HE FOUND HER in the bathroom, asleep on the floor, when he finally returned home just after three on Sunday afternoon. She looked so fragile to him, so waiflike, that he knew he’d made the right decision. The only decision.
A stab of guilt shot through him as he realized how exhausted she must have been to have fallen asleep on the cold tiles. He should have phoned.
“Lis?” he said softly.
“Marcus…” She sat up, instantly awake.
“I just wanted to tell you I’m home.”
Her beautiful eyes were shadowed as she stared up at him. “To stay?”
Marcus nodded. He wanted to tell her that he wasn’t angry with her anymore, to take away the fear in her eyes, but he couldn’t lie to her.
“You’re sure?” she asked, still sitting on the floor.
He nodded again.
She leapt up and threw herself against him, her arms wrapping around his neck. “Thank you, God,” she whispered. “Thank you.”
Marcus held her close to his heart, where he knew she belonged. She still fit him perfectly, as if the child she carried was nothing more than a bad dream. Then her slender frame began to shudder, and the shudders turned to sobs. His arms tightened. He’d been wrong to leave her hanging all weekend with no word from him. He knew how emotional Lisa was, how deeply she felt everything. How much she’d worry.
But she’d been wrong, too! Even as he held her, he felt the bitterness of her betrayal. The pain of her deception. The jealousy. She’d accepted another man’s seed into her womb.
Anger surged through him anew, and it took everything he had to continue holding her. He tried to concentrate on his love for the woman in his arms, wondering how much time would have to pass before the destructive emotions he felt would be gone, dreading the possibility that he would be living with them for a very long time. Perhaps for the rest of his life.
Surely loneliness and empty walls would be better than that.
He knew why Lisa had turned to artificial insemination, understood that her intentions, if not her actions, were honorable. She’d been trying to save him from himself. He could hardly fault her for that when he’d been presumptuous enough to attempt to do the same thing with his plans to leave her. But his plans would still have left the opportunity for them to live their lives together if she’d ultimately chosen to come back to him. He had been going to free her, yes, for a time. Free her to find out if he was what she still wanted, sterility and all. His plans had left the choice up to her.
But her plans had taken away his choices.
Which was one of the reasons he’d come back to her. She was pregnant. He was her husband. He would stand by her. Because he was an honorable man. Because she needed him. And because he loved her so damn much that, even pregnant with another man’s child, he still wanted her. But he would never accept her baby as his own. He couldn’t. It wasn’t his. Not in thought, and certainly not in deed.
“I did it for you,” she said against his neck, her voice wobbly with her tears.
“I know.”
“I love you so much.”
“I know.”
She pulled away to gaze up at him. “I never meant to hurt you like that, Marcus. Never. I’m so sorry.”
“Shh.” He pulled her close again and kissed the top of her head. “It’s okay, Lis. I understand. Everything’s going to be all right.” He wanted it to be. He was going to try his damnedest to make it be. Except that, deep inside, he was afraid nothing was ever going to be right again.
OLIVER HAD IT BAD. He wondered if fifty-three was too old for a midlife crisis. He was thrilled at the thought of being a grandfather, of holding Barbara’s grandchild in his arms. But maybe the fact that he was going to be a grandfather was bothering him, too—subconsciously. Maybe that was why he was suddenly finding himself thinking about the woman across the table from him at odd times during the day.
She looked so cute in her short-sleeved red dress, like a juicy ripe tomato.
“Lisa was in today. It’s great to see her so happy,” Beth said, devouring her salad.
“It is,” he agreed, though he suspected his daughter had some rough times ahead of her yet. “I haven’t seen much of Marcus, though, have you?”
“No.” She frowned. “Come to think of it, the last couple of times I stopped over, he was nowhere around.”
Oliver’s heart sank as he nodded. He’d noticed the same thing. He’d just been hoping it had been coincidental, a matter of bad timing. “Has she said anything to you about him?”
Beth put her fork down. “No. Why? Is something wrong? I thought he was happy about the baby.”