Jack was there with her son. Their son. His son.

Kevin was trying not to stare at the brown bag Jack had sitting on his lap.

“Don’t you want to know who the surprise is for?” Jack asked, his attention on Kevin.

He’d make a wonderful father. The unexpected thought caught Erica completely off guard. In another time, another life, Jack would’ve been able to give so much. On the few occasions she’d seen him with Kevin, she’d noticed the natural affinity he seemed to have with children.

Or was it just his son?

Was she robbing them both of something vital by keeping her secret? In trying to protect them was she hurting them instead? Inflicting more pain where she tried so hard to bring happiness?

Or would telling her secret cause the greater pain?

And what about Jefferson, the man Kevin called Daddy? He might be her ex-husband but he considered Kevin his son.

“So who’s the surprise for?” Kevin’s voice rose on the last word as he stared at the bag.

“I think it’s for you,” Jack said.

Dear Reader,

The book you’re holding is very special to me. This is a story about love—in its purest form—in the hands and hearts of human beings who are not perfect. It probably isn’t the type of love story you find very often in a romance novel, yet it epitomizes everything that reading Harlequin books while I was growing up taught me about love and life. About the possibilities awaiting me. About the things I could hope for. Things I’d find only if I lived my life heroically. If I strove always to be a good person and make the right choices.

I grew up believing in the love I now write about. And then, clinging diligently to those beliefs, I flung myself out into the world where good and bad weren’t so clearly delineated, where the right choices weren’t always obvious. Where the heart could be confused.

I discovered something miraculous. The love we read about and come back to time and time again, the hope, the assurance that, in the end, right wins—it’s all true. It’s not as easy as it looked in the books I grew up reading, though. Finding that happy ending takes the ability to endure, to forgive oneself for not being perfect, to strive—especially in the face of mistakes—to do what’s right. To never stop believing you can be a good person.

So this story is for all the people like me who have the courage to live in this world full of bumps and bruises and still believe.

Please approach Erica, Jack, Jefferson, Pamela and Kevin with an open heart. I’m confident they’ll do the rest….

Sincerely,

Tara Taylor Quinn

P.S. I love hearing from readers. Write me at P.O. Box 15065, Scottsdale, AZ 85267 or visit me at www.tarataylorquinn.com.

The Secret Son
Tara Taylor Quinn

www.millsandboon.co.uk

DEDICATION

For Kevin. This is the great thing about being a writer. What you can’t have, you can create. Since the first day we met—and I fell in love—I’ve had a great yearning in my heart to have known you as a little boy….

And

For Jake Bodell. I’m fairly certain you wouldn’t read this book in a million years, or like it if you did (except for the setting and the political parts). But it was you and your ability to act upon promptings that provided me with the strength to get it written. You are an amazing young man.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

All the dog jokes contained herein are the property of scatty.com (www.scatty.com), whom the author wishes to thank for their generosity in allowing her to use them.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER ONE

September 1996

IT HAD BEEN the best—and the worst—week of her life.

Walking up Fifth Avenue, Erica was barely aware of the Thursday-afternoon crowd pressing around her. Years ago crowds had bothered her. Not anymore.

Going home to face Jefferson, now that was going to be horrible. To look into those loving gray eyes and know she’d betrayed him…

Oh, not physically. She could give herself that much credit. Sort of. In the past week she’d kissed Jack. Touched him. Let him touch her.

Okay, begged for his touch.

But they hadn’t made love.

Thinking of Jefferson, that was a huge comfort; thinking of Jack, of never seeing him again, of never knowing what it would feel like to be held, to be loved, by the man who’d awakened her heart fully for the first time in her life, there was no comfort at all. That knowledge brought such incredible grief she could hardly breathe.

But it had to be that way. She was a married woman.

And Jack, a former FBI agent, was a freelance hostage negotiator, always on call, ready to run at a moment’s notice, married to his job. A job, he’d told her, that he wouldn’t be able to do if he had someone waiting at home for him. A job filled with risks he wouldn’t be able to take if he had someone relying on him.

They’d spent this one stolen, enchanting week in New York City while he waited for the call to move and she was getting the runaround from a Wall Street Journal reporter she’d come to straighten out about Jefferson’s public support of stem-cell research. If it hadn’t been for the threat of some very real damage to Senator Jefferson Cooley’s reputation because of the bad—and worse, inaccurate—press coverage he’d received from the Journal, his communications director would not have had to risk her emotional health by staying in the city all those days. As soon as she’d met Jack Shaw she’d have hightailed it back to Washington.

To her husband.

And boss.

A man who was twenty-seven years her senior.

When she’d finally spoken with the reporter an hour ago, he’d promised a retraction. And another article, telling the real story. The story Erica had written herself and handed him as she left the meeting.

She could escape New York. And the temptation of Jack.

Her flight left JFK at seven the next morning, putting her in Washington in time to make the morning staff meeting at the senator’s office.

She’d have liked to go tonight. To make it home in time to crawl into bed beside him and tell herself she’d done him no wrong.

Maggie’s Place. It was the pub where she and Jack had first met. They’d both enjoyed the place, with its long mahogany bar and Irish charm, and they’d gone there every night for the past six nights. And stayed until closing.

It had been on one of the tables set for two along the side wall of the pub that Jack’s fingers had found hers. And clung. They’d been talking about their favorite television sitcoms at the time.

Shaking her stylishly cropped head of short dark hair, Erica still couldn’t understand why she hadn’t carefully pulled her hand free. Or why she’d gone back the next night.

When she’d married Jefferson three years before, she’d promised him loyalty.

He’d known she wasn’t in love with him.

A longtime friend of her family’s, he’d been one of the guests at her wedding to Shane. She’d been a naive, idealistic twenty-two.

Four years later he’d been there to help Erica pick up the pieces when that marriage ended. She was already working in his office by then, Congress had been in session, and he’d given her very little time off, insisting that work was what would see her through.

He’d been right.

As he almost always was.

He’d told her, one night when he’d come into the office late and found her crying over the writing of what should have been a simple speech, that the happiest years of her life weren’t behind her. That eventually she’d love again.

She’d refused to believe him.

Jefferson had shaken his head, telling her to give it some time.

But love hadn’t come to her a second time, and after Shane, it never would. Or so she’d thought until this past week.

The possibility that Jefferson might have been right—and that she’d found out several years too late—scared her to death.

Until this week she’d consoled herself with the thought that she’d already endured the worst life had to offer. That nothing she had yet to face would be harder than surviving Shane’s betrayal.

She’d been wrong.

Leaving Jack was going to be worse. Far worse.

Walking around the corner to Forty-seventh Street, Erica could see Maggie’s Place just ahead. She’d been telling herself all day that she wasn’t going to the pub that night. Jack had given her a quick good-night kiss the night before. The affectionate kind of kiss shared by friends.

And she’d felt it all the way to her toes.

Jack was danger. Making her want things—believe in things—she couldn’t have. She was better off not knowing they existed. She had to stay away from him.

Her feet carried her toward the pub, anyway.

Jack risked his life whenever he went to work. He walked into highly volatile situations to save the lives of strangers, negotiating with madmen and extremists and desperate people who had nothing to lose. He’d told her she was the first person he’d connected with on a personal level in more than five years.

She couldn’t just leave him sitting there. Couldn’t go without thanking him for giving back to her what Shane had stripped from her all those years ago. Her belief in herself—and in a chemistry that made life exciting. In possibilities.

She couldn’t go without telling him goodbye.

Jefferson had her life. She could at least give Jack goodbye.

He was sitting at “their” table. The one halfway down the row. “You look beautiful,” he told her, smiling, his eyes warm with seductive appreciation as she pulled out her chair.

She’d worn the black ankle-length pants and red blouse more for him than for the Journal reporter.

“Thank you,” she said, her trepidation disappearing as she took her seat across from him.

In this city where anyone could get lost in the crowd, her time with him existed in a universe all its own.

It seemed to Erica that being with Jack brought her face-to-face with the person inside herself, the person she really was. How could anything that felt this natural, this destined, be wrong?

He was wearing jeans and a black polo shirt that hugged his chest, the bands at the bottoms of the short sleeves tight around his biceps.

“Did you get your call?” she asked, although it made no difference.

Hours were all they had left. They’d both known that from the beginning.

“Did you have your meeting?” he countered, glancing down into his beer.

He hadn’t answered her question.

Erica waited until he looked up, his beautiful eyes meeting hers, before she nodded.

In his gaze she saw a flash of the same desperate sadness she felt herself.

“When are you leaving?” he asked.

“In the morning. I have a seven o’clock out of JFK.”

“I go in the morning, too.”

Although it made no sense at all, disappointment crashed through her.

“Where?” she asked, telling herself not to be afraid for him.

“Florida.”

A teenage boy was being held hostage by a suspected drug dealer who wanted safe passage to Cuba. The FBI Crisis Negotiation chief had called Jack earlier in the week to speak with him about the situation. They’d still been searching for the boy at that point.

“The hostage-taker’s ready to negotiate?” she murmured.

Jack nodded.

“So why do you have to go?” She cringed, hoping that didn’t sound as bad to Jack’s ears as it had to hers.

“I speak the language, for one thing. The guy’s Latin American.”

“You can’t be the only one.”

He took a sip of his beer, studying the suds. “A few years ago I had a successful negotiation involving him. He’s agreed to talk, under the stipulation that I be the one he speaks to.”

“He’s taken hostages before?”

“No.” Jack shook his head, frowning. “He was a hostage.”

“Oh!” Taken aback, Erica studied him.

And she’d thought she had a tough job.

“So—” he looked across at her, his weathered face solemn “—tonight’s it, then.”

“Yeah.”

His hand was close to hers on the table. Just the smallest movement would bring their fingers together again.

“Maybe we should go upstairs to the dining room or something as a sort of send-off.”

“I’d rather stay right here.” Where they’d spent every minute they’d ever had together.

He sat back, his hand sliding off the table. “I’m glad we had this week,” he said.

“I am, too.” The words were almost a whisper. Her throat hurt with the effort to get them out at all.

How was she going to live the rest of her life without ever seeing him again?

He finished his beer and motioned for another. “Knowing that you’re in the world gives my life a whole new dimension,” he said quietly.

She couldn’t speak, afraid of what might spill forth, afraid of the regrets she’d have to face when she left their world and returned to her own.

“It’s something we can take with us,” he added.

Erica tried to smile. “Thank you for that.”

“Hey.” He leaned forward, his thumb following a path down her cheek. “We have hours yet.” His face was softly lit with a half smile that almost made her cry. “Let’s not lose them.”

Her face, her entire body, responding to the light touch of his thumb, Erica nodded.

“I think pita pizzas are in order.”

It was their favorite of Maggie’s munchies. They’d tried them all.

Erica forced a grin and determined that she’d make the next hours the absolute best they could be.

By the time the pizza arrived, she’d just about managed to pretend that this was like any other night that week—a beginning, instead of the end.

Except for the underlying desperation. Now when they talked, they didn’t hesitate before they jumped into any topic. If they only had this one night, they didn’t have time for deliberation, for careful phrasing or circumspect questions.

Erica couldn’t take her gaze off him, even for a second, frightened of losing the chance to store up one more memory. He seemed to be having the same problem, his eyes more intent—though she wouldn’t have believed that possible—than they’d been all those other nights.

They were drinking faster.

Eating faster.

They were doing everything faster, speeding through years of their lives, trying to squeeze in every single memory.

And then, suddenly, they stopped. The noise in the pub continued around them—the murmur of conversation, intermittent laughter, the clinking of glasses—but Erica and Jack were surrounded by silence.

Emotions engulfed her. Confused her. There was so much, so many feelings. And yet not nearly enough.

“Why do you have to be a hostage negotiator?” she blurted out, terrified for his safety, although it wasn’t her business to be.

Shaking his head, he took a protracted swig of beer. And then he said, “I was married once. A long time ago.”

Erica’s stomach tensed. “You didn’t tell me that.”

“I know.” Both hands grasped the cold mug, and he didn’t meet her eyes, gazing someplace over her shoulder, instead.

“I’d just joined the agency,” he finally began. “Completed my training. She was a flight attendant. We’d met in college.”

“She went to college to be a flight attendant?”

“Melissa had a degree in education. Loved kids, hated teaching.” Jack’s tone of voice, the faraway look in his eyes, testified that he’d loved his wife.

“She liked flying?”

“She liked traveling, and I was gone a lot.”

“So what happened?”

He glanced back at Erica and some of his tension—the stiffness in his shoulders, the whiteness of his knuckles around that mug—dissipated. “She got pregnant. We’d been married a little over three years and were both ready….”

Pregnant. Jack had a child.

Erica was finding it difficult to breathe, but she listened anyway, feeling his love for his family—sensing his pain.

When he reached across and took her hand, holding it with both of his, it was the most natural thing in the world. His palms felt cold from the mug of beer.

“We had a girl, Courtney Marie….”

Jack swallowed with apparent difficulty. His eyes had a definite sheen.

“When she was a couple of months old, Melissa took Courtney to see her mother out in California. My mother-in-law taught at a high school in Malibu, and Melissa went to meet her for lunch one day.”

He paused again. Erica squeezed his hand, holding on.

“A couple of kids went crazy, pulled guns out of their backpacks, started yelling.”

“Oh, my God,” Erica whispered. “Jack, don’t. You don’t have to do this.”

“According to the reports, it was all pretty chaotic after that. Some random shots were fired, but apparently no one was hurt. Officials started closing in on the kids. They got scared. And around the corner walked Melissa with Courtney in a carrier on her chest….”

Erica, seeing the story’s end, swallowed back tears.

“One of the kids grabbed her, held her in front of him while he made his way out of the school. They were holed up in his van for more than three hours before gunshots were heard again. When the authorities got inside the van, Melissa and Courtney had been killed by a single shot. I was working here in New York and they couldn’t reach me.”

“What happened to the kid?” It didn’t matter. Erica didn’t give a damn about the kid. She just had to get her mind off that young woman and her baby.

Jack’s baby.

“He was dead, too.”

Jack’s eyes were bleak. Vacant. And completely dry.

Erica had to fight not to cry for him.

“Jack,” she said, attempting to bring him back to her if she could. “I’m sorry. So incredibly sorry.”

As he refocused on her, Erica could see the raging emotions he was struggling to control. “I know,” he said.

There was nothing she could do for him, nothing she could say that was going to make any difference at all to the despair he was fighting. She could only sit there. Give him her love. And hope that there really was some healing power in a human heart.

“She was only two months old. Not even rolling over yet.” His voice was low. “That’s when I joined the Crisis Negotiation team.”

Erica ached to hold him in her arms.

She ached for a lot of things she couldn’t have.

CHAPTER TWO

HOURS PASSED. Erica drank four more glasses of wine, well past her limit. But without the numbness it brought, she’d never be able to walk away from Jack and go home to the man she’d married.

Maggie’s was closing within the hour. There were only a few late-night stragglers left.

“I’m glad Jefferson is good to you.”

“I don’t deserve his goodness,” Erica said. She’d always felt that way, but never more so than she did at this moment, sitting here with Jack, clutching his hand, afraid that she’d fallen in love with him.

“How can you say that?” Jack argued. “You spend your life presenting him in the best possible light, giving everything you have to the building of his reputation.”

“He’s in love with me.”

“I sure as hell hope so.” The words were sharp.

“I love him, too, but I’m not in love with him.”

“You said he knew that going in.”

She nodded. “I’d been working in his office for several years, and I’d recently received the promotion to communications director.” Erica, remembering back three years before, could hardly make sense of decisions that had seemed so logical and clear-cut. “The Republican senatorial race in Massachusetts was going to be brutal that year. While Jefferson’s reputation was good, so was the reputation of the state prosecutor hoping to win his seat. No matter how much we pumped the issues, the campaign was going to come down to the fact that the prosecutor had a beautiful wife and three honor-student kids, and Jefferson was childless and had been divorced for several years.”

She didn’t want to waste precious time talking about this. And yet, it was important to know he understood.

She stared at their hands. His tanned skin was in stark contrast to her paleness. She loved the back of his hand, covered with a sprinkling of the same sandy hair that fell across his forehead.

His touch was bittersweet, promising things she’d stopped believing in.

“One night, late, after consuming almost an entire bottle of wine to unwind from a particularly grueling week, Jefferson confessed that he’d been in love with me for years.”

It was well past midnight now. Their hours had turned into minutes.

Jack’s eyes narrowed. “He just blurted it out?”

“No.” She shook her head. “That’s not Jefferson’s style. He was arguing with me, actually, disputing a statement I’d just made about the nonexistence of love. I told him the emotion was a fantasy. That its power was ephemeral. That the happiness I thought I’d found with Shane didn’t really exist.”

It had been one of her many misconceptions, though she hadn’t discovered that until this past week.

“We debated through another glass of wine, and then I finally just told him that if love did exist, it wasn’t anything I was going to allow in my life again. I refused to be that vulnerable. Wasn’t going to give someone else the power to hurt me that much.”

“A wise decision.”

Erica wasn’t surprised he agreed. After sharing a sardonic grin with him, she continued. “At that point, with the conversation at a standstill and the bottle of wine gone, Jefferson’s confession lay between us like…like some shocking indiscretion.”

The bartender came over and handed Jack their final tab. Without letting go of her hand, he fumbled with his wallet, threw his credit card on the table. He caressed her palm with his fingers—and the rest of her with his eyes.

Time was almost up.

She needed more to drink. She wasn’t numb enough yet.

“What happened next?” he asked, as though their world wasn’t coming to an end.

“We talked awkwardly about the campaign for a few minutes, trying to get back on familiar ground. The talk came around to Jefferson’s single status, and the solution seemed obvious. We should get married. He must’ve asked me fifteen times if I was sure I didn’t harbor some secret dream about a knight in shining armor.

“I pointed out that I hadn’t had a date since my divorce and that I didn’t want one.

“He said he hated the thought of me living my whole life alone. I told him I wasn’t thrilled with the idea myself, but that it was far better than the alternative.

“He asked me to marry him and eventually I accepted.”

The bartender came back with the receipt for Jack to sign. Resentment shot through Erica. Couldn’t the man have given them a few more minutes?

“Two months later we were married, and four months after that, he won.” She continued telling her story as though they hadn’t been interrupted, as though they weren’t supposed to be standing up, heading toward the door, leaving the pub.

And each other.

“I had a lot of reservations because I knew he was in love with me and I couldn’t return those feelings. But in the end, he somehow convinced me that being allowed to share my life would make him happy. I let him convince me it would be enough.”

The biggest mistake of all.

Jack was frowning.

“You have to understand,” Erica said quickly. “It wasn’t that I didn’t love him. I did—I do. It’s just not a stars-in-your-eyes, heartjumping kind of love. He’d been a colleague of my father’s, a friend of the family for years. I’d actually had a crush on him for a short time while I was in high school.”

“Just how old is he?” Jack asked, pulling her up to stand with him, still not relinquishing his hold on her hand.

She didn’t want to tell him. Jefferson looked younger than he was, and Jack had told her he wasn’t really up on Washington politicians, anyway. She was pretty sure he’d missed the publicity about her marriage to Jefferson three years before.

“Fifty-nine,” she said with obvious reluctance.

He stopped. Stared at her. “Twenty-seven years older than you?”

He was good with the math.

Erica nodded.

“And here I’ve been picturing you with some hotshot young stud tearing up Capitol Hill. This kind of reminds me of that song by the Eagles. ‘Lyin’ Eyes.”’

Hand in hand, they walked to the door.

“Except that I’ve never visited the cheatin’ side of town.”

The New York air was crisp. Cool. Forty-seventh Street was almost deserted. With the minutes closing in on her, Erica felt caged, claustrophobic.

“Let me walk you to your hotel?”

“Of course.”

But there was no “of course” about it. Always before, he’d hailed her a cab on Fifth Avenue and wished her good-night.

A twenty-minute walk to her hotel—if they took things slowly—and then her soul mate was going to walk out of her life forever. How could she possibly make it through a lifetime of never feeling this way again? Of never feeling the intensity, the rightness, she felt when she was with Jack?

This wasn’t the youthful passionate love she’d felt for Shane. It went deeper than that. Deeper than what she’d known as love.

Jack made her feel complete.

THEY WERE NEARING her hotel. Jack spent the last couple of blocks wondering whether he dared to kiss her good-night.

He was going to have to leave her without doing what he needed most—take her to bed. He didn’t even question that.

Jack didn’t sleep with married women.

And she wasn’t the type to cheat.

Jefferson Cooley might not have passionate love from her, but he had her loyalty. And of the two, loyalty won out.

As he believed it should.

“See that guy over there?” Erica said, gesturing as they approached her hotel.

A man, dressed casually in a pair of well-fitting jeans and a button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled up, leaned against the corner of the building.

“Yeah.”

“My first night here, he tried to get me to go with him, supposedly to pick out some earrings for his mother. I had to tell him no three times before he finally gave up,” she said, her voice not quite steady, though from wine, their imminent goodbye or something else he couldn’t be sure. “He’s been hanging around the hotel all week.”

She slowed her steps until they were barely moving forward at all. “For a while I thought he was out here smoking, but I’ve never seen him light up. A couple of times since that first night, I’ve caught him watching me. And then last evening, I’m almost certain he followed me into the hotel. He came in right after I did. I slipped into an elevator just as the door was closing and lost him.”

Once a cop, always a cop. Jack checked the man out. Erica was right. He was watching them. Or rather, her. The guy hadn’t been hanging around his place all week.

“I’m walking you inside,” Jack said brusquely, putting an arm around Erica to lead her through the front door of the hotel.

He glared at the guy as they passed, warning him off in no uncertain terms. The other man shrugged and looked away.

The man might be perfectly harmless. Just a hotel guest appreciating a beautiful fellow guest.

But Jack had learned the hard way that you could never be sure.

Glancing back as they entered the hotel, Jack wasn’t pleased to see the man still leaning there, still watching them.

It was odd, the way he’d been leaning against that wall all week. Was he a threat to Erica? And if so, why?

“I’d feel a whole lot better if you’d just let me see you safely up to your room.”

Erica looked at him uncertainly, lightly chewing her lower lip, and he knew it wasn’t just the man loitering outside that was troubling her. With every moment they prolonged this goodbye, they were giving temptation the edge, challenging a strength that might not be able to sustain them.

She nodded, silently leading the way.

Not another word was said as they rode the deserted elevator up to the twelfth floor. She paused outside a double door about halfway down the hall.

A suite. At least Jefferson Cooley kept her in style.

She slid her electronic entry card into the slot above the door handle. “I can’t do this,” she said suddenly, resting her head against the door.

Jack reached for the card with shaking fingers. “Here, let me.”

But the green light was already on. She’d unlocked the door.

Erica turned, her eyes bright with unshed tears as she looked up at him. “I can’t just go in there and leave you when I still have another six hours before I have to be at the airport….”

“What are you saying?”

“I just wish we could go somewhere and talk.”

He had to work tomorrow. Lives were at stake. He had to be sharp, decisive, alert to every nuance.

But he’d have a long plane ride to recover from a sleepless night….

“It does seem criminal to waste six perfectly good hours,” he said.

“We could go to that place we passed a few blocks back, the one with the yellow and green lights,” she said.

Jack thought of the man hanging around outside. “I’d rather you didn’t leave the hotel again, not while that guy’s still down there. He’s probably harmless, but just in case…”

Erica frowned, her dark-brown eyes filled with so many conflicting emotions he couldn’t decipher. “Nothing in the hotel will be open this late.”

Temptation battled resolve with no clear victor.

Jack took a steadying breath. At the agency, they called him a man of steel. They joked that his middle name was self-control. And it was true. A hostage negotiator had to be cool under pressure.

He reached around her to open the door of her suite. “I’ll bet you have a fully stocked bar in here,” he guessed, “and a perfectly good table and chairs we can use.”

He glanced around the corner of the entryway. He’d been right. The bar was along the far wall. The table was glass, with four chairs around it and a big bowl of fresh fruit in the center.

“We’ll pretend we’re in the bar down the street, the one with the yellow and green lights, but I’ll know you’re safe.”

She looked as though she was going to refuse. As though she had to refuse. And then she smiled at him.

“Okay,” she said, hesitation in every line of her body. She stood there, tall, model-slim, arms tight against her sides. And he realized that if this was a risk for him, it was a greater one for her. “We’re in a bar. And we have the whole night ahead of us….”

Jack wasn’t sure how many shots of whiskey he consumed over the next couple of hours. He only knew that he was ahead of her and her glasses of wine probably two to one. And that it still wasn’t enough.

On his last trip back from the bathroom, he couldn’t make himself return to that hard wicker chair, squeezing his long legs under the ridiculous glass table. He’d been afraid something was going to break every time he set his drink down.

He wasn’t sure why he’d thought staying in her suite had been such a good idea, either.

He’d miscalculated the danger. It wasn’t the man outside she had to worry about but the one sitting here in her room.

She’d gone to the second bathroom in the suite, and while she was gone, Jack poured fresh drinks for both of them and took his over to the long beige sectional in the living area. The square coffee table in front of the couch was glass, too.

Jack set his glass down, anyway.

And thought of Erica.

Every time she laughed, every time she moved, every time she spoke, every time those dark-brown eyes met his, every time he remembered that he was going to tell her goodbye and never see her again, Jack felt as if he’d been punched. He’d never wanted a woman as badly as he wanted Erica Cooley.

And yet, when he considered chucking it all, giving up the crusade to save others where he hadn’t been able to save his own, he knew he couldn’t do it. When he thought about changing his life, his goals, his mind filled with visions of that tiny body, that small casket and he realized he couldn’t turn his back on all the lives he could save.

He couldn’t risk committing himself that completely again, either.

He laid his head back, eyes closed, waiting for her. Trying to predict whether she’d join him on the couch. Or make the smart choice and stay over at the table.

He tried to figure out what he hoped she’d do.

She joined him on the couch—a full cushion away. He still hadn’t decided if he wanted her there, or across the room where he wouldn’t have to be so strong.

He’d had a lot to drink.

Jack leaned forward, grabbed his glass from the table and took a full sip. He didn’t look at her.

“What are you thinking about?” The soft words touched him, seemed so intimate.

“When Melissa and Courtney were killed, something inside me changed. Shut down.”

It still felt odd, talking about that part of his life. He never had before tonight. And yet, strangely, it felt right. The environment was safe, somehow.

He wanted Erica to know.

His arm lay along the back of the couch and she reached out with her hand, laying it on his.

“How could it not?” she asked gently. “They were a big part of you.”

“Far more than I’d realized,” he admitted. “If I’d allowed myself to acknowledge how important they were to me, I’d never have been able to do the job I’d chosen, risking my life every day.”

“You didn’t work in an FBI office?”

He shook his head, remembering some of the more dangerous situations he’d somehow managed to get through unscathed. “I was a field agent. Drug trafficking.” He’d slammed into more than one hovel filled with greasy, violent, conscienceless men, who’d pull their guns without the least provocation.

“I didn’t train for the crisis team until after Melissa’s death.”

Her fingers trailed lightly over the back of his hand. “Whenever you’ve talked about the past few years, you’ve mentioned your work, things you do in your spare time, skiing, books you’ve read, movies, trips to Vegas. What about your personal life?”

“That is my personal life. Work and what I do in my spare time. I’m out of town a lot, but I have an apartment here in New York.”

Erica looked down shyly, which was not like her. “I mean your really personal life,” she said. “You haven’t said so, but there must be a woman in the city someplace who’s missed having your company this week. Someone who would’ve had it if I, if we—”

“There’s no one.” He wasn’t sure how smart it was to tell her that. But he wasn’t sure about a lot of things at the moment.

Except that he hadn’t had enough whiskey to dull his senses. He took another sip.

“How long has it been since there’s been someone?” If he’d detected jealousy in her voice, he might’ve been able to joke with her, fob off the question—while secretly being flattered, of course.

He couldn’t build any defenses against Erica’s compassion.

“I told you, I don’t have the time or energy to invest in ‘someone.’ Nor can I do my job if I know someone’s waiting at home for me. How can I take the chance of putting them through the hell and the horror I went through when Melissa and Courtney were killed? I risk my life every single time I go to work. As a freelance negotiator there’s very little I do that’s safe. I don’t man a desk during downtimes or give training classes, do research or program management like I used to do with the agency.”

“But you must have friends.”

“Of course I do.” He had acquaintances all over the United States. Guys he could call if he ever needed a favor. Usually he just called them to go out for a beer if he was in town.

Or to bum a place to crash for a few nights.

Jack hated hotels.

“And you must have sex.”

It took Jack a second to recover from the jolt those words sent through his body.

“I mean, you’re a gorgeous man, Jack. You exude virility, energy. Vitality. Sex appeal…”

“I have sex,” Jack choked out, a bit desperate to shut her up. “Sometimes. Not often. And not with anyone exclusively.”

“Oh. Good.”

He finished off his whiskey, set the glass on the table, much harder than he’d intended. He winced at the sound.

“You know the part of me that shut down after Melissa?”

He felt foreign to himself, talking this way, but he couldn’t let tonight end without telling her.

“Yeah.”

“I discovered this week that it wasn’t permanent.”

Her fingers froze on his wrist.

“It’s okay,” he assured her quickly, wondering if perhaps the whiskey was affecting him, after all. “You aren’t supposed to do anything with that knowledge. I’m not asking for anything, I just wanted you to know. Wanted to thank you.”

He couldn’t tell what she was thinking. She wouldn’t meet his eyes.

And…damn, her lips were trembling.

“Ah, Erica,” he said, trying to cajole her into calmness. Into repose and resignation. Instead, he was afraid he’d only let her hear his own despondency.

She smiled, but it looked like an effort.

He felt utterly useless. His muscles tensed with the effort it was taking him just to sit there.

Her shoulders straightened. She looked at him, her eyes glistening.

And all his strength dissolved.

CHAPTER THREE

THERE WAS NOTHING sexual about the way he pulled her into his arms. Jack wasn’t sure what was right and what was wrong anymore; he knew only that he couldn’t sit there with Erica hurting so badly and do nothing.

Which was why she ended up cradled in his arms, her face pressed against his chest as she took a couple of ragged breaths.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered.

“Don’t be,” he said softly, aching for both of them. “Please don’t ever be sorry we met.”

Her eyes shone with tears that didn’t fall. “I’m not sorry we met,” she said, her voice weak. “I am sorry I’m not better equipped to handle this.”

“How could you be?” He sat back, pulling her with him, allowing her to rest against him more than actually holding her. “I don’t think either of us was prepared for what’s happened.”

“I never expected to fall for someone.”

“Me, neither, which is why we couldn’t possibly have been prepared.”

They were quiet for a while, the hum of the hotel’s air conditioner, her weight against him, lulling Jack into a tentative sense of peace. He started to follow Erica’s breathing pattern, soothed by the evenness, the steady ebb and flow. He wondered if she’d fallen asleep.

Part of him hoped so.

Another part, the possessive part that he’d thought gone from him forever, didn’t want to waste a single second of the time still left to them. There were so many thoughts—so many feelings—inside her and he wanted every one of them. To store them away, like tiny gifts, to pull out and savor in the years to come.

“I’m not sorry about us.”

She wasn’t asleep.

“I’m not, either,” Jack said.

As frustrated and horrible as he felt, he should wish he’d never met her. Shouldn’t he?

“Can I ask you something?” he said a moment later.

“Sure.” She was playing with the corner of his collar, rubbing it back and forth against the pad of her thumb.

“Sex with Jefferson—he’s good to you, isn’t he?”

It wasn’t any of his damn business. And yet it was. He loved her. He needed to know that she was treated right.

He needed to know.

“Jefferson is always good to me.”

Jack had suspected as much. And was genuinely comforted to hear her say it.

He was also far more jealous than he had any right to be.

“I just wasn’t sure, with him being so much older…” Let it go, man.

“Sex doesn’t really play a big part in our relationship.” The words were said quietly but not hesitantly. Jack sat unmoving, wanting to hear more, wanting her more. He shifted beneath her to hide—and perhaps ease—the tightness in his groin.

“When we were first married we tried…Jefferson was a very conscientious lover, always making sure I was…satisfied before he…you know.”

So the man wasn’t a selfish bastard, but then, after a week of hearing about him, Jack already knew that.

“After a while, I don’t know, things just tapered off. We rarely make love anymore.”

“Did you ever discuss it? Ask him about it?”

“We talked.” Her knuckle grazed his throat.

“And?”

“One reason’s his age. The male sex drive dropping after fifty and all that. But Jefferson is very fit. He doesn’t look or act anywhere near the fifty-nine he actually is.”

“So what was the other reason?”

She turned her head, burying her face in his chest for a moment. Jack held his breath, willing his body not to torment him.

Finally she said, “He knows my heart isn’t in it.”

Jack didn’t know what to say to that. He was ashamed of his immediate reaction—the fact that he felt glad Jefferson wasn’t having sex very often with the woman he’d fallen so suddenly in love with. He was also saddened to think of Erica going through the rest of her life practically untouched.

“I told you I was an only child,” she said, her body growing heavier against his as she relaxed. “What I didn’t say was that my parents were already in their forties when I was conceived. My dad was seventy when he died six years ago. Jefferson’s fifteen years younger than him, but somehow he’d seemed like a second father to me.”

“What about your mother? Is she still alive?”

Jack’s parents were both gone—killed in a car accident when he was in college.

“She’s in Florida,” Erica said. “Living in an adult community next door to her younger sister. They golf and play bridge all day.”

“What did she think of your marriage?”

“She was mostly for it,” Erica said. “She wasn’t thrilled about the age difference, but she knew I’d never find a man better than Jeff….”

Her voice trailed off again and Jack tried not to think as he held her. Until she shuddered.

“Erica?’

She raised her head and he could see the agony in her eyes.

“This is just so hard,” she said, her lips twisted in pain. “I never expected it to be so hard.”

“I know….”

“What are we going to do?’

“What can we do?”

As she watched him silently, Jack’s heart took hope. He waited to see what miracle she might come up with, some way they could be true to themselves and yet…

“Nothing,” she said. “Keeping in touch would not only be incredibly stupid, it would make things even harder. I’ll survive in my real world, if you’re no more than just a memory. You have to be something I can put away when I go home. If you were still a part of my life, I’d constantly be wanting more.”

He knew she was right, but…

“Maybe you should at least have my address, just in case.”

“No, Jack. I’m not strong enough to do that. I’d be tired one night, feeling lonely, and I’d end up using it.”

“In my line of work, you don’t want to be too easily found, so I’m not listed.”

“Good.”

He nodded. This was the way it had to be.

“Oh, God, why does life have to be so hard?” She sounded beaten.

Her face was only inches from his, and Jack leaned forward slightly to kiss her eyelids closed. She should get some rest. She had a meeting in the morning. He could sit there and hold her the rest of the night.

Hold her and not think.

His lips trailed tenderly across one cheek and then the other and then had nowhere else to go.

Except down to her mouth.

There was no conscious decision. No decision at all. The hour was late, the alcohol convincing. The need to comfort, to connect, too overpowering.

One minute he was kissing her face…and the next she was naked beneath him and his lips were on her breast, her nipple, his body sliding inside hers.

It was wrong. He knew that. And he could see, by the look in her eyes, that she knew it, too.

And yet, nothing had ever felt more right.

They had two hours before she had to shower and leave. Jack made love to her, laughed with her, told her how beautiful she was, how smart, how much he admired her.

And then, in the doorway of her hotel room, just before dawn, he told her goodbye.

A COUPLE OF MONTHS later, in the bedroom she shared with Jefferson, Erica knew for certain that she’d never be able to forget Jack.

Or forgive herself for that stolen week in New York.

She and Jefferson had just returned from a pre-holiday party at the White House. He was still in his tux, although he’d loosened the tie at his neck. He was sitting on the love seat in the corner of the big bedroom suite in their Washington condo. He looked tired.

“When are you going to tell me what’s the matter?” he asked as she came in from the bathroom.

Now. She had to tell him now. But…

“Why do you say that?” She wanted to take off the long, slim-fitting black gown and pull on her silk pajamas. But she didn’t.

“I’ve known something was wrong ever since you came home from New York,” he said, running his hands through his thick, stylishly cut gray hair.

“Why didn’t you mention it before?”

“I’d hoped that eventually you’d come to me with whatever it was.”

Were his shoulders as broad as Jack’s?

Surprisingly enough, Erica thought, they probably were.

But were they broad enough to handle what she was about to tell him? She’d been cold all evening, the November chill seeping through her bones. But now she was sweating.

Wanting nothing more than to crawl into the big four-poster bed, cuddle up to her husband and go to sleep, Erica joined Jefferson on the other side of the room, where she dropped into an armchair adjacent to the love seat. She didn’t know where to begin. Or how.

Jefferson waited. And Erica knew how much it was costing him to do this. Her husband always anticipated crises, always acted decisively, attempting to resolve problems if he couldn’t prevent them. Asking him to just sit and do nothing wasn’t fair.

“I never realized it was possible to hate myself so much,” she said in a low voice.

He leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “Knowing you as I do, I’m sure there’s no need to put yourself through that kind of grief, Erica, so why don’t we talk about whatever this is and get it behind us?”

If he had any idea…

Erica opened her mouth to speak but, looking up at him, couldn’t make the words come. How could she do this to him? She, who knew so well how devastating it was to be betrayed?

After suffering the effects of Shane’s betrayal, she’d never have believed herself capable of doing anything so deplorable. So selfish. So hideously unfair.

Her stomach roiled, and Erica was afraid she might be sick again.

“I met a man in New York.”

Jefferson’s head dropped.

“His name’s Jack Shaw. He’s a hostage negotiator, used to be with the FBI.”

Her husband’s shoulders straightened as he sat back and held his head up to meet her gaze.

“You want a divorce. To go to him.”

“I’m never going to see him again.”

She had no way of seeing him, even if she wanted to, which she didn’t. Her life and Jack’s—they were farther apart than ever.

Jefferson’s eyes narrowed. “He left you?” If Erica hadn’t been feeling so completely miserable, she’d have smiled at the delivery of that question. His tone said How dare he leave you? as though Jefferson himself was ready to go hunt the man down.

She shook her head, instead.

“We both knew when we left New York that we’d never see each other again.”

“Why not?”

She did smile then, though tremulously. “I’m a married woman, Jefferson.”

“That’s more in name than in deed,” he said sadly. “And I was aware from the outset this might happen. Hell, Erica, I’m old enough to be your father. You think I haven’t been prepared for this from the beginning?”

“No,” she said, a little shocked.

“Well, I was.” His posture was relaxed; only the fact that he couldn’t seem to figure out what to do with his hands revealed his inner turmoil. “I’m not going to stand in your way. And I sure as hell don’t want you feeling beholden to me.”

Erica felt as though her world was spinning increasingly out of control.

She wanted to tell him she’d married him for better or worse. That she’d never—once—had any intention of forsaking those vows or asking to be released from them.

But she had forsaken them.

In the worst possible way.

It all came pouring out then. How Jack had saved her from that jerk at Maggie’s. How they’d never planned to see each other again, but how they’d each shown up at Maggie’s the next night, just in case the other might happen to stop by. How they did the same thing every night that week. How they talked. And never touched. Never even went anywhere else.

How she’d have come home in a second if she could have gotten the Journal reporter to talk to her.

Jefferson nodded at that point.

She told him about Jack’s wife and daughter. His job. How he, no less than Erica, wasn’t free to embark on a relationship.

“We accepted from the beginning that one week was all we were ever going to have.”

Reaching across the space between them, Jefferson pulled her from the chair and into his arms, his touch comforting, completely nonsexual. “We’ve nursed you through a broken heart before, my dear,” he said, sounding certain, if a little tired. “We can do so again.”

She wished a broken heart was the only consequence of her time with Jack. “I don’t deserve you,” she whispered, fighting tears.

“Don’t talk like that,” he said, his voice soothing. “You can’t be blamed for being attracted to a man your own age. It’s natural.”

“You have to be disappointed in me.”

“I am disappointed,” he admitted with a heavy sigh, and the knife inside Erica twisted further. “But not in you.”

“How could you not be?”

“Because I know you, Erica, and I know that you’d never purposely do this—to either of us. How can I blame you for being human?”

“You’re far too generous.”

“Marrying you was the most reckless thing I’ve ever done,” he said, gazing into her eyes. “I’m almost three decades older than you. I know, and I’ve always known, that our marriage contravenes the natural order of things. As I said, I don’t fault you for what you did. What you felt…”

“But you’re disappointed, anyway.”

“I’m disappointed that I’m not twenty years younger, that when I finally fell head over heels in love with a woman, she wasn’t my own age and at the same place in life. I’m disappointed that I’m too old to do for you whatever this Jack guy did.”

Erica started to feel sick again. She freed herself from her husband’s arms, whispering, “There’s more.”

“You slept with him.”

Though it took more strength than she thought she had, Erica forced herself to keep looking at him. “How did you know?”

“I suspected as much the day you got back. Don’t forget, honey, I’ve taken you there myself. You get a certain look about you after you’ve made love. A softness, a satisfied peace. It’s a look I haven’t seen in a long time.”

Only someone as attuned to her as Jefferson would notice such a thing.

“I’m so sorry, Jeff,” she said hoarsely. “I can’t believe I’ve done this. That I’ve hurt you like this. I didn’t think I could do such a thing. And certainly never wanted to.”

“I know,” he said, his eyes filled with the sadness he wouldn’t express in words.

“I’d do anything to take it all back….”

“I know that, too,” he said, and then held her hand, much like she’d held Jack’s that night he’d told her about losing his wife and daughter. “Of course, it would’ve been best if you’d walked away before there was anything to take back, but if I think that way, I’m going to get angry and that won’t do us any good.”

“You should be angry.”

He bowed his head, and she couldn’t see what he was thinking. “No,” he finally said, looking up at her. “Anger is unproductive and so is regret. Rather than wishing for the impossible, the wiser thing to do would be for us to put this behind us and move forward.”

Did he want a divorce?

“Forward how?”

“If, as you say, there’s no chance of a relationship between you and this man, if you still want to continue living the life we’ve created here, I see no reason for anything to change. Our reasons for marrying still stand. I still love you, want to take care of you. Professionally, I still need a wife….”

She didn’t say anything. Couldn’t.

Because there was more. Something that prevented her from ever returning to Jack.

But something she didn’t think Jefferson should have to accept, either.

CHAPTER FOUR

SHE HAD SOMETHING else to tell him.

Senator Jefferson Cooley sat next to his beautiful young wife on the pale beige seat and waited.

He could handle whatever she had to say. She wasn’t leaving him. That was all that mattered—Erica allowing him to share her life.

He was one hell of a lucky man.

Or a pathetic man?

Where that thought came from, he didn’t know. But as his wife looked at him, her eyes brimming with unshed tears, with soul-deep sorrow, with panic and a despair that went beyond anything he’d ever read there before, the thought just disappeared.

“What is it, love?” he asked, holding both her hands in his. Whatever it took, he’d make it right for her.

“I…I’m…”

His heart grew cold.

“I’m pregnant.”

Oh.

Hell.

He stared at her. Acid burning his stomach. His chest. Every living part of him.

He preferred the cold.

“I’m sorry, Jeff. So sorry.” Erica didn’t cry often, which made the tears sliding down her beautiful cheeks that much more threatening. He wondered if tears were falling down his, as well.

Or if the pain was too deep for that.

“It’s okay,” he said. Because he wanted it to be.

Out of the blue he thought of her father. A high-powered attorney, Jefferson’s friend. Would he have approved of Jefferson’s marriage to his daughter? Or would he be finding this night just reward for Jefferson’s sin, his transgression in marrying a woman so much younger?

“No.” She shook her head, pulling one hand free to run soft fingertips along the side of his face.

Wiping away tears?

“It’s not okay.” Her sweet voice tore at him. Making him want to destroy something—preferably the man who could do for her what he could not.

It touched that chord of love deep inside him, as well.

She was so strong. But she was lost, too. He could see the confusion, the fear and need in her dark-brown eyes as she gazed at him. And it occurred to him that she was there with him. In their bedroom.

He was the one she came to when she had a problem. The one who heard her confessions. Who shared the realities of everyday life with her.

“We’ll make it okay,” he told her. “We always do.”

“You shouldn’t have to,” she said, and there was no doubt that she meant the words she was saying. “I can’t do this to you, Jeff. And yet, I guess I already have. It’s not as though I can just disappear out of your life. The press would be all over you—us—in a second.”

A surge of hurt, disguised as anger, shot through him. Even now, did it always have to be about work?

Couldn’t it ever be just about the two of them? The team they made? Their ability to face anything life had to offer as long as they did it together?

“Leave the press out of this.”

“We can’t.”

The anguish cut a little more deeply. “The press is a surface concern, Erica. There are no reporters here in our home. In our bedroom.” In our life. The life I share with you, the life no one else knows about.

She didn’t say anything. Just continued to gaze at him with those sorrowful eyes.

“Right now it’s just you and me, love.”

She looked down.

So did he.

At the flat stomach he’d been admiring in that alarmingly gorgeous gown she’d been wearing so elegantly all evening.

You, me and another man’s baby, he amended. So heartsick he was dizzy for a moment.

Even if it hadn’t been months since he’d made love to his wife, the baby she was carrying couldn’t be his. During his early twenties, Jefferson had contracted mumps. He’d been left sterile.

“What do you want to do?” He found the question floating somewhere in the red haze of his mind.

“I have no idea.” She shook her head, looked up at him with complete honesty. “I know it’s ludicrous and completely unfair, but all I’ve been able to think about is talking to you. It’s what I always do when I can’t figure something out.”

A patch of clearness appeared in the haze. “So let’s start with the basics,” he said.

She needed him to help her sort out the problem. He knew how to do that.

She needed him. He could think again.

“I’m pregnant,” she said, as though making a list. “I’m never seeing Jack again.”

“You’re going to have the baby.” He knew that wasn’t an option. He was, publicly at least, a right-to-lifer. She was, too.

Before life had become so confused, he’d been a right-to-lifer, period. But he’d been in Washington a long time. He’d heard stories, seen things. Too many things. He wasn’t sure where he stood, personally, on most issues anymore. There were always two sides.

With good people, well-intentioned people, on each of them.

Erica was staring at him, her eyes wide. Startled. He raised his brows in question.

“I hadn’t thought that far ahead,” she said, sounding more like the little girl of twelve she’d been when he’d first met her twenty years before.

Since he’d married Erica, people had been saying he’d robbed the cradle. No one knew that, most of the time, Erica was the more mature of the two. She was so determined. So focused and sure of her course.

She sat tall, holding herself rigid, one slim body against the world—hiding so much. He’d never seen Erica let herself need anyone. Except for me, he reminded himself. That stood for something. Everything.

Jefferson’s needs vanished. His fears, the pain and disappointment, were buried beneath the compulsion that was stronger than self.

Picking Erica up, he cradled her like a child. Carried her to their bed. Lay down with her, turning her so he could spoon his body around hers. Enveloping her in his safety. He did this because she allowed herself to take comfort from him.

For those moments Jefferson did what he could to protect her from the agonies of living.

Just as he’d been trying to do—in one way or another—for most of her life. Far more important than career, fantasies or ambitions, Erica was everything to him. Precious. It didn’t matter that she couldn’t return his love, that she couldn’t love him the same way he loved her.

Eventually Erica turned over, cuddled next to him, her pale face only an inch from his own. “I don’t know how to protect you from this,” she said. “I can’t stand it that you’re going to be irrevocably hurt, no matter what. That you’ve done nothing, and yet you’ll pay the greatest price.”

Done nothing? He’d married a woman young enough to be his daughter. Robbed her of the chance to find a man who could raise the passion of youth in her.

A man who could give her children.

But for now, none of that was important. Now they were solving problems. Dealing with facts.

“Don’t you think you should contact your Jack?” Her Jack. He hated those words, punished himself with them.

“I can’t.”

“Why not?” Tense, Jeff waited to hear that the other man had used Erica and then dumped her. Waited, knowing he’d have to fight the urge to hunt the other man down and kill him with his bare hands.

“Because I don’t have any way to find him.”

“He refused to give you even that much?” The acid was back.

“No, he tried. I didn’t want to know how to find him.”

“Because of me.”

“Yes.”

He’d spent the past three years reaching for heaven. And landed in hell.

“So we’ll track him down.”

“No, Jeff. In the first place, he’s unlisted.”

“He’s FBI.”

“Ex. He’s independent. And good. You know as well as I do that means he’ll be untraceable. They’ll protect him. He doesn’t exist.”

Still, there were ways. “And in the second place?”

“It won’t make any difference to him.”

“Trust me,” he told her, lying as close to her as he could get. “It’ll make a difference.”

When she shook her head, dark tendrils of that short textured hairstyle he loved flew around her eyes. Making her look wild. Making him feel a little wild.

She was his wife, dammit.

His.

“The baby will only be more reason to stay away from me,” she said softly.

Jeff was finding it hard to believe that Erica had fallen for such an insensitive son of a bitch.

“It’s too late for him, Jeff.”

He listened while Erica gave him the horrifying account of two deaths—Jack Shaw’s wife and his baby daughter. Listened to her words, but heard how much Erica loved the other man. Heard the way her voice softened and knew that he was never going to instill that kind of love in her.

Heard and felt hope die.

And yet he knew she was probably right: It was too late for Jack.

“And even if there wasn’t all that to contend with,” she said, her mouth still only an inch from his, “there’s his job. There’s no way a man like Jack could risk his life every day if he knew he was leaving behind someone who needed him every bit as much as the person he was going to save—because when he goes to work there’s the possibility that he’ll have to offer his life in exchange for that of a hostage.

“The only way he can cope with Melissa and Courtney’s deaths is by spending his time preventing the same thing from happening to someone else. It makes their lives—and their deaths—count. They didn’t die in vain.”

Jefferson could understand that, too.

“So who has to know the baby isn’t mine? Other than you, I haven’t told anyone I’m sterile in over thirty years.” Jeff’s heart started to pound. Was he really considering fatherhood at his age?

Adrenaline pumped through him. He felt a new surge of life, excitement and anticipation.

Him. A father. It was a dream he’d given up forty years ago.

Erica sat up. Her gown had slipped, revealing more of her cleavage than she normally exposed. “I can’t let you do that, Jeff,” she said. “I love you too much to see you make such a sacrifice.”

She loved him.

The front of his tuxedo pants was fuller than when he’d zipped them up a few hours ago.

“What sacrifice?” he asked, thinking quickly. Desperately. He had a chance to keep the woman he loved.

He looked up at her. Her flawless skin, full lips. The honesty blazing from her beautiful eyes.

There was still a chance.

“All I’ve ever wanted was to be able to share your life with you,” he reminded her. “To be the one you came home to each night. To hear about your day, share in your triumphs. Be there to support you through the tough times. Hear you laugh. See the world through your eyes. So having the opportunity to be the father of your child—” he had to think of it as hers, only hers “—to share that rewarding experience with you is a bonus.”

Tears sprang to her eyes again. “Only you could put a positive spin on this,” she said, her lips breaking into a tremulous smile.

“The solution works,” he said, making sure his point hit home. “I get what I want—you. The baby gets what it deserves—a set of parents who will love and provide for it. You get the security and love you’ve always had here. Help with your baby. Friendship…”

With one hand, the nails perfectly manicured, Erica traced his lips. “You don’t have to sell me on what I get,” she said softly. “I’ve always known what a treasure I have in you. You’re the one who deserves so much more….”

Maybe. Sometimes he thought so. But he loved her.

“So, we’re having a baby?” he asked, making sure they’d sealed their bargain.

Erica, with marked hesitation, nodded. “On the condition that if you change your mind, you promise to let me know. I won’t have you tied down to this unless it’s what you truly want.”

He had no doubt about what he wanted.

And suddenly, no choice but to take it. Reaching up, sliding one hand around her neck, he pulled her lips to his, taking them in a kiss that was far more demanding than any he’d taken before. He filled her with his own taste, as though he could somehow wipe away the other man. Not only from her senses, but from her memory.

That night, Jefferson set out to seduce his wife. To have her even if she didn’t love him.

That night, the man who always put her welfare first was tired. He was a man who needed her, and Erica let him find his comfort in her body.

There are many kinds of love. That was his last coherent thought before he drifted off to sleep.

CHAPTER FIVE

May 1997

JACK SHAW belonged to his job.

For better or worse.

Patience was his virtue. Staying cool under pressure his MO.

A woman—the mother—was crying. Getting hysterical. Jack refused to let himself hear her. She wanted him to do something.

She didn’t understand that timing was the key to survival. To her daughter’s survival.

He understood her, though. He knew exactly how she was feeling as she waited there in the balmy May sunshine. Helpless while her daughter’s life was held in the precarious hands of a maniac.

Marissa was only four, he’d been told. She was on campus as part of a child-care program.

Rubber-suited men in bullet-proof vests and gas masks surrounded the building. A team was working on the classroom ceiling; tubes with tiny lenses were being fed down through the air-conditioning vents so they could see inside the classroom on the television monitor set up in the van.

“Do you like dogs, James?” Jack asked. He’d been sitting on the cement outside a first-floor classroom window for half an hour. This was one tough talk-down.

“What’s it matter?” came the surly reply through the barely open window.

“I had a dog when I was kid. Damnedest thing, though. He was my best friend, and the biggest pain in my ass, too. Barking and getting me in trouble when I would’ve been able to sneak in past curfew undetected. Waking me up early to be put out on Saturday mornings, the only time I could sleep late.”

There was no sound from the classroom. Jack wanted to hear something—anything—from Marissa. Even crying.

He listened. But heard nothing. And so he sat, pretending he had all the time in the world.

Another high school. Arizona this time. Jack had been in Los Angeles visiting an old buddy from his time with the agency—and attending a movie premiere as the guest of a director he’d once rescued. Arizona authorities had been relieved he was so close.

Sometime over the years Jack’s specialty had become child negotiation.

“So,” he said again, dropping a couple of small stones from one hand to the other. “You like dogs?” The list on the ground beside him—the one he’d memorized but kept referring to, anyway—said that James had always wanted a dog.

There was no answer from inside.

The compilation of facts about the teenager had been written by James’s teachers, but his mother had been one of the main contributors. She knew her son well. Too bad she hadn’t done anything with that knowledge. Like to understand what drove him, what made him so unhappy—so desperate. Try to help him.

These were the cases that sickened Jack the most. The parents who were so shocked to find their son or daughter capable of terrorism. Parents who only knew their kids in superficial ways, who didn’t recognize the misery or the rage.

“James? You like dogs?”

“Maybe.” The tone was belligerent, but Jack smiled, anyway. James had just come down a step.

“So, you know why the poor dog chased its tail?”

Nothing.

“He was trying to make ends meet.”

The ground was hard beneath his butt, but Jack pretended not to notice. He was just there for a chat. For as long as it took.

“You ready to tell me what you want?” he asked in a casual voice.

“A dog. Can you get me a dog?”

“I’ll work on it.” Jack waited. “That’s all you want?” he asked, leaning back against the stucco wall of the building.

The fifteen-year-old didn’t answer.

“You ready to come out, then?” he called easily. “Or to send Marissa out, at least?”

“We got a picture!” The exclamation was a whisper—from the bearded, longhaired police officer working closest to Jack. He rolled a television monitor into Jack’s line of vision.

The boy with the deep sullen voice wasn’t even five feet tall. He was skinnier than a girl. He wore clean, stylishly baggy slacks and a pullover. His blond hair was cut short. James Talmadge looked like every mother’s dream.

Sweat dripped down the back of Jack’s neck.

The dream ended where James’s right hand held a gun to a four-year-old girl’s throat. Marissa was lying on the floor, shaking, her eyes wide, unfocused.

Goddammit!

What was it with high schools and guns, anyway? High-school terrorism had happened enough times you’d think someone would do something about teenage anger before it got to this point.

Jack suddenly heard a painful wail. The little girl’s mother had just seen the television. On the monitor the child jerked, probably recognizing her mother’s voice.

“Get her out of here,” Jack said, pointing to the mother as, on the screen, James pushed the end of his handgun against the child’s throat.

Marissa’s mother wasn’t leaving without a fight. A female officer spoke to her, telling her that for Marissa’s sake she had to at least move back and be quiet. Hearing her mother’s voice, knowing that her mother was right outside the window, could make the child do something rash that would get her killed.

Jack saw the young mother nod, her shoulders racked with sobs as she allowed herself to be led several feet away.

The mother’s anguish singed his nerve endings. It had been a long time since he’d felt that particular blistering. Usually he managed to distance himself from the pain of others. It was the only way he could do his job.

“James, we’re working on the dog,” he said, maintaining his patience. He stared at the laces of his tennis shoes and the hem of his jeans, which rode half an inch up his ankle. “You can trust me. Just toss me the gun and it’ll all be over. You’ll be safe,” he finished calmly, as though he were encouraging the boy to throw a baseball.

There was no answer.

“You know what happened when the dog went to the flea market?” he asked, his nonchalant tone belying the intensity with which he studied the screen. “He stole the show.”

Timing was the key to survival. The longer he could stall the harried boy, the more chance he had of talking him down. Or at least getting little Marissa out of there.

Though he could see the two kids, he still listened attentively. The little girl’s unnatural quiet bothered him. The resiliency and adaptability of children was amazing, but Marissa’s mind was going to catch up with her eventually.

Maybe today. Maybe ten years from now.

And it was going to be hell for her when it did.

“Tell me what you want, James.”

“You got that dog?”

“Like I said, I’m working on it.” Turning to the officer on his right, Jack whispered, “Get me a dog.”

Nodding, the young man took off at a trot.

“What else?” he asked. A dog was not the reason the kid had barged into a classroom brandishing a gun. Jack would bet his life it wasn’t the reason he’d cleared out everyone but the four-year-old child he now held hostage.

“I want my little sister back,” James said. He still had the gun on the child, but he’d turned toward the window. Looking for Jack?

“Where is she?’

“In a foster home.”

Jack scanned the paper he’d been given. There was nothing about a broken family there. With raised brows, he glanced around at the officers surrounding him. They shrugged, shook their heads. The school principal was there. When Jack met his eye, he nodded.

Shit. It was information he should’ve had an hour ago.

“So, Mr. Hotshot Cop, you gonna make the trade? You gonna bring me my sister?”

Chances were he couldn’t. But Jack wasn’t going to tell the kid no. Number-one rule of engagement—never tell the perpetrator no. The word signified endings.

“I’ll see what I can do,” he said, instead.

“Yeah, you do that.”

Marissa was crying. Jack couldn’t hear her, but he saw a tear drip off her chin.

James saw it, too. The boy stared at the teardrop for a long moment. And bent down to wipe the little girl’s cheeks.

She glanced up at her captor, terror on her face, before her expression once again went blank.

Jack took a deep breath. Calmed the shudders rushing through him. “Hey, James, you ready to come out?” he asked. “We’ll do everything we can to get your sister back, I promise.”

“Yeah, right.” There was no mistaking the boy’s bitterness. “I’ve heard that before. I’ve waited almost a year.”

“But I’m here now,” Jack said. “And I promise I won’t leave until I’ve gotten to the bottom of this.”

“Don’t screw with me, man,” the boy said. “I know how it works. As soon as you get this kid, they put handcuffs on me and adios.. You’re gone, never to be heard from again. And Brittney’s left with some guy who slaps her for wanting more than one glass of milk at dinner.”

Lowering his head, Jack felt the ache of years’ worth of struggle climbing up the back of his neck. An officer handed him a couple of typed paragraphs on a computer printout. Information he should’ve had an hour ago, except that the boy’s mother hadn’t thought it was pertinent.

James’s mother had never been married. Had had several live-in boyfriends, but only two children, James and Brittney. By two different fathers. Neither father was in the picture. Ms. Talmadge had lost custody of her three-year-old daughter because of repeated abuse. And since Child Protective Services was attempting to place Brittney in a permanent home with a new family, James had been denied visitation rights.

“How do you know her foster father slaps her?”

“She told me.”

“You’ve seen her?”

“Yeah.”

“Where?”

“I go by her day care sometimes. Talk to her through the fence. Now, I mean it, man, get me Brittney—and a dog—and I’ll make the trade.” He jabbed the gun at Marissa’s throat.

“You know why the dog didn’t speak to his hind foot?”

James turned toward the window. “What’s with the jokes, man?”

“The dog didn’t speak to his foot because it’s not polite to talk back to your paw.”

The skinny teenager shook his head, but his shoulders visibly relaxed.

Jack checked the list. He asked James a couple of questions about various friends named there. About the volleyball team he played on. James’s only response was to adjust the gun at Marissa’s throat. His hand was shaking.

“You know why dogs wag their tails?”

James looked at the window.

“Because no one else will do it for them.”

The kid gave a disgusted snort. He was still looking in the direction of Jack’s voice.

“You know how to tell if you have a stupid dog?”

Carefully monitoring the activity around him, waiting for the appearance of the dog, Jack continued sitting on the ground as though nothing was going on.

“It chases parked cars,” he said.

The little girl was lying still, her cheek pressed to the tile of the classroom floor. Her eyes were open, unmoving, staring vacantly at the floor.

“James, tell me again how you think holding Marissa is going to help you get Brittney?”

“Because it’s an even trade. A little girl for a little girl,” he spat.

Although this emotionally disturbed kid’s thinking was clearly twisted, there was no doubting his confidence in this theory he’d worked out.

The entire team of uniformed men and women were watching Jack. And the monitor. They were standing by in case Jack ran out of time. Waiting for a signal from him to move in.

James leaned back against a desk. It slid, toppled, caught the boy on the ankle.

From the open window Jack heard the crash. An angrily whispered Shit.

“James? You okay in there?”

“Like you care.”

“Believe it or not, I do care.” And he did. In an objective sense, as an observer. It was what made him so good at his job. He had to care. Because if he didn’t, he’d never be able to reach his perpetrators.

If he didn’t find a way to empathize, he’d lose his sanity by hating.

Hating every single person like James who put innocent people in danger.

Hating the young man who’d aimed his gun at Melissa’s chest and—

No! He knew better than that. He had a job to do.

For the poor distraught woman who stood only a few yards away from him trembling in the arms of a young blond man in business attire. Slacks. A tie. White shirt. His expression was a mixture of fear and unadulterated rage. He must be the father.

The two were counting on Jack to remain calm.

He asked James about the high-school football season. About getting his driver’s license. And what kind of plans he had for a car.

The boy didn’t respond.

Marissa was starting to shake. Her entire body was shivering, as though she was lying in a snowdrift rather than on a schoolroom floor.

Around the corner of the van Jack became aware of movement. A uniformed police officer approached him, a beagle puppy in her arms.

“We got the dog, James,” Jack said even before he had possession of the animal. The officer was approaching from the side of the building, staying out of the boy’s sight—and shot.

“He’s a puppy,” Jack said as the woman leaned over to hand him the squirming five-pound ball of brown, white and black fur. “He’s got big brown eyes and he’s all yours.”

Holding his breath, Jack studied the monitor. Obviously more agitated, James stared at the little girl.

“You want me to bring him in?” Jack asked.

“What I want is my sister.” The boy’s words, delivered through gritted teeth, were fierce. “You got her out there, Cop?”

“We’re working on it.”

“Yeah, well, work a little faster. I’m not waitin’ around here much longer.”

Marissa, who’d started to cry openly, received an angry kick. “Shut up!”

Through the open window, Jack heard the growled command. James moved and Jack stiffened, his hand at his belt, ready to pull his gun.

Reaching up, gaze on the monitor, he dropped the puppy through the window. And ignored the new sheen of sweat that broke out on his upper lip when James barely glanced at the dog.

“Get up,” the kid told the little girl. She didn’t move.

“I said get up!” James ordered.

Marissa’s body convulsed, and then she settled back, a quivering mass. With the gun never moving from her throat, James one-handedly pulled the child’s arms behind her, yanked off his belt and strapped Marissa’s hands together. The little girl didn’t even try to fight him. He dragged her over to a far corner, to the left of where Jack was sitting.

“Don’t move.”

Keeping the gun pointed at the child, James moved to the puppy and pushed it back through the window. Jack caught the small shaking dog and handed it to the nearest officer.

“Get my sister here in the next five minutes or I shoot,” James yelled just above Jack’s head. Close enough to slide his hand out that window and shoot Jack.

“We’re working on it, James,” Jack said, as though reassuring a hungry boy that dinner was almost ready. “But it might take a little longer than five minutes.”

The gun still aimed in the general direction of the little girl, the boy fired a shot. Splinters from the chalkboard sprayed around the room. The bullet lodged in the cement wall.

Uniform and rubber-suited officers alike jerked to attention. All eyes were on Jack, guns pointing toward the classroom.

“I have a shot,” one of the officers said. “Should I take it?”

“No.”

Jack wasn’t going to see that boy die if he could help it.

He’d have to go in. James was shooting. It was only a matter of time.

Marissa was lying to the left of the window. James was on the right. Jack’s job was to get through that window and put himself between the child and the gun.

The worst that could happen was that he’d take the bullet. He hoped it would hit the bullet-proof vest he had on under his T-shirt. But if not, it would be his life in exchange for the child’s.

Small price to pay.

He shifted onto his knees. “James?” he called. “My butt’s getting sore sitting here, so I’m going to stand and lean on the windowsill. Okay?”

It was a gamble. But if the boy’s attention was on Jack, chances were the child would be safe for another moment or two.

“I don’t want you to be startled by the movement,” he said, crouching under the window. “Is it okay with you if I look in?” he asked.

“No.”

Peering over his shoulder, receiving the confirmation he’d been seeking, Jack rose to his full height. An officer inside the building was ready to rush the boy if James turned the gun away from the child for even a second.

He stood.

James, startled, aimed the gun at Jack, who pushed up the window and climbed in. “Just didn’t want you—”

The rest of his words were lost in the chaos that followed. A couple of officers appeared from the back of the room as Jack put himself between the boy and the small blond girl lying on the floor. With one officer on either side and others filling the back of the room, they apprehended the boy.

Jack reached for the now-hysterical child.

And a shot rang out.

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