Taking it All Read Free Page B

to step up and not lose a single client.
    To date, he’d only lost one and he wanted to keep it that way. Which meant being called out at all hours of the day. Clients wanting to meet with him. Or calling him in panic after a bad day in the stock market. It seemed to never end.
    In the beginning, Tate had wanted Chessy to accompany him to his dinners with his clients. Had wanted her to play the consummate hostess. They’d even had small dinner parties at their house that Chessy had arranged with Joss’s help since Joss was such an amazing cook.
    But lately? He hadn’t asked her to accompany him for anything. He’d made an offhand remark that it was becoming too much for her and that he didn’t want his job to consume them
both
. At the time Chessy had taken it as a sign of his caring. That he wanted to take care of her and not put her in high-pressure situations. But marriage was all about partnership, wasn’t it?
    She didn’t think she’d ever failed Tate or embarrassed him, but now that paranoid side of her wondered just that. If he was somehow ashamed of her, that she was
too
outgoing,
too
bubbly for the staid, moneyed clients he catered to. His not wanting her to be a part of him courting and wining and dining his clients had ended up being yet another rejection, one that at the time hadn’t bothered her, but in retrospect made her heart clench. Was Tate growing tired of their marriage? Did she no longer satisfy him? Had she done something to cause him to lose faith in her? Their relationship? The not knowing was eating her up on the inside and it was growing harder and harder to cover up her growing unhappiness with a bright smile and words of understanding. She was lying to her friends, even though she knew they saw right through her façade. But the simple fact that she
was
lying, keeping so much locked inside her, made her feel like the ultimate fraud.
    She swallowed the quick knot in her throat, determined she would not cry tonight and ruin her carefully applied makeup. Joss and Kylie had both come over to lend advice and help her prepare for her anniversary night. She’d needed their support because she was starting to doubt herself and she hated that.
    Just because she chose to surrender her submission to Tate didn’t make her a brainless twit unable to perform the simplest task unless he was there to direct her. But him always being there, taking care of her, cherishing her, had become her safety net. She knew she’d never fall without him there to catch her. There was comfort in that knowledge. It gave her a sense of security that she’d come to rely on. And lately? She felt like she was operating without that safety net. It was a sad testament of her marriage that she saw more of Kylie and Joss and was more in tune with
their
relationships than she was with her own!
    She motioned for the waiter after studying the menu. The truth was she wasn’t that hungry and her nerves were on edge because she absolutely planned to address her growing unhappiness with Tate this weekend and she had
no
idea how that would go over.
    One part of her thought he’d be horrified that he wasn’t providing what she needed. Another part of her feared he’d be angry with her for not “understanding” the sacrifices he was making in order to make them financially secure. It was a coin flip and it saddened her that she was so out of touch with Tate’s thought processes that she had no idea which way he’d go. She liked to think that he would be understanding and make the effort to spend more time with her. But the not knowing was killing her.
    The waiter promptly appeared at her table, and in a low voice barely above cracking, she placed hers and Tate’s orders and asked for a bottle of their favorite wine. A sparkling white they drank every year on their anniversary. They’d discovered it on their honeymoon and had vowed to commemorate each