Another Man's Child

by Tara Taylor Quinn

  “I’ll take a look at it.” She jumped when he finally spoke, his voice without inflection, and his eyes, when she met them, were just as empty.

  “Tomorrow?” she asked, desperate enough to keep pushing.

  “Fine. Set up a time.”

  They were the last words he said to her that night. Although he reached for her when he finally climbed into bed beside her sometime after midnight. And while she went willingly into his arms, she didn’t find the joy she’d found there two weeks before. And once again, when he reached his peak, his gaze was locked, not on her, but on the wall behind her head.

  CHAPTER THREE

  “THE WALLS ALL HAVE double insulation to insure your privacy, in spite of the common wall between you and your neighbor. Of course, since we’re all adults here, we find we have little problem with noise…”

  The woman continued with her friendly sales pitch, but Marcus had a hard time concentrating on what she was saying. The four-bedroom unit she was showing them certainly appeared to live up to her praises, but for the life of him, Marcus couldn’t figure out why anyone would want to live there. The Cartwright mansion might be empty, it might be quiet, but at least there he could breathe. The moment he’d driven Lisa through the ornate gates of Terrace Estates, he’d felt like he was suffocating.

  They’d.been stopped by a security guard immediately. Their names were on the visitor list and the guard sent them on through, but if they lived there they’d have to show a pass to the security guard every time just to get to their own home. Their guests would have to do the same. It reminded Marcus of a prison.

  But if this was what Lisa wanted.

  He looked at his wife as she followed the Terrace Estates representative into a double walk-in closet. Lisa had come straight from work and was wearing the soft yellow suit he’d bought her last Christmas. The cropped jacket showed off her slim waist, and the short skirt complimented her long gorgeous legs, reminding him of the last time they’d been wrapped around him. She’d cradled him lovingly, but without ecstasy. He was losing her, slowly but surely.

  “Marcus! Look at this closet! It’s big enough to be another bedroom.” Lisa sounded almost as enthused as the Realtor. Didn’t the place seem as barren to her as it did to him? Had they really grown so far apart?

  “It is large,” Marcus replied, glancing inside. It seemed like a lot of wasted space to him. And it was along the wall the unit shared with the place next door. He couldn’t imagine listening to some stranger scraping hangers along the clothes bar every morning. Couldn’t imagine why anyone would want to.

  “Oh, and come see the bathroom!” Lisa called from the other side of the master suite.

  Marcus made the proper noises as she pointed out the sunken bathtub, the separate Jacuzzi and shower stall. Very nice, very modern, but he just didn’t see how any of this was going to help things. Their problems went a lot deeper than empty rooms. Lisa was only fooling herself if she didn’t see that.

  “What do you think?” Lisa whispered to him as he peeked into the ceramic-tiled shower stall.

  “We’ll buy it if you want it.” He’d never been good at telling her no.

  With her hand on his shoulder, she turned him to face her. “Do you want it?” she asked, her big brown eyes filled with love—and doubt. The Realtor had tactfully disappeared.

  “I want you to be happy.”

  Lisa’s eyes filled with tears. “I am happy, Marcus. As long as I’m with you,” she whispered.

  Looking down into her lovely face, Marcus could almost believe her. “Then let’s go home,” he said, putting his arm around her as he walked her out. Her hand slid around his waist, pulling him closer, and he tried to convince himself that she wasn’t ruing the day she’d fallen in love with him.

  “Disappointed?” he asked, glancing over at her as they left Terrace Estates behind them.

  She shook her head. “Relieved. I love our house. I’d have hated living there.”

  “But you’d have done it.”

  “Yes. But, oh, Marcus, it’s just…I miss you. I miss the time we used to spend together.” She stared out the windshield.

  They’d been together almost every evening for the past couple of weeks, but Marcus knew what she meant. They were together in body, but in the ways that mattered, they were more apart than ever. Since their anniversary, they’d been hiding from each other—thinking before they spoke, weighing every word to make certain they didn’t voice the thoughts that were tearing them up inside.

  “Let’s go to the club,” he said suddenly. “We haven’t gone dancing in months.” He needed to hold her. Just hold her.

  She turned, to him, her face alight. “What a good ideal I’d love to.”

  He grabbed her hand, holding it under his on the gearshift between them. “Dancing it is,” he said, and he turned the car along the road toward the country club. Disaster had been averted once more.

  But as he drove her home later that night, as he took her upstairs, undressed her and made slow intimate love to her, Marcus was stabbed again with the guilt that was corroding everything good and dear in his life. What right did he have to deprive her of the family she wanted, the family she’d always dreamed of having? What right did he have to deny that family the chance to thrive under her great store of love? What right did he have to keep it all for himself?

  None. No right at all. He simply wasn’t ready to face the alternative. To live his life without her beside him. He’d been taking care of Lisa since the first day he’d met her, when she’d been trying to carry too-big boxes into her sorority house the August before her sophomore year at Yale. He’d taken one look, relieved her of her burden and decided then and there that she needed watching over. By him. He’d been watching over her ever since, this gorgeous woman who was physically weaker than he and therefore in need of his protection. But he’d known almost from the first where the real strength in their relationship lay. Within her. He drew his strength from the love she gave him so freely. And, God help him, he wasn’t sure he could give that up.

  He held her long into the night, listening to her breathe softly beside him. But sleep eluded him. His own selfishness left too bitter a taste.

  LISA’S THIRTY-THIRD birthday fell on a Sunday in the middle of July, and for once she wasn’t on call. Marcus woke her with a kiss when the sun was peeking over the horizon. He set a warming tray laden with two covered plates, a single red rose and an envelope on the night table beside her.

  “Happy birthday, sweetheart,” he said, kissing her once more before he straightened.

  He was wearing nothing but a pair of cut-off sweats, and desire pooled in her belly as she ran her gaze up his long muscular thighs.

  She lifted the comforter and smiled at him. “Come back to bed, Marcus…”

  The omelets Marcus had made for them were still warm, if a little tough, by the time they got to them, but Lisa enjoyed every bite. Hannah provided enough deliciously cooked meals to get them through the week, but they cooked for each other on weekends. Lisa always enjoyed those meals the most.

  She and Marcus sat across from each other on the unmade bed, the warming tray a table between them. Or rather, she sat. He was sprawled on his side, propped up on an elbow, taking up the whole length of the bed, and still naked.

  “You’re beautiful, you know that?” he said, munching on her last piece of toast.

  “I’m glad you think so.”

  “I know so.” He motioned to the envelope still propped against the bud vase on the tray. “That’s for you.”

  Lisa reached for the envelope slowly, excited, but just a little afraid to see what was inside. Marcus wasn’t a card man. In all their years together, he’d only given her two. One on their first anniversary and one for Valentine’s Day. She still had them both.

  The intent way he was watching her as she slid the card from the envelope only increased her trepidation.

  The front was simple, an airbrushed picture of a sailboat. She o
pened the card.

  Every day of my life, I celebrate the day you were born. Love, Marcus. He’d written the words in his familiar scrawl. The rest of the card was blank.

  Tears filled Lisa’s eyes as she read the words again. She hadn’t realized how much she’d needed that reassurance.

  She looked across at her husband, smiling through her tears. “Thank you.”

  Removing the tray from the bed, he tumbled her onto her back and showed her the truth of his words.

  “HOW ABOUT WE MOVE this party to the shower? We have exactly half an hour before we have to be somewhere,” Marcus said almost an hour later.

  Lisa glanced at the clock. “Where could we possibly have to be at nine-thirty on a Sunday morning?”

  Marcus just grinned and headed across the room to her dresser, pulling out a pair of white shorts and a blue-and-white crop top. “You ask too many questions. Now get your pretty rear into the shower and then into these clothes.” He tossed them on the bed.

  Two minutes later she heard him singing in the shower. With one last sip of coffee, she went in to join him. In spite of her efforts to draw him out, Marcus remained closemouthed about where they were going as he hurried her out to his Ferrari. Lisa giggled, enthralled with this playful side to her husband. Marcus hadn’t been so lighthearted since before—

  No. I’m not going to think about that. Not today.

  “We’re heading toward the ocean. Are we going to Angelo’s?” she asked, naming her favorite Italian restaurant.

  Marcus shifted the Ferrari into fourth and grinned at her.

  “But, Marcus, we just ate breakfast.”

  He kept his gaze on the road, still grinning.

  She thought about Angelo’s succulent pasta. The bottomless basket of freshly made Italian bread. “I suppose we could walk on the docks awhile and work up an appetite.”

  If anything, his grin grew wider. The man was infuriating. Didn’t he understand that she didn’t want to spoil a perfectly wonderful meal by being too full to eat it?

  “You don’t want to walk on the docks?” she asked.

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “That’s the problem. You aren’t saying anything. Going to Angelo’s is a wonderful idea. I want to go. I’m just not hungry yet.”

  “Did I say anything about going to Angelo’s?”

  He’d stopped the car at the marina. And right in front of her, bobbing in the deep blue ocean, was a sleek beautiful sailboat with a huge red ribbon blowing from the masthead. But the name, written in large gold print across the stern, was what finally reached her. Sara.

  The name she’d chosen for their firstborn, in memory of her little sister.

  “She’s ours?” she asked, still staring at the boat. She’d always wanted to learn to sail. And Marcus had always promised to teach her. But somehow they’d never found the time.

  “Happy birthday, Lis.”

  Excitement bubbled up inside her. Excitement and hope for the future. Their future. This was something they could do—together.

  “Are we going to sail her today?”

  “Unless you’d rather go straight to Angelo’s,” Marcus said, his eyes twinkling.

  Lisa punched him in the arm, then threw her arms around his neck, kissing him full on the mouth. “Thank you, Marcus.”

  “You like her?” he asked, and she heard the hesitation in his voice. There it was again, his questioning his ability to please her. She just didn’t know how to convince him that he still made her happier than any other person on earth. That it was something he did just by loving her. She cursed his parents for teaching him that he had to earn affection, for showing him that if he was ever cause for disappointment, he’d lose that affection. For convincing him that he was responsible for everything—even those things beyond his control. For making him doubt that he was worthy of his wife’s love.

  Lisa looked at the Sara again, the shiny white bow trimmed with royal blue. “It’s perfect,” she said, giving him another hug. She’d just have to keep showing him until he believed again.

  “In that case, Dr. Cartwright, let me teach you how to sail.”

  They didn’t go far, they didn’t go fast, and at times, Lisa was more of a hindrance than a help, but she loved every minute of it. The boat was just the right size for a two-man crew, and Lisa was delighted when she discovered the cabin below, complete with a tiny kitchen, an even tinier bathroom and a queen-size bunk.

  “We’ll christen it soon,” Marcus called down from the deck where he was busy maneuvering them toward Long Island Sound. Lisa smiled. He’d read her mind—as he often did.

  She was exhausted but happy when they finally docked the boat in the slip just before sundown. She couldn’t remember a day she’d enjoyed more. The Connecticut shoreline beckoned them, the lush green banks blending into the vivid blue sky as if rendered on canvas by a painter.

  Lisa’s skin was a little tender from so much time in the sun, her cheeks and hair were filled with salty ocean spray, her clothes were damp and wrinkled, and she felt great. She watched as Marcus went forward and secured the Sara to the dock. The wind had blown his hair into casual disarray, his polo shirt had come untucked from shorts that were no longer white, and his skin had a healthy golden glow. A secret little thrill washed through her as she watched him. He was gorgeous—all man—and he was hers.

  A pretty young woman standing with a baby on her hip on the deck of the boat across the dock from the Sara smiled and waved when she saw Lisa on the deck. Lisa waved back just as a toddler came running up and clutched the woman’s leg, saying something Lisa couldn’t hear.

  With a shrug and another little wave, the woman took the child’s hand and led him away. Probably to the bathroom, Lisa thought. She wondered if the woman knew how incredibly lucky she was.

  And she was so young. She couldn’t have been more than twenty-two or -three. A whole decade younger than Lisa. And she already had two children. Lisa blinked back the tears that sprang to her eyes, quickly wiping away the couple that spilled over, cursing herself for her weakness. She lived a blessed life, with a man she adored. It was enough.

  “Let’s get this thing bedded down,” Marcus said, his voice clipped. He’d come up behind her.

  Lisa swung around, stricken. Marcus looked from her tear-filled eyes to the other boat, where the woman and her children had been standing only seconds before, and then turned away. His shoulders were as stiff as his Puritan ancestors’. Lisa knew he’d seen the whole thing.

  Cursing herself again, Lisa ran her hand along his back. “Marcus—”

  “Leave it, Lis.”

  He didn’t look her way again as he instructed her on furling the sails.

  Lisa helped Marcus secure the Sara in the slip, eager to learn everything she could about caring for their new boat, but much of the glow had gone from her day. Marcus was beating himself up again, and this time it was her fault. Suddenly thirty-three felt ancient.

  A MONTH LATER Marcus gave Lisa another surprise, though he wasn’t there to share it with her. She went in to see little Willie Adams again, the eleven-yearold ball player with the broken back. She’d talked to Marcus about the boy weeks before, and he’d agreed that they would finance the boy’s treatment, but so far, Willie’s physical-therapy sessions had been a complete waste of time. She’d been particularly worried because the boy’s lack of progress stemmed more from his defeated attitude than it did from his injury.

  But when she entered his room at the hospital that morning, he was wearing a baseball glove and tossing a ball between it and his free hand, in spite of the cast that kept most of his torso immobilized. His red hair was combed into place for the first time since she’d admitted him, and he was grinning from ear to ear.

  “How you doing today, Willie?” Lisa asked, taking the chart from the end of his bed to see what could have brought about such a miracle. Had the boy regained some more feeling in his legs? And if so, why hadn’t she been called? She’d left instr
uctions to be informed the minute there was any change.

  “Hi, Doc. Watch,” Willie said. He shoved the covers down past his toes, and slowly began to rotate his right foot. And then, a bit more quickly, his left.

  Lisa watched, her heart thumping. Finally. Now he had hope.

  “That’s great, Willie!” she said, as the boy started on his right foot again. “How does it feel?” She. ran her hand over the boy’s leg.

  Willie shrugged, his freckled face breaking into an embarrassed grin. “I guess I can feel it a little better,” he said. “It kinda hurts.”

  Lisa helped him settle the covers back over his partially paralyzed limbs. “Well, don’t overdo it, buster,” she said. A week ago she’d been begging him to try to sit up.

  “But I gotta work hard, Doc. Danny Johnson says that if I’m better by next summer, I can come to his Junior League training camp.”

  “Danny Johnson?” Lisa asked, suddenly understanding—and falling in love with her husband all over again.

  “He’s a pitcher for the Yankees, Doc, the best, and he runs a camp for promising teenage baseball players every summer.”

  He’d also gone to college with Marcus. “Teenage players?” Lisa smiled at the boy. “You won’t be thirteen until the summer after next.”

  Willie grinned. “I know. Ain’t it great? I’ll be the youngest guy there, but Mr. Johnson talked to my coach and he says I’m ready.”

  Lisa replaced the chart at the end of Willie’s bed. “Then we’ll just have to make sure you’re better by next summer, huh?” That gave them a year. And as there was no longer any sign of permanent damage to Willie’s spine, she figured they could just about make it.

  Lisa tried to wait up to thank Marcus that night, but by midnight, she knew she was going to have to go to bed without him. Again. She was on call starting at six the next morning, and her young patients deserved to have her well rested. It wasn’t their fault that her husband would rather be in meetings with strangers than at home with her. In the month since her birthday, he’d hardly been home. And he hadn’t touched her at all.