Because he liked what he would find, he answered himself. From an erotic cloud of hair to her generous breasts, he loved her body. And it wasn’t just that. Her kisses were shy, not provocative. Sweet, as if they meant something beyond the moment. The sounds Lynn made he found especially endearing. It was as if she couldn’t help herself. He liked that: knowing she was shy, and probably blushed the next day at the memory of herself sobbing with pleasure or whimpering at the touch of his hand, but that he moved her beyond inhibitions.
One of the men asked him something about the Trailblazers, Portland’s pro basketball team, and Adam answered, but as briefly as possible. Impatience barely in check, he waited for Lynn to finish her cheesecake.
As she swallowed the last bite, he tossed some bills onto the table and said abruptly, “We need to get home. Grandma is baby-sitting, you know, and it’s after her bedtime.”
A wide, devilish smile spread across his buddy Ron’s face. “Uh-huh. Sure. It’s Grandma’s bedtime you’re worrying about.”
“Shut up,” Adam said amiably. He took Lynn’s hand and tugged her to her feet. “We’re newlyweds, aren’t we? We’re entitled.”
They escaped only after a couple more minutes of razzing. In the lobby, Lynn shrugged into her coat when he held it for her. Neither talking, they went out into Portland’s usual chilly, damp night.
“Are you concerned about Angela baby-sitting?” she asked, as he unlocked the passenger car door for her.
He pulled her to him for a quick, hard kiss. “Nope. I got to imagining how much I was going to enjoy unzipping your dress.”
“Oh.” He could hear her blush, if such a thing were possible.
On the drive home, Lynn agreed that she liked his friends, liked their wives, had indeed made plans to take Rose and Shelly to the art fair at the elementary school where Jillian served as PTA president. Yes, she thought she could be friends with Jillian in particular; did Adam know that she’d written a children’s book and was seeking a publisher?
Despite her willingness to answer direct questions, Lynn was rather quiet. It seemed to Adam that her voice was constrained. Maybe she was tired, he decided. Could be she’d been nervous about meeting his friends and was relieved it was over. Or she was anxious about leaving the girls with Angela. There were any number of reasons she might be a little distracted.
But on top of his earlier brooding, it bothered him that she wasn’t as open as usual, that she seemed to be doing some brooding of her own.
If it looks too good to be true… The wail of a distant siren seemed to whisper just to him.
He had too many moments like this, when he felt as if he were balancing a dozen wineglasses on his nose like the Chinese acrobats he’d taken Rose to see last fall. Any misstep and he’d see them teeter, arc in slow motion through the air, shatter on the floor. Maybe it was losing Jennifer the way he had. He knew how quickly the rug could be yanked out from under you.
Especially when the only promises given were “I’ll try my best,” and a more formal “I do.”
At home her smile seemed forced, too, when Angela jabbered about the cute things Shelly said and how smart she was and wasn’t it nice that the girls loved each other like sisters?
“Thanks for baby-sitting, Mom.” Adam kissed her cheek and managed to get her heading toward the front door. He walked her out to her car, thanked her ten more times, and stood with hands in pockets watching until the brake lights winked once and her BMW disappeared into the trees. Asking her to baby-sit had been Lynn’s idea; he had always waited in vain for her to volunteer. She’d agreed with such alacrity, he guessed she had wanted to be asked. Apparently he and she were two of a kind. Thanks to Lynn, his relationship with Angela and Rob was the best it had ever been.
More surprisingly, he’d realized recently that he was seeing more of his own parents, too. Just today, his mother had called to chat. She’d asked a few probing questions about his marriage, which made Adam wonder if Lynn hadn’t been right after all. His mother might care more than he’d suspected. These past weeks, they’d come to dinner several times and had Lynn, Adam and the girls over to their place. Hell, his mother had even given Shelly and Rose a tour of her studio! Adam was coming to the unwelcome conclusion that he had shut his parents out, not the other way around. He was lucky that Lynn was around to mend fences he’d evidently damaged in his clumsiness.
Lynn. He locked the front door behind him, anticipation quickening in him. He could take his wife to bed. At last. There, at least, they were close, their moods invariably in sync. She wanted him, he had no doubt about that much.
She’d left lights on downstairs but had apparently already gone up. Disquiet touched him. Was something wrong? Had somebody said something tonight that upset her? Damn it, why wasn’t she talking to him?
Irritably he asked himself why he was jumping to conclusions. Maybe she’d slipped upstairs to get ready for him. He might find her lounging in a sexy pose on the bed. He just hoped she hadn’t taken the dress off. He wanted to save that pleasure for himself.
Flipping off lights as he went, Adam paused in the upstairs hall, as he knew Lynn would have done a few minutes before, to step into the girls’ bedroom and assure himself they were both safely tucked into bed, healthy, their sleep untroubled. As he stood beside the bed, Rose’s eyes opened and she gazed sleepily up at him.
“Daddy,” she whispered.
He bent down, cupped her face and kissed her forehead. “Mommy and I are home. You sleep tight, sweetheart.”
“’kay, Daddy,” she murmured even as her heavy lids sank closed. After a moment of stillness, a small snore escaped her parted lips and she rolled away, nestling closer to Shelly.
Adam’s smile died when he reached his bedroom and saw Lynn. Her back was to him. She’d already shinnied out of her panty hose, unclipped her earrings and let down her hair. As he watched, she massaged her scalp, then ran her fingers through the curls and shook them out. At last, she groped behind her neck for the zipper on her silk dress.
He stepped silently behind her and eased the zipper down. She started, then bowed her head to let him work. As the dress parted, he brushed his lips along her nape. The skin was so soft here. With his fingertips Adam traced her spine, ignoring the catch of her bra, slipping inside her panties. She moaned.
“Are you tired?” he asked. “You didn’t wait for me.”
“I am tired,” Lynn admitted.
“If you want to go right to sleep…” Hoping like hell she’d say no, Adam nuzzled the curve between neck and shoulder.
She sucked in a breath. “I thought I would.” Her voice was throaty, not much above a whisper.
Disappointment smacked him in the face, fear in the gut. She might just be tired. But what if it was more?
He straightened away from her. With determined civility, Adam said, “Then you’d better get right to bed. Would you rather I read downstairs for a while?”
“No.” Lynn turned suddenly and wrapped her arms around his neck. “No, don’t go. I’m not that tired.”
“If you want to sleep, it might be best…” The translation, he thought grimly, was, I need to put some distance between us if I can’t have you.
Her eyes were huge and dark, and he felt tension quivering through her. “You’ve changed my mind. If…if you’re still in the mood.”
The disappointment evaporated like a cold sweat; the fear lingered. She tugged his head down to hers with a hint of desperation. Her mouth was needy, her fingers on his tie and shirt buttons clumsy. She seemed suddenly frantic for him.
He shrugged out of his shirt as she swept it from his shoulders. Her dress pooled at her feet. As he flicked the catch of her bra, she was already unbuckling his belt and unzipping his fly, taking him in her hands. She made mewling sounds as he reached inside her panties and found her hot and damp.
“Yes. Right now,” she whispered, an ache in her voice. “I want you.”
He stripped the panties from her as he lai
d her on the bed. The ceiling light was still on. There seemed nothing romantic about what they were doing right now, but he was past caring or remembering the slow seduction he’d planned.
Her urgency had communicated itself to him. He didn’t even get his pants off before she tugged him down. Thrusting inside her, he drank in her cries with his mouth. She whimpered when normally she would have sighed softly. Clutching desperately at his back and shoulders, her nails bit into his flesh. When his mouth left hers, she pleaded with him.
“Harder. Faster. Oh, yes. Now! Oh, please, now!”
Ripples traveled through her belly and she cried his name. “Adam!”
Groaning, teeth gritted, he finished with a triumphant shout, emptying himself inside her. He collapsed on top of her, his mind eddying in a dark whirlpool. What in hell had happened here? Why had she been too tired one second, then too impatient to wait for him to kick off his trousers the next?
He liked being wanted. He didn’t like the fact that she had seemed to need the physical release more than the intimacy of their lovemaking.
He must be crushing her, he realized. It seemed a superhuman effort to roll to one side, but he managed. When he tried to take Lynn with him, keep her wrapped in his arms, she stiffened.
“I’m cold,” she said in a small voice. “I think I’ll take a shower. If you don’t mind.”
That brought his eyes open. “Why would I mind?”
“I’ll be back to bed in a few minutes.” She was definitely beating a retreat. She slipped off the bed and scooped up her dress, holding it in front of her as if to hide her nakedness. A second later the bathroom door shut and he heard the shower start.
He usually felt good in the aftermath of sex. This time he felt…obscene. Sprawled on his back on the bed, ankles cuffed by his trousers.
Swearing, Adam sat up and finished undressing. He hung up his slacks and tie, draped the shirt over a chair, and pulled on his pajama bottoms. He brushed his teeth and splashed water on his face at one of the two sinks outside the bathroom. Leaving on the lamp at Lynn’s side of the bed, he switched off the overhead light and climbed into bed.
Her shower wasn’t a quickie. It ran and ran, as if she felt the need to scrub every inch of her body, or simply to let the hot water unknot the tension he’d felt. Guessing that she’d prefer it, Adam pretended to be asleep when she finally, quietly, came out. Water ran briefly in the sink as she too brushed her teeth. A moment later the mattress gave as she sat. The lamp went out, and she slipped in on her side of the bed, seemingly careful not to touch him.
Wide-awake, Adam wondered how Lynn really felt about him. She had entered willingly into their bargain, but he knew damn well that was for the sake of the girls. When he screwed her tonight—there was no other way to put it—did she pretend he was someone else? When she’d pulled his mouth down to his, changing her mind with such odd abruptness, did she hunger for the physical connection without it mattering who held her?
Did she think about him during the day, or in the night when they were separated? Had her feelings for him grown, or were they still two strangers who happened to share a bed?
Adam hadn’t expected to feel so insecure. Not daring to move, he stared into the darkness and knew that something was missing for him in this marriage. He didn’t like discovering that he wanted her to love him. She said, “I want you,” and it wasn’t good enough. The words and everything that went with them counted after all.
What kind of jerk did that make him, considering he didn’t, couldn’t, return her love?
Did she wonder if he closed his eyes and imagined he was making love to Jennifer? The idea unexpectedly jolted him. Was that what was wrong?
The possibility was particularly ironic considering his own guilt because he so seldom did think about Jennifer anymore. She was slipping away from him, Lynn’s vivid presence routing the ghost. He had trouble seeing Jenny’s face anymore, hearing her laugh; she no longer visited his dreams. He sure as hell didn’t imagine her when he was making love to Lynn.
That guilt crushed him suddenly in its grip. He’d lied to himself, he thought in despair. He’d never intended to hold Jennifer close to his heart once he had remarried. His promises on their wedding day, the vows he’d sworn to God beside her deathbed, all meant nothing. Out of sight, out of mind.
Muscles rigid, Adam wasn’t sure he could keep lying here in this bed next to his too-still wife. He needed to be away from her. Able to pace. Bang his head against a wall. He needed to find Jennifer again, if she was here at all.
Or maybe, just maybe, he needed to find a way to say goodbye. Lynn deserved better than their farce of a marriage. Could he give it to this shy, gentle woman with guts, brains and a heart?
Before he lost her?
Her breathing was regular, soft. His gaze sought the light numbers on the clock. He’d been lying here for twenty minutes now. She must be asleep.
Making slow movements only, he edged his legs over the side of the bed and sat up, then, careful not to tug at the covers, stood. He kept a bathrobe on a hook inside the bathroom door. He’d earlier turned down the thermostat, so he shrugged into the bathrobe. Lynn hadn’t moved. She had to be asleep. She wouldn’t even notice he was gone.
He didn’t turn on a light until he reached his home office downstairs. There, Adam ignored the computer and fax machine. It was the large leather album he reached for, the one he kept on a low shelf so Rose could look at photos of her mother whenever she chose.
He sat in the large leather armchair and opened the album in his lap. On the first page were pictures taken while they were engaged. God, she looked young, was his first thought. Not so different from Shelly. A girl. She sparkled, Jenny did, even in a photograph. He traced the lines of her pixie face, alight with laughter, and remembered the first time they met, when she’d chattered so fast he didn’t know half of what she said. She was beautiful, but in a different way with her eyes slanted like a cat’s, her high cheekbones and pointy chin. She’d worn her brown hair short, increasing the elfin effect. Next to her, he had always felt stolid, slow moving. Even his thoughts couldn’t jump from idea to idea with the lightning speed of hers. He had fallen in love with Jenny McCloskey immediately, and loved her until the day she died. Loved her even afterward, when he had been left to raise their daughter alone.
Slowly he turned the pages and watched her mature from that laughing girl to a stylish, sophisticated woman who never quite lost the mischief in her eyes. In the last photos, Jenny was pregnant, her face slightly rounder, her stomach ripe with their child. Not Rose, but Shelly.
Ah, Jenny, Adam thought, are you really gone? Is it time to say goodbye?
“You still miss her.”
His head shot up so fast he bit his tongue. Damn. Lynn had sneaked up on him. She stood in the doorway, looking small and vulnerable in the thick chenille robe that had been a Christmas gift from her mother. Her eyes were fixed not on him, but on the open album.
Adam resisted the temptation to close it. He swallowed. “No. Most of the time, I don’t think about her.” Because of you. But he didn’t say that. It sounded too much like an accusation.
“May I see?”
Wordlessly he turned the photo album and held it out. Lynn took it from him and gazed down at his first wife, pregnant with the child she had raised as her own.
With shock he saw her eyes brim with tears. She touched the photo, too. “She—your Jennifer—would have adored Shelly.”
Adam opened his mouth to say and Rose, but he couldn’t. Jenny had been so quick, so impatient, he thought Rose might have driven her crazy.
Lynn swiped at her tears with the back of her hand. Her voice sounded just a little hoarse. “Why tonight?”
“What?”
Now she did look at him, her gaze bravely holding his. “Why did you come down to look at her pictures tonight?”
God. He wanted to evade, but he could see that she wouldn’t let him.
“I’m forgetting
her. I swore I wouldn’t do that.”
“She’s dead.”
Anger flashed through him. “Do you think I don’t know that?”
Her eyes were too clear, too all-seeing. “Sometimes, I’m not sure.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“She’s been dead for almost four years. Shelly’s lifetime. And you’re still grieving as though it was only four months ago.”
“Would you want to be forgotten that quickly?”
Lynn answered without hesitation. “I would not want to linger here, if some wisp of my presence crippled the people I’d loved.”
He got to his feet, dumping the photo album, not looking at where it lay sprawled on the hardwood floor. “Crippled? Rose didn’t know her to mourn. And look at me. I’ve remarried, I make love to my wife. Hell, I was so damned eager tonight, I didn’t get my pants off! How is that crippled?”
Unblinking, she stared at him for the longest time. Anxiety clenched his stomach and knotted his hands at his side.
Whatever he expected, it wasn’t what came.
“I love you,” she said quietly.
He expelled all the air in his lungs as if a fist had driven it out.
“You love me,” he said stupidly.
She loved him, Adam exulted. Her strange mood tonight meant nothing.
“Do you love me?” she asked, equally quietly.
He hadn’t caught his breath yet. Not a single word presented itself. She loves me, tangled in his mind with one last seeking cry, Jenny.
Jenny was gone. Lynn was here, and his heart swelled with the startling awareness that he wouldn’t want it any other way.
Whose Baby? Page 21