“What’s up?” she asked.

“Your next appointment’s been canceled. Your client is trapped on the tarmac in Toronto. He wants to reschedule for Monday.”

“Isn’t that a happy coincidence?” Nora said, pulling over to park by a café. “Sounds like we have plenty of time now for a long story.”

They ordered coffee and sat at table in the corner of the café by the windows. Nora kept her coat on. A woman in a black leather bustier got more attention than she’d prefer right now.

“So what’s the story with you and the kid?” She blew on her coffee as she studied Lance over the brim.

“Can I ask why you want to know?” Lance took a sip of the coffee, apparently not bothered by its temperature. Masochists. Such show-offs.

“I like you. I want to know everything about you, especially the stuff you don’t want me to know.”

“There might be a good reason I don’t want you to know.”

Nora didn’t back down. “I’m not asking to meet her and audition for the role of wicked stepmother. I just want to know about her, about you and her.”

“The situation...it’s not something I’m particularly proud of.”

“Don’t care. You think you’re the only person at this table with a past? You realize you’re talking to a Dominatrix here, right?”

“Right. Good point.”

“So tell me about Maya.”

Lance took a deep breath.

“I can’t start with Maya. I have to start with her mother, Amber. I was on a short leave eight years ago in Vermont and met this beautiful woman. Smart, sexy...love and lust at first sight. One of those whirlwind courtship things. We kept in touch after I shipped out, we got married on my very next leave. I shipped out again right after the honeymoon. Amber told me a month later I was going to be a father.”

“Happy news?”

“Very happy. I had a new wife I thought I was in love with and a new baby on the way. Magic. But a few months later I had metal in my back and it’s no more Navy, no more career. So I go home, and we start living together for the first time since we got married. She has Maya, I have surgeries. Once she’s healed up from the delivery, and I’m healed up from the IED, I think, ‘Great, we can start having sex again.’ But apparently that was not to be.”

Nora narrowed her eyes at him.

“Why not?”

“Amber threw herself into motherhood. I don’t know what happened but being a mom changed her. There were good changes. She adored our daughter and gave her everything, all her love and attention and affection. But it was a bad change, too.”

“Because she gave your daughter all her love and attention and affection?”

“Right. Breasts were for breast-feeding only. Her body had given birth to our daughter so Amber didn’t consider herself a sexual being anymore. I talked to some guys who have children and they say this is normal, give her a year. So I gave her a year. Then two years. I ask if we can go to couple’s therapy. She says I’m obsessed with sex and it’s my issue, not hers. I say that I think a married couple not having any sort of sex for two entire years is not normal. She accuses me of being an insensitive sex-obsessed pervert. I start to realize that we made a huge mistake getting married so quickly. We barely knew each other. Looking back I don’t even know why she married me. The uniform? The prestige of being an officer’s wife? Maybe she just wanted to be a mom and thought I’d make a good sperm donor.”