Free Healing the Wounds by M.Q. Barber Page A

studio. One of those rooms in which he excels, wouldn’t you say, Alice?”
    She accepted the conversational diversion, holding up her end while Henry ladled soup and Jay carried bowls. Maybe the ability to pick a route through a potential verbal minefield wasn’t strictly a dominant skill. Henry masterfully directed conversation without seeming to, but Emma wasn’t bad herself.
    Years of dinner parties or small talk at the club would teach subtlety. Henry and Emma shared a knack for it. Not a skill she possessed. Directness, that was more her style. Jay’s too.
    They kept to safe topics, agreeing that Henry’s agent, though a cheerful fellow, drooped with a cadaver’s gauntness.
    “The nerves, I expect,” Emma said. “I’ve never met that man when he was standing still.”
    “He did seem high-strung when I met him. Jay fidgets a lot—I mean, a lot.”
    Bringing the last of the soup bowls, Jay stuck his tongue out.
    “But Henry keeps him well-fed.” She resisted the urge to return Jay’s gesture. Better not to open the floodgates and spill the less-cute juvenile shit clogging her head in front of the intimidating woman across the table. “Enough to put meat and muscle on his bones. Otherwise he’d be a dancing skeleton.”
    “Dibs! I’m calling it now, so nobody else can be a dancing skeleton for Halloween.” Jay’s enthusiasm caused laughs all around. “Henry, you heard me call it, right?”
    “I did. We’ll investigate the possibilities of body paint at a later date.” Henry set his hand on the back of his chair.
    Jay slid into his seat at the foot of the table.
    Emma swiveled, one perfectly manicured eyebrow rising. “You don’t have a server? I would have thought—” She glanced at the floor beside Henry’s chair. At Alice. Settled on Jay and shook her head in a single slow motion.
    Jay had already brought the soup to the table. Full-service waitstaff.
    “No, no pillows this evening, Em.”
    Her glance again went to the floor beside Henry’s chair as he sat.
    Holy shit. Emma expected someone to kneel at Henry’s side instead of participating at dinner. A cold night in January. Henry’s voice snapping commands. The hollow feeling in her stomach, the chill in her chest. The unpleasant distance between herself and Henry. To be loved and rewarded for her submission was one thing. To sit ignored like a slave unless the master needed something was another thing entirely. Not a game she wanted to play.
    Henry picked up his soupspoon.
    With the quiet clink of the metal against the ceramic bowl, Emma drew her chin up and focused an unwavering stare at Henry.
    Her intensity matched Jay in his best waiting pose.
    “Grateful though I am for Victor’s training in the formalities, I don’t run my household in the same fashion.” Henry steered the spoon in a slow curve through his soup. “As he balanced his needs with yours, so I balance mine with Jay’s and Alice’s.”
    “No, of course.” Emma nodded, more to herself than to Henry. “Of course you would.”
    The talk turned to inconsequential chatter, Henry smoothly encouraging Jay to share stories of the week’s most amusing deliveries. He settled down as Henry guided him, Emma asked polite questions, and Alice chimed in on occasion. The charming comedian. Untroubled by the deeper currents. Definitely not thinking about Emma’s marriage or what her submission had involved. Things Alice couldn’t stop thinking about.
    Jay even remembered to tip his bowl properly away to spoon up the last of his cream soup. Henry laid his own spoon down as he surveyed the table. “Salads are in order, it seems.”
    Jay stood, picking up his soup bowl. Emma half stood.
    Shit. No point in standing when she’d already been out-subbed by both of them. Whatever the mindset needed for a submissive, she didn’t have it. The instinctive desire to serve. Fuck. Henry would’ve done better to pick this other woman, the one who spoke art fluently and offered her