“I know.” Her smile faded. “Jeff, neither of us wants this. The timing is bad, it’s confusing. There are probably a hundred reasons to pretend it never happened, but that’s not what I want.”
“What do you want?”
She settled her head on his shoulder and closed her eyes. “To play it by ear. To enjoy my time with you without getting too personally involved or getting hurt.”
Until it’s time for me to leave.
She didn’t say those last words, but he heard the message and knew she was correct. They could pretend for now. Pretend that they were allowed to be lovers and act like other people. But they both knew the truth. Eventually she would walk away from him because he could never give her what she needed and deserved. And he would let her go because to keep her in his world meant being distracted. One mistake on an assignment could easily be the end of him and the client.
“I need to keep my own room,” she said. “So Maggie doesn’t get confused. I don’t want her to know about this. I thought I’d plan on heading back there before she wakes up.”
She was talking about spending her nights with him. Of them being together in the same bed for hours at a time. Not just making love, but holding and touching and sleeping together. Longing filled him. A need to inhale the scent of her and be with her until the memories were so strong that he could never forget.
“So what do you think?” she asked. She opened her eyes and looked at him. “You haven’t said what you want.”
He knew this was all pretend, but it was more than he had ever had, so it was enough. “I want to make you happy,” he said. “I want to do whatever you would like.”
She grinned. “Really?”
He turned her onto her back and slid one thigh between hers. “Absolutely anything.”
“How wonderful,” she murmured. “I’ll give you a list of requests tonight.”
“Why don’t we start right now?”
* * *
“Mommy, I found one!” Maggie squealed with delight, then held up a brightly colored yellow plastic egg. “Uncle Jeff, look!”
“How many is that?” he asked.
Maggie glanced into her basket. “Four,” she said with a reverence generally used by chronic shoppers at a twice-yearly sale.
Ashley smiled at her daughter and fought against an unexplained urge to cry. Her eyes began to burn and her throat tightened. She blinked rapidly until her wayward feelings were under control.
Her weakened emotional state was easy to explain, she thought as she sat next to Jeff on the rear step of his house. Ever since she was twelve years old, she’d been fighting to keep her world together. First she’d had to deal with her sister’s death and the subsequent loss of her mother. Then she’d struggled to keep afloat in the foster home system. She’d managed to graduate from high school and start college, only to find herself in love with a charming loser who had no business being a husband let alone a father. Then she’d been a single mother, barely able to keep her world together.
For the past thirteen years, life had been one challenge after another. For the first time since the trouble all started, Ashley had a chance to relax and just breathe. Thanks to her job as Jeff’s housekeeper and the part-time accounting work she did, she actually had a savings account. She was current in her studies, every day her graduation from college was that much closer, Maggie was happy and healthy and they had a very impressive roof over their heads.
All because of Jeff.
Ashley glanced at him out of the corner of her eye. He’d dressed for church in a beautiful navy suit, but she happened to know that shortly after six that morning, he’d been outside in jeans and a sweatshirt, hiding Easter eggs. He’d concealed them just enough that Maggie wouldn’t think the Easter bunny had gone soft on her, yet she was finding every single one of the plastic eggs.
Last night Jeff had helped Ashley prepare the eggs, filling the hollow plastic with chocolates, stickers and gaudy Day-Glo rings. He was growing on her; he was growing on them both.
Ashley recognized the danger signs. It wasn’t just that Jeff made love to her every night with an attention to detail that left her breathless. Somehow the three of them had created rituals. Jeff and Maggie went grocery shopping twice a week. Fridays were movie-and-popcorn nights, complete with a Disney flick and plenty of cuddling on the sofa. Jeff had watched Maggie two evenings before Ashley’s last set of midterms.
He always asked about both their days, listening intently as if the information were essential to world peace. Or maybe it was just essential to his own well-being. He talked about work, explaining he had a business trip to the Mediterranean late the following month, and kept her updated on the performance of the new recruits.
“Six!” Maggie hollered as she held up another plastic egg.
Jeff stood. “Well done, young lady. Most impressive. As I believe the quota for each child is six eggs per Easter bunny visit, you’ve found them all.”
“Really?” Maggie’s blue eyes glowed with pride. “Mommy, I found them all!”
“You are a very clever little girl,” Ashley said, holding out her arms to her daughter.
Maggie ran to her for a hug, then turned to Jeff and held up her free arm. The tall, dangerous man bent low and scooped the child into his arms. Ashley’s heart tightened in her chest. Both she and her daughter had it bad. Jeff no longer scared them, if he’d ever scared Maggie. He was kind and gentle and he paid attention. How was she supposed to resist him?
