Another Man's Child. Tara Quinn Taylor
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“but we could talk about it over dinner.”
The woman’s smile promised more than just dinner, and his body surged to life. Tell her no, jackass. A few minutes to pick her brain is all you’re after.
He looked at his watch, the Rolex Lisa had given him when he was still the man of her dreams. “We could meet back here in the lobby at six.”
“I’ll be here.”
Her bright red lips promised to make the evening one he’d remember. With one last look up and down his suited frame, she left the room.
He tried his damnedest not to carry the vision of her lush breasts and womanly hips, encased so seductively in that black-and-red business suit, with him as he headed to the last session of the day. He was a married man. Very much in love with his wife.
Except that every time he thought of Lisa, he saw again the disappointment, the sadness he’d brought to her eyes—to her life. He’d always been a doer, a problem-solver, but there wasn’t one damn thing he could do about that look in Lisa’s eyes.
At five o’clock he was back in his room to shower and change from his suit to slacks and a sport coat, trading his staid navy tie for one a little more colorful. He couldn’t quite meet his reflected gaze as he took one quick look in the mirror, but he refused to feel guilty. He was going to a business dinner. That was all.
He also avoided the picture of Lisa he’d set out on his nightstand when he’d checked in that afternoon. And he didn’t call her as he’d promised when he’d kissed her goodbye in their garage that morning, either.
He’d come to the convention, not only to deliver his paper on multiple diversification, but to garner enough space from his lovely unhappy wife to consider the consequences of his inability to give her what she wanted most in the world. He’d sacrifice his life to save his marriage. But there were some things he just couldn’t change.
The door of his hotel room slammed behind him as if sealing his fate, even while he knew that there was no earthly pleasure worth selling his soul for. But as he walked down the hall, his mind flashed back to the way Julie had looked at him, the way Lisa hadn’t looked at him since that diagnosis eighteen months ago. These days all he saw in her eyes was that damn sadness and disappointment. He pushed the button for the elevator.
Julie was waiting for him as he stepped off the elevator, and her smile was as bright as the sequined halter dress she was wearing. Her eyes, dancing with pleasure, made another slow seductive tour of his body.
“Do I pass?” he asked, smiling as he took her arm to lead her to the glass-sided elevator that would whisk them to the top floor restaurant.
She rubbed her elbow against his side. “More than ever.”
One soft breast brushed against him, and his body throbbed with sudden desire. She wasn’t looking at him with the embers of a dying happiness in her eyes. He could give her exactly what she wanted without even trying.
Julie smiled politely as the maître d’ led them to an intimate table for two alongside a wall of windows in the glass-enclosed revolving restaurant. Marcus felt carefree, full of anticipation, virile again, as he escorted her, knowing she was turning the heads of the other patrons. He’d always felt like that with Lisa, too, back when they spent enough time together to accommodate dining out.
“I have to admit, I’m surprised you agreed to have dinner with me,” Julie said an hour and a half later. They’d finished the lobster he’d ordered, their conversation almost entirely business and even more stimulating than he’d expected, and had moved into the lounge area of the restaurant. His body was humming with the wine he’d consumed.
“You’re a very beautiful woman. I find it hard to believe you’d ever question a man’s desire to be with you.” For just a moment his gaze caressed her. Down over her gleaming bare shoulders, her lush breasts to her slim waist, and back up to a mouth made for kissing.
“The last time we met, you didn’t seem the least bit interested.”
The last time. That conference in New York two years before. He and Lisa hadn’t known then. “Times change.” Marcus stared at the liquor he was swirling in his glass before setting it back on the table decisively. “You want to dance?” he asked abruptly.
“Yes.” If she minded his brusque tone, she certainly didn’t let it show as she took his hand. Along with desire, Marcus felt a surge of sympathy for her, this woman so cloaked in the aggression necessary to take her success from a man’s world that she scared off the suitors she also craved.
The band was playing a romantic ballad, the perfect background for seduction. Marcus led Julie to a shadowy corner of the half-empty dance floor and brought her into his arms. Her skin was like satin as his hands came to rest on her bare back, her breasts soft mounds against his chest, tempting him. The sequins on her dress glittered under the muted lights. One dance. Just one dance.
They moved naturally together, swaying skillfully to the music. Marcus tried not to notice when her nipples hardened against him, or to see the smoky knowing look in her eyes. He’d have to stop if he acknowledged them. He wasn’t the type of man who could cross that line.
Julie’s lips parted, inviting his kiss. He pulled her closer, instead, even though he knew she could feel his arousal. She moaned, pressing her pelvis against the hard resistance of his, burying her face against his neck. Her passion was so honest it threatened his control.
She was his for the taking. He could lose himself in her, bring her the satisfaction she so obviously hoped for. He didn’t have a single doubt he could give her what she desired. That alone was the biggest temptation.
But still a forbidden one.
He’d known it was going to come to this. Julie had made no secret of the fact that she wanted him. So why had he accepted her invitation to dinner? Why had he asked her to dance? Why was he torturing himself?
He adjusted her body against him, trying to mold her softness so that she fit him better, to find that feeling of protectiveness that would come when she settled her head on his shoulder. He craved that feeling. Craved that surety that he could make everything right for her. That he could take care of her.
Marcus adjusted the woman in his arms again, but to no avail. She just didn’t fit. She wasn’t ever going to fit.
She wasn’t Lisa.
And no matter how badly he wanted the release, he couldn’t take it at Lisa’s expense. He’d promised her his loyalty, and that, at least, was something he could still give her.
With a feeling of inevitability, he pulled back from the beautiful woman in his arms. He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t take the pleasure she was offering. He loved Lisa too damn much.
“HEY, DOC, HOW’S IT GOING?” Beth Montague stopped outside Lisa Cartwright’s office door in the medical complex connected to Thornton Memorial Hospital.
Lisa looked up from her desk and met her friend’s searching gaze with a shrug.
Coming in and closing the door behind her, Beth planted one plump hip on the corner of Lisa’s desk. “The kitten didn’t help, huh?”
Lisa shook her head. “No more than the cruise, the summer home at the beach and the season’s tickets to the theater.” Instead of filling up empty holes, the cat’s presence had pointed out what bottomless pits those holes had become. She and Marcus had both tried so hard to make the cat a reason to come home that they’d smothered it with attention. “The poor thing ran from us every time we walked in the door,” she said, shaking her head again.
“Cats are that way sometimes,” Beth replied. “Remember I told you about Corky, the cat we had when I was growing up? He’d only come out from behind the furniture at night. I used to wait up for him sometimes, and after he got used to me sitting there in the dark, he would crawl up into my lap and purr so loud I was afraid it would wake up my little brothers