HE MADE LOVE to her every night that next week. Driven by something he didn’t understand, or maybe something he did understand and wasn’t ready to acknowledge, he loved her with an urgency he’d never known before. Not even when their divorce had become inevitable, the final court date imminent, had he been filled with such a sense of energized desperation.
One way or another, his time at Miller Insulation was coming to a close. His time in Cincinnati was coming to an end. And, as that day drew near, he found he didn’t have any plans not to go. He wanted to tell Susan that he’d stay, that he’d be the perfect father to her children. But he couldn’t. He just didn’t have any confidence in his ability to do so. He was afraid he’d suffocate within a week of the declaration. And he couldn’t lie to her.
One of the babies moved again on Wednesday night, just after Michael and Susan had made love. It wasn’t a kick this time, but a heel or something sliding across her entire belly, sticking out as it went. They both watched its progress.
“Can you feel that?” Michael whispered, as though he’d disturb the children if he spoke any louder.
“Of course,” she laughed. “You try being rubbed from the inside out.”
Michael couldn’t imagine the feeling, but he knew what it felt like to carry a lead weight around in his chest. A weight that was getting heavier by the hour.
He’d never experienced a stronger need to get up and go, to run as far and as fast as he could. Or to stay.
“Have you decided what to name them?” he asked instead, studying the mound of her stomach.
Susan frowned. “I change my mind at least twice a day. There are so many names I like.”
That sounded like Susan. If she could get away with it, she’d pin a minimum of six names on each kid.
“Remember to pay attention to initials,” he told her, rolling over to lie on his back, staring at the shadows on the ceiling. “Kids can be awfully cruel when they tease, and names and initials always seem to be a target.”
“So I can’t name her Katy Kathleen ’cause she’d be KKK, huh?”
Katy Kathleen Kennedy. His name. That he’d given to Susan and she’d kept after the divorce.
“Right,” he said, jumping up as if self-propelled, shrugging into his robe. “Want a snack?”
“I’m not hungry,” Susan surprised him by saying. She was always hungry these days.
He shouldn’t have been surprised, though. He wasn’t hungry, either.
But he escaped to the kitchen anyway. Dished himself a bowl of ice cream he didn’t want. And then, while it melted beside him, took up paper and pencil and doodled.
What was the matter with him? What in hell was the matter with him that he checked out anytime she got too close, anytime those babies got too close? Michael wished to God he knew. Wished he could control the claustrophobic dizziness that assailed him anytime he tried to force himself into a decision about the children.
One thing was for certain. He couldn’t keep on like this much longer. Couldn’t keep hurting Susan. There didn’t seem to be much point in moving forward when there were some fundamental things that couldn’t be changed.
Zack Kennedy. He looked down at what he’d written. A good name for a boy. Short. Strong. Solid.
If the boy were his, he’d name him Zack.
LAURA WAS getting desperate. In the four weeks since Jeremy had announced he was quitting soccer, the boy had been late for school six times, he’d been held for detention twice, and failed an exam. Looking around to make sure no one was paying attention to her, she stole over to the computer cubicle in one corner of Jenny’s classroom and logged on to the Internet. She was at the school to volunteer, but the class was having reading time. That gave her fifteen minutes.
Moving around the Internet much more slowly than her kids would have done, she managed to find a search engine, and then a button to click on to find people. A prompt asked her to type in the name of the person.
She did that. And waited nervously, glancing over her shoulder every couple of seconds. It wasn’t that anyone cared whether she played around on the computer; she just didn’t want to have to explain what she was doing. Not even to herself if truth be known.
Had she no pride?
And then, just that easily, up popped a listing—name, address, phone number. And even a place she could click on to see a map.
She clicked. And printed. Snatching up the page as soon as the printer let go of it, she folded it and slipped it inside her purse.
She was armed.
MICHAEL WAS making her walk on a treadmill. He’d brought one home the day before without even discussing it first and set it up in her study. “To make the birth’s easier,” he’d said.
And because Susan was so crazy in love with him, so thrilled that he’d cared enough to buy the stupid thing, she was treading quite sweatily Saturday morning.
She just wished Michael looked as pleased to have her on it as he’d looked bringing it home the night before.
“You sure you feel okay?” she asked for the second time.
He glanced up from the papers he’d been studying. “Fine, why?”
“I don’t know.” Susan held her side as she trod, wondering why something that was so good for you had to feel so bad. “You’ve been awfully quiet.”
“We’ve only been up for half an hour.” Head bent, he returned to the business in front of him.
She tried to catch his eye the next time he glanced up. He managed not to notice.
“My folks invited us to their place tomorrow.” His words came out of nowhere.
Susan’s heart gave a little jolt—even more than it was already jolting. She’d always adored Michael’s parents. But she hadn’t known he’d told them—
“There’s a family reunion planned, a picnic.”
A Fourth of July picnic. And she’d been planning to stay home and get caught up on laundry, reading, lying by the pool—anything that would keep her close in case Michael had some time to spend with her.
“Are you asking me to go?” she finally murmured when he said nothing else.
Arms crossed at his chest, he sat back in his chair. “They don’t know about you.”
There was no reason to feel disappointed. After all, she’d assumed as much. “About the babies, you mean.”
“About any pregnancy at all.”
Susan nodded. She understood. “So you’re going alone.” And she was on her own for the holiday. No big deal. She had that laundry and reading and...
Coming around to the front of the desk, Michael leaned back against it, close enough for her to touch. “I don’t know what to tell them, Sus.”
“You don’t have to tell them anything,” she panted. “I’m not pinning these babies on you.”
“They know we still see each other....”
“What if I’d had artificial insemination?” One foot in front of the other. Nothing more than that required. Just one foot at a time. Easy. “Insemination was always one way to meet my goal.” Not that she’d have done it. She’d need to know far more about the father of her child than the reports prepared by a clinic.
“Those babies...” He swallowed, looked down at her bulging stomach covered by the cotton T-shirt and shorts she was sweating in. “They’re my parents’ grandchildren, Susan. My parents are their grandparents. They have a right to know each other.”
She hadn’t dared hope that could ever be. At least, she’d tried not to.
“They have as much right as your father has to know them,” he said, his chin jutting almost defensively.
“Is that what you want?” she asked him. Didn’t he know that all he had to do was say so?
Michael stood up, strode to the window, lifted it to let in a fresh Cincinnati breeze. “I don’t think it matters what I want or don’t want in this situation,” he said. He’d moved to the far wall, straightening a picture. Susan was getting dizzy—keeping up with him, treading and breathing, all at once.
&nbs
p; They were right back to square one. And she wasn’t sure how much more energy she had. “Of course what you want matters,” she told him. She couldn’t seem to come up with another way to tell him that she wasn’t going to be responsible for ruining his life. That he was under no obligation, that there was no reason for him to give up what he was to become something he was not.
“Not in this case.” He sat back down beside her. “The children are people, Susan, with rights and freedoms of their own. My parents, too. What right do you or I have to keep them apart?”
She frowned. She hadn’t thought of it like that. Hadn’t thought her choice to become a mother would have such far-reaching effects on so many people. “I just—”
“Sure,” he interrupted, his brow furrowed. “We can keep them apart easily enough in the beginning. But what about later?” He turned and locked gazes with her. “What happens when the children find out about me and look up my family? I’ll tell you what. They’ll all have lost years of a relationship that they’ll never be able to regain. Can you do that to them? To any of them?”
She couldn’t even think about doing it. But she couldn’t not do it, either, if that was what Michael needed. “You’ve given this a lot of thought.”
“Haven’t you?” He looked surprised.
“I really believed that my decision to have a baby was a very personal one,” she said, studying a spot on her off-white carpet. She’d never felt less intelligent in her life. “And that as long as I was willing, ready and able to bear the total responsibility on my own, I was doing no one any harm.” She turned off the treadmill and came to a stop.
“I wish it was that easy.”
“Yeah,” she said, sharing a sad smile with him. “Me, too.” And then, softly, “I’m sorry, Michael. I never meant...”
“Shhh.” He placed a finger on her lips. “I know.”
She cradled her stomach, loving the babies too much to feel that having them was wrong. And yet...
“So what are we going to tell my parents?”
As much as she wanted to go home with Michael, to be welcomed into that fold, she knew she couldn’t. “We don’t have to tell them anything yet, do we?” she asked. “At least until the babies are born.”
She had to give Michael all the time she could, all the freedom she could, to determine for himself what part he’d play in their lives.
“My mother and sisters would have a shower for you.”
She would have loved every minute of it, too. “I’ll have just as much fun picking everything out on my own,” she said instead.
“But they’d love to do that, and more. To share in the anticipation of the coming babies. My mom would start sewing immediately. And bragging.”
“Michael.” She stepped closer to him, running her fingers through his hair. “You aren’t responsible for everyone’s happiness, you know,” she said. “Yes, they’d probably like knowing right now, but it’s not going to kill them if they don’t. You need to think of yourself.”
“Seems to me that’s all I’ve been doing since this whole thing began. Probably before that, too.”
“No more than anyone else,” she told him adamantly, “and less than most.”
He said nothing, just walked with her as she headed toward a shower. “You’ve spent your entire career listening to your customers, making sure you give them only what they need, not what it would most benefit you to sell them. They come away from transactions with you feeling cared for, not used.”
“That’s just—”
“And what about Bobbie Jayne?” she interrupted. “Every time that child needs a bandage, you’re there, not only paying for it, but making sure it’s properly applied.”
He propped his shoulder against the door of the bathroom. “She doesn’t ask for much.”
“That’s not the point.” She pushed off her tennis shoes and socks. “The point is, you care, and you help, every single time she calls. And what about Melanie Dryson?”
“What about her?” A sexy half grin lingered on his face as he watched her strip down, piece by sweaty piece.
“You stuck your nose out more than once to see that she got the promotions and the credit she deserved.”
Completely naked, Susan stepped into the shower, pulling the curtain behind her.
The water, once it warmed, felt wonderful on her skin, soothing muscles that were already tired so early in the day.
“How ’bout I give you something you deserve, stripping like that so delicately right in front of me?”
Opening her eyes, Susan saw Michael standing in the shower with her, utterly gorgeous in his masculine perfection. Utterly naked. And wanting her.
“How ’bout it?” she asked him.
He proceeded to do that very well. And if there was a hint of desperation in their lovemaking these days, she tried very hard not to notice.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
“CAN I ASK YOU something?” Susan asked later, watching as he brushed his wet hair into some semblance of order.
“Of course.”
“These past three years, before I got pregnant, were you happy?”
He waited so long to answer her stomach tensed.
“I was content, sure.”
Content. Not happy. Why wasn’t she surprised?
As she toasted bagels and Michael mixed up some orange juice, Susan wondered if he’d ever been happy. If he even knew what the word meant. If, maybe, the problem wasn’t about goals and dreams and being who you were, but about never reaching quite far enough: Never asking for it all. And never relaxing enough to even know if he had it.
NEEDING TO PUT some distance between her and Michael, Susan went shopping right after breakfast. Baby clothes and toys, bottles and diapers were all happy things. And she got really, really happy. So happy that there was barely room for her in the Infiniti when she finally called it quits midafternoon. She had enough stuff for three baby showers. And she even had mints and chips and probably some peanuts to go with the loot. She’d have herself a party.
Another strange, and very old, car was blocking her drive when she arrived home. Heart plunging, she groaned. “Ah, Seth.” If he was blasted this early in the day, she was taking him straight to detox.
“Close your ears, little ones,” she instructed firmly as she headed empty-handed up the walk. The baby shower was going to have to wait.
On the alert, she let herself in, listening carefully to gauge how bad things were.
Shock held her immobile two steps inside the door. That wasn’t Seth’s voice.
“You’re such a nice man.” The voice was definitely feminine. And the woman just a tad too fond of Michael, in Susan’s opinion.
And since the house was Susan’s, hers was the opinion that counted. Set on charging the living room like a pit bull, she stopped suddenly, struck by a thought that left her weak and shaking.
Michael mattered that much to her. The idea of him with another woman was enough to make her insane.
She was acting as if he still belonged to her. As if he were her husband—and the father of her children. She could no longer hide from the truth. She was not only hopelessly, illogically, passionately in love with him, she truly didn’t think she could live without him. For real. Until that moment, she’d never actually faced the fact that she might have to try.
Which meant she had tried to trap him.
As her thoughts fell over themselves, they became increasingly dangerous. If she felt these things, wasn’t it possible, probable even, that Michael felt them, too? From her? That all the while her mouth had been telling him he was free to go, her eyes and heart were telling him something completely different?
Oh, God. Her fingers to her lips, she searched for a way to escape.
“Susan? Is that you?” Michael was calling her.
She made a dash for the hall, but ran into Michael as he came out of the living room. “There’s someone here to see you,” he said. With one glance at her face he stopped.
>
“You okay?”
Nodding her head jerkily, Susan tried to think, to behave normally. “Just have to go to the bathroom.” She blurted the only thing that came to mind. “You know how it is with pregnant women.”
Babbling like an idiot, she made a dash for their bedroom, ran into the adjoining bath and locked the door.
For want of something better to do, she splashed water on her face—and then repaired her makeup.
“I can think about this later,” she told her children who were protesting the butterflies that were sharing their space. “I’ll get rid of whoever’s come to see me, if she really did come to see me, and then claim I need a nap.”
With a plan, she felt a little better, but stopped again, just as she was about to open the bathroom door.
“I really do need a nap,” she said to her stomach. “I wouldn’t lie to Michael, not ever.”
Except she had. She’d been lying all along.
MICHAEL WATCHED Susan closely as she joined them in the living room. Relieved to see that her color was back, he smiled at her. She’d been sickly white when she’d first come in from shopping.
Their guest jumped up from the couch as Susan approached. “Hi,” she said, holding out her hand. “I’m Laura Sinclair.”
Michael almost felt sorry for the woman, standing up to Susan’s intimidating once-over—followed by her clear lack of recognition.
“What can I do for you, Ms. Sinclair?”
“You’ve never heard of me.” Michael’s sympathy for their pretty blond guest grew. Her glance darted toward the door.
“Laura’s the woman Seth told you about,” he said quickly, before the other woman decided to run.
“You’re Seth’s woman?” Susan asked, her eyes wide as they took in Laura’s long blond hair, faded blue jeans, the old but neatly ironed blouse that accented her tiny waist. “He’s got better taste than I realized.” Susan grinned and Michael, standing with his hands in the pockets of his shorts, relaxed just a little.
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