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“Yes,” he said. “Today.”

“For…for us?”

“Yes. It’s going to be for us. For our…”

Family. He didn’t have to say it. “That’s…great. Here?”

“I had thought that you would want to stay close enough to the business.”

“Well, that is true.”

“But I had also thought that you would probably want to get out of the city. A place with a nice yard.”

She laughed. “Yes. A yard. I… That’s such a funny thing to think of. We had the run of the city, but it’s not the same, is it?”

“No,” he said. “It’s not.”

And most people realized that. Most didn’t have to ask the question.

There was something strange about both of them.

But they knew the steps toward normal. They could figure it out.

She understood that trying to change the relationship between them was asking for way too much right now. But she ached to touch him, and she hated the idea of him going off and satisfying himself in other ways, with other people.

She didn’t say that. Not now.

There was no point.

“All right. Let’s go.”

Chapter Eight

He had tasked an estate agent with finding them places to look at from the edge of the city all the way to Cape Cod. They looked at several homes closer to the office, but it was the large, sprawling house that overlooked the Atlantic that he could see captured Esme’s attention.

“It has to be this one,” she said, gripping the balcony railing, looking out over the water.

There was a large, green lawn, and from that position there on the balcony they would be able to see not only the ocean, but children playing.

Children.

They wouldn’t have more than one child.

It wasn’t like that.

There was something in that realization that grieved him.

Alex and Esme were so close. He had wished for a brother. A sister. Someone to care for. Would their own child be lonely?

No. Because unlike his father, they wouldn’t throw their child to the wolves.

Their child would have them.

Such as they were. Such as it was.

“Then we will buy it.”

She looked at him, the sun filtering across her beautiful face.