Another Man's Child

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 opened 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.”