Fire Raiser by Melanie Rawn

Erika placed a languid hand on the boy’s arm.
    “Troy,” she said, “go get me something to drink, won’t you, darling?”
    He moved off obediently. Lachlan had noted that Erika’s gaze had never left the sight of her husband and Holly in conversation over by a potted palm. Something rather evil inside made him say, “Bet they were a cute couple in high school.”
    Erika’s brown eyes flickered toward him. “Haven’t you seen the pictures?”
    “Are there pictures? Holly doesn’t have any that I’m aware of.”
    She was too polite to say aloud that she didn’t believe him. Evan repressed a sigh. What she said next confirmed that tweaking her had not been a good idea.
    “I hear that she’s as fanatical about her writing as he is about his flying. How do you deal with it?”
    “I’m not sure I understand.”
    Erika slanted a sideways glance at him, then blurted, “I asked him once which he loved more—me or flying.”
    And—wild guess here—you didn’t much like the answer? If you didn’t already know the answer, you shouldn’t have asked the question. And of all the stupid things to ask —Evan tried very hard not to shrug. “It’s like that with the creative types.”
    “Since when is flying an airplane—”
    He knew it was rude to interrupt, but he did it anyway. “When he’s flying he’s off in his own world, right? Doing something that takes him away from everything else? Makes him feel like nothing else can? Sounds to me like it’s pretty much the same. When they’re into their thing, whatever it is, they don’t think about anything else. And God help anybody who tries to get between them and their work.” He smiled suddenly, remembering what Holly was like in the throes of a writing binge. He hadn’t seen that aspect of her in a long time, though. Now that the twins were out of babyhood and able to entertain themselves for at least part of each day, maybe she’d find another book to write. He hoped so; there were times when her lack of a focus for her intellect and creativity made her a pain to live with.
    “No,” Erika was saying bitterly, “he doesn’t think about anybody but himself when he’s flying. Are you saying that Holly is the same way?”
    “Pretty much.” He really didn’t feel like explaining to this woman that the way Holly loved her work was a goodly chunk of what made her Holly, and if she wasn’t the way she was he wouldn’t love her half as much.
    Erika shook her head. “I don’t understand how anything can be more important than the people you love.”
    “It’s important in a different way.”
    “But if they love other things more than they love us—”
    “Think what he’d be like if he didn’t have the plane. What would he do?”
    “He could go back to running a business—”
    Evan restrained a snort. “Look, it’s not just what they want . It’s what they need . You have to stand back and let them do their thing, and be there when they come back from wherever it is they go that we can’t follow.”
    “What if they don’t come back?”
    It had never even occurred to him that Holly wouldn’t return to him. He thought about it for a moment, then all at once realized what this woman’s problem really was. She hated giving her husband up to anything for even a fraction of a second. When he flew, he belonged to the plane and the sky—not to her. And if she didn’t own him every instant of every day, then how could she be sure of him? No wonder she was jealous. Suspicious. Controlling. She could never be certain that her husband really loved her, because her definition of love was total possession.
    Evan actually enjoyed seeing that absent, abstracted look on Holly’s face, the one that meant she was chasing down an idea inside her head. It meant she was doing what she’d been born to do. Her eyes would darken, and her brows would tense, and sometimes she’d bite both lips between her teeth for a second before seizing the nearest pen