There’s a beat as I stare at her in surprise. My reply is as dumb as it sounds. “No, you’re not.”

She gives a small smile. “I feel it sometimes. You’re so fit and…”

“Caro, when the winter storms roll in, I’m the one limping around like a fucking retiree!”

She rests her hand on my right thigh, over the ugly scars that there’re always so fucking anxious to show in photo shoots.

“I know, tesoro. But…” she huffs out in frustration. “My periods have stopped.”

She looks up and stares at me.

“You’re pregnant?!”

“No!” Her voice cuts across my happy thoughts.

Now I’m just freakin’ confused.

“Um, okay?”

Her lips thin slightly and she crosses her arms. Not sure how I’m pissing her off…

“It’s menopause, Sebastian,” she explains, her voice brittle. “It’s a big deal. A very big deal. I can’t … I’m not…”

Now I’m getting it. Okay, so not always the sharpest pencil in the box when it comes to this shit, but I know what to do.

I pull her into my arms.

“Caro, I get that this, um, change of life, is a big deal, I do. But I love you, baby, and nothing else matters.”

“I just feel so old compared to you. You’re a model, for God’s sake. I feel old and frumpy and I’m just so bored.”

She pulls away from me and I’m wary again now. I swallow several times.

“Bored with me?”

Her head whips around so fast, her hair fans out around her.

“No, tesoro! God, no! Never that! But I need to be challenged—and not just athletically in the bedroom.”

I can’t help a small smirk at that comment, but I reel it back in because her eyes are flashing with annoyance.

“So what sort of challenge do you want?”

“Well, there was that assignment in the Middle East that came up and…”

“No! No fucking way! We talked about that!”

“Actually, we didn’t talk about that, Sebastian. You lost your temper and stormed out of the house.”

True.

“Caro, it’s fucking dangerous out there. No more war zones. No more places you have to wear body armor. Don’t tell me we didn’t discuss that, because we fucking did. You’re not going.”

“Stop telling me what to do!”

“Stop being so fucking selfish!”

She gasps and her eyes glitter dangerously, but I’m not backing down.

“I mean it, Caro. We’ve got three kids. What the fuck do you think would happen to us if something happened to you? I couldn’t…”

I don’t finish the sentence, so we sit there staring at each other. Caro takes a deep breath and I can tell that she’s trying to talk calmly.

“All I was going to say is that since I turned down the Middle East assignment, I’ve felt … adrift. I need a good story to get my teeth into.” She pauses. “And I had an offer this morning.”

“Not a war zone.”

She rolls her eyes. “No, not a war zone.”

“Okay, then.”

“Okay, what?”

“You got a new assignment. It’s not a warzone. How long will you be away for?”

I hate this bit. I hate her going away, but she hates it when I leave, as well. And this is a partnership.

She smiles slightly. “Well, it would be about a month … or two…”

That’s a lot longer than I was expecting, but I can see the excitement inside her. I’ll miss her like fuck, but we’ll deal. Somehow.

“Fuck, Caro, two months … that’s a long time,” I say quietly. “But if it’s what you need…”

My words tail off. I’m already imagining what it will be like to be without her for so long. Fucking grim.

She runs her warm hands down my arm. “Don’t you want to know what the assignment is?”

“Sure, baby,” I say, trying to smile.

“I’ll be sailing to Hawaii from San Diego. They want me to write an article about the challenges … for a family.”

I look up, wanting confirmation for what I’ve heard. “A family? What?”

“It’s a series of articles about alternative ways of family life. You know, families who go backpacking around the world; families who live in eco communities and grow their own food, children growing up on the carnival circuit. Well, the editor is following a family at the start of their sailing-around-the-world trip. I’ve been asked to go and report on it … and then I suggested to the editor that we all go for the first month, so I get a real flavor of what it’s like. All of us.”

Her words run together rapidly and I’m not sure who she’s trying to persuade—me or herself.

“It would be an amazing learning opportunity for the children: geography, sailing, navigation, cooking in a galley, fishing … I don’t know! Lots of things. It would be good for us, as well, Sebastian, to spend time together.”

She’s pretty much convinced me, and I can see how amazing it would be to do something like that. But one thing worries me.

“It sounds great, Caro, but I don’t know … Sofia has only just started at her new school and she really likes it. It could fuck things up if we take her out for a couple of months now.”

Caro smiles at me. “You’re such a good father, Sebastian. So responsible.”

I know she’s teasing me, because I used to be kind of wild, but this shit is important.

“I’ll have to ask permission to take the children out of school for so long, but if the school goes for it, do you have any other objections?”

“No, baby. Not even one.”

Caro smiles at me in a way that has my dick hardening immediately. That’s something that’s never changed—no other woman has ever gotten me so hot so quickly. And she knows it.

“We’d be away for your birthday and our tenth wedding anniversary,” she says, as if I could forget that.

“Baby, all that matters is you being happy.”

“So, you think I should take the assignment?” she asks.

I roll my eyes. “Caro, you made up your mind before I walked through the door.”

She thinks about this. “No, I hadn’t made up my mind, but I’d have been disappointed if you thought it was a bad idea. So, I’ll tell the editor yes?”

“Yeah, baby.”

She kisses my lips softly. “I love you, tesoro.” Then she runs her hand over my straining zipper. “Now, I think you need to be thanked properly.”

I scoop her up and carry her into the bedroom. I know exactly how she can thank me.

We start making plans the next day. Gibsy is pissed until I throw him a bone and promise I’ll do some shots for his fuckin’ calendar while I’m in Hawaii. Then he starts getting excited about doing a shoot at the Marine Corps Base in Kaneohe Bay. He doesn’t care that I’ll get the piss ripped out of me. Whatever. It raises money.

One of the best parts of the plan is that we’ll be able to spend some time with my brother Ches in San Diego. We try to meet up twice a year but it’s not always possible with family commitments as well as work.

Caro is glowing. It hurts somewhere deep inside my chest because I can see now the difference in her. I’d stopped noticing—hadn’t realized she wasn’t happy—and that is un-fucking-forgivable. I won’t let shit like this happen again.

Marco is ecstatic that he’ll be getting time off school, until Caro points out that he’ll lose his place in Little League. I take him to one side and promise that we’ll do a load of surfing and all his friends will be jealous as shit.

Then I have to get him to promise that he won’t tell his mom I said ‘shit’. Little dude worked me for five bucks.

The schools aren’t very happy with us, but Caro talked the Principals into it somehow. I was left behind for that discussion. She says the male teachers get defensive around me, and the female teachers are too busy checking me out to make sensible decisions. Fuck’s sake.

We’ve got to pack light because there won’t be a lot of room on the boat. Shirley is in tears when Caro tells her that she can only take one Barbie doll with her. I promise her that I’ll buy her a Hawaii Barbie when we get there. I’ve no idea if there is such a thing, so Caro might have to figure out how to make a grass skirt and a lei for a doll. And then I start wondering how Caro would look in just a grass skirt and a lei, but because the kids are eating their supper, I have to shake that thought and take a cold shower instead.