My core ached for my husband, and as his hands slid up my back, lifting my shirt with his warm palms, I knew he wanted me too. I remembered the last time we’d made love: a rare night of passion that ended abruptly when Lucas wandered into our bedroom, scared that Mommy was being attacked by a monster. That monster was Daddy.

Unbuckling Grant’s belt, I pulled him toward the bedroom with my hand gripping his open waistband. I could feel his swelling erection against my probing fingertips. As he tore my shirt up and over my head, his lips searching my neck, my pulse jumping under his tongue, I felt the rush of adolescent newness, the rush of passion, the rush of . . . Collette’s cries.

Everything came to an abrupt stop. Collette’s whimper echoed from the baby monitor.

“Oh, come on!” I grumbled into Grant’s chest.

“Well, that ends that. As usual.”

He was pissed, and I couldn’t blame him. Hell, I needed it just as much as he did.

“Please don’t leave. She’ll go back to sleep,” I assured him. But he was already rebuttoning his shirt. I was losing him—and not just tonight. The distance between us was growing into a wide chasm.

“Honey, we both know you’re going to spend the next hour soothing her. Then another hour getting her back to sleep. By then I’ll be home. Let’s take a rain check.”

“I don’t want a rain check. I want tonight—with you.”

Collette’s shrieks on the monitor intensified. He gestured at the frantically blinking red light.

“Robin, her majesty is summoning you. I’ll see you later.”

I grabbed his wrist, forced him to look me in the eye.

“Grant, is our marriage dying?” It was too big a question as my husband was running out the door, but I needed to know. His mouth opened, closed, opened in a tentative sequence. I waited for him to crack the safe and say what I needed to hear.

“Of course not. I promise you, we’re okay. How about this: Ryan can watch the others and we’ll go out tomorrow. How’s a nice dinner at the Wooden Nickel Restaurant sound? I’ll order pizza from Della Sala’s for the kids; you know how they love those square slices.” He sealed the evening’s fate with a step away from me. “In fact, treat yourself to a new dress. Oh, which reminds me, you need to call the credit card company. Something’s wrong—they declined a charge I tried to make, which shouldn’t be possible. Can you look into it?”

A chill prickled my skin. “Sure, I’ll sort it out.”