by Carol Devine
She surprised him. She didn’t hesitate. She kissed his cheek and lingered, then looked at him. “A Judas kiss. That’s what it feels like to me.”
She had the beauty of the converted, the charisma of her faith. As though to prove it, she offered her mouth again to him.
He took full advantage, intoxicated by the freedom she gave him. The dress was like water in his hands, unresisting and fluid to the touch. He shaped her body with it, hearing the whisper of silk and what the sound of it did to him.
She opened his coat, sliding her hands up his back and stretching to meet him.
Warning bells went off in his mind. She was turning the tables, or attempting to, at least. He slowed her down by nipping her tongue, her lips. “Is this what you want, Meg? Is this real?”
“I’m surrendering.”
That pronouncement chilled his heart. He tried to push past it, push past her and make her be the one who drew the line.
He jerked her to him; she didn’t protest. He pinned her to the wall, taking her breath, and realized how close he was to truly hurting her.
But it wasn’t enough to get her to stop.
Her kiss found him, giving and beyond lush. He fought to eliminate the passion she brought to him, but he’d gone so long without. She tugged at his shirt, and her fingertips slid under the waistband of his trousers.
Desperate, he grabbed her up and swept aside the accessories on his desk, pulling her down on top of him.
It wasn’t one of his wisest moves.
She was pliant, yet heavy enough to feel the way his body strained to fit hers. He couldn’t hide his arousal. She made it infinitely worse, too, because she gave him her weight and opened her mouth to him.
For a moment, he joined her. He let her win.
It wasn’t bad. It should be, though. It should be monumental in its clarity that if she surrendered to him totally, he would lose something precious. He couldn’t name what it was, but the fear divided him completely, making him recall the one dream he hadn’t been able to shake. He was his father’s son, John B. Tarkenton Jr., and he had one heck of a reputation to uphold.
He lifted her up and switched places with her. She wore hose, silken and erotic in the extreme. Sandwiched by sensation, his hands rounded her hips, shedding the nylon.
She hiked a leg, and he hooked it around his hip, opening his trousers in the process. She pushed them down along with his briefs and clung to him, opening her mouth, and he plundered it the same way he plundered her body, feeling how good she was for him, how good she was to him.
It was the last thing he had envisioned, to take her like this, in this secret place, yet the fantasy of it gripped his imagination.
He wrapped her legs around his waist and drove into her. Rich sensation had him grasping for more. Cradling her back, he sought her mouth, her kiss, but the connection he wanted was elsewhere.
Glazed by passion, her gaze held his, entreating him with need. Control deserted him. Exploding within her, he became mindless of all but the beacon of her eyes, anchoring him to the awesomeness of complete and total pleasure. It had always been this way with Meg, and for once in his life, he didn’t feel ashamed of losing his vaunted self-control.
Relaxing, he laid her gently down on the desk. It didn’t take long to give her the same pleasure she gave him.
They ended up skipping the gala, and snuck past the servants to spend the rest of the night in the same bed. But Jack didn’t sleep. Instead he watched peace steal over Meg’s face.
Peace wasn’t possible for him. Faith in the future was even harder to grasp. Days of faith were days gone by, days when he had been young and too full of himself—like now. But if having faith meant having a future with Meg, he had to give it another try.
Was this what love was supposed to feel like? He wasn’t sure. And he needed to be absolutely sure before he said anything.
She knew he was sensitive about the subject of Allen. From Jack’s point of view, Meg supposed he had reason to be jealous. What she didn’t understand was why he kept bringing Allen’s name into every conversation, especially when Jack had already told her he had no intention of trying to compete with the man.
She called Jack on it when they were dressing for a political fund-raising dinner one evening. He stood in front of the dressing room mirror, tying his four-in-hand tie, refusing to even consider the idea that after three months of life as a family, Katie had become quite fond of him. “Don’t blow what Katie might think about me out of proportion,” he said. “She’s just a little girl.”
“Your little girl.”
He met her gaze in the mirror. “Yours, Meg.”
“Doesn’t it hurt that she doesn’t know the truth?”
“I don’t want her to know.”
The crispness of his tone warned her not to pursue the subject, but Meg decided she couldn’t let him get away with it this time. If they were ever going to get past his jealousy of Allen, Jack had to come clean about why he didn’t want to acknowledge Katie in any way, shape or form.
“If Allen were in your position, he wouldn’t be half as magnanimous.”
“He doesn’t have to be. He’s dead.”
“That’s not what I meant at all. Why do you keep putting words in my mouth?” She presented him with her back. “Could you zip me up, please?”
He could and did, restraining himself from doing anything else. They were already running late.
“Don’t you see what you’re doing? Don’t you see how your worship at the feet of Allen hurts Katie?”
“He was a man, Meg. No better or worse than most. It’s not a crime for a man to lust after a woman, especially when he’s smart enough to make that woman his wife.”
“He was trying to help me.”
“Justify it any way that you want. You want to make him the good guy and me the bad guy, go ahead. Join the line. It forms on the left.”
“Don’t get smart with me.”
“Alien was the smart one. He married you first. He was the best husband a wife could have. You don’t have to tell me. I already know. I’ll never be his equal. Thank you. I’ll keep it in mind.”
She stared at him. “That’s the story of your life, isn’t it? You’ll never measure up no matter how hard you try.”
He held her gaze just to show her he could, knowing exactly how to avoid her stab in the dark. “Come here,” he said.
She bit that lush lower lip of hers, the one he planned to ravish the moment she came near.
“Will you meet me halfway?” she asked.
He came within an arm’s length of her, but she didn’t move.
She spoke instead. “No one should have to lose a father the way you lost yours, Jack, in such a brutal fashion.”
He shrugged. “It wasn’t so brutal The clips on TV showed it from every possible angle known to man. The bullets went right through him. He didn’t feel a thing.”
Knowing how callous he sounded, he waited for her to touch him, to offer comfort. The moment she did, he would push her down on the bed and finally take her.
She bent low as though to put on a pair of shoes. That was odd. He felt her lay her cheek upon his hand and he felt the faintest stirring of sorrow. He couldn’t imagine why. Fortunately, he didn’t give in to it.
She did. She wept against his hand. He couldn’t push her down and make love to her when she was crying. He sifted through her hair instead, waiting until she stopped and the danger passed.
She lifted her head and finally looked at him, putting the back of her hand against his cheek. That was his clearest signal yet. She wanted to be gathered and taken to bed. The wonder of her body would make him forget the problems in his life.
He could make her forget her problems, too. He would get her heart to pounding and her skin to heat, and then he’d delve deep. When the moment of satisfaction came, he would be filled with the certainty that he was alive. It would hold him for a while. Hold him until he needed her again.
And he felt how much he needed her now.
Except he couldn’t bring himself to touch her. All he had to do was push her down and she would open her body to him. But he couldn’t bring himself to do it. It was the strangest sensation.
Her eyes filled again with tears. He didn’t understand why she cried, why she withdrew and left the room, closing the door softly in her wake.
He sat by himself and studied the foreign look of his tears, warm and wet on the palms of his hands.
Nine
The moment he drove through the gates of the estate, Jack sensed something was different. Tom, the security guard, gave the usual thumbs-up sign. The thumbs-up was normal. The usually taciturn man’s grin was not.
Jack parked in the garage, noting that his mother’s Bentley was absent. That was unusual. She made a great deal of the dinner hour, especially with a family to preside over.
He didn’t suspect Meg was behind it all until he spotted her lounging at the doorway of the house, barefoot in leggings and a leopard-print sweater, the most raucous smile on her face.
“You want champagne, mister?”
She raised the uncorked bottle in her hand, but before he found the breath to answer, she drank from it herself, straight up.
“Where is everybody?”
“Gone.”
With a pirouette, she was gone herself. Loosening his tie, he followed his nose into the kitchen which, though empty of staff, smelled delicious nonetheless. “Meg?”
“Here.” She paused in the hall like the sprite she was.
“What about my mother and Katie?”
“Your mother was kind enough to take Katie away for the night. I told everyone I was getting an awful cold and vanted to be alone,” she said in dramatic fashion.
“Alone?”
“With my husband to take care of me, of course. Champagne, anyone?”
She lifted the bottle of champagne to her lips and, eyeing him boldly, guzzled straight from the bottle. Or tried guzzling, at any rate. Guzzling wasn’t part of Meg’s repertoire. Yet the effort she put into it impressed him no end.
“Meg, you know the rules. Spill any of that champagne and we’ll both be in trouble.”
“I thought you liked trouble.” She offered the bottle, mischief in her eyes. “Come and get it.”
“Oh, no, you don’t. You come to me.”
“That gets boring after a while, don’t you think?”
She hid the bottle behind her back, retreating like the feline she was, placing each foot sideways with stealthful care. Seeing the way she moved affected him strongly, and he felt how much he wanted to keep her safe, even from something as undangerous as the furniture in the room. “You better watch where you’re going,” he warned.
She nodded and smiled and brought the bottle to her mouth, crinkling her nose at him. She drank.
How he wanted to capture that moment, capture her and keep her forever. He leaped for her, but she sprang into the dining room, putting the mahogany table between them.
He chuckled because he couldn’t help it. Damn, she was quick. And funny and brilliant and more and more beautiful every day.
Matching her show of stealth, he kicked off his shoes and socks, then took on the aura of a predator, ready to spring. He circled the table and she did the same, keeping them on opposite sides. “You know you can’t escape,” he told her.
“Wanna bet?”
He chuckled at her slang and jumped. The suddenness of his move had her shrieking with laughter. He cornered her and put his arms up, capturing her there.
She knew it was over, knew she was caught. She didn’t try to hide the bottle. She closed off the top and shook it instead.
He caught her hands but wasn’t able to elude the frothy explosion when she let go. It doused him. Doused her, too. That’s when he took the bottle away.
“I do love champagne,” he admitted. “Especially on you.”
He tipped the bottle upside down over her head. She tilted up her chin and opened her mouth, swallowing down the last few drops, the long column of her throat exposed to him. He kissed that throat, sipping champagne until he hit the cleavage of her breasts.
He wanted her naked. He wanted her now.
Her fingers were busy with the buttons of his shirt. He ripped it off, popping buttons, and she had the temerity to giggle.
“What are you laughing at?”
“It’s not what I’m laughing at, but whom. You, my dear husband, you.”
He kissed her for the sudden sting he felt behind his eyes, kissed her for saying what he needed to hear, and for making it possible for him to not say anything at all.
He leaned into her. It was the wall that held them up, the wall and the urgency of desire. They always had the desire. Except now it was fueled by his sense that he had time to see and hear and touch her all over. It was allowed.
He saw how she divined what he felt. Her gaze grew tender and she laid her hand alongside his face.
He copied the gesture, feeling the firmness of her cheek and the generosity that lay beneath it. He snagged the wet tangles of her hair, moved beyond words, and kissed her with gentleness, even though need hurried him. He wanted better than “hurried”. He wanted the best for her, wanted it to be the best for them. “Tell me what you want,” he whispered. “Tell me what you like best.”
She whispered in his ear. He did exactly as she said. In the end she wanted to be carried to their bed. That sneaking suspicion he had from the beginning was right on.
He didn’t know what else to do with the enormity of his feeling. He could only show her in this way and hope it was enough.
“Daddy?”
“Yes, Katie,” Jack answered, intent on the newspaper he held open before him. Then he froze. Had she truly said—
“Daddy, are you listening to me?” she demanded.
“Of course,” he answered as the headlines in front of him wavered. But he couldn’t put the paper down to check those big brown eyes of hers. Katie might see how shaken he was. “Can we go to the zoo?” she asked.
“The zoo?” he echoed, hiding behind his paper. “Now?”
She giggled. “Of course not, silly. It’s morning.”
As usual, the way her mind worked caught him flat-footed. “Isn’t the zoo open in the morning?”
“Yes. But we can’t go today.”
“We can’t?”
“It’s Sunday, silly.”
“Sunday.” He lowered the paper and her eyes twinkled at him. This was one of her favorite games. “Are you sure?”
“Sure I’m sure. I have my pj’s on.”
“Don’t you usually wear your pj’s on Sunday?”
“Of course, silly.”
Meg entered with a fresh stack of pancakes. “Katie knows that today is Sunday because her pajamas are on. Every other day of the week, she’d have her clothes on by now.”
He sensed Meg hadn’t heard what started this conversation. He didn’t want her to, either. He was shaken enough as it was.
“Mommy, do we have to go to church today?” Katie asked.
“Yes, punkin’.”
“I want Daddy to come, too.”
The D-word arrested Meg the same way it had arrested him. Her fork stopped midway between the stack of pancakes and Katie’s plate, but the moment passed in an instant. “Jack’s not your daddy, sweetheart,” Meg said, moving smoothly on to stack pancakes on her own plate.
Her cool words stole his joy. Except he didn’t know if it was joy or some other foreign emotion. But Katie was oblivious to everything but her need to be heard. “I want Jack to be my daddy now.”
She slipped off her chair and crawled into his lap, wreathing his neck, and the magic of what she called him returned. And the worst part was, he wanted to look at Meg and share it with her. He couldn’t, though. It was far too big a risk.
He didn’t go to bed with her that night For the first time in months, he sat alone in his den until well after midnight, drinking str
aight malt whiskey, noticing little but the burn in his mouth, down his throat, behind his eyes.
My God. He was a father now.
The moment Katie called him Daddy, Meg spoke the lie and heard the lie and knew the lie for what it was. A shield. But like any weapon taken in battle, it was difficult to put down.
Jack didn’t make it any easier. He withdrew from her. He withdrew from everyone. Even Katie noticed it. That’s when Meg knew she had to do something. She had to take matters into her own hands.
She discussed his distance with Amanda one day. She listened for a long time and gave good advice, that Meg had to keep the faith and wait for him to come to her, but that wasn’t what her gut instinct said.
Even with Katie, his mind was far away.
And his body never betrayed him, which made Meg anxious inside. Sure, she missed the sex. But she missed the small intimacies they used to share more. She missed their being husband and wife, to have and to hold, for better or worse, richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, as long as they both shall live.
And that was the point. They weren’t together anymore. Jack made it official when he moved back to the other bedroom.
And for the first time Meg saw how the lie might have hurt him. It hurt Katie, too. Every time she called him Daddy, she spoke the truth without knowing it.
Such a small piece of knowledge it was, too. Just a matter of timing and organisms so microscopic, they couldn’t be seen. Except in the color of Katie’s eyes. And it was becoming harder and harder for Meg to look into those eyes. The lie had become that big.
She saw how it affected Eleanor, too. How she loved to sit and comment that J.J. reminded her of his grandfather. The grandfather he and Katie shared.
Meg definitely felt the most guilt with Eleanor.
The revelation didn’t come all in one moment. But there came a time when the cost of perpetrating such a fundamental lie outweighed the benefit of keeping silent. Now when Meg thought of her family, she considered the concept of what family really meant, of what it was really for. And the family that came first in her heart was the one she had made with Jack.
