Tara Quinn - The Secret Son

“I never expected to fall for someone.”

“Me, neither, which is why we couldn’t possibly have been prepared.”

They were quiet for a while, the hum of the hotel’s air conditioner, her weight against him, lulling Jack into a tentative sense of peace. He started to follow Erica’s breathing pattern, soothed by the evenness, the steady ebb and flow. He wondered if she’d fallen asleep.

Part of him hoped so.

Another part, the possessive part that he’d thought gone from him forever, didn’t want to waste a single second of the time still left to them. There were so many thoughts—so many feelings—inside her and he wanted every one of them. To store them away, like tiny gifts, to pull out and savor in the years to come.

“I’m not sorry about us.”

She wasn’t asleep.

“I’m not, either,” Jack said.

As frustrated and horrible as he felt, he should wish he’d never met her. Shouldn’t he?

“Can I ask you something?” he said a moment later.

“Sure.” She was playing with the corner of his collar, rubbing it back and forth against the pad of her thumb.

“Sex with Jefferson—he’s good to you, isn’t he?”

It wasn’t any of his damn business. And yet it was. He loved her. He needed to know that she was treated right.

He needed to know.

“Jefferson is always good to me.”

Jack had suspected as much. And was genuinely comforted to hear her say it.

He was also far more jealous than he had any right to be.

“I just wasn’t sure, with him being so much older…” Let it go, man.

“Sex doesn’t really play a big part in our relationship.” The words were said quietly but not hesitantly. Jack sat unmoving, wanting to hear more, wanting her more. He shifted beneath her to hide—and perhaps ease—the tightness in his groin.

“When we were first married we tried…Jefferson was a very conscientious lover, always making sure I was…satisfied before he…you know.”

So the man wasn’t a selfish bastard, but then, after a week of hearing about him, Jack already knew that.

“After a while, I don’t know, things just tapered off. We rarely make love anymore.”

“Did you ever discuss it? Ask him about it?”

“We talked.” Her knuckle grazed his throat.

“And?”

“One reason’s his age. The male sex drive dropping after fifty and all that. But Jefferson is very fit. He doesn’t look or act anywhere near the fifty-nine he actually is.”

“So what was the other reason?”

She turned her head, burying her face in his chest for a moment. Jack held his breath, willing his body not to torment him.

Finally she said, “He knows my heart isn’t in it.”

Jack didn’t know what to say to that. He was ashamed of his immediate reaction—the fact that he felt glad Jefferson wasn’t having sex very often with the woman he’d fallen so suddenly in love with. He was also saddened to think of Erica going through the rest of her life practically untouched.

“I told you I was an only child,” she said, her body growing heavier against his as she relaxed. “What I didn’t say was that my parents were already in their forties when I was conceived. My dad was seventy when he died six years ago. Jefferson’s fifteen years younger than him, but somehow he’d seemed like a second father to me.”

“What about your mother? Is she still alive?”

Jack’s parents were both gone—killed in a car accident when he was in college.

“She’s in Florida,” Erica said. “Living in an adult community next door to her younger sister. They golf and play bridge all day.”

“What did she think of your marriage?”

“She was mostly for it,” Erica said. “She wasn’t thrilled about the age difference, but she knew I’d never find a man better than Jeff….”

Her voice trailed off again and Jack tried not to think as he held her. Until she shuddered.

“Erica?’

She raised her head and he could see the agony in her eyes.

“This is just so hard,” she said, her lips twisted in pain. “I never expected it to be so hard.”

“I know….”

“What are we going to do?’

“What can we do?”

As she watched him silently, Jack’s heart took hope. He waited to see what miracle she might come up with, some way they could be true to themselves and yet…

“Nothing,” she said. “Keeping in touch would not only be incredibly stupid, it would make things even harder. I’ll survive in my real world, if you’re no more than just a memory. You have to be something I can put away when I go home. If you were still a part of my life, I’d constantly be wanting more.”

He knew she was right, but…

“Maybe you should at least have my address, just in case.”

“No, Jack. I’m not strong enough to do that. I’d be tired one night, feeling lonely, and I’d end up using it.”

“In my line of work, you don’t want to be too easily found, so I’m not listed.”

“Good.”

He nodded. This was the way it had to be.

“Oh, God, why does life have to be so hard?” She sounded beaten.

Her face was only inches from his, and Jack leaned forward slightly to kiss her eyelids closed. She should get some rest. She had a meeting in the morning. He could sit there and hold her the rest of the night.

Hold her and not think.

His lips trailed tenderly across one cheek and then the other and then had nowhere else to go.

Except down to her mouth.

There was no conscious decision. No decision at all. The hour was late, the alcohol convincing. The need to comfort, to connect, too overpowering.

One minute he was kissing her face…and the next she was naked beneath him and his lips were on her breast, her nipple, his body sliding inside hers.

It was wrong. He knew that. And he could see, by the look in her eyes, that she knew it, too.

And yet, nothing had ever felt more right.

They had two hours before she had to shower and leave. Jack made love to her, laughed with her, told her how beautiful she was, how smart, how much he admired her.

And then, in the doorway of her hotel room, just before dawn, he told her goodbye.

A COUPLE OF MONTHS later, in the bedroom she shared with Jefferson, Erica knew for certain that she’d never be able to forget Jack.

Or forgive herself for that stolen week in New York.

She and Jefferson had just returned from a pre-holiday party at the White House. He was still in his tux, although he’d loosened the tie at his neck. He was sitting on the love seat in the corner of the big bedroom suite in their Washington condo. He looked tired.

“When are you going to tell me what’s the matter?” he asked as she came in from the bathroom.

Now. She had to tell him now. But…

“Why do you say that?” She wanted to take off the long, slim-fitting black gown and pull on her silk pajamas. But she didn’t.

“I’ve known something was wrong ever since you came home from New York,” he said, running his hands through his thick, stylishly cut gray hair.

“Why didn’t you mention it before?”

“I’d hoped that eventually you’d come to me with whatever it was.”

Were his shoulders as broad as Jack’s?

Surprisingly enough, Erica thought, they probably were.

But were they broad enough to handle what she was about to tell him? She’d been cold all evening, the November chill seeping through her bones. But now she was sweating.

Wanting nothing more than to crawl into the big four-poster bed, cuddle up to her husband and go to sleep, Erica joined Jefferson on the other side of the room, where she dropped into an armchair adjacent to the love seat. She didn’t know where to begin. Or how.