Another Man's Child

“The first time? Maybe. Chances are, though, it won’t.”

Lisa didn’t think she could go through this again. “It won’t?”

“Only twenty percent conceive the first time out.”

Twenty percent. Lisa started to feel sick again, though for an entirely different reason. Did she have enough time to wait another month? Would Marcus give her that long before he did the gentlemanly thing, the honorable thing, and walked out on her?

Could she live with him for another whole month without telling him what she’d done? Could she go through this again?

“How long till we know?” she asked.

“We can do an early detection in a couple of days. It’ll be two weeks before we’ll really know for sure. But, if you’re so inclined, you can have a blood test done each day, since you’re here, anyway. That way you’ll know for certain the first second it’s possible to tell.”

Two weeks. Could she wait two weeks? Lisa didn’t think it was possible. She also didn’t see where she had any other choice..

THAT AFTERNOON Lisa did something she’d never done before. As soon as Hannah was finished for the day, Lisa called Marcus at work and left him a message to come home. Then she showered and changed into a sexy black lace nightie and waited for him to arrive. Twenty minutes later she heard him at the front door.

“Lisa?” he called the moment he stepped over the threshold. “What’s wrong—” He stopped abruptly as soon as he caught sight of her coming into the foyer. She was barefoot and practically naked, her hair a wild tangle around her shoulders.

/> Wrapping her arms around his neck, Lisa pulled his head down for a scorching kiss before he could ask any more questions. She’d startled him. Good. She could feel his confusion in his kiss, in the way it took him just a fraction of a second to respond. She poured every ounce of passion she had into that kiss, giving him all her love, promising him it had always been, and always would be, his alone.

His briefcase dropped to the floor at their feet as he scooped her up into his arms and carried her into the living room, falling with her on the thick velvet couch.

“I think I’m glad you called,” he murmured into her ear as he worked his way around her neck, leaving hot little kisses in his wake.

“Me, too.” He had no idea how glad, how badly Lisa needed to wipe away the thought of another man’s seed in her body.

Their lovemaking, there on the couch, was more intensely passionate than Lisa had ever known. It was almost as if Marcus sensed her desperate need for him, and it triggered an answering need in him. And when, sometime later, he finally exploded inside her, Lisa knew it was then that their baby had been conceived. Because it was only after Marcus’s love had mixed with that tiny bud of life inside of her that she could relax enough to accept the seed of another man into her womb.

He had a second orgasm before he finally led her upstairs to their bedroom, and while Lisa rode the waves with him every inch of the way, she couldn’t help being aware, that second time, of a difference in Marcus’s touch, an edge that had never been there before. She wasn’t sure what it meant.

“I could get used to coming home early,” he said later, holding her against him in the middle of their bed.

“Mmm. Me, too. ‘Course the neighbors might begin to talk about the steam coming off our roof every afternoon.”

Marcus chuckled, a warm rumble beneath her ear. “People have always talked about us, Lis. They can’t figure out why I prefer to spend my free time with you rather than out hitting a little white ball around a bunch of manicured grass.”

“Hey! I take my share of it, too. I’m always the odd one out when the girls get together in the cafeteria to complain about picking up their husband’s dirty socks.”

He pulled her closer. “I guess we’re luckier than we think sometimes, huh?” he asked, but he didn’t sound convinced.

“We sure are,” Lisa said, believing the words, but knowing full well that luck, like their love, may not be enough to save their marriage.

She lay awake in his arms long after he’d fallen into an exhausted sleep. She continued to be besieged with moments of sheer panic, when she imagined the disgust, the breach of trust she’d see in Marcus’s eyes once he knew what she’d done. She prayed over and over, in those moments, that the seed hadn’t taken, that Marcus would never know how she’d betrayed him.

But as her mind grew weary, her thoughts drifted to her old dream, the one where Marcus was holding their baby in his big strong arms, cradling it against him, protecting it. And always in the dream, Marcus’s eyes were filled with love, his voice echoing with laughter.

The dream vanished suddenly when, out of the darkness, it finally came to her what had been different about Marcus’s lovemaking that second time. He hadn’t held her as if he was protecting her, but more as if he was letting her go.

As if he’d been saying goodbye.

CHAPTER FIVE

RON CAMPBELL stuck his head into Marcus’s office one afternoon almost two weeks later. “The house is yours, Mr. Cartwright.”

“Thanks, Ron.” Marcus hated the place already.

The young man came into his office and sat down in one of the huge maroon chairs in front of Marcus’s desk, handing Marcus a fax with the final figures on it, along with a copy of the deed.