Climbing The Walls - Hart & Cole Book 1

~ Chapter 1 ~

Kris

30th September 2003

It's Tuesday morning on one of the hottest days the earth has ever seen, and I'm lying there on the bed with my eyes closed, and my four-year-old daughter is sitting astride my stomach bouncing up and down telling me: 'Wake up Daddy, Daddy wake up!!!'; but I'm afraid to open my eyes because if I do and it's not there, then it's going to be a bad day, and I have a big presentation to do at 9:30, so I don't want it to be a bad day.

"Daddy, Daddy, wake up!" Nikita insists, so finally I open one eye and roll my head to the side... and the biggest grin slices across my whole face because it's there: a single white rose, on the pillow next to mine.

"Hey, sweetie..." I sit up halfway, grabbing Nikki and holding her above my head. She kicks her legs wildly and squeals, and it's the most beautiful sound in the world because it's going to be a good day; and I love her to bits and pieces even though sometimes she frustrates me, and sometimes I want just five more minutes of sleep, and sometimes I don't know what to do with her.

"If Nikita vomits, I'm not cleaning it."

Immediately Nikita is put down on the carpeted floor, and I tell her "Go get Daddy a cup of juice, Kiki." She runs off in her little pink bunny bedroom slippers, and when I know she's gone, I look up at the doorway from which the voice came.

I want to tell her I love her and I'm sorry for last night and it should have been my rose, not hers, which after four or five hours of restless sleep I actually wholeheartedly believe; I want to tell her I love every inch of her and I love every dimple, every smile, every laugh, every single thing about her; I want to tell her that right now my heart is bursting and the goofy ear-splitting grin I had a moment ago when I first saw the rose, plus the dopey-looking smile I'm wearing now, are all because of her.

"You're... still here," I say. I hope she understands the rest by telepathy.

"I'm late," she replies, pulling on one side of her strappy cute sex-goddess high-heeled power-woman shoes.

As she leans against the door frame with her leg in the air behind her, I can see the almost imperceptible scratch right below her knee where the neighbour's cat mauled her; and on this ridiculously humid Tuesday morning in my half-comatose giddily-happy frame of mind, I think that I've never seen anything more beautiful.

"D-don't go yet," I manage to stammer finally, after my mouth opens and slams shut a few times. The bedside clock says its 6:04 a.m. and she won't actually be late for another two hours... but no, not Nicole. Nicole leaves the house at 6:00 for the latest; my overachiever sex-goddess power-woman wife.

"Late. Have to," she says, then adds: "Your turn for Kiki today."

"I know."

Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays she drops Nikita off at kindergarten (and picks her up at 3:00 p.m.) and I am in charge of carting Khailam off to day-care (and bringing him home afterwards); Tuesdays and Thursdays Nikita is mine, and Nicole gets our two-year-old. Khai days are easier. He can't really talk yet.

"And your turn for dinner."

"I know," I repeat.

And then her ice-bitch front finally crumbles as she comes over to the bed to retrieve the white rose. She replaces it in its designated place in the cupboard beside our wedding photo albums. It's fake and it's six years old, but it represents the fibre that has sewn our marriage together for the past six years over all the bumpy and wobbly patches we've driven through, and I love it more than ever today.