A Father's Secret

“Good book?” she asked in the silence that suddenly opened between them.

He flicked a look at the tome on his lap, almost appearing surprised to find it there. He laughed, the sound making her gut clench. He didn’t laugh nearly enough and the sound of it warmed her to her core.

“To be honest I couldn’t tell you if it’s good or not. I grabbed it off the shelf and opened it and that was about all.”

Erin laughed with him. It felt good to be relaxed in his company.

“Not a huge amount of popular fiction in here,” Erin commented, letting her eyes slide over the many hardback and leather-bound covers. “How’s your own book coming along?”

“Slowly. It’s more of a manual, really. My firm designs and develops software.”

“Sounds exciting,” she said drily.

“It’s definitely not, which is why I’m in here rather than back upstairs where I should be working.” He sighed deeply. “I would normally have done this at home, but there are too many reminders.”

“Your wife?”

“Yeah, Laura.”

“Pretty name.”

“Pretty woman. She would’ve given anything to be a mother, like you.” He raised a hand and rubbed his eyes. “I blame myself for her death. It’s not something I find easy to live with.”

Erin stiffened in her chair, her breath frozen in her chest. “Surely you’re not respons—”

“I was driving the car when we were broadsided—it was my fault. I ran a red light because we were late for an appointment. No, I was late, so I tried to make up time.” His voice was bitter and angry.

Erin didn’t know what to say in the silence that stretched out between them. What could anyone say when the facts were stated so baldly? She jumped as a log of wood suddenly snapped, sending a shoot of sparks up the chimney.

“I’m sorry,” Sam said, carefully placing his book on a side table and getting up to stand by the fire. “I shouldn’t be off-loading to you.”

“It’s okay,” Erin said.

“No, it’s not. I have tried to deal with it, to come to terms with what I did, the choices I made that day. I still can’t believe I was so stupid, so bloody reckless and arrogant.” His hands balled into fists at his sides.

“Are you succeeding in dealing with it?” she asked softly.

She could see the muscles in Sam’s jaw clench tight for a moment before he spoke.

“Most of the time. She just deserved so much more, y’know? I put my business first for most of our marriage. I certainly did so that day. If I’d just delegated one small thing, and left the office on time, she’d still be alive today.”

Erin rose to stand beside him, placing one hand on his forearm. Beneath her touch she felt his muscles were tense—his rage against himself a palpable thing.

“You can’t say that. Anything else could have delayed you that day. Any number of things could have come up.”

Sam gave her a twisted smile. “You’re a fatalist then?”

She shook her head. “I just think that some things simply happen. Questioning them after the event is futile. We can’t turn back time, no matter how much we want to.”

“And the future? Do you think we can change what’s going to happen there?”

There was a note of desperation in his voice that pulled at her every instinct to comfort, to offer solace from whatever demons rode him.

“I don’t know,” she said after a small hesitation. “I’d like to think we learn from our mistakes, something at least.”

“Yeah,” he said brokenly. “Me, too.”

He still sounded so lost and unhappy, as if, even though he’d said the words, he didn’t really believe they were true. Erin didn’t stop to think. She lifted her face to his, her lips slightly parted, and kissed him.

His body jerked, as if he’d received an electric shock, but almost instantly she felt him begin to relax. He angled his head slightly, the better to return her kiss, she realized, and his hands slid around her waist to her lower back, pulling her into him. She went willingly, not allowing herself to think about how wrong this was. All she could think about was how right he felt and, when he opened his mouth to deepen their kiss, how right he tasted.

Her body, so long dormant—attuned only to her most basic needs of survival and to those of her infant son—began a slow burn. Her hands slid up Sam’s arms, feeling the muscles that were so taut with anger a moment ago, loosen and soften under her touch.

When he pulled her hard against him, she felt a jolt of pure sexual hunger spear through her, and she knew he felt the same way. The hardened ridge of his arousal pressed against her mound and she let her instincts override the last bastion of good sense as she flexed against him.