Bliss and the Art of Forever (A Hope Springs Novel) by Alison Kent Page B

not have gone to see him. It was February. She was leaving for Italy in June. Four months barely gave her enough time to get her house ready to list, the sign in the yard, and her possessions either sold or stored. And all her books . . .
    Suddenly, she was extremely exhausted. And left pondering the fact that she was scheduled to leave town after meeting a man worth staying for.

FRIDAY, MAY 26, 2006
    “Please let me do something,” Brooklyn said. “It’s my anniversary, too, you know.” She was sitting at the table in the kitchen of the Hope Springs house she and Artie shared, watching him very capably pull their dinner together.
    He had already set the table, taken the lasagna he’d worked on all afternoon from the oven to cool, and put the fresh Italian loaf he’d baked earlier in to warm. Their kitchen smelled like a ristorante : onions, tomatoes, oregano, and wine, and Brooklyn was starving. For the food. For her husband.
    He brought two glasses and the bottle he’d just opened to where she sat, and poured hers first. She reached for the stem, looking past it to the dark hair dusting the edge of his hand, his wrist. The tattoo on his forearm. It was new, and still healing. He had it inked to commemorate ten years on the job.
    It was the Austin Fire Department symbol. Above and behind it flew the Texas state flag as well as the stars and stripes. An eagle perched on top, its talons gripping the emblem’s edge, and the word Brotherhood stretched across the center on a banner.
    She lifted her glass to her mouth and sipped, her gaze falling to his belt buckle against his flat stomach. She wanted to take him to bed. The lasagna could wait. But this was the first time in their five-year marriage that his shift hadn’t fallen on their anniversary date. This was his night as much as it was theirs, and she wouldn’t do anything to take away from their celebration.
    “Drink,” he told her. She raised her gaze; his smile was bright in his five o’clock shadow, and his brown eyes flashed. “That’s what I want you to do. Drink and relax and enjoy dinner. Your gift to me.”
    “Five years. You’re supposed to give me wood,” she said, and when he snorted with laughter, she felt the heat of a blush rising. She loved that he could still make her blush. “Something made out of wood, you perv.”
    “You love every pervy bit of me,” he said, heading back to the oven to check on the bread. “Or would that be every pervy inch?”
    He was right. She did. “What I love is your lasagna,” she said, and sipped her wine. The bottle he opened was one of several they brought back from their last trip to Vernazza. They had plans to go again in June.
    He bent at the waist as he reached for the bread, and all she could think about was undressing him, climbing over him, onto him. She drained her wineglass and when she reached for the bottle to pour more, he was there, across from her, handing her a box enclosed in olive-green paper.
    A ribbon of pink wrapped the box in a cross, and the tiny bow at the apex was the same pink sprinkled with glitter. She didn’t want to open it. The package was pretty enough that she wanted to set it on the living room bookcase as a keepsake, but she sensed Artie’s impatience.
    “C’mon. Open it.”
    The box was a rectangle, the size fitting of a fountain pen, but he’d given her a fountain pen before. She wasn’t a jewelry person, though it might very well have held a bracelet. She couldn’t imagine him buying a bracelet.
    What she found inside was a bookmark. The label read “Arte Legno,” whose products, she knew, were made in Italy of olive wood. The top of the bookmark was carved into an owl with big eyes, big ears, a tiny beak, and feathers that could’ve served as flat toothpicks.
    “Oh, Artie,” she said, pressing her fingers to her lips. “I love it. It’s adorable.”
    “And me?” he asked. “Am I adorable?”
    “Absolutely. And I love you, too.”
    “Good,” he