Free Belonging by Nancy Thayer Page A

sure everything was in place. The movement caused her to rush into the kitchen, pull a can of tamales from the cupboard, and stand bending over the kitchen sink, eating them cold as fast as she could. Odd how the hot spices settled her stomach.
    If her viewers could see her now, she thought! She knew from her fan mail that the women who watched her show envied her, considering her completely “successful.” This year alone she’d been listed in two magazines’ polls of the top ten most admired women in America. As she walked through the country’s most wonderful houses and interviewed their owners for her weekly television show, she emanated the serene aura of a triumphant woman, content in her life.
    Joanna shook her head ruefully at that thought, and the very act of shaking her head set off a current of dizziness through her body. Holding on to the cold porcelain of the sink, she closed her eyes and waited for the nausea to pass. Beads of sweat broke out across her forehead. Bending over, she rested her cheek against the soothing chill of the sink. Outside the window, a few snowflakes swirled down, silver in the light, seeming to disappear into the darkness.
    She and Carter had been lovers for over three years. They’d survived production catastrophes and triumphs together. They’d opened their hearts to one another. At this particular moment in time it was true that Carter was not as close to her as he had been, could even be said to be pulling away, but she was certain that was due to his problems with the network. Carter did not carry failure well; it made him cranky.
    Which was too bad, when right now she needed him to be loving.
    Everything had changed. The world was new to her. She had to change—she was changing with each breath she took—and she had to ask Carter to change also, no matter what pain it caused. Joanna knew that Carter felt little passion for Blair, but profoundly loved his son. But Chip was fifteen, no longer an innocent child. He spent most of his life at camps, and next year would go off to boarding school. Was it really necessary for Carter to keep his home together for Chip’s sake? Not any longer. That was what Joanna thought.
    Now all she had to do was convince Carter.
    Her equilibrium had returned. The silky lining of her red dress whispered against her thighs as Joanna hurried into her bathroom and opened the medicine chest above the sink. It held mostly cosmetics. Joanna prided herself on her excellent good health—she possessed endless energy, and worked through flus that set other people back weeks, and was impatient with her body when it showed any signs of weakness. Uncapping a bottle of Scope, she rinsed her mouth and gargled, returned the bottle to the cupboard, redid her lipstick, and blew a kiss to her reflection in the mirror. She rather looked, she thought,like someone who sang piano bar down in the Village. Grabbing up her fur, gloves, and handbag, she locked up her apartment and hurried down to wait for Carter in the ground-level vestibule.
    His dark green convertible Saab slid up the street just a few moments later, and Joanna hurried out, taking care not to slip on the snowy sidewalk. He had to double-park and so she quickly opened the passenger door and got inside, glad for the leathery-smelling heat of the interior. The overhead light showed Carter’s face as he turned to greet her: he smiled briefly, but his eyes were icy, and when he turned back to look out the rear window as he nosed the car back into the traffic, his smile faded and his chin jutted out, causing a little bunching fist of flesh just under his mouth which she secretly thought of as his “boxing glove” and which always clearly signaled his mood.
    Leaning over, she kissed his cheek. He did not turn his face to meet her mouth with his. Ah, well. Carter never did like it when she asked him for anything, especially not for a meeting on a day that wasn’t considered one of “their” days. He did