Sometimes when she performed, Olivia stole glances into the wings or out into the audience looking for him. The sight of that beautiful face, the knowledge of what they’d created together, gave her singing extra meaning.

They talked, they planned, they adjusted and readjusted their lives together. No soprano could hope for a more perfect husband. And he still loved when she sang naked for him.

* * *

As Thad headed home, he remembered the serious doubts he’d had about Liv’s competence as the mother of his future child. How could he not have doubts after he’d watched her sing Azucena in Il trovatore? Crazy Azucena, who throws her own fricking baby in the fire! Witnessing The Diva’s glee as she prepared for the role, then watching her onstage as she sang that wacko woman with way too much enthusiasm, made him consider a vasectomy. When he’d expressed his doubts about leaving her alone with an infant, she’d gone off into whoops of laughter, jumped in his lap, and started kissing him.

Nine months later, Sia was born.

The light of his life, Theodosia Shore Owens, should be asleep by now, and it was time for him to get home and relieve their nanny.

Now they had another baby on the way, which meant they’d be facing more of the chaos they’d gotten so good at untangling. He couldn’t wait.

He turned the volume up on his favorite classical radio station. Tonight they were playing a recording of Olivia singing bel canto, and his wife hit a Rossini passage that covered him with goose bumps. “I wouldn’t be able to sing the way I do without you,” she’d told him more than once.

He didn’t believe it, but what he did know was this: At the end of the day, when her makeup and costumes came off, Liv loved being Mrs. Thad Owens. Almost as much as he loved being Mr. Olivia Shore.