Lover's Knot by Emilie Richards

as she wanted him.
    “What about Birdie?” she asked when he reluctantly pulled away. “I cain’t leave her alone. She won’t be able to manage. She has to be with me.”
    “If you want, we’ll stay at your place with Birdie. Ma and Luther can stay on at mine. When they’re gone, we’ll work it out. Sell one, farm both.” He shrugged. “It don’t hardly matter, Leah. Birdie can live with us wherever we are. We’ll be together. Where we’re living won’t make a difference.”
    He put his arms around her and pulled her against him, closer this time, and with more insistence.
    She gave in to the embrace and to the man, and as she kissed him back, she gave him her answer.

CHAPTER SIX
    I saac woke up earlier now that Kendra wasn’t sleeping beside him. At first, after the shooting, he had launched himself upright every morning in a frantic, instinctive effort to find his wife. Now he woke up well before his alarm went off but fully aware that he was alone, and why.
    He supposed there was an advantage to not being able to sleep. He could avoid the worst of rush hour, beating many of the State Department employees and university students who poured into Foggy Bottom. He could arrive at ACRE headquarters and partially clear his desk before the majority of the staff arrived. Some days, if he woke up particularly early, he jogged the miles to work, showering and changing into suitable clothes once he arrived. By the time he made it to his desk, the restless energy that plagued him had dissipated. He could control his impatience with bureaucracy, and channel dogged determination into positive outcomes.
    This morning he was awake before six, too late to jog but with plenty of time to shower, dress and navigate traffic. By nine, when the support staff arrived, he would be well into his day.
    After the shower, he considered calling Kendra, but waking her made little sense. More truthfully, their occasional phone calls left him dissatisfied, even angry, and he wasn’t in the mood to risk another.
    If Kendra missed him or their life together, she was giving no sign. She was polite. She asked about his job, about friends who were “their” friends, about the way he spent his evenings. But nothing he asked drew much response. She was making short trips into the world. She had bought a table and chairs for the front porch, and some gardening tools. The telephone company had hooked up a land line, and now she could access the Internet.
    Then, as if this meant nothing, she announced she might buy a barn and use the logs to add on to the cabin. She would find out soon if that made any sense. Maybe even today.
    Clearly, if Kendra planned to add to the cabin, she planned to make it a real home. He wondered how she would reconcile this with her job and marriage. Particularly her marriage.
    He was still thinking about her when he pulled into his designated slot in ACRE’s parking garage. Parking was at a premium in the city, and ACRE had only a dozen slots in the garage, all for executives.
    He remembered the first day he’d driven to work after his promotion to managing director—feeling guilty that his staff still had to carpool or take the Metro, pleased that he had worked his way into this new position, another rung on the ladder to a political appointment where his voice might be even more effective.
    The move to his position at ACRE had been smooth. With undergraduate degrees in economics and environmental technology, plus a law degree, he had started as a fund-raiser at the Sierra Club. When the Maryland chapter of ACRE offered him an administrative position, he accepted it and rose quickly through the ranks to state director. He showed a knack for raising money and organizing innovative programs, as well as making important political contacts in Annapolis and D. C., so no one was surprised when he was tapped to work in the national headquarters.
    ACRE would not be Isaac’s final stop. Compared to its big brothers, the