The Secret Son

September 1996

IT HAD BEEN the best—and the worst—week of her life.

Walking up Fifth Avenue, Erica was barely aware of the Thursday-afternoon crowd pressing around her. Years ago crowds had bothered her. Not anymore.

Going home to face Jefferson, now that was going to be horrible. To look into those loving gray eyes and know she’d betrayed him…

Oh, not physically. She could give herself that much credit. Sort of. In the past week she’d kissed Jack. Touched him. Let him touch her.

Okay, begged for his touch.

But they hadn’t made love.

Thinking of Jefferson, that was a huge comfort; thinking of Jack, of never seeing him again, of never knowing what it would feel like to be held, to be loved, by the man who’d awakened her heart fully for the first time in her life, there was no comfort at all. That knowledge brought such incredible grief she could hardly breathe.

But it had to be that way. She was a married woman.

And Jack, a former FBI agent, was a freelance hostage negotiator, always on call, ready to run at a moment’s notice, married to his job. A job, he’d told her, that he wouldn’t be able to do if he had someone waiting at home for him. A job filled with risks he wouldn’t be able to take if he had someone relying on him.

They’d spent this one stolen, enchanting week in New York City while he waited for the call to move and she was getting the runaround from a Wall Street Journal reporter she’d come to straighten out about Jefferson’s public support of stem-cell research. If it hadn’t been for the threat of some very real damage to Senator Jefferson Cooley’s reputation because of the bad—and worse, inaccurate—press coverage he’d received from the Journal, his communications director would not have had to risk her emotional health by staying in the city all those days. As soon as she’d met Jack Shaw she’d have hightailed it back to Washington.

To her husband.

And boss.

A man who was twenty-seven years her senior.

When she’d finally spoken with the reporter an hour ago, he’d promised a retraction. And another article, telling the real story. The story Erica had written herself and handed him as she left the meeting.

She could escape New York. And the temptation of Jack.

Her flight left JFK at seven the next morning, putting her in Washington in time to make the morning staff meeting at the senator’s office.

She’d have liked to go tonight. To make it home in time to crawl into bed beside him and tell herself she’d done him no wrong.

Maggie’s Place. It was the pub where she and Jack had first met. They’d both enjoyed the place, with its long mahogany bar and Irish charm, and they’d gone there every night for the past six nights. And stayed until closing.

It had been on one of the tables set for two along the side wall of the pub that Jack’s fingers had found hers. And clung. They’d been talking about their favorite television sitcoms at the time.

Shaking her stylishly cropped head of short dark hair, Erica still couldn’t understand why she hadn’t carefully pulled her hand free. Or why she’d gone back the next night.

When she’d married Jefferson three years before, she’d promised him loyalty.

He’d known she wasn’t in love with him.

A longtime friend of her family’s, he’d been one of the guests at her wedding to Shane. She’d been a naive, idealistic twenty-two.

Four years later he’d been there to help Erica pick up the pieces when that marriage ended. She was already working in his office by then, Congress had been in session, and he’d given her very little time off, insisting that work was what would see her through.

He’d been right.

As he almost always was.

He’d told her, one night when he’d come into the office late and found her crying over the writing of what should have been a simple speech, that the happiest years of her life weren’t behind her. That eventually she’d love again.

She’d refused to believe him.

Jefferson had shaken his head, telling her to give it some time.

But love hadn’t come to her a second time, and after Shane, it never would. Or so she’d thought until this past week.

The possibility that Jefferson might have been right—and that she’d found out several years too late—scared her to death.

Until this week she’d consoled herself with the thought that she’d already endured the worst life had to offer. That nothing she had yet to face would be harder than surviving Shane’s betrayal.

She’d been wrong.

Leaving Jack was going to be worse. Far worse.

Walking around the corner to Forty-seventh Street, Erica could see Maggie’s Place just ahead. She’d been telling herself all day that she wasn’t going to the pub that night. Jack had given her a quick good-night kiss the night before. The affectionate kind of kiss shared by friends.

And she’d felt it all the way to her toes.

Jack was danger. Making her want things—believe in things—she couldn’t have. She was better off not knowing they existed. She had to stay away from him.

Her feet carried her toward the pub, anyway.

Jack risked his life whenever he went to work. He walked into highly volatile situations to save the lives of strangers, negotiating with madmen and extremists and desperate people who had nothing to lose. He’d told her she was the first person he’d connected with on a personal level in more than five years.

She couldn’t just leave him sitting there. Couldn’t go without thanking him for giving back to her what Shane had stripped from her all those years ago. Her belief in herself—and in a chemistry that made life exciting. In possibilities.

She couldn’t go without telling him goodbye.

Jefferson had her life. She could at least give Jack goodbye.

He was sitting at “their” table. The one halfway down the row. “You look beautiful,” he told her, smiling, his eyes warm with seductive appreciation as she pulled out her chair.

She’d worn the black ankle-length pants and red blouse more for him than for the Journal reporter.

“Thank you,” she said, her trepidation disappearing as she took her seat across from him.

In this city where anyone could get lost in the crowd, her time with him existed in a universe all its own.

It seemed to Erica that being with Jack brought her face-to-face with the person inside herself, the person she really was. How could anything that felt this natural, this destined, be wrong?

He was wearing jeans and a black polo shirt that hugged his chest, the bands at the bottoms of the short sleeves tight around his biceps.

“Did you get your call?” she asked, although it made no difference.