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“You’ve been here for more than two weeks and I don’t see how this is accomplishing anything,” she said. “Unless it’s hurt the good things we had going for us.”
“Such as?” He looked up from the papers he’d been trying to study.
“We haven’t made love since you moved in here.”
Yeah, well, that was one of the things he couldn’t explain. “I’m not here to make love.”
“Why are you here?”
He wished to hell he knew. “Because I’m the father of the two children you’re carrying.”
“So?”
“So, that’s why I’m here.”
“What is this supposed to accomplish?” she asked, leaning against the door frame. God she was lovely. Almost five months pregnant with his children. He couldn’t remember ever seeing her so beautiful.
Which was just another of the things he couldn’t explain.
Sighing, Michael put down the papers. They hadn’t been holding his interest, anyway. “I don’t know what’s supposed to happen, Susan,” he admitted. Maybe he was just seeing how long he could stand to be there, how long before he started to suffocate. Or capitulate as his father had.
“I don’t know, either.” She wandered into the room, dropped down to the couch. “We talked more when you were across the country.”
Yeah. And he missed those easy conversations. Frowning, he tried to find a way to express what he wasn’t sure of himself. “I need, somehow, to separate you from the children, separate my relationship with you from the children.”
He needed to make love to her. So badly he’d woken up with a hard-on every morning for the past week. Gone to sleep with one, too, for that matter.
“Why?” The question was soft, understanding, making it difficult for him not to reach further.
“Because I already know how I feel about you.”
“How’s that?”
Picking up a pencil, Michael pulled the message pad away from the phone and drew aimlessly. “You’re my best friend. The person I always think of first when I have something to share.”
“I was starting to wonder if that had changed.”
He looked up when he heard the tremor in her voice.
“The question has never been about yo
u, Sus.” He met her gaze openly, intent on reassuring her on that score, at least. “We’ve always been able to give each other the space we needed to do what we had to do, yet at the same time provide each other with understanding and encouragement.”
“And why do think that was?” He knew she wasn’t testing him for answers she already had. Rather, she sounded as though she were trying to understand it herself.
“Because we were two of a kind.” Finally—an answer he had. “You were hell-bent on not becoming your mother and I was just as determined not to become my dad.”
“Yeah, I guess.” The oak-grain layers of her hair glowed in the evening light.
“Both of them were forced by family responsibilities into roles that weren’t satisfying to them, your mom by giving up herself, her own dreams, my dad by being trapped in a job he hates.”
“But family responsibilities bring joy, too.” Her arms rested atop her protruding belly.
“And sometimes—like with your mother, my dad—they weren’t a joy because of the cost.”
“I’m not so sure of that,” Susan surprised him by saying. “The cost was great, granted, but perhaps some of the joy was, too.”
Feeling strangely deserted, Michael said, “Sounds like you’ve changed a bit.”
