Her Detective's Secret Intent

“Who says you have to stop?” she whispered, aware only of him again. Sand. Dust. All would be well.

“Sex complicates things. I don’t want to lose you.”

I don’t want to lose you. She’d dreamed those words. Back when she used to fantasize about meeting a good man, having a husband who’d cherish her as much as she did him.

I don’t want to lose you, she’d cried in Jeff’s arms when she’d finally accepted what he’d known—that he wouldn’t live long enough to see the birth of their son.

“You aren’t going to be around forever,” she reminded Tad.

“Like I said, it’s complicated.”

But not impossible.

He wanted her. And she needed him. To help her get to that normal life she was supposed to live.

She was a woman who didn’t trust, but she trusted Tad. Enough to have him in her home. To give him time with Ethan. To want to share her body with him.

She was horny as hell and maybe she wasn’t thinking straight, but it felt so...good. So right.

“I’ve never felt anything like this before. Been turned on like this.” She couldn’t keep it to herself anymore. “It’s making me crazy. I think about you all the time, about how you looked that day in the examining room with your pants down around your ankles...”

Just saying the words made her heat up. She reached for her wine, took another sip. So yeah, usually one glass was her limit, but there was nothing usual about this night.

“Surely you must’ve been attracted to Ethan Sr.,” Tad said. He had a look in his eye, a wanting, that reached right inside her.

She didn’t want the wine anymore. She wanted Tad. For real. Needing him to know her in ways no one else had.

“I...wasn’t attracted to him,” she said slowly. “Not sexually, at any rate.” She was attracted to his heart. To his friendship.

And could tell this part of the story. There’d be no way to trace what had happened between her and Jeff.

They’d never dated. No one had suspected.

“You had a child with a man you weren’t sexually attracted to?” His frown showed concern, but the edge in his voice sounded suspicious, and he seemed more like a detective sensing something criminal. “Did he rape you?”

She might have seen that coming if she’d been herself.

“No!” Oh, God, no. While the lie might be a good cover, she couldn’t let it stand. “I’d just...never...” She faltered. “He was a friend. A close friend. I wasn’t into partying and drinking, and sometimes he’d stay back and hang out with me. Mostly we talked. Trusted each other with things we never told anyone else. We’d both grown up in foster homes and it bonded us.” Her father’s abuse, his birth mother and then foster father’s abuse, that was what had bonded them.

“The car accident I told you about, that killed him...” The football game. She’d been there, standing on the sidelines, cheering for his fraternity. “He didn’t die immediately.” He’d had long enough to find his long-lost brother, contact him. The guy had offered insincere commiseration, asked for money and then moved on.

“But he knew he was going to die,” she went on. “The one thing he wanted was to have a child, a legacy, part of himself to continue on in the world. He wanted that with me. And he wanted his child to be connected to me. Someone who would give me unconditional love. When he first talked to me about it, I didn’t think he was serious. But he wouldn’t let go of the idea. And the more he talked about it, the more I saw that if I did as he asked, he’d be able to die peacefully. I had to give that to him. I knew I wanted children someday, and if that day came sooner...”

Her biggest concern had been her father. He’d gone nuts when she’d just kissed a guy. The second she’d come in the house and shut the door. As far as she knew, he’d only taken it out on her, not the boy she’d gone out with. The date had been during the summer between her junior and senior years of high school, and she’d stayed home until she healed. But the guy had never called her again—not that their date, or the kiss, had been that great. And not one guy had asked her out in her senior year, either.

If that kind of reaction had happened after just a kiss, no telling what he’d do to her, or Jeff, if she turned up pregnant without a husband or full-time job. She’d been going home less and less since leaving for college and hadn’t gone at all during the months her pregnancy was showing. She’d been petrified of what he’d do.

And had known that eventually she’d have to tell him. He was her father. He still insisted on birthdays and holidays together.

“You’re saying Ethan was conceived on purpose with someone with whom you’d had no sexual relationship?”

She nodded. “And it wasn’t all that terrific for either of us,” she admitted. “The sex, I mean.” Jeff had struggled to even make it happen. They were so close emotionally, and physically it had been so awkward...

“Was he your first?”

She’d hoped he wouldn’t ask that. But nodded.

“And since Ethan...there’s been no one?”