The Secret Lives of Doctors' Wives

At the reminder, a ripple of tension raced down her spine. Maybe if she went on the attack, he would leave.

“Look, I was going through a rough time last year. You were pushy as hell. You took advantage. I made up my mind a long time ago…that you and I…weren’t right for each other.”

He slammed his notebook aside and sat up straighter. “Oh, right, blame me for what happened. Revenge fantasies cause you to chase your old boyfriend down with your Beamer, and then when I ticket you and prevent you from doing murder or whatever you intended, you reach under the table and grab—”

“Okay! I don’t need a replay!”

“What was I—a revenge fuck?”

“Oh…! Is that what you told everybody you know—that I threw myself at you?”

“It damn sure would have been the truth. What about the revenge part? Is that why you did it?”

She marched toward him, intending to pound his wide chest. But as soon as she entered his space, she grew jittery and halted. Suddenly she was too afraid of his power and her own vulnerability after all that had happened tonight. Besides, anytime she saw him, guilt about the past swept her.

He lifted his hands in mock surrender. “Okay. Okay. I’m sorry I said that. And about what happened last year, I was a self-serving…er, pushy jerk…To let you feel me up right there in the bar. And then to kiss you back when you kissed me.”

Just when her blood came to a rolling boil again, he paused.

“To let me?”

“Rosie, be fair. The sex was your idea. You knew how easy it was for you to stir me up in high school,” he stated. “And you’d learned a lot since then. I was going through a rough patch with my wife, too.”

“Your wife? You…you dog! I can’t believe this!” Oh, yes, yes she could. After tonight, she could believe anything. Men were scum. “You were married?”

“Was.”

This was bad.

She gulped in a breath, almost strangling. She knew she should drop it, but she couldn’t. “You should’ve stopped at that first kiss—or at least by the second.”

“So should you. The truth is, you sort of pushed, too. I mean, your hands were doing all those things under the table.”

“But you were married.”

“Not anymore—thanks to you.”

“What? You’re blaming me? Oh…!”

“When Marie and I were making up, I’m afraid I told her about us.”

“Marie? Her name’s Marie, too? And what’s this us? There is, I mean was, no us.”

“I tried to explain that to her. Stupidly, I thought I should try to be honest when we started over.”

“And you were dumb enough to tell her about us?”

“Us. There! You said it, too!”

Images of what she’d done with Michael sprang into vivid color in her imagination. This was a nightmare. She couldn’t believe Michael had turned up the same night she’d seen Pierce again.

“How much did you tell her?”

“Too much.”

Everything. He’d told his wife everything!

Why had she picked Michael to sleep with instead of some stranger? The point had been to reassure herself she was still even capable of sex after the number Pierce had done on her. Period. She’d wanted no attachments. Who better than a man she knew she had to be done with?

Strangely, the sex with Michael had quickly become a compulsion. After a kiss or two, she couldn’t have stopped had her life depended on it. He’d made her feel too damned attractive, and she’d craved that after the way Pierce had discarded her.

A minute passed, and then another. The silence between them grew thick and heavy. Michael’s eyes were so intense they were giving her a bad case of the chills.

“Last year you were so upset with that doctor, you wanted to kill him,” he murmured. “You over the bastard yet?”

The question caught her off guard, and she spoke too abruptly and too defensively. “Yes!”

He was watching her eyes, reading her. “Ever see him?”

“No!” She forced herself to look Michael squarely in the eye.

“Ever talk to him?”

“No!” Her heart raced. But why was Michael probing so hard?

After a long moment of scrutinizing her, Michael’s hard face relaxed again, and she decided maybe she’d pulled it off.

“Good,” he said, his tone oddly controlled.

“Officer Nash, it’s late,” she stated.

“Michael,” he murmured.

She went to the front door and opened it. She smiled when he grabbed his notebook and got up.

He glanced around. Fortunately, the family photos didn’t seem to attract his attention. But he’d had a lot of time alone with them in the den. Still, he had no reason to be suspicious. But if he looked at Carmen’s pictures too closely…

“Nice house. Nice couch. And the pool. The pool’s great. You always did like to swim. I remember when we ran away together, how you wanted to go to that beach with all the palms and skinny-dip.”

She tensed again but said nothing.

“What about your art? You still draw everything you see?”

She shook her head.

“That’s too bad. You were good. I remember how you wanted to be a famous artist.”

His comment made her feel wistful. As a kid she’d seen her art as a way out of East Austin and the deadend kind of life Hazel had led, just as Michael had seen playing college football as his ticket to success. Both of them had been through so much. First they’d blamed each other for their fathers’ tragedy. Only with time had he seen that her pain was as great as his, and their mutual pain had caused them to form a bond. Then she’d gotten pregnant and made her decision.