“I realize that I’m asking an awful lot of you,” she continued. “I want you to know how grateful I am that you’re going to help me. I also want you to know that I’ll try to make it as easy as possible for you to get through the whole…process—”
“Before we go any further here just tell me one thing, will you?” Sean cut in. “Did you move forward with this business of adopting a foreign baby after I left Mayfair back in June?”
“No, of course not,” she answered without hesitation, stung by the accusation of equivocation on her part underlying his question. “For the first few weeks after you left me, it was all I could do to get out of bed each morning. Then I had to focus as much energy as I possibly could on getting ready for the start of the school year.”
She paused and drew a quick, angry breath.
“I certainly wasn’t plotting to thwart you in any way,” she added. “I’m not that kind of person, and you, of all people, should know that by now. I wasn’t expecting to find this in my mailbox.” Charlotte tapped a hand on the envelope for emphasis, and tipped her chin up angrily. “But I am happy that I did, and I don’t intend to pretend otherwise.”
“I don’t expect you to.”
Typically, Sean didn’t attempt to defend his questioning of her or to backpedal even the slightest bit. But for just an instant, Charlotte was sure that she saw the merest flicker of hurt in his pale gray eyes.
Her response must have touched a nerve with him, as well. Though how exactly, she couldn’t really be sure. Unless he had meant to offer her an ultimatum earlier— either go forward with adopting the child or work together to save their marriage.
“I don’t suppose you’d consider—” Charlotte began, then looked away when his expression hardened again.
He hadn’t said that reconciliation was an option. In fact, he’d been quite firm about his intention to file for divorce once the adoption process had been completed.
“What?”
“Nothing,” she said, pushing away from the counter, envelope in hand.
“Is there anything else you’d like to know right now? Otherwise, I’ll just run upstairs, collect my clothes and head on back to Mayfair. We can discuss the adoption again in a few days—”
“You are not driving back to Mayfair tonight,” Sean said. “The weather has only gotten worse since you’ve been here, and that’s going to make it even more dangerous for you to be on the road than it was earlier, especially on the interstate.”
“I’ll be fine—” Charlotte assured him.
She didn’t really want to drive home tonight. But neither did she want to spend the night in the town house with her husband, knowing as she now did that their marriage was over.
“There’s also a lot more I want to know about this adoption business,” Sean added, riding over her feeble protest. “Do you have any idea of exactly what we’re going to have to do? Has the agency given you any information on where we’re supposed to go to collect the child and a specific time frame for doing so?”
Charlotte didn’t much care for the way he phrased his rapid-fire questions—adoption business, process, collecting of a child. He made it sound so cold, so…clinical—as if becoming the parents of the precious little girl in the photograph were just another transaction to be brokered as quickly and efficiently as possible.
But she also had to admit that he had a right to know up-front all that he would be required to do.
Unfortunately, Charlotte couldn’t provide him with the information he wanted in the same concise manner he’d just requested it, though she was sure most, if not all, of it was contained in the envelope.
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “I haven’t had a chance to look through all of the paperwork the agency sent us.”
“All the more reason for you to spend the night here. That will give us a chance to sort through the packet together,” Sean said amenably enough, then added, “unless you’re ready to call it a night, in which case I don’t mind reading over the information on my own.”
Deftly outmaneuvered, Charlotte realized that Sean had given her two choices, neither of which would allow her to leave New Orleans that night.
Going through the adoption-agency information was going to take awhile, and according to the clock on the kitchen wall it was after ten o’clock already. She was barely alert enough to drive now, although with a little coffee she’d probably be good to go. But a couple of hours from now even coffee wouldn’t help her to stay awake during what would be a long, tedious drive in stormy weather.
The only way she could possibly get away that night would be to leave the envelope with Sean so he could review the contents on his own, and she certainly wasn’t prepared to do that.
“I suppose we might as well go over everything together,” she said at last, though not nearly as graciously as she should have.
“Would you like some coffee before we get started?” Sean offered with the benevolence of one who had triumphed.
“Yes, please.”
Charlotte sat on her stool again, making an effort to tamp down her irritation. How bad could spending one night in the guest room of the town house really be when it would also give her a chance to cement her new affiliation with her soon to be ex-husband?
Obviously, she was about to find out.
“Do you still take cream and sugar?”
“Do you still make coffee strong enough to hold a spoon upright?”
“Cream and sugar it is,” Sean acknowledged with the first hint of humor in his voice that she’d heard all evening.
Reminded of how charming he could be when he put his mind to it—as he was apt to do whenever he’d gotten his way—Charlotte was tempted to lower her guard just a little.
She was stuck in the town house with him for the night, so why not relax and enjoy the companionship Sean now seemed willing to offer her? With the rain still thundering down outside, the small kitchen, light and bright, provided a warm and cozy haven for the two of them.
Only by Sean’s choice they weren’t really a couple anymore—at least not in the same sense that they’d once been. If she allowed herself to pretend otherwise even for an evening, she knew that she would find it even more painful to face the reality awaiting her in the not-too- distant future.
Better to think of her husband as a business partner from now on, Charlotte warned herself as she took the sheaf of paperwork from the envelope and laid it out on the island countertop. A temporary partner with whom she would have dealings for only a short time before he walked out of her life for good.
“You’re looking just a mite grim all of a sudden,” Sean observed as he set two steaming mugs of café au lait on the counter, then sat on the stool across from her again. “Have you come upon something disturbing among all those papers from the adoption agency?”
“The number of forms alone that we’re supposed to complete is daunting,” Charlotte replied, glad to have something to use as a blind for her disquieting emotions.
She took a swallow of the hot, sweet, creamy coffee laced with chicory. Then she spread the various forms out in front of her, reading headings aloud as she turned them toward Sean for his perusal.
“To start, we need a written referral from the adoption agency in New Orleans, criminal background checks from the local and