Marriage and Family

Chapter Twenty

Dinner went by without any arguments and it was quite enjoyable. They began laughing and joking around with each other again, just like they used to before everything started to turn bad.

After they were done with the dessert, Martin simply sat there, staring at Sam while she swirled her glass of wine around. He loved being able to look at her and realized that it had been a long time since he had taken the time to really drink in he beauty like this. But now that he had the opportunity, he wasn't going to pass it up.

"What?" She asked, looking over and seeing him staring at her with a goofy grin on his face.

"Nothing." He shook his head.

"You're staring." She informed him.

"It's because I can't help it." He explained. "You're even more beautiful than the day I met you."

"But that's been a long time." She blushed. "I've got wrinkles now and…"

"I don't see them." He interrupted. "All I see is the most beautiful woman in the world."

She smiled at him, unable to believe that he was flirting with her. That hadn't happened in a long time too.

"Would you like to dance?" He asked, holding out his hand to her.

She put her hand in his. "Yes I would."

"Great." He led her to the dance floor, wrapping his arms around her tightly and holding her close as they started to sway to the music.

"You know, I think I should apologize to you." Sam quietly told him as they danced.

"Why?" He didn't really think that there was any reason for her to apologize for anything.

"Well…" She cuddled up closer to him. "I've been rather suspicious of you since I got home. I haven't been very fair to you."

"I…"

"No, let me finish." She told him. "You're behavior has changed and I shouldn't have assumed that something bad made you change it. I probably shouldn't even care what changed it. I should probably just be happy with the change and let it go."

"It's been a long time since we've spent this much time together without finding something to fight about and it's nice. This whole day has been nice and I've had a lot of fun."

"I shouldn't have been suspicious of you and I'm sorry. If you say that simply missing me has triggered this sudden barrage of attention, then I'm going to believe you and let it drop."

Her apology made him feel extremely guilty about not telling her that he had been reading her journals. Here she was trusting him and he was keeping a secret from her. But could he really tell her though? Wouldn't she get really mad at him?

If she did, then all of the hard work that he had gone through to start rebuilding their relationship would go down the drain. It would be taking two steps back from the one step forward that they've taken.

But if he didn't tell her, would that be any better? He'd be keeping a secret from her, and secrets usually had a funny way of coming out at some point. As it was, there were already a few people that knew he had read the journals.

There were many ways that she could find out. They could slip up and accidentially mention it, he could accidentially reference something from them that she hadn't told him, or she could just figure it out on her own. She was smart.

If she found out from someone else, it might be worse than if he just went ahead and told her. Who knows, she might not be that mad after all—if he found the right way to tell her.

"Can you forgive me for being suspicious?" She asked him, looking up at him.

"There's nothing to forgive." He assured her, leaning in to kiss her nose.

"Well I'm glad that we have that settled." She smiled. "So I was thinking, can we make this a weekly thing?"

"Make what a weekly thing?" Martin asked.

"Dinner and dancing." She answered. "Can we do this more often?"

"Of course we can." He replied. "I think it would be a lot of fun to do this more often."

"Great." She smiled at him again before resting her head back down on his shoulder. Going to the movie and dinner today hadn't completely erased their problems. She knew that they would still have to talk about a lot of things and something told her that they would still have a few more fights.

But at this moment, she just wanted to forget that they were ever having problems and just enjoy his company. He seemed to have changed while she was with Claire. She had hoped that this time away from him would help him quit taking her for granted, and it looked like it had worked. Maybe those few months without him weren't unnecessary after all.

"You know, I'm sorry that I didn't call more often while I was gone." She told him. "I wanted to…I just didn't know what to say."

"I understand." He told her, rubbing small circles on her back. "Although I would have liked it a little more if we had been able to talk to each other. I felt like you were intentionally avoiding me."

"Truthfully I was." She admitted. "I didn't want to end up fighting with you again and I knew that would be very likely if we spoke."

"Well we're not fighting now." He pointed out.

"No we're not." She smiled, resting her head back on his shoulder and enjoying the moment.

"You want to skip dessert and head back home?" He asked after they had been dancing for quite a while.

"Why? You getting tired of dancing?" She asked.

"Not really." He explained. "I just thought that you might still be tired. You've been traveling for a long time and I wasn't sure if you were completely adjusted to being back or not."

"That's sweet of you." She kissed his cheek and then proceeded to yawn. "I guess I am still kind of tired. But I don't want this evening to end."

He smiled and then leaned in to place a soft kiss on her lips. "Don't worry. We'll have many more nights like this."

"I'm going to hold you to that." She grinned.

"I hope so." He grinned back.