Page 27 of Crave the Love

I couldn’t argue with that.

There was a time when I wholeheartedly believed that Johnny and I were the two luckiest people in the world. The way he loved me, and the way I loved him, was unparalleled.

Both of us put in the time. We made the effort. And the strangest thing about that was that I didn’t put in that effort for the benefits I believed I’d receive. I did it because I wanted to do it for Johnny. Something compelled me to do it, and I couldn’t say that the way he showed his love for me wasn’t a big part of it.

But now we were here.

We’d gotten married, things had been wonderful for quite some time, and somewhere along the line, things started to unravel.

It hadn’t been intentional. Or, at least, I didn’t think that it was.

My business had grown tremendously over the last few years, and Johnny had become one of the best in his business. For a while, I believed we both might have seen what was happening to our relationship and didn’t do anything about it because we didn’t want to be the one to do anything that might stifle the growth and success our partner was experiencing. Truthfully, I don’t think either one of us wanted to stifle our own growth, either.

But something needed to change.

We couldn’t continue to be roommates who only made time to reconnect on special occasions.

We needed to be a married couple who was madly in love with one another. I didn’t think I was being naïve, either. I realized relationships changed. I wasn’t under the impression that we’d be in the honeymoon phase forever, but the evolution of our marriage shouldn’t have resulted in dissolution.

Our marriage needed a hero.

Maybe I always viewed Johnny as the superhero in the relationship—he had rescued me from that rogue beach umbrella—but that didn’t mean I couldn’t be the one to step in now.

I loved him, and I was willing to do whatever it took to save this.

So, I was going to surprise him here at work and make it happen. Walking through the front door, I found Jackie sitting at the front desk.

Jackie was Johnny’s secretary. For a long time, he’d avoided hiring anyone, but when the demands of running his own business had become too much, he needed someone to help ease a bit of the burden. He hired Jackie, and from what I knew, she’d managed to step up in a big way that lightened his load tremendously.

“Good afternoon, Kiera. How are you?” she greeted me.

“I’m great, Jackie. You?”

She shrugged, a smile on her face. “I can’t complain.”

Nodding, I jerked my head toward Johnny’s office. “He’s not on a call, is he?” I asked.

Jackie glanced down at the phone on her desk, inspected it, and returned her attention to me. “Looks like he just got off.”

I grinned. “Perfect.”

Not wasting another moment, I moved away from Jackie’s desk and toward the door that would lead me into Johnny’s office. I tapped on the door, but didn’t wait for him to respond when I opened it and walked inside.

Johnny looked up from his desk as I closed the door. “Kiera,” he said, his voice indicating he hadn’t been expecting my visit.

Truth be told, I had made trips to meet Johnny at his office on occasion before, but he always knew I’d be arriving. Today’s visit was a surprise, and I thought that was just the kind of thing our marriage needed.

“Hey,” I returned, moving toward his desk.

“What’s going on?” he asked.

I avoided the chair that sat opposite of him, rounded the desk, set my purse down on top of it, and leaned against it with my fingers curled around the edge of it. I looked down at Johnny and answered, “I’ve been doing some thinking lately, and I thought it might be fun for us to take a few days off from work to do something fun.”

His brows pulled together. “Take a few days off?” he repeated. “I thought you were going to be busy for the next few weeks preparing for the wedding later this month.”

I shook my head. “I was, but then I got a call from the bride’s mother telling me that the wedding was off. The groom was getting cold feet and asked his bride if they could just delay things a bit longer, so I’m not sure what’s going to happen there. With that wedding no longer happening, I only have a fiftieth birthday party bash and two corporate events to plan that are the most pressing. My load has been seriously lightened, and since I knew you weren’t working on any big projects, I thought this might be the perfect time for us to take a few days off to reconnect.”

Something that looked a lot like despair washed over him. He reached out, curled his fingers around my wrist, and lamented, “Kiera, I’m sorry. I actually just got off the phone with a client. If I had known even an hour ago that you wanted to do something, I could have made it happen. Unfortunately, I’m going to be tied up for the next couple of weeks. I figured you were in the same boat, so it wasn’t going to matter.”