Czytaj książkę: «Another Man's Child»

CHAPTER ONE

THE WOMAN HAD A BODY that practically begged a guy to come out and play, a glint in her eyes that dared him to win.

And she was looking at Marcus. There was enough money among the businessmen she was addressing to buy the eastern United States twice over, but it was Marcus with whom she made eye contact.

He shifted in the cushioned armchair he’d chosen midway around the table. He knew Julie Winters. Had always admired her genius. She had a helluva mind for numbers and for manipulating those numbers, making her one of the most successful forces on Wall Street.

“In summary,” she concluded, “independents are the businesses of the past. Diversify your assets. Scratch your own backs before someone else scratches it for you and leaves you bleeding.”

She caught Marcus’s eye. I’d like to scratch your back, but I’ll be gentle, her glance seemed to say.

He had a sudden vision of Lisa’s eyes when she’d looked up at him from the paper that morning. They’d had that sad, troubled, faraway quality he’d seen all too often in the past eighteen months.

The meeting was over. And Marcus had a question or two for Julie. She’d quoted some figures he hadn’t heard before, pertaining to the future of electronic advertising. Standing at the back of the room while he waited for her to finish, he admired the confidence with which she was dealing with one of his more overbearing peers.

That glint was back in her eyes when she finally approached him.

“Marcus! It’s good to see you again.” She placed a perfectly manicured hand on his forearm, her red nails glistening against his sleeve.

“You, too, Julie. Got a few minutes? I’d like to hear more about your predictions regarding warehouse to the consumer.”

“I have another session to get to,” she said, “but we could talk about it over dinner.”

The woman’s smile promised more than just dinner, and his body surged to life. Tell her no, jackass. A few minutes to pick her brain is all you’re after.

He looked at his watch, the Rolex Lisa had given him when he was still the man of her dreams. “We could meet back here in the lobby at six.”

“I’ll be here.”

Her bright red lips promised to make the evening one he’d remember. With one last look up and down his suited frame, she left the room.

He tried his damnedest not to carry the vision of her lush breasts and womanly hips, encased so seductively in that black-and-red business suit, with him as he headed to the last session of the day. He was a married man. Very much in love with his wife.

Except that every time he thought of Lisa, he saw again the disappointment, the sadness he’d brought to her eyes—to her life. He’d always been a doer, a problem-solver, but there wasn’t one damn thing he could do about that look in Lisa’s eyes.

At five o’clock he was back in his room to shower and change from his suit to slacks and a sport coat, trading his staid navy tie for one a little more colorful. He couldn’t quite meet his reflected gaze as he took one quick look in the mirror, but he refused to feel guilty. He was going to a business dinner. That was all.

He also avoided the picture of Lisa he’d set out on his nightstand when he’d checked in that afternoon. And he didn’t call her as he’d promised when he’d kissed her goodbye in their garage that morning, either.

He’d come to the convention, not only to deliver his paper on multiple diversification, but to garner enough space from his lovely unhappy wife to consider the consequences of his inability to give her what she wanted most in the world. He’d sacrifice his life to save his marriage. But there were some things he just couldn’t change.

The door of his hotel room slammed behind him as if sealing his fate, even while he knew that there was no earthly pleasure worth selling his soul for. But as he walked down the hall, his mind flashed back to the way Julie had looked at him, the way Lisa hadn’t looked at him since that diagnosis eighteen months ago. These days all he saw in her eyes was that damn sadness and disappointment. He pushed the button for the elevator.

Julie was waiting for him as he stepped off the elevator, and her smile was as bright as the sequined halter dress she was wearing. Her eyes, dancing with pleasure, made another slow seductive tour of his body.

“Do I pass?” he asked, smiling as he took her arm to lead her to the glass-sided elevator that would whisk them to the top floor restaurant.

She rubbed her elbow against his side. “More than ever.”

One soft breast brushed against him, and his body throbbed with sudden desire. She wasn’t looking at him with the embers of a dying happiness in her eyes. He could give her exactly what she wanted without even trying.

Julie smiled politely as the maître d’ led them to an intimate table for two alongside a wall of windows in the glass-enclosed revolving restaurant. Marcus felt carefree, full of anticipation, virile again, as he escorted her, knowing she was turning the heads of the other patrons. He’d always felt like that with Lisa, too, back when they spent enough time together to accommodate dining out.

“I have to admit, I’m surprised you agreed to have dinner with me,” Julie said an hour and a half later. They’d finished the lobster he’d ordered, their conversation almost entirely business and even more stimulating than he’d expected, and had moved into the lounge area of the restaurant. His body was humming with the wine he’d consumed.

“You’re a very beautiful woman. I find it hard to believe you’d ever question a man’s desire to be with you.” For just a moment his gaze caressed her. Down over her gleaming bare shoulders, her lush breasts to her slim waist, and back up to a mouth made for kissing.

“The last time we met, you didn’t seem the least bit interested.”

The last time. That conference in New York two years before. He and Lisa hadn’t known then. “Times change.” Marcus stared at the liquor he was swirling in his glass before setting it back on the table decisively. “You want to dance?” he asked abruptly.

“Yes.” If she minded his brusque tone, she certainly didn’t let it show as she took his hand. Along with desire, Marcus felt a surge of sympathy for her, this woman so cloaked in the aggression necessary to take her success from a man’s world that she scared off the suitors she also craved.

The band was playing a romantic ballad, the perfect background for seduction. Marcus led Julie to a shadowy corner of the half-empty dance floor and brought her into his arms. Her skin was like satin as his hands came to rest on her bare back, her breasts soft mounds against his chest, tempting him. The sequins on her dress glittered under the muted lights. One dance. Just one dance.

They moved naturally together, swaying skillfully to the music. Marcus tried not to notice when her nipples hardened against him, or to see the smoky knowing look in her eyes. He’d have to stop if he acknowledged them. He wasn’t the type of man who could cross that line.

Julie’s lips parted, inviting his kiss. He pulled her closer, instead, even though he knew she could feel his arousal. She moaned, pressing her pelvis against the hard resistance of his, burying her face against his neck. Her passion was so honest it threatened his control.

She was his for the taking. He could lose himself in her, bring her the satisfaction she so obviously hoped for. He didn’t have a single doubt he could give her what she desired. That alone was the biggest temptation.

But still a forbidden one.

He’d known it was going to come to this. Julie had made no secret of the fact that she wanted him. So why had he accepted her invitation to dinner? Why had he asked her to dance? Why was he torturing himself?

He adjusted her body against him, trying to mold her softness so that she fit him better, to find that feeling of protectiveness that would come when she settled her head on his shoulder. He craved that feeling. Craved that surety that he could make everything right for her. That he could take care of her.

Marcus adjusted the woman in his arms again, but to no avail. She just didn’t fit. She wasn’t ever going to fit.

She wasn’t Lisa.

And no matter how badly he wanted the release, he couldn’t take it at Lisa’s expense. He’d promised her his loyalty, and that, at least, was something he could still give her.

With a feeling of inevitability, he pulled back from the beautiful woman in his arms. He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t take the pleasure she was offering. He loved Lisa too damn much.

“HEY, DOC, HOW’S IT GOING?” Beth Montague stopped outside Lisa Cartwright’s office door in the medical complex connected to Thornton Memorial Hospital.

Lisa looked up from her desk and met her friend’s searching gaze with a shrug.

Coming in and closing the door behind her, Beth planted one plump hip on the corner of Lisa’s desk. “The kitten didn’t help, huh?”

Lisa shook her head. “No more than the cruise, the summer home at the beach and the season’s tickets to the theater.” Instead of filling up empty holes, the cat’s presence had pointed out what bottomless pits those holes had become. She and Marcus had both tried so hard to make the cat a reason to come home that they’d smothered it with attention. “The poor thing ran from us every time we walked in the door,” she said, shaking her head again.

“Cats are that way sometimes,” Beth replied. “Remember I told you about Corky, the cat we had when I was growing up? He’d only come out from behind the furniture at night. I used to wait up for him sometimes, and after he got used to me sitting there in the dark, he would crawl up into my lap and purr so loud I was afraid it would wake up my little brothers and sisters.”

Lisa smiled. She’d heard a few stories about Beth’s favorite childhood pet.

“Of course, he got a lot bolder as he grew up. Anyway, maybe you guys just needed to give the kitten more time. Cats are great companions.”

“It wasn’t the cat, Beth. It was us.” She hesitated, almost loath to admit the rest. “One night last week Marcus and I spent half an hour talking baby talk to the thing, trying to coax it out from under the bed to play with this new squeak toy Marcus bought. Suddenly we looked at each other, sitting on the floor in our work clothes acting like a couple of idiots, and it hit us what we were doing. And the worst part was, we couldn’t even smile about it. It was just too…pathetic. So Marcus found another home for the cat the next day. A home where it’s allowed to just be a cat.”

Beth’s cheerful blue eyes filled with sympathy. “Okay, so you haven’t found what works yet, but you will.”

“I wish I could be so sure.” Marcus hadn’t called after his meetings in New Jersey the day before as he’d promised. He’d phoned, instead just as Lisa was climbing into their big empty bed that night, and he’d been different somehow. Nothing she could name exactly, just a little distant, evasive, as he’d answered her questions about the day. She’d hung up with the unsettling knowledge that no matter how much she loved her husband, no matter how solid their friendship was or how completely she believed in them as a couple, their marriage was in serious trouble.

“Have you tried to talk to him again about the possibility of artificial insemination? It’s the perfect answer, you know.” Beth was a doctor, too, though not a pediatrician like Lisa, and she ran a fertility clinic at Thornton. Not only was she Lisa’s friend, she was also the doctor who’d overseen the months of testing she and Marcus had been through in their attempts to have a child.

“I’m not going to mention it to him again,” Lisa said. Her stomach became tied in knots just remembering what had happened the first time she’d broached the subject with Marcus. She’d already tried talking to him about adoption, she’d brought home pamphlets on fostering a child, and both times Marcus had refused even to discuss the issues with her. But he’d discussed artificial insemination, all right. She still remembered the stricken look on his face.

Beth’s brow furrowed. “It sounds as if nothing else is working, hon. What could it hurt to talk about it to him again? The clinic’s designed for couples in your position.” Tragically widowed while still in her early thirties, Beth had never had children of her own. Now she spent her life helping others to do so.

“I can’t, Beth. He’ll just tell me that if I’m dissatisfied with what he can and cannot provide, then I’m free to leave him for someone who can satisfy me. The worst part is, I think he really means it. As much as he loves me, he would just let me go. He’s so eaten up with self-hatred he can’t even look at things with an open mind. And I can’t hurt him anymore. He sees his sterility as his ultimate failure, and I can’t continue to rub it in his face.”

“Do you think he’s failed you?” Beth asked.

“No!” Lisa had no doubts about that. “I’m a doctor. I know he had nothing to do with the fever that rendered him sterile. I love him, Beth, flaws and all. But…”

“But?”

“But I just can’t see either one of us being happy without a child. It’s what we both want more than anything on earth, what we’ve always wanted. Hell, Marcus and I were planning a nursery before we even planned our wedding. Every big decision we’ve ever made, every goal we’ve set, has been influenced by the family we’d planned to raise. I just don’t see how we can keep a union that’s been built on such a foundation from toppling over.”

“Answer one question for me.” Beth’s eyes were piercing.

“Sure. If I can.”

“Who do you love more, need more—your husband, or the baby he was supposed to give you?”

“That one’s easy. My husband. He’s my best friend. I can’t imagine a life without Marcus.”

Beth stood up, nodding. “Then you’ll find your answer, Lis.”

“Even though there’s a part of me, a part that’s been there as long as I can remember, who needs to be a mother, too?” Lisa asked the question softly, almost afraid even to say the words out loud.

Beth’s eyes warmed with concern. Lisa knew how much her friend was pulling for her and Marcus. The three of them had formed an unshakable bond that first year after Beth’s husband had been shot waiting in line at a fast-food restaurant. She and Marcus had insisted that Beth move in with them, and for six months they’d both taken turns sitting up with their friend on those nights when the demons had become too fierce for her to face alone. That had been more than five years ago.

“I understand your reluctance, Lis,” Beth said now, “but you need to talk to him again. Have him come visit me. Maybe if he sees how much he’ll be involved in the process, if he understands how scientific everything is, he’ll come around.”

Lisa smiled and nodded as her friend left, but she knew she wouldn’t do as Beth suggested. She’d never known Marcus to look so beaten as he had the night she’d tried to talk to him about giving him a child through artificial insemination. She’d never seen him so angry. Or so hurt. No, she couldn’t do that to him again.

TWO DAYS LATER when she unpacked Marcus’s suitcase and found the shirt rolled in with his other dirty clothes, she was tempted to change her mind. She picked up the shirt slowly, staring blankly at the lipstick-stained collar for a moment, her mind masked with disbelief. It couldn’t be.

Standing there, unable to move, to look away, she felt frightened—and stupid. Had Marcus…? Surely he hadn’t…No. Of course not. He wouldn’t. Not ever.

And then she remembered his phone call from New Jersey. Not only had he not called when he’d promised, he’d been strangely evasive.

She blinked, surprised when a tear splashed onto the incriminating collar. Had they come to this, then? Had they really come to this? Were their ties of friendship, their loyalties to each other, in jeopardy? Was the love she’d cherished for more than a decade going to slip through her fingers right along with her dream of having a child? She dropped the shirt as if she’d been burned.

And then just as suddenly picked it up again. The lipstick was still there. She could see it through the blur of her tears. She just couldn’t believe it. And didn’t know what to do about it. This happened to other women, other couples. Not to her and Marcus.

“Nothing happened.”

Lisa jumped. She hadn’t heard Marcus come upstairs.

“Something apparently did,” she said, throwing his shirt in his face. It was too much. To lose Marcus on top of everything else was just too much.

He grabbed her arm as she pushed by him. “Nothing happened, Lisa.”

She looked up at him, this man of her dreams, and even blinded by tears of anger and disappointment, she knew she still loved him. After ten years of marriage, after eighteen months of anguish, even after finding another woman’s makeup on his clothes, she felt the impact of him clear to her soul. “Her lipstick’s on your collar.”

Marcus dropped her arm and bowed his head. “We had dinner—and one dance. That’s all.”

It was enough. She knew him that well. Wrapping her arms around her middle, she warded off the darkness that threatened to consume her. “You wanted her.”

“She wanted me. And yes, I guess part of me wanted her, too, wanted to be with a woman who didn’t know I could only do half the job.”

A sob broke through the constriction in Lisa’s throat, and she backed away from him.

“Who was she?” She willed herself to speak calmly.

Marcus swore and strode over to her, grabbing her arms, forcing her to look at him. “Nobody. She was nobody, Lis. Just a woman. Any woman who’d looked at me the way she did would probably have had the same effect. Which, in the end, was no effect at all. Because she wasn’t you.”

“Was she pretty?” Lisa couldn’t let it go.

“She was pretty, sure, but so are you. And you’re the one I want to be with. You’re my best friend, Lis.”

She studied his face, his blue unblinking eyes. “Are you sure about that?”

“Absolutely.”

His gaze bore into her, telling her things mere words couldn’t, and suddenly some of the tension that had held her rigid, barely able to breathe, drained away, leaving her feeling weak and helpless. She sank against his chest.

He held her silently, his hand rubbing the back of her head soothingly as she soaked the front of his shirt with her tears. He was still wearing his business suit, and Lisa burrowed her arms beneath his jacket, taking comfort in his lean hard strength, letting his love console her, just as it had done for well over a decade. She needed him more than life itself. And she felt it all slipping away.

“I love you, Lis.” His voice was thick through the whispered words.

“I love you, too.”

But she knew that love might not be enough, not if he refused to believe in the strength of that love, not if he continued to blame himself for something he couldn’t help and was convinced that she blamed him, too.

MARCUS LAY FLAT on his back, staring at the shadows the moonlight made on the ceiling as he listened to Lisa breathing beside him. He’d made love to her that night, giving her everything he had to give, and she’d been smiling when she fell asleep in his arms. But still, he knew that what he had to give wasn’t enough. It was never going to be enough. Because no matter how often or how expertly he made love to her, he was never going to leave behind the seed of that love. He was never going to impregnate his wife. He wondered how long it was going to be until she started to think about leaving him for a man who could.

She stirred in her sleep, snuggling up against his chest, and Marcus automatically put an arm out to pull her close, settling her head in the crook of his shoulder. He used to love these moments in the night when he lay awake and cradled her, glorying in the knowledge that this gorgeous, intelligent, caring woman was his. Until he’d met Lisa, the only kind of affection he’d known had come in terms of discipline, respect and loyalty—necessary, but so cold. It had taken years before he’d really believed that Lisa’s body curled warmly and lovingly into his was something he could count on for the rest of his life.

Now the feel of her against him was merely a reminder of how he’d failed her, of what he couldn’t do, of things he couldn’t make right.

Being careful not to disturb her, Marcus got up from the bed and went downstairs, hoping to dispel his demons with a shot of whiskey. But after the second shot, he knew the hope was in vain. He sat alone in the living room of the home where he’d grown up, where his father and grandfather had grown up before him.

He had it all. He’d taken the family shipping business and turned it from a solid respectable venture into an enterprise that far surpassed even his father’s vision. Cartwright Enterprises had been through many transitions since its inception almost two centuries before. His early ancestors had made the family’s first millions in whaling and sealing, and the generation following them were glorified Yankee Peddlers. His grandfather had expanded into imports and exports. Marcus’s father had doubled the Cartwright shipping fleet before a car accident had taken his life—and his wife’s, as well.

But in the eight years since Marcus had taken over, Cartwright Enterprises had become a business of the nineties. It owned several of the companies it had once shipped for. It was no longer just the middle man.

And like his father before him, Marcus had done it all for the son to whom he would one day pass his heritage. He was a Cartwright. One of the Cartwrights. His ancestors, English gentry with everything but money, had come to the New World with dreams and determination. Through the early battles with Indians, the revolutionary war, the Civil War and both world wars, the Cartwrights had remained strong, determined and successful, each generation continuing and surpassing the achievements of the one before. And from the time he was old enough to understand, Marcus had worked hard to fulfill his responsibility to his birthright, to ensure that the breath of his ancestors, when he passed it on, would continue to thrive.

But unlike his father, who’d worked for financial power, Marcus had worked like a madman for another reason. He’d done it to buy his freedom, to have the time to be at home with his family when he had one, to make it to every school play, to watch each and every game, to attend all recitals, birthday parties and Christmas pageants. He wanted to make enough babies with Lisa to fill the rooms in the home he was born to, and to dispel forever the emptiness of his boyhood.

He didn’t look back on those lonely years with any fondness. His parents had been interested in raising the Cartwright heir, not a child.

Marcus reached for the bottle and poured another inch of scotch. His mind turned to his sterility, and he tried for the millionth time to think about the alternatives Lisa had talked about soon after his diagnosis. But as hard as he’d tried, and God knew he’d tried, he just couldn’t consider them rationally. He felt the rage coming, felt it in the sudden heat in his veins, in the tenseness in his muscles. Why? By what cruel twist of fate did he have to be the one to end the Cartwright line, to silence forever the voices of his ancestors? He who wanted children more than wealth, who understood their value in a way his father never had?

He’d worked hard all of his life, earning an honest living when, in his position, it would have been surprisingly easy to do otherwise. He gave to charities. He upheld the faith of his ancestors and never balked when there was a task to do. He’d never left a job unfinished in his life.

So why had he been robbed of the ability to do the one thing he wanted most to do? There were plenty of men out there who didn’t want children, who fathered them without even knowing or caring. Yet it was Marcus who’d had that privilege revoked. His wife who had to look elsewhere to get his job done.

Marcus strode around the living room, trying to outdistance his demons. And as always, as the rage within him continued to boil, he was seized by the desire to just pack his bags and leave this town for a place where the Cartwright name meant nothing, where he could hide from his shortcomings—and his heritage. Where he could live out the rest of his days, if not in happiness, at least in peace. He’d have gone, too. If it wasn’t for Lisa.

Marcus took one last swallow from the crystal shot glass, then hurled it into the fireplace where it shattered into a thousand glittering pieces, reminiscent of the dreams he had once been foolish enough to have.