“I have a meeting at ten.” He still sounded grumpy, though his hands, having found their way beneath her T-shirt, were moving over her bare back.
Ronnie sighed. “We never seem to have much time, do we? I hate that.”
“You wanted an affair, you got an affair.”
He wasn’t grumpy, he was downright cantankerous. Flicking a glance up at him, Ronnie saw that he was still scowling.
She knew how to fix that.
“I missed you,” she said softly, pressing her mouth to his chest.
“Horny, are you?” His hand found her bra strap and with a deft movement unhooked it. “Me too.”
Ronnie glanced up at him in shock. That bit of crudity sounded so completely unlike Tom that she could hardly believe it had come out of his mouth.
“That wasn’t very nice,” she said reprovingly even as his hand slid around her body and under her loosened bra to cup her breast.
His hand on her breast felt good. She had spent the days since they had last been together dreaming about him touching her like that. He squeezed, and Ronnie shivered.
“I don’t feel very nice at the moment.” There was a tone to his voice that Ronnie had never heard before. Frowning, she looked up at him, but then he distracted
her by the very effective method of pulling off her T-shirt and bra.
For a moment he did nothing more, merely stood looking down at her. She was wearing bicycle shorts, socks, and tennis shoes, and her naked breasts brushed his chest.
Without another word he picked her up and carried her to the bed.
His lovemaking was hard and furious, nothing like the previous times. He demanded and she gave, entering her almost immediately, almost forcing her to a response that was shattering in its intensity. He set the pace, taking what he wanted, manipulating her expertly until she could do nothing but writhe and cling and cry out his name.
The end, when it came, was explosive.
Then he started up again.
When at last he finished, he lay on top of her for only a second or so before rolling off the bed and heading for the bathroom. Moments later Ronnie heard the sound of water running. He was taking a shower.
It didn’t take a genius to figure out that Tom was angry at her. For making him worry last night? Probably.
Swinging her legs out of bed, she got up, stretching. Her body tingled all over from his unshaven face, and she would probably have bruises later in places she would only be able to see with her mirror, but she felt as content and as sated as a cat that had just devoured a whole can of tuna.
Smiling a little, she headed for the bathroom. To her surprise the door was shut and locked. Pondering, she turned to the vanity sink that was just outside the
bathroom, brushing her hair and checking her makeup. She then walked back into the bedroom, donned the terry-cloth robe that he had discarded, and settled down in bed to wait, intrigued.
Tom in a really nasty mood should be something to see.
When he walked into the bedroom again, some ten minutes later, he had showered, shaved, and was wearing a pair of light-gray suit pants and a white shirt. The shirt was open at the collar, but otherwise buttoned all the way up. A navy tie was slung around his neck. He even had on his shoes.
He looked at her as he entered the room. His jaw was hard, and his mouth was set in a grim line. Wrapped in his bathrobe, sitting with her back against the headboard and her knees drawn up in front of her, Ronnie returned his look with lifted brows.
“What was
that
all about?” she asked.
Tom’s face darkened, and he walked past the bed toward the window.
“Sex,” he answered curtly, pulling the cord that opened the curtains. Light flooded into the room, not a blinding light, because of the fog, but nevertheless enough to illuminate every corner. Ronnie blinked. “That’s what this whole thing is all about, isn’t it? Sex? I want sex, you want sex, so we have sex? That was pure, raw, hard, I’m-horny-you’re-horny sex.”
He stood with his back to her, looking out over the city. Ronnie looked at the unyielding set of those broad shoulders and sighed.
“Tom …”
Abruptly he turned to face her. “This isn’t working for me, Ronnie. I knew it wouldn’t. I am not constitutionally
capable of being the guy you’re screwing on the side. You’re either going to have to leave your husband and file for divorce or it’s over between us.”
Ronnie stared at him. Whatever she had expected, it had not been that.
“Tom …”
“I mean what I say.” He walked toward the bed. “You’re going to have to choose: him or me.” At the foot of the bed he paused, and she saw that his hands were balled into fists at his sides. “If you decide it’s me, you know where to reach me. If you don’t, good luck and Godspeed.”
“Tom! Tom, wait!”
But even as she scrambled out of bed, he was already walking out the door.
Chapter
36
R
ONNIE SPENT THE NEXT WEEK
on automatic pilot. She went to luncheons and dinners, and couldn’t have said what she ate or who else was there. She chatted gaily at official functions, and couldn’t afterward remember the subject of the conversation. She played tennis with her friends, and missed so many balls that they asked her if she was feeling all right. She went shopping, and could not find so much as a pair of shoes she liked.
Twice, late at night, she picked up the phone to call Tom. And twice she put the receiver back in its cradle before she finished dialing.
There was no appeal possible: Tom meant what he said. She knew it, had known it when he said it. Had known from the beginning in fact that this day was coming. To use his own words, he was not constitutionally capable of being the man she was screwing on the side.
Tom was an all-or-nothing-at-all kind of guy.
Ronnie told herself that she would get over it, over
him
. If the situation with Lewis wasn’t ever going to
improve—and it wasn’t; the very idea of sleeping with him gave her the creeps—at least she still had the life she wanted. She still had the houses and cars and charge cards and jewelry and—and
things
.
In the end, wasn’t that what was most important?
She knew as well as she knew her own name that alliances between men and women were ephemeral. Love did not last.
That was when she put a label on something she should have realized long before: Somehow, somewhere, sometime on the long and winding road from that first day at the Neshoba County Fair to the morning in the hotel in Washington, she had fallen head over heels in love with Tom.
At the thought of never seeing him again, she felt physically ill.
But of course she would see him again. He was still consulting for Lewis, and for her. She would
see
him. Even talk to him. He would be around.
She might even be able to persuade him into her bed from time to time. They had already conclusively proven that he was vulnerable to temptation where she was concerned.
But even if she succeeded in getting him to sleep with her again, what would she have gained? The time they had managed to steal together already had not been enough for her.
More time was what she wanted from Tom, not less. She wanted to make love with him, yes—but afterward she wanted to be able to fall asleep in his arms. She wanted to be there when he woke up in the morning. She wanted to be there with him for breakfast, and lunch and supper and Saturday-afternoon
ballgames and church on Sunday. She wanted to be there when he wrestled with the problems of being a father to an adolescent son, and went to visit his mother, and had business issues to discuss.
She wanted to be part of his life.
But did she want it badly enough to give up the life she now had? And it would be gone, the big houses, the big money, the sheer
importance
that came with being married to Lewis.
She had signed a prenuptial agreement. At the time she hadn’t thought a thing about it. She had persuaded herself that she was in love with Lewis. What did it matter if she signed away her claims to all but a tiny fraction of his money in case of divorce? There would never
be a
divorce.
Nothing, she had thought at the time, would induce her to agree to one. Even if their love didn’t last, their marriage would. Having got what she wanted, she would never be fool enough to throw it away.
She hadn’t counted on falling in love with another man.
A pigheaded, jealous-natured man who was not content to take a backseat in her life.
Tom offered none of the trappings that she enjoyed as Lewis’s wife. She didn’t know how much he earned, but even a six-figure income could not begin to touch the millions Lewis had at his disposal.
Tom came from the world she had left behind, the world of mortgage payments and electric bills and ham sandwiches in the kitchen for supper.
Why on earth would she even consider giving up everything she had with Lewis to go back to that?
Was any man worth it?
Even Tom?
Ronnie found the answer as she was flying back to Jackson with Lewis on Thursday. They were in a private jet that had been loaned to the campaign by Ynoba Corporation, a Mississippi conglomerate that wanted to influence Lewis’s vote on environmental issues. The seats were plush bone leather, the floors were covered with thick bone carpet, and the walls were upholstered in leather-grained bone vinyl. There was no noise at all in the cabin, and there was a stewardess to see to their every need. The plane was the ultimate in luxury travel; Ronnie was so used to it and others like it that she didn’t even notice anymore.
Lewis was still campaigning hard, wooing his constituents back to the fold with every ounce of political savvy he could muster. As a consequence they would be spending a long weekend every other week in his home state. Ronnie had a full quota of campaign events scheduled for the next three days, as did Lewis.
Just thinking about it made her tired. She leaned her head back against the cushioned headrest and stared out the window at the clouds below.
Lewis was on his cell phone, yakking to all and sundry as he always did when he was in the air. Staying in touch, he called it. Stoking the fires. Usually she just tuned him out.
But it occurred to her, as a phrase or two caught her ear, that he was talking to Tom.
“We’ll be doing that barbecue thing tomorrow. What is it you thought I should say to the press again?” Lewis paused, frowning. “Oh, right, I got it now: Voters don’t care much about what you
did;
what they’re interested in is what you
will do
, because that is what affects them.”
Lewis listened for a minute. Ronnie could make out an indistinct rumble on the other end of the conversation, but strain though she did, she could not clearly hear either Tom’s words or his voice.
“Yeah, I’ll do that, and Ronnie’s going to be talkin’ about education. You need to tell her anything?”
For an instant Ronnie’s heart stood still.
“Oh, okay, I’ll talk to you later, then. You take care • of yourself, boy.”
Lewis clicked the cell phone off. Staring at it, Ronnie felt as though her lifeline had just been severed.
Seconds ago on the other end of that phone had been Tom.
Lewis turned to say something to her, to pass on some words of advice from Tom, she had no doubt, but she didn’t hear so much as a syllable.
All she could do was think about Tom—and what she was throwing away.
As soon as they landed in Jackson, she had to get dressed to go out. She was scheduled to be the guest of honor, and speaker, at the Mississippi Commission on Women dinner that night. Lewis was going to a Rotary Club meeting.
When the limo bringing her home again pulled up in front of Sedgely, it was not quite ten-thirty. Ronnie got out and went up the steps to the porch, waving to the security officer/driver who had seen her home.
As the red lights on the rear of the car headed back down the drive, Ronnie turned to go into the house.
But in the end she walked down the steps again. It was a warm night, a beautiful night, with crickets and
tree frogs and cicadas forming a chirping chorus. The faintest hint of honeysuckle still perfumed the air. Early September in Mississippi was almost as much summer as July, she thought. The nights were better than the days for being outdoors.
She would go for a walk. She badly needed to be alone, to think.
Davis came bounding up out of nowhere with a mighty woof, and Ronnie patted his head absentmindedly. She had grown fond of the dog, but at the moment she could have done without his company. He reminded her too vividly of Tom.
Trying to send him away, though, was a waste of time, just as sending him to obedience school had been futile. With Davis it just hadn’t taken.
So she accepted his company. He snuffled around the shrubberies as she headed away from the house. She considered going for a swim, but the pool, she feared, would bring up memories that might cloud her mind.
This had to be a well-thought-through decision, because it was the biggest decision she had ever made in her life.
She had to choose between Lewis and Tom. The thought almost made her laugh. On the surface of it, there was no choice at all. If the contest was strictly between the two men, she would choose Tom, every day of the week and three times on Sunday.
The real choice, then, boiled down to this: love or money.
That was what she had to think about. That was what she had to coolly, calculatingly weigh. That was the choice that had to be made.
Love or money.
In the end, though every ounce of pragmatism she possessed screamed against it, she made the choice with her heart: love.
She was going to leave Lewis for Tom.
The decision made, she looked up at Sedgely, at the big white house that had once stood for everything she had ever wanted in life, and suddenly felt as if the weight of the world had been lifted from her shoulders.
The lights were still on inside, in the front hall and upstairs and in Lewis’s office. That meant Lewis was in, and awake.