The Secret Son

by Tara Taylor Quinn

  It was one of the reasons she’d chosen the place.

  Erica ordered the Chesapeake rockfish stuffed with crab. Jack chose the porterhouse steak, a twenty-four-ounce cut of premium filet mignon and prime sirloin. He wasn’t a seafood person. She hadn’t known that.

  Feeling awkward, Erica realized that although she’d made a baby with this man, she’d never even had a meal with him. A few appetizers, but never an actual meal. She knew what kind of lover he was, but knew nothing about his food likes and dislikes. She knew how to please him in bed, but wouldn’t know the first thing about preparing a breakfast that he’d like.

  It made their time in New York seem cheap.

  And yet, looking across the candlelit table at him, she knew it hadn’t been.

  “You look good,” she told him.

  “Thanks.” He paused, glanced down and then back across at her, his eyes taking on a glint from the candlelight. “You’re more beautiful than ever, of course, but you don’t look happy.”

  She shrugged. “I’m adjusting.”

  “The divorce.”

  “Yes.” An ability to say anything had been one of the defining characteristics of that week in New York.

  He sat back, ankle resting across his knee, arms on the armrests, his drink between his hands.

  “Had you seen it coming?”

  Shaking her head once, Erica picked up her wine, took a sip. “I had no idea. I thought we were happy…”

  Compared to what she’d felt since the divorce, they had been.

  “…but Jefferson said I was settling.”

  “Were you?”

  “Probably, but I didn’t have a problem with that.” She’d had no trouble getting out of bed in the mornings, had looked forward to each day. “Jeff and I had always been good together, and adding Kevin to the mix made it near perfect, as far as I was concerned.”

  She’d had everything she wanted. And none of what she didn’t want. She’d had someone she cared about to come home to, someone to share life’s fortunes and challenges. And none of the devitalizing vulnerability—the risk—she’d experienced with her first marriage.

  “I really worked hard to make sure Jeff had what he needed. Making him happy was my priority. Especially after…”

  She should have looked away from those compelling eyes. But she couldn’t, any more than she could have walked out of the restaurant at this moment.

  “After New York,” he finished softly.

  She nodded. Needed to look around, to see who else was in the room with them, to reassure herself that someone was there, that they weren’t in a world all their own.

  Why did it always seem that way with her and Jack? As though they existed in their own private sphere, speaking a language no one else could hear or understand.

  “So he just came to you one day and told you it was over?” His tone was compassionate.

  “No.” She looked away then, couldn’t let him see the depth of her shame. Couldn’t bear to have him know her that intimately, to be that close. “I walked in on him and his girlfriend.”

  Jack’s glass landed on the table with a thud, his expletive leaving her no doubt that in him she still had a champion.

  Not that that meant anything in a practical sense.

  “The man robs the cradle and he still can’t stay faithful?” Jack asked. “He’s got a wife who’s twenty-seven years younger than he is and that’s not enough? What’d he do, go for thirty this time?”

  “No,” Erica actually smiled. And then, taking another sip of wine, she shook her head. They were both ignoring the salads that had been placed before them. Apparently Jack had missed the majority of the carefully orchestrated press about her and Jefferson. “Pamela’s only a few years younger than Jeff.”

  “Oh.” He sat back. Picked up his glass.

  “How humiliating is that?” she asked, trying to make light of feelings she really didn’t understand well enough to come to terms with. “Instead of the older wife being left by the rich successful husband she’d sacrificed her younger years to help, Jeff leaves his young wife for an older woman.” She didn’t mention that she herself had created the PR campaign encouraging the nation to believe in exactly this scenario.

  Jack didn’t say anything for a while. Just studied her.

  She started in on her salad.

  “You blame yourself.”

  She looked up, fork in hand. She should’ve known he’d understand. “Who else is there to blame?” It wasn’t as if this was the first time it had happened to her. Both times she’d been complacent, happy, unaware. “I have a tendency not to realize when I’m not making people happy.”

  “Or maybe you’ve just married the wrong men.”

  God, she hated the sound of that. Men. Plural. She’d been through not one, but two unsuccessful marriages. She’d never envisioned herself as a woman who’d have multiple husbands. Exactly the opposite. She’d always believed in happily ever after. Had been so certain she’d have the same kind of marriage her parents had. A long, loving, supportive life together that lasted until “death do you part.”

  “YOU SAID YOU HAD a meeting today,” Erica said as she scooped up a bite of the mashed potatoes she’d ordered with her fish. “Were you working on a job? Someone here in town was being held hostage?”

  Jack didn’t answer her right away. He cut a piece of steak, took a sip of Scotch. He knew he was slowing his time with her as much as possible. He thought he’d blown out of proportion his memories of how good it had been to be with Erica Cooley. At least expected their distinctive connection to have dissipated over the years.

  It hadn’t.

  “I’m not here on a hostage case,” he told her, leaving the bite of steak waiting at the end of his fork. “I’ve been asked to head up a new crisis-training center here in the city. It’s not just for law-enforcement officials. It’ll also be made available to companies who want to send upper-management personnel. Individuals can attend, as well. With the way the world has changed in the past decade, especially in the past year, it’s become apparent that there’s a need for more mass preparation.” He ate the piece of steak.

  “You’re moving to Washington?”

  Erica glanced up, but only briefly. Not long enough for Jack to gauge her reaction to the idea. Would it matter to her to have him close? Did he want it to?

  It wasn’t a new thought, but one he’d been considering since the Washington job offer had come in more than a month ago. In fact, his first thoughts had been of Erica—even before he found out what the job actually entailed. There’d been no doubt in his mind that he wanted her to welcome the idea as much as he’d welcomed the possibility of getting to know her on a day-to-day, real-life basis.

  And then he’d remembered that he didn’t want that. More, that she didn’t come unencumbered. Erica had a son. A precocious little boy who was a huge part of her life. He’d read about Kevin’s birth in the paper years ago as the popular sixty-year-old Senator Cooley introduced his first child to the world.

  A child. It was enough to give him serious pause. He didn’t ever want a committed relationship with a woman again. Caring for a child was even more intolerable. He couldn’t do it; he’d drive both the mother and child away with his incessant hovering, his attempts to make sure the world didn’t harm them. He’d be too protective. Too possessive. On the verge of neurotic.

  If you’d experienced things that didn’t happen to most people, you tended to overcompensate. It was an effect that couldn’t be avoided.

  “I haven’t accepted the position yet,” he finally admitted.

  “Because you’d have to leave fieldwork?”

  “Partially, although I wouldn’t leave it entirely. I’d still be on call for certain situations.”

  “Like the ones involving children?”

  She knew him well. They’d been together only a week and she could read him as though they’d been together for a lifetime.

  In New York, a time that had a c
lear beginning and end, no possible entanglements, that had been a thrilling sensation—the feeling that you were the complete focus of someone’s attention, that your needs and wants were identified, understood…

  He returned abruptly to the present.

  “Those situations and others where, for one reason or another, I might be the best choice.”

  Erica cut a piece of fish with her fork, raised it to her mouth, closed her lips around it, chewed, swallowed.

  “Do you want the job?” she asked.

  “I’m tempted when I think about the greater number of lives I can help save. Instead of one man fighting for one life at a time, we’d be preparing hundreds of people to save what could amount to thousands of lives.”

  “Why do I get the feeling there’s more to this?”

  Jack took another bite of steak. Chewed. Glanced around for their waiter. He needed a refill on his drink. And then heard himself admit something to her that he hadn’t really admitted to himself yet. “I’m getting a little burned out handling nothing but crises. After a while it’s hard to see good in the world when all you deal with is the bad.”

  “But when you rescue someone successfully…”

  He looked across at her, recognized the same warmth he’d felt in New York. The warmth that had driven him to seek her out every single evening that week and, ultimately, to stay with her far longer than he should have that last night. He’d been largely responsible for the fact that she’d let herself down in such an unforgivable way.

  “The successes are the reason I wouldn’t give it up entirely.”

  “Have you had many failures?” Her voice was soft, filled with empathy.

  “I haven’t lost a hostage.”

  His whiskey was delivered. Picking up the wine bottle on their table, Jack refilled her glass. It was only her second. She was drinking more slowly these days.

  “But you’ve lost a hostage-taker?”

  “One.” He found himself telling her about the young man in the Arizona high school. James Talmadge. Dinner forgotten, he sipped on the well-aged whiskey as the memories came flooding back. Visions he’d refused to see ever since the night he’d left that Arizona town. They’d been locked away for more than five years, apparently only waiting for Erica.

  “Where were you when the officers were approaching him on either side?” Erica asked when he paused in the telling, her lovely brow creased beneath that sassy dark hair.

  Had she been Melissa, he’d have lied to protect her.

  Now he lived his life without commitments or responsibilities; it meant he didn’t have to make apologies for the dangers inherent in his job. Once that changed, he wouldn’t be free to do the work he needed to do.

  “Standing between James and the child.”

  She didn’t flinch. “So what happened?”

  “With me as a shield, they quickly passed the little girl out the window…”

  “And?”

  “James shot himself.”

  Erica’s fingers sliding over his hand brought him back from the memory of the young man lying on the floor in a pool of his own blood. He could still taste the bitterness of a wasted life. He hadn’t been able to escape it for weeks afterward.

  He couldn’t help himself from turning his hand over and linking his fingers with hers. “I learned something that day that I’d lost sight of.”

  “What?” Her eyes were wide, letting him see all of her, feel all of her, as he had that long-ago week in New York.

  “That the hostage-taker’s life is just as important to me as the victim’s. I’d been so busy concentrating on the child that I’d failed to be aware of James’s state of mind, to foresee all the possibilities.”

  “Can you really expect that of yourself?”

  He could and did. There was simply no other choice.

  “SO TELL ME about your son.” They’d moved on to dessert, a piece of homemade key lime pie they were sharing.

  Things had become confusing to Jack. He figured bringing her son into the conversation would take care of that.

  “He’s a great kid,” she said. Her fork was staying a safe distance from his on the plate. “He’s curious about everything, loves to learn, watch cartoons and play baseball.”

  “I remember playing baseball as a kid,” Jack said. He rarely thought back to the days of his childhood, rarely thought back to any time before Melissa’s death. Because everything led to that moment in the van, when a single shot from a teenager’s gun took two lives he’d sworn to protect.

  “Did you play on a team?”

  “Oh, yeah,” he said, grinning. They were getting closer to the center of the pie. “Little League, high school, even college.”

  Erica raised her brows. “Sounds like you were good. What position did you play?”

  He’d been scouted by the New York Yankees farm team. He’d chosen to go to the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia, instead, and hadn’t regretted the decision even once.

  His fork bumped into hers. Their eyes met. “First base.”

  “I’m impressed.”

  Jack didn’t know what was happening. Didn’t know what he wanted. About the only thing he felt certain of was that neither one of them was thinking about baseball.

  “I DON’T WANT this to be the last time I see you.”

  Erica’s stomach twisted and she looked away. She and Jack were standing outside the Prime Rib. Her condo was just a couple of blocks away and she was planning to walk there alone. She didn’t want him to know where she lived. Didn’t want to know that he knew. Because if he did, she might start wishing he’d show up there someday. Might start waiting…

  “Can I call you?” he pressed.

  She nodded.

  Hands in his pockets, he faced her. “I’ll need your number, then.”

  Scrambling in her purse, wondering what the hell she was doing, she took out a business card and handed it to him.

  He stared at it for a minute, then caught and held her gaze. “This is your office.”

  Nodding again, Erica said, “It’s the easiest place to reach me.”

  He didn’t question her decision. At least not verbally.

  “We live separate lives.” The words were torn from her.

  It was his turn to look away, but he didn’t stay away long. “I know,” he said, pulling her against a corner of the building as a crowd of businessmen left the restaurant and passed close to them.

  “What we had in New York…it won’t work in real life.”

  “I know.”

  “So why not just keep it what it was?” She could feel tears burning behind her lids. Tears he’d never see. She was so tired.

  “And what’s that?”

  “An incredible memory.”

  She could stare up at him forever. Jack was so handsome he took her breath away. But more, the vitality emanating from him enclosed her in a safe world she didn’t want to leave.

  “What if it’s more than just a memory?” he asked.

  “What if it isn’t?”

  “Wouldn’t it be easier to find out, one way or the other?”

  She wasn’t so sure. Those New York memories had seen her through some of her darkest times. “There were reasons New York couldn’t last more than one week,” she reminded him. “They’re still there.”

  “You aren’t married anymore.”

  But she still cared about Jefferson, still felt a need to atone for what she’d done to him. She couldn’t give him what he deserved, but he had her loyalty. It meant a lot to him. And to her. “I have a son.” They both knew that was more than he’d ever be able to take on. And yet, her heart fell when he remained silent, accepting her unspoken challenge that Kevin was a problem.

  “And while you might be in the field a lot less, there’ll still be times when you’d have to make decisions like the one you made with James. Would you be able to do that, put your life on the line if you knew I was here, waiting for you to come home?”

  “Probably.
Maybe not.”

  Heart pounding, Erica studied him. “Are you saying your reasons for remaining unattached no longer exist?”

  She had the distinct feeling that he wanted to tell her they didn’t.

  “No. I can’t ever be involved again to the extent that I was with Melissa. The risk is more than I’m willing to accept.”

  “So…”

  He leaned his forehead against hers. “I don’t want this to be the last time I see you,” he whispered.

  “I don’t want it to be the last time I see you, either.” Erica licked lips that were suddenly dry.

  He was going to kiss her. With her rational self, she knew it. But physically she was in denial until she felt that confident, intimate touch. The one she’d been dreaming about…

  The one she’d tried not to remember every single time Jefferson had reached for her in the past six years.

  Completely oblivious to where she was, to the people milling about as they left the restaurant, Erica fell back against the wall behind her, opening her lips to his.

  She was thirty-two again. Believing in the possibility of a love she’d turned her back on six years before. Needy. Needing Jack.

  When his tongue touched hers, he groaned and pulled back. “Come on,” he said, “I’ll walk you home.”

  “No.” Erica stepped away from the wall, away from him, her face averted. “I’ll be fine by myself.”

  “Erica…”

  She met his eyes, resolute. “I need to keep some objectivity.” She told him the truth. She knew it was the only thing that was going to satisfy him.

  “It’s dark.”

  “I’ve walked this route many times. It’s only a couple of blocks.” That was more information than she’d wanted to give him.

  He didn’t give in easily, but he did eventually nod. Truth be known, she didn’t want to be left any more than he wanted to leave her.

  “I’ll call you,” he said, before turning to head in the opposite direction.

  Erica looked back once during that first block. Jack was standing just beyond the entrance to the restaurant, watching her go.