The Secret Son

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.