Kay David - Obsession

“I need to catch the alarm.” Emma shook out her hair, the strands tangled and twisted from the wind’s touch. “Wait here.”

He nodded as she walked quickly to a closet on the other side of Felicity’s desk. The panel to the security system was hidden inside. Opening the door, she punched the number into the keypad. The code was a personal one, and in the morning, Christopher would know she’d been in. He teased her a lot when she worked odd hours; he’d think nothing of seeing her name on the printout.

By the time she finished and stepped out of the closet, the bank’s security guard was at the door that separated the main lobby from hers. She crossed to the window set in the center of the mahogany panel. “Everything’s fine, Jorge,” she said. “It’s just me.”

Through the beveled glass, the older man looked sleepy, and unhappy that she’d disturbed his rest. Adjusting his uniform, he ambled off, back to the chair where he spent his nights. Security here was not what it would have been in the States. At home, depending on the bank, she might not have even been allowed to come in like this, especially with a client at her side.

Unlocking the inner door to her office, Emma crossed the marble floor and switched on the desk lamp. She turned to call Raul only to find him already there; he’d slipped inside behind her, a silent shadow.

In a matter of minutes she had her computer booted up and had logged on to the bank’s database. Opening the center drawer of her desk, she consulted a small notebook and figured out the daily code. She tapped it in and looked up at Raul as the system processed the numbers.

“I’m very doubtful that anything has changed.”

“I understand.”

The screen in front of her flickered, the terminal bright in the otherwise dark office. Typing quickly, she opened the file that recorded money transfers, and at the bottom of the screen, a new figure had been posted. Surprise rippled over her in an unexpected wave.

“It’s there, isn’t it?”

She raised her gaze to his. “Yes, it is.”

“I told you to trust me.” Rising from the chair, he walked slowly around her desk to look down at the screen. She started to stop him, then realized it didn’t matter. It was his account. If he wanted to see the numbers, he could.

He leaned over her shoulder and began to trail his finger over the monitor as he followed the figures. She stopped breathing at his closeness, but she reacted too late. His aftershave reached her, the same one she’d smelled earlier. Her stomach tightened at the masculine fragrance, and she tried to concentrate on something else. Her eyes went to his right hand as it rested on the screen. One of his knuckles on his ring finger was misshapen. It’d obviously been broken and never set years before.

“What happened to your finger?” The words slipped out before she could hold them back.

He glanced at her, then at his hand, his gaze switching back to her as he spoke. “I had a summer job one year in a canning plant. I caught my high-school ring on a piece of machinery. It kept going and my finger didn’t. My dad popped it back in place, but I never saw a doctor and it healed like that.”

“A cannery sounds like a dangerous place for a teenager to work.”

“It was. But where I came from, a job was a job and I felt lucky to have it. My parents were migrant workers along the border between Mexico and Texas. We went from town to town and they picked vegetables for a living. My steady job was a real step up.”

“And now you have this.” Emma tilted her head to the terminal. “You’ve come a long way.”

“Yes, I have,” he said. He waited a moment, then leaned back and stared at her. “How far have you come?”

He’d asked about her past before, and she’d avoided the question. Now, in the darkened office with the wind howling outside, she was too exhausted and drained to think up another lie. Even more importantly, though, something was happening between them. Something that was drawing them closer and closer. She had fought the sensation as long as she could. But no more.

“Not that far,” she said, glancing at the screen.

“I grew up in Louisiana in a little place called Kenner. My parents divorced when I was just a kid, and I never saw my dad again. My mom raised me.”

“And sent you to LSU, where you earned a degree.” He raised his eyes to her diploma hanging on the wall.

“I got a scholarship, or it would never have happened. I majored in finance.”

“Then you got married…”

She nodded slowly and stayed quiet. What was there to say about that that mattered?

He went on, “…and then you divorced.”

She nodded again.

He waited a few seconds. “But you didn’t have any children,” he said finally. Quietly. “So that photograph you’re hiding in your desk drawer means nothing to you. The one of that beautiful little girl, and the boy who looks exactly like you.”

Catching her breath, Emma followed his gaze. In the corner of the drawer the picture of her children seemed to glow. With accusation.

“Are they yours?”

She waited two heartbeats, then nodded. “Yes,” she whispered. “They’re mine.”

The silence that built felt like a living thing, breathing and waiting between them.

“Why did you lie to me the other night?” he finally asked.

“I don’t know.” She swallowed hard, then shook her head slowly. “Yes, I do. It’s because I don’t have them. They live with their father, and sometimes it’s just too hard to…to talk about them.”

She waited for the next painful question, the one that always hurt the most. Why does he have them and not you?

When it didn’t come, she answered, anyway, something compelling her to speak-the same thing that was drawing them closer, she suspected. “The divorce was…ugly. There were accusations made. Against me. He got full custody.”

“Did you fight him?”

“As much as I could.” Her low voice contained regret, but not the oceans of it she usually carried around, the horrible, heavy burden that she never put down. “His family is very powerful in Louisiana, and money isn’t a problem. Until I can afford an attorney who isn’t afraid of them, the things Todd said about me won’t go away.” She dropped her gaze and stared at her babies’ faces.

“What did he say?”

When she didn’t answer, Raul lifted her chin with one finger.

She spoke, knowing he’d never relent until he knew the truth. “He told everyone who would listen that I was a dreadful mother and a horrible person.” A cramp seized her heart. She had to wait for it to pass before she could speak again. “The judge believed him and I lost all right to see my children.”

“He must have had a reason to do something that drastic.”

She looked up into the black well of his eyes. “He did,” she said hoarsely. “I was addicted to pain pills and alcohol.”

The confession hung in the stillness between them. Raul’s expression didn’t change, didn’t move. She couldn’t tell what he was thinking.

“I…I had a car accident right after Sarah was born. It was a really bad accident, and I injured my back severely. The pain just wouldn’t go away. I couldn’t pick her up, I couldn’t nurse her, I couldn’t do anything. And poor Jake got ignored completely. I was a bad mother. When the doctor gave me something that made the pain a little easier to bear, I was ecstatic. It let me take care of the children again, be the kind of mother I wanted to be. My only complaint was that it didn’t last long enough. I had a drink one night because I was so depressed about it all, and I realized the alcohol worked with the pills. It made the pain stay away longer.”