My Babies and Me

Choking back tears, Laura watched the dejected face of her son, completely uncertain what to do next.

“But I’m not going anymore,” Jeremy told her, looking up at her with angry eyes.

“Because of the woman.” She could barely say the word. Why in hell had Seth done it? Why, if he had another woman in his life—which surely he did by now—had he brought her over here? To watch Laura’s son?

She hated Seth the next instant when fat tears welled up in Jeremy’s eyes and dripped slowly down his dirt-streaked face. “I don’t want to see him with anyone else, Mom. I want him to love you.”

Laura pulled the boy into her arms comforting him as she silently wept.

LATE FRIDAY NIGHT, long after he’d made love to Susan, Michael lay awake in the bed he’d once shared with her, in the room that had once been theirs and tried to see a future. The picture was gray, blank. Cold.

“We need to talk, don’t we?”

Startled by the soft voice beside him, he turned his head. “I thought you were asleep.”

“I was. For a while.”

“How long have you been awake?” Why in hell did it matter? Except to distract her from her original question.

?

?Long enough.” Sighing, she raised herself on one elbow, pulling the sheet over her naked breasts.

Michael wished she hadn’t done that. Hadn’t shown him her beauty and then covered herself. Hidden herself from him. He wanted nothing more than to bury his face between her lush breasts, inhale her sweet scent, love her. Lose himself in her. Again. Forever.

“Even if I couldn’t see the misery in your eyes, you’re so tense I can practically feel your muscles quivering.”

Michael willed his muscles to relax, trying for nonchalance. “Your imagination is working overtime. Go back to sleep, Susan.”

“Michael?” She waited for him to look at her. Which he did. Eventually. “Don’t lie to me,” she said.

Her beautiful blue eyes, warm with compassion, were too much for him. He couldn’t continue the charade.

Leaning over her, he took her lips in a kiss that was meant to distract her and distracted him, instead. Her mouth opened beneath him, soft and welcoming, and he was lost. Nothing else seemed to matter when he was with Susan like this. Only her. Only them. Together.

Until she broke away. “Not now, Michael,” she said, shifting toward her side of the bed. “Not like this.”

Frowning, frustrated on top of everything else, he sat up—not bothering to cover himself up the way she had. He wanted her. He wasn’t embarrassed about that.

“Like what?” he grumbled.

“With secrets between us.”

“There are no secrets here.”

Laughing without any humor at all, Susan slid out of bed and into a robe so quickly he admired her finesse. But only because he didn’t want to focus on anything else.

“I lived with you for ten years, Michael,” she told him, “and I’ve been sleeping with you for the past three.”

He knew that but liked the sound of it anyway.

“In all that time, if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that it takes you about two seconds to fall asleep after sex.” Glancing at the clock, she delivered her closing line in superb prosecuting-attorney form. “It’s been exactly one hour and twenty-four minutes and you’re still awake. Something’s wrong.”

“You timed it?” he asked sarcastically.

She ignored his remark. “We both know what that something is.”

“We’re not in the courtroom, Susan,” he said, still sitting with his back propped against the headboard. “And I’m not a defendent.”