The Secret Son Read online

  Their condo was the envy of everyone who visited, the brown leather couch he was sitting on the best that money could buy. There was a park right outside their door where he and Kevin could play catch every evening.

  Kevin. The three-year-old scrap who’d completely changed his life. The boy was the light of Jefferson’s days and nights, the joy in his heart. Legs spread, elbows on his knees with his glass clasped in both hands, Jefferson hung his head. Kevin. His son, who made his life endurable—more than endurable.

  And yet, while he was the best father to Kevin he knew how to be, he hadn’t fathered him.

  Someday the boy was going to know that. And when he did, he’d want to meet Jack Shaw—a man who’d still be young enough to tackle him when Kevin was on the high-school football team. Jefferson would be well into his seventies by then.

  Kevin, his greatest blessing—and a constant reminder of his failure as a man. Not only could he not arouse his wife’s passion, he wasn’t capable of giving her babies to love, either.

  Erica had gotten both from another man.

  Swallowing another sip of the smoothest whiskey it was possible to buy, Jefferson wondered where his life had gone so wrong. Which turn had put him on this road to hell. That long-ago evening, after hours in his senatorial offices, when he’d talked Erica into marrying him?

  Or had it been before that? When he’d first fallen in love with the daughter of one of his most trusted business associates?

  He finished off the shot, reached for the open bottle on the table in front of him, refilled his glass and drank it in one gulp. The next shot he took a little more slowly, giving the burn that followed the trail of the liquor time to subside.

  He’d made love to his wife that night. She’d come into his arms willingly, caressed him in all the places she knew he was most sensitive. She’d welcomed him inside her, loving him generously. And all out of duty. He couldn’t even pretend there’d been any passion.

  A quick gulp of liquor stung his throat and unaccustomed tears sprang to his eyes. He’d just made love to a very compassionate piece of cardboard. And he’d been so damn desperate for her that he’d shuddered all over her with the strength of his orgasm.

  In the eyes of his country, he was a hero. In the eyes of his young wife, a pathetic old man.

  When had the joy of being allowed to share Erica’s life ceased to be enough? When had it started damaging what once it had blessed?

  Another visit between bottle and glass. Another sip.

  He was afraid to even consider what their relationship was doing to Erica. She loved him. He was in no doubt of that. As a very dear and trusted friend. A protector. A confidant. A father figure. Not as a man.

  And she seemed to torture herself with guilt for that every day of their lives. The greatest irony was that the fault lay with him. He’d approached her when she was at a low point, grieving over lost dreams, lost love and hope, a lost marriage, and he’d let her convince him that she was never going to love again. He was the one with the experience, the greater wisdom, yet he’d allowed himself to be convinced of something he knew wasn’t true. Erica had been too young to write herself off that way.

  But rather than give her the chance to find that out, he’d married her. Ultimately he’d forced her into what would become—what had become—an untenable situation when she finally did discover that there was still passion in her soul.

  So where did that leave them?

  Sitting back on the couch, Jefferson remembered something Pamela had said to him the day before.

  An attorney on his staff, she’d been discussing some ramifications of a particular bill with him. She’d pointed out how he could work things so the bill could slide past his legal team, but he’d kept at her—and the problem—to find a way to word the bill and yet still take the high moral ground.

  When they’d finally succeeded, she’d told him there were very few men like him in Washington. And that it was too bad he was taken.

  Though it might have sounded like flirtation, from Pamela it had been sincere.

  Still, it was something he’d heard many times before.

  What made this time so different was the way Pamela had said the words. As if she was personally very sorry that he was already spoken for.

  She’d made him feel special in a way he hadn’t felt in years. At that moment, he hadn’t been a powerful senator. He hadn’t been rich or famous. He’d simply been a desirable man.

  It was a feeling he’d needed from his wife that night. And Erica had known. It was why she’d tried so hard. And then, when trying alone didn’t work, it was why, in the end, she’d faked her response.

  Jefferson sat a long time, staring off into the darkness, a strong, optimistic man who was losing faith.

  Along with the dignity he’d already lost.

  June 2001

  TWO DAYS BEFORE Kevin’s fourth birthday, excited about the party plans she’d made—all centering on the guest appearance of a friend of Jefferson’s who happened to be first baseman for the Atlanta Braves—Erica breezed right by Jeff’s secretary and went barreling into her husband’s office.

  Only to stand there shocked as Jeff and Legislative Attorney Pamela Woods broke apart. They’d been in each other’s arms.

  Erica just couldn’t figure out why.

  “Erica!” her husband said. “Is something wrong? Is it Kevin?” His immediate concern was reassuring.

  Pamela’s bowed head was not.

  Nor, once she had a second for the thought to sink in, was the idea that Jeff assumed the only reason she’d seek him out was to discuss their son. Of course, that was why she’d gone to his office, she remembered with a pang of guilt.

  That pang was about the only familiar thing at the moment, the only sensation she recognized.

  Certainly the expression on her husband’s face wasn’t one she’d ever seen before. Guilt. Shame. As though he’d been caught with his hand in the till. Jefferson was the most honest, upright man she’d ever met. Which made him a bit of an anachronism in this town of fast talk and even faster moves.

  Erica’s thoughts were coming in slow motion as she stood there. She didn’t speak. She didn’t laugh. Or cry. She didn’t do a single thing.

  His hand hadn’t been in the till. Unless she’d been mistaken, Jeff’s hand had been inside Ms. Woods’s suit jacket. Right at breast level.

  “Erica,” Jeff said, his voice filled with contrition. And perhaps pity. “Say something.”

  No. This wasn’t happening. It couldn’t be happening. No. She shook her head for good measure.

  “I’m sorry,” Jeff said.

  The tone of his voice, the depth of sorrow, cut through the fog surrounding her. He was hurting her. More than she’d ever thought possible.

  Because she wasn’t in love with Jefferson, she was supposed to be protected from ever feeling this kind of pain again.

  “I’d better go.” Pamela’s soft words registered, but Erica couldn’t have acknowledged them if she’d wanted to.

  She didn’t think she wanted to.

  “Jeff?” she cried as soon as she heard the door close behind the attractive older woman.

  He didn’t say anything. Just wrapped those strong, dependable arms around her and held on.

  “I’m so sorry, honey,” he said.

  “Sorry for doing it? Or sorry I found out?” she asked, the words muffled against his shirt.

  “I’m sorry I hurt you.” He had a third choice. “Especially like this.”

  Yeah, she was pretty damn sorry, too.

  But she deserved it. After what she’d done to Jeff almost five years before, she had no right to be upset at finding her husband in the arms of another woman. Hell, she and Jack had been in a hotel room. Eventually in bed. Jeff had just been standing fully clothed in his office…

  “It’s not the first time, is it?” she whispered.

  “No.”

  “Have you slept with her?”

  “Not ye
t.”

  Not yet. As though he planned to.

  That knife stabbed so sharply she couldn’t breathe. For a second there, the world spun. She couldn’t go on. Couldn’t move forward. Or away. She couldn’t go through this again.

  Jefferson was her best friend. He loved her. Desperately.

  And, in her way, she loved him, too. But not in the same way…

  She caught her breath. And then lost it again on a painful hiccup that, had she been some other woman, might have turned into a sob. For Erica, it settled into a suffocating tightness inside her. Hidden. Scary.

  Because she didn’t know what else to do, she stood there and let him hold her, let him rub her rigid back.

  “How long?” She finally mustered the question, though its significance was lost on her.

  “A while.”

  Eventually Erica pulled away and walked over to the leather couch in Jeff’s office. She’d fallen asleep there just last week, comforted, after a grueling day, by the sound of her husband’s calm voice while he completed a late conference call. She’d been waiting for him to finish so they could go home together, have dinner with Kevin, tuck him in.

  Wishing she was a weaker woman, she sat down calmly, as though she could handle anything. She would rather have fallen apart, let Jeff take care of her. Because then she might be able to prevent what she feared was coming next.

  “We need to get a divorce, honey.”

  It came.

  He sat close beside her, sliding one arm across her shoulders.

  “You’ve been eating yourself alive for years over the fact that you can’t make yourself fall in love with me….”

  Pulling out of his embrace far enough to be able to look him in the eye, Erica said, “I love you, Jeff. Very much.”

  If she could, she’d open her heart and show him he really did belong there.

  “I know you do,” he said, his gaze implacable. “Like a father, maybe, or an older uncle. But you’re in love with someone else.”

  “No,” Erica said, not recognizing the frightened quality in the voice she heard. She shook her head. “I haven’t seen Jack or even heard from him. Not once in all these years.” She took a deep breath. “I’ve never looked back, Jefferson, I swear to you. From the moment I told you what I’d done, from the moment you forgave me, I’ve been faithful to you.”

  “In body,” he said, trailing a finger along her creased brow. “But not in your heart, Erica. The memory of that man burns there.”

  “We don’t need to divorce, Jeff. I don’t want to divorce. I’m happy being married to you.”

  “You’ve settled for being married to me.”

  “I give everything I’ve got to you.”

  “To me and Kevin,” he said. And then, “I know you do, Erica, but you aren’t happy, not deep down, where it matters most.”

  “I—”

  He put one finger against her lips. “And I’m not happy, either.”

  “But you said that sharing my life was the thing you wanted most in the world.”

  “It used to be. Until it started to rob me of self-respect.”

  “I don’t understand.” But she did.

  Jeff sat back, pulling her with him, running his fingers through the short wisps of her hair as she settled her head against his chest. The position was comforting. Familiar.

  This was her husband. Things would work out. They always did.

  They had to.

  “I might be looking at seventy just a few years down the road, but I still need to feel like a desirable man.”

  “We can make love more often…”

  “I make love,” he corrected. “You love me by allowing me to do so.”

  “I—”

  “Don’t cheapen what we have with anything less than total honesty.” He’d never spoken to her in that tone before. “We both know I don’t arouse passion in you.”

  “But—”

  “I need passion, Erica.”

  He was right. Everything he’d said was right. Erica felt sick. “And that woman gives you…passion?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you want to lose everything we’ve built over the years, everything good that we share, for a little passion?” She wasn’t being fair and she knew it.

  “No, if it was just the passion, probably not. But it’s more than that. It’s not even about Pamela.”

  “What then?”

  “It has to do with what she’s taught me about myself. Years of living with a woman who doesn’t desire him, of bearing the heavier part of an unequal love, can be…damaging to a man’s self-esteem.”

  She had to sit up. To separate herself from him. Set them both free. But she couldn’t move. “I make you feel bad about yourself.”

  She’d wondered. And had tried so hard to prevent that.

  “Probably as bad as not being in love with me makes you feel about yourself,” he said. “I see the guilt in your eyes when we make love and you don’t come,” he said. “Or worse, when you pretend to.”

  What a blind fool she’d been to hope he hadn’t noticed.

  “You’re only thirty-seven, honey. You still have a whole life of love and passion ahead of you. I can’t go on depriving you of that chance.”

  If he’d been anyone but Jefferson, Erica would’ve suspected she was being fed a line, that he really wanted his freedom so he could screw his girlfriend. But this was Jeff. He always put others’ needs—especially hers—above his own.

  “You don’t love me anymore?” She hated that she even asked. But while he was right—she didn’t love him the way a woman was supposed to love her husband—she did care about Jefferson. Cared about him deeply.

  “Of course I love you.” His voice caught and he pulled her tightly against him. “It’s because I love you that I know we have to do this.”

  “You want to marry Pamela.”

  “Maybe, but while she’s certainly been a catalyst in my decision, I’ve known for a couple of years that I had to let you go.”

  She believed him. And believed that he still loved her.

  And because she cared for him, far more than he realized, Erica had to let him go, too.

  “Okay,” she said.

  The room was silent after that. Tuning in to Jefferson’s steady heartbeat, absorbing the warmth from his body, Erica tried to keep panic at bay. To find something she could hold on to.

  “You aren’t firing me, too, are you?”

  “Of course not! I’d be lost without you.”

  Like a break between harsh labor pains, Erica’s anxiety calmed for a second. She would still see Jefferson every day, still be part of his life. She could do this.

  “What about Kevin?” she asked.

  “Obviously he stays with you.”

  Obviously. That wasn’t what she’d meant. “He adores you.”

  “I assume I’ll still be seeing him every day. Taking him to ball games. Keeping his life as much the same as possible.”

  “Just not sleeping with his mother.”

  Neither of them mentioned that Jefferson didn’t do that much anymore. He worked late in the den, then stayed in the guest room if she was already asleep. Neither of them said anything at all for a long time. Still, she lay cuddled against his chest. She didn’t want to move. Didn’t ever want to move.

  Except that their son was waiting for them. In a matter of minutes she’d have to find the strength to pretend that her world hadn’t just come crashing down.

  “You’re going to be fine.”

  “Yeah.”

  But she wasn’t.

  Thinking about life without Jefferson, all she could feel was exhaustion.

  And a pain so intense she couldn’t imagine ever recovering.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  May 2002

  ERICA’S LIFE was defined by paradox. At work, as communications director, she was responsible for putting a positive spin on Jefferson’s divorce. She was his advocate, his cheering squad. And once again she
did a damn good job for him. Six months after their quiet divorce, Jefferson was as high in the polls as he’d been after Kevin was born.

  At home, though, she was the woman trying to cope with his defection. He’d promised always to be there for her. To protect her from the betrayal. He’d promised her constancy and fidelity and then changed his mind. It was worse the second time around.

  And everywhere, her divorce was the most talked-about paradox. Instead of leaving the older woman who’d stood beside him through the hard times, who’d helped him get to the top, her politician ex-husband had left a beautiful, young wife for a woman his own age.

  “Hey, Mom, that looks like a good spot, don’t you think? That patch right there under the—” he looked up, thought a minute “—elm tree.”

  Looking where her almost five-year-old son’s finger was pointing, Erica nodded. “Good eye, sport.”

  They were on Capitol Hill this beautiful May Thursday, looking for a spot to eat the sandwiches she’d just bought them for lunch. The big grassy area in front of the Capitol Building was close to the Cooley offices in the Hart Senate Office Building and one of Kevin’s favorite places to hang out. She’d worn her navy silk business suit today, just for the occasion. The one with slacks. Her skirts made it a little hard to accommodate a young boy’s yearning for picnics.

  Quite often, like today, when Erica knew she didn’t have any meetings scheduled, she’d bring Kevin to work with her. He was a favorite around the office, everyone fighting over who got to “visit” with him, and he loved to watch his mother and father at work. Since Jefferson had moved out of their condo and wasn’t there to have breakfast with them, Erica liked to give Kevin any extra time she could around his father.

  Jeff had been planning to share their lunch, but the morning session had run late.

  “Oh, fudge,” Kevin muttered, looking like a miniature Capitol Hill-ite himself in his dark slacks, white shirt and striped tie. “That man’s gonna take our spot.”

  “No, he’s not,” Erica said, smiling at her far-too-mature little boy. “He’s walking with too much purpose to stop under a tree.”