“You always go alone.”

“Not this time.” He hadn’t gone last year. He didn’t believe she’d considered that this time of year held as many reminders for him as it did for her, that his guts ached with loss, with guilt for not being there that day, that at times he was as close to despair as she was. She wasn’t unfeeling, but she didn’t . . . notice him. Yet no matter how much you didn’t want it to, life kept right on going, rolling over you if you didn’t get out of its way. The trade show was important for them, a venue to show off their new products. He had to go.

Around him, equipment hummed, beeped. Something scrabbled on the roof, maybe a bird, or a squirrel snatching up acorns that had fallen off the oaks surrounding the industrial park. He could smell Erin, the sweet shampoo he sometimes borrowed when his ran out. He liked having her scent on him.

“I’m not sure I can.” Her voice lacked the tension she’d entered the lab with.

“Do it for me,” Dominic said, his fingers tight on the gauge. “I need you.”

It was dirty pool and he knew it, but he was tired of fighting fair with her. In past years, he’d spent the entire week in Orlando because a hell of a lot went on even before the actual trade show got underway. This year, though, he’d opted for the earliest flight out Wednesday morning to have time to set up the booth before the show started on Thursday. He’d had Rachel book a late Thursday afternoon flight for Erin. Last Christmas was a blur for both of them. They’d moved in a haze of grief. But this year, the holiday season was proving to be far more brutal on her, and he would not leave her alone for that many days, especially not over the weekend. But he’d already cancelled on several trade shows and conferences over the past year, places he should have been, networking he should have done. He couldn’t miss the PRI show. So instead, he’d decided to take her with him. No matter what kind of fight she put up.

He held his breath, waiting, the animals scrabbling on the roof the only sound in the lab. Say yes, he willed her. Don’t fight me. He needed this. He needed her, but he was so damn terrified she was too far gone to ever find her way back to him. He should have forced her into counseling. He’d needed it, too. But she’d refused, and any pressure he’d put on her had only driven her further away.

“All right,” she said.

His heart started beating again, and he resisted the urge to punch his fist in the air. Unsportsmanlike conduct. He’d like to say it was all for her own good, but he was the one that had to have it. For the last eighteen years, even before they were married, every decision he’d made had been with her in mind. If she left him, he had no idea what would replace her. Without her, he could not bear Jay’s loss. He was willing to do anything to get her back. “Thank you.”

“You owe me,” she said, trying to make light of it, but he recognized the huskiness of emotion in her voice.

“I got us a room at the Crown Royal.”

She raised a brow. “That’s a little swank, isn’t it?”

“It’s nice enough.” On his own, he wouldn’t have spent the extra money, but he’d wanted to give her the best. At forty, she was still gorgeous to him, with a body women ten years younger would envy and long red hair that made him tremble when he buried his fingers in it. Yet her eyes, a pretty robin’s-egg blue, were blemished by dark circles, and her brow furrowed with a frown she probably didn’t even realize was there most of the time. It didn’t used to be that way. She used to laugh a lot. “Pack a bathing suit. The weather’s supposed to be nice.” Unseasonably warm, in fact.

Her lips thinned. “It’s a working trip.”

“I’ll be working. You can lay by the pool if you want.”

“If I’m going, I won’t waste time at the pool. I’ll sit in the booth with you and talk to people.”

She’d hate it, but he didn’t argue. He saw many of the same customers and suppliers year after year, and he liked the idea of introducing his wife around. “You’ll need a couple of cocktail dresses. There are evening parties we’ll have to attend.”

She raised a brow. “Oh yeah, I remember. All the business gets done at the parties.”

Among other things. He grinned, feeling a little lighter now that she’d agreed. Of course, he’d told her about the parties. All the dirty details. And some of them did get pretty damn dirty. “I have to make a showing.”

“Sure, right.” She smirked at him as she left. In that moment, there had been some remnant in her unguarded expression, the Erin of old, the girl he’d fallen head over heels for, the woman he missed as much as he missed Jay.

They’d been together almost half their lives, meeting in night school at the local university in Kalamazoo. They’d both been working full time as well, and they had the same goals, the same dreams. Neither of them wanted to spend their lives worrying about where the next paycheck was coming from. They wanted control over their destiny, wanted a better life for their children. They’d married fifteen years ago, after he graduated with his mechanical engineering degree, but they put off having kids until Erin finished business school, until they owned their home out in sunny California, away from the Michigan winters. Building the life they wanted had been a struggle, but they’d done it together. He designed the products, courted the new customers. She did everything from purchasing to operations, handled the entire office. They were a team, DKG a second family to them. Everything had been perfect.

Until last October. Now they lived in a darkness that seemed to have taken over their souls. They could never go back to that perfect life.

He withdrew the photo from beneath the mouse pad, where he’d stashed it when Erin walked in. Jay had his dark hair and Erin’s pale skin, the wiry body of Dominic’s youth, but Erin’s smile. Jay had loved hanging out here in the lab after school, sometimes on weekends. He’d been smart as a whip, helped out with the testing, knew how to run the instruments.

The photograph was all Dominic had left. She wouldn’t let him talk about Jay. There wasn’t a grave to visit. Erin wouldn’t have it. She’d wanted Jay cremated. That was the only real fight they’d had afterward. Dominic closed his eyes, his heart pumping hard, his chest tight, his temples suddenly throbbing. He could still hear her screaming at him.

He’d given in because he couldn’t stand the anguish in her, or thinking about it, imagining that she was right.

Dominic tucked the picture at the bottom of the drawer. He usually kept it there, beneath a pile of outdated transducers and cables.

They couldn’t go on like this much longer. Unless they wanted to lose each other forever. Sometimes he wondered if that’s what she intended. Despite all the pain, all the sorrow, he couldn’t allow that. She was his other half and though they’d lost everything else, he could not lose her. Without her, he would . . . the thought wouldn’t complete itself.

Instead, he swore he would find a way to bring her with him into the light, even if he had to drag her kicking and screaming.

Even though she’d been out of sight back then, she hadn’t been out of mind. Thank God for the three-hour time difference. He’d enjoyed calling her late at night, regaling her with stories about the after-hours parties. They weren’t sanctioned by the show’s organizers, but no one could stop the private get-togethers. Some of them could get pretty damn wild. Erin had soaked up every naughty detail. He’d get her really worked up, too, telling her how he’d love to watch her with another man at one of these shindigs, just sit back and enjoy her pleasure. Oh, she’d gotten into that one all right, and they’d had some of the best phone sex after that particular fantasy.

But all that was before. Life was different now. Over the last ten days, since he’d finagled Erin into attending the trade show, they’d hardly spoken beyond the necessities of working in the same facility and living in the same house. With emotion slicing through his gut, he admitted she hadn’t even reached for him in the night. The only hope he still harbored was that she hadn’t backed out of the trip.

By five o’clock in the evening, the trade show crowds had thinned, with attendees heading to dinner or the bar or the cocktail mixer. Dominic began locking away his sample gauges.

“Dude, it’s great to see ya here.” Stomping into the DKG booth, Jamison grabbed Dominic’s hand, pumped his arm in a merciless handshake, then slapped him on the back.

“Good to see you, too, man.” Dominic put his tongue to his teeth to make sure they hadn’t been rattled out of his head.

Jamison was a big man with an expanded midsection, a bald pate, and a huge pinkie ring with a ginormous diamond. He was in carburetors. The racing industry had strict guidelines on the thickness of everything from car panels to holes bored through a carburetor for increasing performance. And they used DKG gauges. Jamison was a good customer, and despite his bluster, Dominic had always liked him. He and his wife had flown from Palm Beach to attend Jay’s memorial service.

Jamison boomed a laugh that still managed to turn heads despite the noise level in the hall. “I tell ya, Cam was a peach last year, but I had to watch all my p’s and q’s with that little gal.”

Dominic had a hard time believing Jamison could actually accomplish that. With the fees already paid, Dominic had sent Cam Phan in his place last year. She’d been new at DKG, replacing his previous software engineer when Reggie up and quit because Dominic refused to give him a higher percentage of the profit sharing. From day one, he and Erin had agreed everyone would profit equally. Even their share was the same. As good an engineer as he was, Reggie had always been a pain in the ass. Cam might not have his genius, but she was a quiet little thing and she worked hard.

“She didn’t speak for a month straight after she got back.” Not true, but Dominic couldn’t help ribbing Jamison.

Jamison smacked his forehead. “I’m such a jerk.” But he smiled, not minding the dig at all. “Ryan’s got the penthouse at the Milton. Nine o’clock, party hearty. You comin’?”

Dominic glanced at his watch. The Budweiser mixer would get under way in a few minutes, and he could sure as hell use a beer. After that? He had to fetch Erin from the airport. Her flight came in just past midnight. He hoped she’d sleep on the plane. “Not tonight,” he said. “Anything going on tomorrow?”

“I heard Miterberg is putting on something. And man”—Jamison shook his fingers as if he’d touched a hot stove—“he’s rented a freaking palace.”

“Miterberg usually puts on a good party,” Dominic said mildly. A good party was understating it. Miterberg was a so-called silent partner of a high-profile racing team, and everything he did, he did big. He’d have rented a mansion with acres of grounds and fifty million bedrooms (slight exaggeration). Lobster, crab legs, jumbo prawns, caviar, anything you could think of to drink, and the entertainment would be risqué. Erin would finally get to see what he’d told her about. That had been his plan since the moment he’d decided to bring her. “Erin’ll love it.”

Jamison’s bushy eyebrows, in dire contrast to his bare scalp, shot up. “Dude. You can’t take your wife there.”

Dominic laughed. “I won’t let her venture too far from me.” He’d let Erin go anywhere she wanted. He would encourage her. His pulse quickened with the possibilities. He had no clue why he was wired this way, why jealousy wasn’t a factor for him. Maybe it was plain old desperation now, anything to get her to see him again, interact with him, play with him the way she used to. Perhaps he’d be jealous if fantasy actually became reality, but whenever he thought about it, whenever he’d told Erin the stories about what he’d seen and how he’d love to watch a guy doing her, he’d become so hard he couldn’t think straight. Miterberg’s party could be the big test. Would he let someone touch her? Would she?

Jamison shook his fingers again, his pinkie ring glittering in the overhead lights. “Man, you’re taking a chance,” he said, punctuating with another boom of laughter. “My wife would castrate me if she knew what went on at some of the parties.”

It wasn’t only PRI. It happened at a lot of trade shows. Okay, maybe not the National Association of Accountants annual conference, but he’d worked in an industrial environment long enough to know there was a fair amount of kink going on out there. Not every party, of course; sometimes, he’d had to make things up for Erin, but he was hoping he could find something hot for her to see. A Miterberg party was a damn good bet. Dominic winked at Jamison. “Get me an invitation, would ya?”

“Will do. Catch up with you later.” Jamison followed the crowd into another of the exhibit halls, where the beer would already be flowing and the Budweiser girls mingling. That was part of the charm of this particular show, the scantily clad ladies hawking their sponsors’ wares. Dominic did his share of looking, but he’d never cheated. He didn’t want other women. He wanted to watch Erin with another man.

Their one kinky experience had been unintentional. A hiking trip, they’d gone off trail. Thinking they were out of sight, Dominic had turned her around, pushed her up against a sturdy redwood, tugged down her hiking shorts, and done her standing up as she braced herself against the tree. Hot didn’t cover it. The ultimate was when they realized the trail they’d been on wound around, and they were on display for a couple coming from the opposite direction. It hadn’t stopped him. It hadn’t stopped Erin. In fact, her moans got louder. There in the forest, they’d had some of the hottest sex of their marriage, all while that couple watched. Hell, they’d relived that one event for a lot of fantastic sex later.

Dominic thought of the silent nights in their bed, her hands, her mouth. He needed more, wanted her to touch him, kiss him, talk to him. The only way they connected these days was sexually, in the dark and the silence. But he needed her to connect with him outside of their bed. Even if she got pissed about the party, at least there’d be some sort of connection. She’d actually have to talk to him. Just as she’d had to acknowledge him when he had Rachel make the reservation.

A little kink could be exactly what he needed to crack the shell she’d grown around herself, and an elaborate party at a mansion would be the perfect place to find it.