The soccer field came into view before he slowed down enough to be cautious. Jeremy might not even be there. He'd probably quit practicing the second Seth walked out the door of his mother's house. Or
maybe it had been the next week, when he'd gone to soccer practice and discovered that Seth was no longer his coach.
At least he knew the kid was still on the team. He supposed that was something.
And what would Seth say to the boy if Jeremy was at the field by himself? “Hey, kid, good to see ya. Sorry you weren't important enough to me.”
Right. Just what a nine-year-old needed to hear.
Face
it.
That was exactly what Jeremy was thinking, anyway. The kid's father had run out on him. He'd
expected
Seth to do the same. And Seth had obliged.
The field was empty, just as he'd realized it would be. Of course, it
was
January. Freezing. Who kicked around soccer balls at eight-thirty on a January night?
Jeremy would have. If Seth had still been around to encourage him. The boy had ability. And he loved to play. Soccer was the one thing that could help Seth get through to Jeremy. That could make Jeremy feel good about himself.
Driving by Laura's house was a given.
Maybe he should stop in to say hello. Just to make sure they were all right. There were lights on in the front room, and a glow from the television that appeared to be Jeremy's only solace these days, his only escape.
The front yard was still nothing but a tiny square of hard dirt; the sidewalk was cracked, pieces missing; half the porch sagged. He'd repeatedly offered to set her up in a better place, a better part of town. She'd refused every time. And when he couldn't stand having her there any longer, when he'd found her a place on his own, made all the arrangements for
her to move, when he'd insisted she accept his offer, she'd given him the ultimatum that had ended everything.
Light flickered on the homemade curtains, probably a reflection from the television screen. He wondered if Jeremy was still looking out for his little sister.
Seth had driven by Jenny's school last month, and the little girl had been off by herself, leaning against a corner of the building while her classmates played. She'd seen too much in her young life to be capable of make-believe. To find any joy in childish antics.
Seth had hoped to change that, too. Just as he'd once thought he'd be able to bring an easy sparkle back to Laura's eyes. But the bastard who'd helped create that family had done some real work on all of them. The bruises he'd left behind, both physical and mental, were more than Seth had been able to eradicate.
He'd wanted to be their friend. They'd needed more than that. A single-parent family usually did.
Slamming his gloved hand down hard on the steering wheel, Seth sped away from the run-down neighborhood where Laura lived; he didn't slow down until he'd reached the bar right around the corner from his apartment complex. He could walk home from there if he got lucky enough to be too wasted to drive.
He just couldn't believe Susan was actually
planning
a single-parent family. What if she had a boy? Boys needed fathers. Jeremy was proof of that.
He'd given his sister credit for having more sense.
Â
SHE'D COME PREPARED. Slipping into the public rest room in the lobby of the condo sales office in Michael's
complex, Susan quickly took off her suit, bra and panty hose, donning nylons, a garter and a lavender French-cut negligee. She might be pushing forty but her body still looked goodâcurved in the right places, tight where it should be. Touching up her makeup didn't take but a second, just long enough to coat her lips with wet luscious red. Her nipples puckered with cold, and probably a bit of anticipation, too, as she slid her overcoat and shoes back on, picked up her weekend bag and sedately reentered the lobby.
She'd brought protection, too, just in case Michael hadn't replaced the box they'd finished off the last time she was in town. There was no place in her plan for an unexpected pregnancy, no place for manipulation or dishonesty. If she was going to have Michael's baby, it was going to be with his permission.
An evening sales associate tossed her a welcoming smile as Susan sailed regally past her and into the night, shaking back her hair. Gold with streaks of light chocolateâthat was how Michael had always described her hair. Gold and chocolate. Of course, he'd also said it almost exactly matched the oak of her desk, but that was when he'd had her lying on top of it.
Her desk would have been a little cumbersome to bring, so she'd settled for his favorite whiskeyâa rich golden Scotchâand a box of his favorite chocolatesâall lights. While he'd understand the significance of her offering, he might think her a little odd for bringing him presents on
her
birthday, but she wasn't leaving anything to chance. She wanted his senses overflowing. She wanted distraction.
She wanted to ask a favor and she was scared to death he'd think she was crazy. Of course, his immediate answer would probably be no. She'd wait until he was stone-cold sober before she'd accept that decision.
Â
MICHAEL WAS ELATED and instantly hard when he opened the door of his condo to see Susan standing there, coat gaping, his own personal paramour. But he wasn't really surprised. He'd been thinking of her all day. Needing her. And she was here.
That was just the way it was with them.
“Lady, you read my mind.” He gathered her close, his hands sliding inside the open overcoat, as he kicked the door closed.
“Hello, Michael,” she laughed when he let her up for air.
He kissed her again, tasting her, turned on as much by the familiarity of her as the luscious breasts he felt against him. “Happy birthday, sweetheart.” He nuzzled her neck, her collarbone.
“Thank you.” Her voice wasn't quite steady. She was on fire, too. Even after all these years, it was still instantaneous combustion. For both of them.
“Mind if I put these things down?”
Michael took her bag and the gifts she held without removing his lips from her body. He set her things on the high-backed wicker chair in the foyer and then, turning, forced her backward toward the stairs that led to his bedroom.
He was damn glad she was here.
Â
“WHERE WERE YOU TODAY?” Susan's words were soft, sleepy, her finger toying with his nipple as he
lay facing her, still
inside
her.
“Atlanta.”
Her eyes were closed, but her face was taut, her body tense as she continued to play with him. “On business?”
“Later.” At the moment, Michael couldn't even remember why he'd thought the day's meeting so important.
“Mmm-hmm.” Susan's tongue darted out to his lips and then was gone. “Later.”
Â
“MICHAEL?”
“Mmm-hmm?” He'd just been thinking he should rouse himself enough to tell her his good news. As soon as he was strong enough for another celebration.
“We can always talk to each other about everything, can't we?”
Although he didn't shift from his position propped on the pillows with Susan cradled against his chest, Michael was instantly alert. Lethargy evaporated to be replaced with caution. And maybe something else. Maybe fear.
“I've always thought so.”
“Yeah, me, too.”
Her breathing became more regular as she lay there silently, more relaxed, as though she were going to sleep. Was that it, then? Just a reaffirmation of what they were to each other?
Granted, their relationship was far from traditional, an open-ended friendship with no strings attached. But it worked for him. And for her, too, he thought. Had she just needed reassurance? He was loath to
move, to disturb her. Loath to find out there was more.
“So, if...something...changed for me, I could tell you?”
What had changed?
“Of course you could.”
Had she found someone else? Someone in Cincinnati? God forbid, someone she wanted to marry?
Michael's throat was dry, but he tried to be calm, reasonable. She wouldn't have shown up here tonight, wouldn't be lying naked in his arms, satiated with a couple of hours of healthy love if there was someone else, right?
Unless...
He thought back to the dayâand nightâof their divorce. Sex was exactly how she'd said goodbye.
He couldn't stand the idea of her with someone else.
“So
has
something changed?” He finally had to ask. Had to know.
“Maybe.”
Maybe?
Could you
maybe
be in love with someone else?
He continued to hold her, to run one hand lightly up and down her naked back.
“You're not sure?”
The entire conversation was ludicrous. Susan in love with someone else?
Making love
with someone else? He might have worried about something like that in the beginning, seven years ago, right after their divorce. But now?
“I'm sure.”
His hand stilled. “You are.”
Her hair was rough against his chest as, slowly, she nodded.
Then why in hell are you lying here, naked, in my bed, in my arms?
He wanted to shout at her. Almost did.
Until it occurred to him that Susan had every right to fall in love with someone else. And that he had no rights at all. Not anymore.
Once, he had.
But he'd given them up.
CHAPTER THREE
“I
'M GOING to have a baby, Michael.”
Michael flew out of bed, hardly aware of her head flopping onto the pillows behind him as he stood on the thick carpet covering his bedroom floor.
And then, feeling incredibly foolish, he realized he must have misunderstood, heard her wrong. He'd thought, for a second there, that she'd told him she was pregnant.
“What did you say?” He stalled, looking for a way to explain his bizarre behavior without actually telling her what he
thought
she'd said.
She lay there, gazing up at him, the oddest expression on her face. Half fearful, half belligerent. Her chocolately golden hair was scattered about her face and tangled on the pillows beneath her, her lips bare and swollen, her eyes wide. She'd pulled the covers up to her chin. She looked about sixteen.
“I'm going to have a baby.”
The breath knocked out of him, Michael felt as though he'd been sucker punched. If he hadn't been butt naked he'd have sunk to the floor.
“You...are.” He couldn't, for the moment, think of anything more intelligent to say.
Still wearing that odd expression, Susan nodded. He hated the way she was looking at him. Hated seeing
her so unsure. Hated everything about this damn evening. This day. This life.
“You're going to have a baby.” He just couldn't make sense of it.
She nodded again.
Susan was pregnant. His Susan. The woman whose career meant more to her than anything, including him, was going to be encumbered with someone else's child.
He'd kill the bastard who'd done this to her.
“Who is he?” Michael reached for his slacks and, not taking time for underwear, pulled them on. He would hunt the guy down and kill him with his bare hands for not loving Susan more responsibly. Hell, for loving her at all.
“I don't know yet.”
So intent was he on finding some shoes, a shirt, he barely heard the words when she first uttered them. But as he buttoned his shirt, cussing at every little buttonhole, her voice slowly sank in.
Whirling, he faced her. “You don't know
yet?”
He had to be asleep, having the craziest nightmare of his life. There was no other way to explain the things he was hearing.
Unusually winded, Susan shook her head.
There'd been more than one man? “Well, when are you going to find out?” Didn't they have to wait until after the baby was born to determine paternity?
“I'm not sure.”
“I'm going downstairs.”
Michael took the stairs three at a timeâhalf sliding, half running in his hurry to get away from her. To get away from the whole sordid mess. With a
Scotch in hand, and one small light on above the bar, he paced his living room, doing some quick desperate math. He'd seen Susan at Christmas, but he'd only been able to spare the one day and her whole family had been around. He'd been busy as hell all through the fall with year-end approaching, and dammit, this baby couldn't be his.
His gut hard, he figured out that it had been a good four months since he'd made love to Susan. And there was no way she was four months along. Her belly was as flat as always. He knew. He'd just spent the past two hours intimately acquainted with it.
Not that he'd
wanted
the baby to be his. He finished off the shot of whiskey he'd poured. Not at all. Certainly no more than Susan wanted to be pregnant. He couldn't think of anything she'd want less. Except maybe death. Or anything
he'd
want less, for that matter.
He also couldn't get past the sick feeling of knowing that another man had done this to her. Dammit! Why hadn't she been more careful?
“You're angry, aren't you?”
She'd appeared behind him, wearing a rumpled men's shirt. She'd found the shirt he'd worn to work earlier and wrapped herself in it. The shirt reminded him of his meeting with Coppel.
“No.”
“Don't lie to me, Michael.”
He turned toward her. She was right. Lying to each other was one thing he and Susan had never done.
“Okay, yeah, I'm angry.” So angry he could feel his nostrils flaring.
“Why? It has nothing to do with you.”
So why, if that was supposed to make it okay, didn't he
feel
okay?
“For one thing, I'm angry as hell at the irresponsibility of whatever man did this to you.”
She frowned, dropping down to his leather couch, folding her feet beneath her. “Did what to me?”
Michael swore, out of all patience. “Got you pregnant, of course.” Did pregnancy make a woman stupid, too? He'd thought it only caused pickle cravings and crying attacks.
Susan laughed. Shocking him. “In the first place, Michael, a man can't get me pregnant all by himself.”
She had him there.
“Secondly, I'm not pregnantâyet.”
The whiskey was clouding his brain.
“And in the third place, I haven't slept with anyone but you in my entire life.”
Well, that was okay then.
Michael fell down to the couch beside her, feeling a little drunk, though he'd only had the one shot. “Thank God.”
Only him. In her entire life. He started to grin.
She grazed his face with one slim hand. “Would it really have mattered so much if there was someone in Cincinnati?” Her words were soft, easy, but the light in her eyes was soul-deep.
“It would.” In seven years' time, they'd never discussed fidelity. Or infidelity, either.
“I'm glad.”
Pulling her into his arms, Michael held her, wondering if they'd just made some kind of crazy commitment in this relationship that wasn't. And hoping, irrationally, that they had.
Slowly, though, as he sat listening to her breathing in the quiet of the night, Michael's mind started to clear. He still had his good news to share. But first...
“Why did you say you were going to have a baby if you aren't?” he asked, frowning in the near darkness.
“Who says I'm not?” She turned to look at him.
“You just did.”
“No, I didn't.”
“Susan...” His tension was building again. “You just saidâ”
“That I'm not pregnant,” she finished for him. “But I'm going to be.”
“When?”
“Soon, I hope.”
Aghast, he stared at her. “Why?”
“Because I
want
to be.”
“But...” He was adrift. Lost. He stared at a scrap of paper he'd been doodling on earlier and left on the coffee table. “...then you'd have a child.”
“I know.” It was the quiet conviction in Susan's words that got to him. And scared the hell out of him.
Who was this woman?
Susan didn't want children.
Did she?
“Will you give me a baby, Michael?”
Michael jumped up again. “No!” He hadn't meant the word to be so loudâso harsh. “You're kidding, right?” It was late; she'd been working long hours. That must be it.
As soon as she started to shake her head, Michael looked away.
“Please try to understand, Michael.”
Looking back at her, he nodded. He wanted to understand.
“Having a baby is something I've always planned to do.”
“Since when?”
“Since before you and I were married.”
“And you don't think I should have known about this?”
“Probably, but we were young. We had so many goals.” She shrugged. “Neither one of us wanted a child then.”
“But you planned to have one later.” He was trying to understand. He really was.
“By the time I was forty.”
“You never mentioned it because you weren't planning to stay married to me?” He supposed the question was a bit ludicrous considering that they weren't married, but had she gone into the marriage knowing it wouldn't last?
“I just figured that once we'd both done what we had to do, reached our career goals, we'd be ready to talk about having a family.”
He nodded. At least she hadn't been planning their divorce before she'd even married him. And they'd never actually
said
they were never going to have children. He'd just assumed, since she was as career-driven as he wasâsince she put job above all else and completely accepted the fact that he did, tooâhe'd just assumed she didn't want a family as much as he didn't want one.
Maybe he knew her better than she knew herself.
Sitting down beside her, Michael once again took
her in his arms. Having her there with him was the only thing that felt right, natural... normal.
“Susan, honey, you're at a particularly vulnerable time in your life. A time when people make rash decisions. And then spend the next twenty years regretting them.”
“Don't patronize me, Michael.” She pulled away from him, one-hundred percent intimidating attorney, even while wearing nothing more than his shirt. “I am not going through a midlife crisis.”
“It's perfectly natural.”
“And I'm not going through one.”
“Most people don't realize that they are.”
“And do they start them in their twenties?”
“You can't honestly consider some half-baked thought you once had about having a child as proof that you really wanted it. If you did, why'd you wait so long?”
“Because I knew I could afford to wait. That I needed to wait.” Her eyes pleaded with him to take her seriously. “The thought, even back then, wasn't half-baked.”
“How can you be so sure about a decision like this?”
“Remember when I went to Kentucky that weekend before we got married?”
“Of course.” He'd been scared to death she was going to change her mind.
“I went because I was having second thoughts. I was afraid that by marrying you, I was going to lose me.”
“You never told me that.” Michael pulled at a
string coming loose from the button at the bottom of his shirt.
“I know.” She smiled sadly. “You'd just have told me you wouldn't let that happen, that you wouldn't take away who I was or needed to be.”
“Because it's true.”
“But sometimes these things happen to people without their even noticing it.” She took his hand, held it in her lap. “You wouldn't knowingly or purposely have distracted me from my goals, Michael. Just my loving you, wanting to make you happy might have done that.” She paused, then began again, her voice low. “Once you start...subjugating yourself, you don't even know anymore whose interests you're really protecting. And then you're fifty or sixty years old and resenting everyone because you haven't done what you needed to do in life and it's too late. Look what happened to my mother. Because of our family.”
And suddenly Michael began to understand. He'd been the one to pick up the pieces of Susan's tortured heart after Rose Carmichael died. They hadn't been married yet, but he'd helped her come to grips with that last, painful conversation. Helped her work through the regrets, the recriminations.
“I wrote out a life plan that weekend in Kentucky, Michael. My goals, my dreams. And target dates by which I either had to decide they no longer matteredâor I had to fulfill them.”
Michael started to feel a little sick. “Having a baby was on that list.”
Susan nodded.
“And it still matters.”
“Yes.”
The last thing in the world he wanted was a baby. He had his own reasons. And, like Susan's, they came from examples set by his parents. To Michael, having a child meant his life was over.
He'd felt that even before the meeting with Coppel.
“Have you talked to anyone else about this?”
“Just Seth.”
“And?”
She was silent. Her eyes fell for a moment and then returned to his. “Seth's hardly one to understand.”
Based on her brother's bachelor life-style, he supposed not. But Seth had always championed his big sister, had walked in her footsteps as long as Michael had known him. Michael had even begun to wonder if maybe Seth was still alone, married to his career, because he was following Susan's example.