Jack did most of the hiring and firing at their law firm, but when Carole Navarro had applied, he had solicited Tate’s opinion. No living man could look at Carole impassively. Her large, dark eyes captivated his attention, her figure his imagination, her smile his heart. He had given her his stamp of approval and Jack had put her on the payroll as a legal assistant.
Soon, Tate had violated his own business ethics and invited her out to dinner to celebrate a case the jury had found in favor of their client. She had been charming and flirtatious, but the evening had ended at the door of her apartment with a friendly good-night handshake.
For weeks, she had kept their dates friendly. One night, when Tate had withstood the buddy system as long as he could, he had taken her in his arms and kissed her. She had returned his kiss with gratifying passion. They made a natural progression to bed, and the sex had been deeply satisfying for both.
Within three months the law firm had lost an employee, but Tate had gained a wife.
Her pregnancy came as a shock. He had quickly and agreeably adapted to the idea of having a child sooner than they had planned; Carole had not. She complained of feeling shackled by an unwelcome responsibility. Her engaging smile and infectious laughter became memories.
Her sexual performance had turned so obligatory that Tate didn’t miss it when it was suspended altogether. They had had blistering arguments. Nothing he did pleased or interested her. Eventually, he gave up trying to and devoted his time and energy to the election, which was still years away.
As soon as Mandy was born, Carole dedicated herself to getting her figure back. She exercised with fiendish diligence. He wondered why. Then the reason behind the zeal became apparent. He knew almost to the day when she took her first lover. She made no secret of it, nor of any of the infidelities that followed. His defense was indifference, which, by that time, was genuine. In retrospect, he wished he had gone ahead and divorced her then. A clean break might have been better for everybody.
For months they occupied the same house, but lived separate lives. Then, one night, she had visited him in his room, looking her sexiest. He never knew what had prompted her to come to him that night—probably boredom, maybe spite, maybe the challenge of seducing him. Whatever her reason, sexual abstinence and imprudent drinking with his brother during a poker game had caused him to take advantage of her offer.
During the blackest hours of their estrangement, he had considered resuming his affair with the realtor or cultivating another relationship just for the physical release it would afford him. Ultimately, he had denied that luxury to himself. A sexual dalliance was a pitfall to any married man. To a political candidate, it was an inescapable abyss. Falling into it and getting caught was career suicide.
Whether he got caught or not, vows meant something to him, though they obviously didn’t mean anything to his wife. Like a dolt, he had remained faithful to Carole and to the words he had recited to her during their wedding ceremony.
Weeks after that night, she had belligerently announced that she was pregnant again. Although Tate had seriously doubted that the child was his, he had had no choice but to take her word for it.
“I didn’t want to be stuck with another kid,” she had yelled.
That’s when he knew he didn’t love her anymore, hadn’t for a long time, and never could again. He had reached that momentous conclusion one week to the day before she boarded Flight 398 to Dallas.
Now he shook his head to bring himself out of his unpleasant reverie. He was going to ignore her question about the good-mother routine, just as he had ignored her claim that there had never been a child. He was afraid of the old bait-and-switch con. He wasn’t going to commit himself one way or the other until he knew that Carole’s recent transformations were permanent.
“Why don’t you order up lunch so we won’t have to go out before our meeting with Dr. Webster,” he suggested, changing the subject.
She seemed just as willing to let the matter drop. “What would you like?”
&nbs
p; “Anything. A cold roast beef sandwich would be fine.”
As she sat down on the bed to use the phone on the nightstand, she mechanically crossed her legs. Tate’s stomach muscles clenched at the sound of her stockings scratching together.
If he still distrusted her, why did he want to have sex with her so badly?
She deserved an A for effort. He would grant her that. Since coming home, and even before, she had done her best to reconcile with him. She rarely lost her temper anymore. She made a concerted effort to get along with his family, and had taken an unprecedented and inordinate amount of interest in their comings and goings, their habits, their activities. She was the antithesis of the impatient, ill-tempered parent she’d been before.
“That’s right, a peanut butter sandwich,” she was saying into the receiver. “With grape jelly. I know it’s not on the room service menu, but that’s what she likes to eat for lunch.” Mandy’s unwavering love affair with peanut butter and jelly sandwiches was a joke between them. Over her shoulder, Carole flashed him a smile.
God, he wanted to taste that smile.
Recently, he had. Her mouth hadn’t tasted of deceit and lies and unfaithfulness. The kisses she returned were sweet and delicious and… different. Analyzing them—and he had done that a lot lately—he realized that kissing her had been like kissing a woman for the first time.
What should have been familiar had been unique. Their few kisses had jolted him and left indelible impressions. He had exercised monastic self-discipline to stop with a few, when what he had wanted to do was explore her mouth at leisure until he found an explanation for this phenomenon.
Or maybe it wasn’t so phenomenal. She looked different with her hair short. Maybe the plastic surgery had altered her face just enough to make her seem like an entirely different woman.
It was a good argument, but he wasn’t convinced.
“They’ll be right up,” she told him. “Mandy, pick up the crayons and put them back in the box, please. It’s time for lunch.”
She stooped to help her. As she bent over, the narrow skirt of her suit was pulled tight across her derriere. Desire ripped through him. Blood rushed to his loins. That was understandable, he reasoned quickly. He hadn’t been with a woman in so damn long.
But he didn’t really believe that, either.