The Secret Son

“We debated through another glass of wine, and then I finally just told him that if love did exist, it wasn’t anything I was going to allow in my life again. I refused to be that vulnerable. Wasn’t going to give someone else the power to hurt me that much.”

“A wise decision.”

Erica wasn’t surprised he agreed. After sharing a sardonic grin with him, she continued. “At that point, with the conversation at a standstill and the bottle of wine gone, Jefferson’s confession lay between us like…like some shocking indiscretion.”

The bartender came over and handed Jack their final tab. Without letting go of her hand, he fumbled with his wallet, threw his credit card on the table. He caressed her palm with his fingers—and the rest of her with his eyes.

Time was almost up.

She needed more to drink. She wasn’t numb enough yet.

“What happened next?” he asked, as though their world wasn’t coming to an end.

“We talked awkwardly about the campaign for a few minutes, trying to get back on familiar ground. The talk came around to Jefferson’s single status, and the solution seemed obvious. We should get married. He must’ve asked me fifteen times if I was sure I didn’t harbor some secret dream about a knight in shining armor.

“I pointed out that I hadn’t had a date since my divorce and that I didn’t want one.

“He said he hated the thought of me living my whole life alone. I told him I wasn’t thrilled with the idea myself, but that it was far better than the alternative.

“He asked me to marry him and eventually I accepted.”

The bartender came back with the receipt for Jack to sign. Resentment shot through Erica. Couldn’t the man have given them a few more minutes?

“Two months later we were married, and four months after that, he won.” She continued telling her story as though they hadn’t been interrupted, as though they weren’t supposed to be standing up, heading toward the door, leaving the pub.

And each other.

“I had a lot of reservations because I knew he was in love with me and I couldn’t return those feelings. But in the end, he somehow convinced me that being allowed to share my life would make him happy. I let him convince me it would be enough.”

The biggest mistake of all.

Jack was frowning.

“You have to understand,” Erica said quickly. “It wasn’t that I didn’t love him. I did—I do. It’s just not a stars-in-your-eyes, heartjumping kind of love. He’d been a colleague of my father’s, a friend of the family for years. I’d actually had a crush on him for a short time while I was in high school.”

“Just how old is he?” Jack asked, pulling her up to stand with him, still not relinquishing his hold on her hand.

She didn’t want to tell him. Jefferson looked younger than he was, and Jack had told her he wasn’t really up on Washington politicians, anyway. She was pretty sure he’d missed the publicity about her marriage to Jefferson three years before.

“Fifty-nine,” she said with obvious reluctance.

He stopped. Stared at her. “Twenty-seven years older than you?”

He was good with the math.

Erica nodded.

“And here I’ve been picturing you with some hotshot young stud tearing up Capitol Hill. This kind of reminds me of that song by the Eagles. ‘Lyin’ Eyes.”’

Hand in hand, they walked to the door.

“Except that I’ve never visited the cheatin’ side of town.”

The New York air was crisp. Cool. Forty-seventh Street was almost deserted. With the minutes closing in on her, Erica felt caged, claustrophobic.

“Let me walk you to your hotel?”

“Of course.”

But there was no “of course” about it. Always before, he’d hailed her a cab on Fifth Avenue and wished her good-night.

A twenty-minute walk to her hotel—if they took things slowly—and then her soul mate was going to walk out of her life forever. How could she possibly make it through a lifetime of never feeling this way again? Of never feeling the intensity, the rightness, she felt when she was with Jack?

This wasn’t the youthful passionate love she’d felt for Shane. It went deeper than that. Deeper than what she’d known as love.

Jack made her feel complete.

THEY WERE NEARING her hotel. Jack spent the last couple of blocks wondering whether he dared to kiss her good-night.

He was going to have to leave her without doing what he needed most—take her to bed. He didn’t even question that.

Jack didn’t sleep with married women.

And she wasn’t the type to cheat.

Jefferson Cooley might not have passionate love from her, but he had her loyalty. And of the two, loyalty won out.

As he believed it should.

“See that guy over there?” Erica said, gesturing as they approached her hotel.

A man, dressed casually in a pair of well-fitting jeans and a button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled up, leaned against the corner of the building.

“Yeah.”

“My first night here, he tried to get me to go with him, supposedly to pick out some earrings for his mother. I had to tell him no three times before he finally gave up,” she said, her voice not quite steady, though from wine, their imminent goodbye or something else he couldn’t be sure. “He’s been hanging around the hotel all week.”

She slowed her steps until they were barely moving forward at all. “For a while I thought he was out here smoking, but I’ve never seen him light up. A couple of times since that first night, I’ve caught him watching me. And then last evening, I’m almost certain he followed me into the hotel. He came in right after I did. I slipped into an elevator just as the door was closing and lost him.”

Once a cop, always a cop. Jack checked the man out. Erica was right. He was watching them. Or rather, her. The guy hadn’t been hanging around his place all week.

“I’m walking you inside,” Jack said brusquely, putting an arm around Erica to lead her through the front door of the hotel.

He glared at the guy as they passed, warning him off in no uncertain terms. The other man shrugged and looked away.

The man might be perfectly harmless. Just a hotel guest appreciating a beautiful fellow guest.

But Jack had learned the hard way that you could never be sure.