“Just two weeks?” she said.

“Just two weeks,” he promised. “That’s nothing, right?”

She drew a deep breath. “Okay.”

He squeezed her affectionately and nuzzled her neck. “And now it’s time for that massage I promised you.” Determined to win her over, he carried her into the bedroom.

While Jane was trying to convince her daughter to get ready for bed, Kate kept disappearing into the living room to take another peek at Sebastian. She loved the excitement of having male company and kept asking if Jane thought he was handsome.

Jane did her best to act indifferent, but she was even more aware of the man watching TV on her couch than Kate was.

When she finally managed to get her daughter into bed, she carried out some blankets and a pillow for Sebastian and piled them on a side chair.

He muted the television. “How’re you holding up?”

“I’m fine.” He had his computer on his lap. She waved toward it. “Any word from Mary?”

“Not yet. She’s probably getting settled in Phoenix. I doubt she’ll write or call me until tomorrow.”

“Are you worried about her?”

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“I feel bad for disrupting her life by getting her involved in all this, but…I think she’ll be okay.”

“I wish I could have that kind of confidence when it comes to Latisha.”

Looking more tired than she’d seen him, he covered a yawn. “Have you talked to Gloria?”

“Not since I was over there.” Jane felt she should call, but she didn’t know what else she could say. Taking a deep breath, she patted the blankets. “Here’s what you’ll need for the night.”

“Thanks.”

“You’re welcome.” Their eyes met and the intimacy they’d already shared seemed to draw them together again. For a second, Jane wished Kate was still at her in-laws’. Sebastian felt like the best thing ever to have happened to her. She craved his taste, his smell, his touch-craved him. But Kate wasn’t at the Burkes’. She was just down the hall.

“Okay. I’ll see you in the morning,” she said.

“Yeah. See you then.” The volume went back up a little as he returned his attention to the TV.

Clenching her hands in determined fists, Jane marched over to her bedroom, closed the door and got into bed, where she lay wide awake for what seemed like hours.

Although Sebastian had dozed off, he’d done it without the blankets Jane had left him. He hadn’t even put away his computer. He was still sitting there with the TV on when he woke up at two.

He made himself a bed but couldn’t go back to sleep. The macabre images of the day kept intruding-countered only by the more positive knowledge that Jane was just a room away.

He considered going to her. He wanted to lose himself in her warmth, feel her melt against him the way she had last night. Kate was asleep; she’d never know… But Jane had made her wishes clear.

He hoped a shower might relax him, so he got up and went to take one.

Leaving the light off, he stripped, turned the water to hot and stood beneath the pulsing spray. He was trying to blank his mind, to force Emily, Colton, Mary, Malcolm and Jane-especially Jane-out of his thoughts. He was pretty sure it was working, until he heard the door open.

He could smell Jane’s perfume. He hadn’t locked the door. That had been a conscious decision, one he’d made with exactly this hope in mind. But when the door closed again, a click told him it was locked now.

Twenty-One

She was addicted to him. That was all there was to it. She couldn’t continue to lie in bed, aching with need. She had to have him. And somehow the resistance she’d tried to summon but couldn’t made the experience all the more intoxicating. Giving in had never felt so sweet.

The scrape of the shower curtain against the rod told Jane that Sebastian had heard her come in. In some deep recess of her brain, she hoped he’d send her back to her bed. This had to end somewhere, didn’t it? If she wanted to get out of this affair unscathed, the sooner it ended the better. But he didn’t rebuff her. She could sense his anticipation, feel him waiting for her approach.

Biting her lip, she wondered what she’d do on the off chance that Kate woke up and discovered them both missing from their beds. She’d tell her daughter that Sebastian had left and let Kate think she was in the bathroom alone, she decided. If Kate was older, she might doubt that, but not at twelve. Not when Jane had never had another man over.

They had to be quiet, though. Very quiet…

Assured that she had a way to protect her daughter from knowing too much, she slipped off her nightgown and dropped it on the floor. Steam billowed through the open curtain, so thick it felt like a thousand hands reaching out to curl around her.

Sebastian found her as soon as she stepped toward him and drew her against his slick, hard body. “There you are,” he breathed in her ear. “I’ve been waiting for this since you brought me those damn blankets. What took you so long?”

The memory of Wendy’s scorn. The hope that it wasn’t too late to atone for her mistakes. The determination to do what was best for her daughter.

Clearly, she wasn’t up to those challenges. But she’d already made love with Sebastian several times over the past two days. What would one more night matter?

“I wanted to do the right thing,” she told him.

“I can’t think of anything that feels more right than this,” he said. Then his lips met hers in a breathless, frenzied kiss spurred on by the urgency rising in them both.

“You’ve got the Shield?”

“I’m ready.” Her thoughts were somewhere in the stratosphere, but she’d hung on to that much of her sanity.

He licked away the water dripping from her left breast. “Smart girl,” he whispered.

Minutes later, he lifted her onto him and she could think of nothing except the rasp of his labored breathing, the contraction of his muscles as he held her against the tile wall and that moment of ultimate ecstasy when he covered her mouth with his to capture her moan.

She didn’t hold back with him anymore. She couldn’t. She gave him everything she had, physically and emotionally. She knew that was why making love with him was so much better, so different, than before.

But she also knew that what made it different could swing back the other way-and hurt her more deeply than ever.

The next morning, Sebastian sat at the breakfast table with Kate while Jane stood at the stove, dressed for work in tailored pants and a starched white blouse, frying eggs. Kate already had her meal and was somehow managing to fork up her food and find her mouth without ever looking down at her plate. She had eyes only for him. Every time he glanced up, he found her watching him with rapt attention. He was beginning to wonder if she’d somehow caught on to the fact that he’d had sex with her mother last night. Maybe his smile was giving it away, or the fact that he still felt so aware of Jane as she cooked behind him.




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