Ann Major - The Secret Lives of Doctors' Wives

“Yes, I’d like that, too.” Rosie wiped a bit of shiny blue off the corner of Alexis’s mouth. “We’ll have our very own slumber party.” How Rosie had longed for such closeness to Carmen, Alexis’s mother, when Carmen had been young. But it hadn’t happened back then, and it still hadn’t happened.

Someday.

When they closed the bedroom door, Rosie gently tucked the little girl, Blue Binkie, several books that she demanded, and three of her favorite stuffed animals under the covers of her king-size bed. When Alexis rolled over, hugging her blanket and shutting her eyes, Rosie tiptoed downstairs, intending to turn the lights out, lock up and set the alarm.

Instead, she nearly screamed when she saw Michael sprawled on the couch, writing in his little notebook.

“I thought you’d left.”

He looked up, his eyes hard with suspicion.

“Cute kid,” he said, forcing a mildness in his low tone. “Real cute. Reminds me of you. I envy you. I never had kids.”

Quickly, she glanced at him and at her family pictures right behind him, and then away. Had he looked at them?

Deep breath. Deep breath.

“You have to go,” she said. “Now.”

“Why the hell are you so afraid of me?”

“Who’s afraid? I was just worried Alexis might wake up and get scared.”

“There’s no need to be afraid of me, you know.”

“Right. I’m not.”

“Besides, I thought we kind of clicked again last year.”

At the reminder, a ripple of tension raced down her spine. Maybe if she went on the attack, he would leave.

“Look, I was going through a rough time last year. You were pushy as hell. You took advantage. I made up my mind a long time ago…that you and I…weren’t right for each other.”

He slammed his notebook aside and sat up straighter. “Oh, right, blame me for what happened. Revenge fantasies cause you to chase your old boyfriend down with your Beamer, and then when I ticket you and prevent you from doing murder or whatever you intended, you reach under the table and grab—”

“Okay! I don’t need a replay!”

“What was I—a revenge fuck?”

“Oh…! Is that what you told everybody you know—that I threw myself at you?”

“It damn sure would have been the truth. What about the revenge part? Is that why you did it?”

She marched toward him, intending to pound his wide chest. But as soon as she entered his space, she grew jittery and halted. Suddenly she was too afraid of his power and her own vulnerability after all that had happened tonight. Besides, anytime she saw him, guilt about the past swept her.

He lifted his hands in mock surrender. “Okay. Okay. I’m sorry I said that. And about what happened last year, I was a self-serving…er, pushy jerk…To let you feel me up right there in the bar. And then to kiss you back when you kissed me.”

Just when her blood came to a rolling boil again, he paused.

“To let me?”

“Rosie, be fair. The sex was your idea. You knew how easy it was for you to stir me up in high school,” he stated. “And you’d learned a lot since then. I was going through a rough patch with my wife, too.”

“ Your wife? You…you dog! I can’t believe this!” Oh, yes, yes she could. After tonight, she could believe anything. Men were scum. “You were married? ”

“Was.”

This was bad.

She gulped in a breath, almost strangling. She knew she should drop it, but she couldn’t. “You should’ve stopped at that first kiss—or at least by the second.”

“So should you. The truth is, you sort of pushed, too. I mean, your hands were doing all those things under the table.”

“But you were married. ”

“Not anymore—thanks to you.”

“What? You’re blaming me? Oh…!”

“When Marie and I were making up, I’m afraid I told her about us.”

“Marie? Her name’s Marie, too? And what’s this us? There is, I mean was, no us.”

“I tried to explain that to her. Stupidly, I thought I should try to be honest when we started over.”

“And you were dumb enough to tell her about us?”

“ Us. There! You said it, too!”

Images of what she’d done with Michael sprang into vivid color in her imagination. This was a nightmare. She couldn’t believe Michael had turned up the same night she’d seen Pierce again.

“How much did you tell her?”

“Too much.”

Everything. He’d told his wife everything!

Why had she picked Michael to sleep with instead of some stranger? The point had been to reassure herself she was still even capable of sex after the number Pierce had done on her. Period. She’d wanted no attachments. Who better than a man she knew she had to be done with?

Strangely, the sex with Michael had quickly become a compulsion. After a kiss or two, she couldn’t have stopped had her life depended on it. He’d made her feel too damned attractive, and she’d craved that after the way Pierce had discarded her.

A minute passed, and then another. The silence between them grew thick and heavy. Michael’s eyes were so intense they were giving her a bad case of the chills.

“Last year you were so upset with that doctor, you wanted to kill him,” he murmured. “You over the bastard yet?”

The question caught her off guard, and she spoke too abruptly and too defensively. “Yes!”

He was watching her eyes, reading her. “Ever see him?”

“No!” She forced herself to look Michael squarely in the eye.

“Ever talk to him?”

“No!” Her heart raced. But why was Michael probing so hard?

After a long moment of scrutinizing her, Michael’s hard face relaxed again, and she decided maybe she’d pulled it off.

“Good,” he said, his tone oddly controlled.

“Officer Nash, it’s late,” she stated.

“Michael,” he murmured.

She went to the front door and opened it. She smiled when he grabbed his notebook and got up.

He glanced around. Fortunately, the family photos didn’t seem to attract his attention. But he’d had a lot of time alone with them in the den. Still, he had no reason to be suspicious. But if he looked at Carmen’s pictures too closely…

“Nice house. Nice couch. And the pool. The pool’s great. You always did like to swim. I remember when we ran away together, how you wanted to go to that beach with all the palms and skinny-dip.”

She tensed again but said nothing.

“What about your art? You still draw everything you see?”

She shook her head.

“That’s too bad. You were good. I remember how you wanted to be a famous artist.”

His comment made her feel wistful. As a kid she’d seen her art as a way out of East Austin and the deadend kind of life Hazel had led, just as Michael had seen playing college football as his ticket to success. Both of them had been through so much. First they’d blamed each other for their fathers’ tragedy. Only with time had he seen that her pain was as great as his, and their mutual pain had caused them to form a bond. Then she’d gotten pregnant and made her decision.

Rosie felt the stirring of a vague, nostalgic longing. For what? It wasn’t as if things could have ever worked out between them.

She’d done what she’d thought best, and now they both, him unwittingly, had to live with the consequences. Period. There was no going back.

Unable to read her mind, he grinned and changed tack. “I notice this house belongs to one of your ex-fiancé’s ex-wives, Yolie Carver. The fast-food taco queen.”

He’d emphasized the name Carver, and Rosie tensed again.

“You’re not living with her just to cozy up to his family? You’re not still stalking…” His eyes darkened.