Confessions

Chapter One

Laura Swann Fletcher had never realized how long five minutes could be. Especially when you were holding your breath.

She scowled at the vial atop the cultured marble countertop, as if intimidation could speed up whatever mysterious chemical reactions were taking place inside it.

Heat lightning flashed outside the bathroom window, hinting of the storm to come. A distant taste of rain rode on the sultry air. Normally, summer storms in Arizona’s high country never bothered Laura.

But tonight was different. Tonight she felt as if the electricity had gotten into her blood, making her edgy.

“Dammit, hurry up,” she begged. As if she didn’t have enough to deal with. “Please, hurry up.”

She took a deep breath that should have calmed, but didn’t. “It’s only stress,” she insisted, as if saying the words could make them true.

Perhaps she should have taken Fredericka Palmer up on that offer of Valium. Only last week her longtime best friend had professed concern about her. If only Freddi knew the whole story.

“Dammit, get hold of yourself.” Laura hardly recognized the high, nervous voice. She pressed her palms against her rib cage and, taking several more deep breaths, willed herself to relax.

But her mind continued to churn restlessly, tossing up the myriad problems that had been plaguing her. Problems without end. Dilemmas without solutions. Nerves humming, Laura decided to see if one all-important call she’d been waiting for had come while she’d been out buying the home pregnancy kit.

The answering machine was downstairs, in the den. The red light was blinking, signaling four calls. She pushed the Rewind button. Then, Play.

Unbearably restless, she prowled the plank floor.

Beep. “Laura. It’s your father.” His recorded voice was as gruff as always, but she thought perhaps it was only her imagination. His next words confirmed that it wasn’t. “I heard a story today that damn well better not be true. If you’re there, pick up.”

There was a slight pause as he waited for her to do as instructed. As she always had. “Hell.” Another frustrated pause. “When I get back from Santa Fe, you and I are going to have a talk. Because you’ve got a lot of explaining to do, girl.”

So, he’d found out. Even as Laura reminded herself that she’d been going to tell him herself, painful memories, buried but never forgotten, snaked through her.

She looked down at her watch.

Two more minutes.

She continued to pace.

Beep. “Laura, it’s Alan. Thunderstorms kept us on the ground at National, now we’re stuck on the runway at O’Hare. We’re going to be late getting into Phoenix, then with the ninety-minute drive to Whiskey River, it’ll probably be past midnight before I get home. Don’t bother waiting up.”

It was not the first time her husband had been delayed while on a trip with Heather Martin, his ambitious and sexy chief of staff. Laura doubted it would be the last. The difference was, this time she honestly didn’t care.

Alan Fletcher was a rising political star, the brightest, most promising light in the Republican political firmament. Having won reelection to the U.S. Senate by a landslide, he was being touted as the party’s best hope to regain the White House.

Laura had never enjoyed living in Washington. She hated the artifice, the parties that were nothing but power plays, the emphasis on political prestige rather than character. The role of senate wife had been difficult enough. The idea of becoming First Lady gave her hives.

Beep. “Hi, Laura. It’s Mariah. Kill the fatted calf, the prodigal daughter is coming home! Do I have a lot to tell you! Guess it’ll have to wait until I show up on your doorstep, which should be around midnight, which I know is an ungodly hour, but I’m dying to share my news with my big sister. Love ya.”

Damn. Laura dragged a trembling hand through her auburn hair. Trust Mariah to choose this weekend to return to Whiskey River. Nothing like throwing a lit match into an already volatile situation.

Then again, Laura considered, if anyone could appreciate what she was about to do, it would be the woman who, like their glamorous mother, had been banished from the Swann family.

She looked at her watch again.

Only one more minute.

Beep. “Hi.” The deep, intimate voice sent a familiar heat surging through Laura.

“I just wanted to make sure you’re okay. Hell, the truth is, I’m worried about you, babe. I still wish you hadn’t insisted on doing this alone.

“Christ, Laurie—” she could picture him dragging his hands through his thick black hair “—I don’t remember you being so stubborn twenty years ago. If you had... Oh, hell. Forget I said that. One day at a time, right?”

“One day at a time,” Laura whispered.

It was the same thing she’d been saying for months. The problem was, she knew Clint Garvey would not wait any longer. The last few times they’d managed to be together, they’d wasted valuable time—time they could have spent making love—arguing.

Finally, last weekend, Clint had issued an ultimatum. She knew, with every fiber of her being, that if she didn’t keep her promise to leave her husband, she would lose the only man she’d ever loved.

She sighed as she looked down at her watch again.

Finally!

The indicator’s damning red Plus sign confirmed what she’d suspected all along. It hadn’t been stress that had caused her to feel so tired lately. And it hadn’t been flu that had brought about the occasional bouts of morning queasiness.

She was pregnant.

With her lover’s child.

Timing, Laura considered weakly, was indeed everything.

With her back against the wall, both literally and figuratively, she slid down to the tile floor, wrapped her arms around her bent legs and rested her forehead on her knees.

What on earth was she going to do? A fleeting dread shot through Laura. Her first thought was that Clint would think she’d been lying when she’d assured him that she could not get pregnant. But how could she have known otherwise? After having spent years trying to conceive?

When pollsters had informed her husband that a pregnant wife was worth from eight to fifteen points in the opinion polls, Alan had begun dragging her to infertility clinics all over the country. None of the increasingly esoteric, uncomfortable and horribly embarrassing treatments had worked.

Finally, last year, after her thirty-sixth birthday, Laura had given up the quest for a child. Alan, needless to say, had not been pleased. It was, after all, a great deal easier to campaign on a family values platform with a smiling wife and darling children by your side.

Alan. Laura groaned. Her husband was going to be absolutely furious. What if he attempted to pay her back for her infidelity by refusing to grant her a divorce? Worse yet, what if he decided to claim this child for his own?

“I won’t let that happen!”

Laura reminded herself that her husband’s most consistent personality trait was that everything Alan Fletcher said, everything he did, including marrying her, was geared solely toward enhancing his career. If he attempted such a ploy, she’d hold her own press conference and tell the entire world the truth.

Ronald Reagan had proven that a divorced man could get elected president. But would voters choose a candidate involved in a messy paternity battle? Laura didn’t think so.

“It’s going to be all right,” she assured herself. And her baby. “Granted, this complicates things. But Alan will see that a quick, quiet divorce is in his own best interests.”

Latching on to that optimistic thought, she pressed her hands against her still-flat stomach in an unconscious gesture of maternal protection.

Her churning mind gradually calmed as she began to view her unborn child—hers and Clint’s child—as a reward for all the pain they’d suffered.