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What she needed to determine was if Parker Evans was her future.
She could no longer ignore or deny her attraction to him. It wasn’t strictly his intellect and talent that appealed to her, as she had tried to delude herself into believing. She was attracted to him, the man. Countless times she had fantasized kissing him again, having his hands on her, having her mouth on him.
She didn’t even know if he was capable of making love in the conventional sense, but it didn’t matter. She wanted to touch him and to be touched. She wanted to be intimate with him on whatever level and by whatever means it could be achieved.
While married she never would have acted on that desire. During her courtship and marriage, she had never looked at another man or thought of one in a sexual context, which had made her spontaneous attraction to Parker all the more disturbing.
During her return flight to New York, she had convinced herself that the island was responsible for the romantic yearnings she had experienced there and that once she was back in familiar territory, they would stop. By the time the plane touched down at La Guardia, she had persuaded herself that the rift between her and Noah was curable, that the temporary lull in their marriage had left her open to fanciful daydreams that would vanish the moment their dozing passion was reawakened.
She had talked herself into believing that with a little ingenuity on her part she could revive their love life and feel again the exhilaration and excitement she had when she left the church on Noah’s arm as his bride.
What a naive strategy that had been!
It made her angry now that she had been willing to assume all the responsibility for their marriage being out of sorts. How could she have been so gullible? Did everyone except her know about Noah’s affair? The people with whom they both worked every day—had they known? Was she a comically tragic figure, the last-to-know wife? The staff must have thought, Poor Maris, as she toiled away at book publishing while her husband periodically slipped out for an illicit rendezvous with his mistress.
Noah had his adversaries among the staff, but he also had his allies, people he had pirated from the publisher with which he’d been formerly affiliated. Divorcing him would be easy compared to disassociating him from Matherly Press.
Which brought her to the next hurdle she must face: informing Daniel of their split.
She would postpone it for as long as possible. It would come as a double blow for him. He would be losing not only his son-in-law, but his protégé. Maris was confident that her father was strong enough to handle it, as he had handled all the other setbacks and disappointments in his life, but she saw no point in upsetting him prematurely. However, until the time came when it was necessary for him to know, it was going to be a challenge to keep up the pretense that everything was normal.
He was watching her now with his unsettling intuitiveness. It was hard not to squirm under the direct gaze. “So what do you think, Dad?”
“About the book? I think it’s very good. Speaking as a publisher, I would prod the author to complete it.”
“Then I guess I’m off.” She stood up and began pulling on her raincoat.
“What does Noah think?”
“He hasn’t read it yet.”
“I wasn’t referring to the manuscript, Maris. What does he think of your going away to spend more time with this writer?”
“I don’t need his permission.” Seeing that he was taken aback by the sharpness of her tone, she amended it. “I’m sorry, Dad. I didn’t mean to snap at you.”
“Apology accepted. I don’t presume to interfere with your personal life. It’s just that…”
“Don’t stop there. You’ve come this far.”
He reached for her hand. “It’s just that I remember well when you fell in love with a book, and then with the author.”
She gave him a faint smile. “Is that what you’re thinking? That I’ve got a schoolgirl’s crush on this writer?”
“It wouldn’t be for the first time.”
“I’m older and wiser now.” She stopped herself from saying, I’ve learned my lesson. “This book, this author, have nothing to do with Noah and our marriage. Nothing whatsoever.”
That was the truth. Her marriage was over whether or not she ever saw Parker Evans again. Had she never heard of Parker or Envy, her marriage would have ended. It would have ended because her husband was false and their marriage a sham.
“So Noah’s agreeable to your going?”
Noah’s feelings on the matter seemed very important to her father. But they wouldn’t be if he knew the whole story. She was tempted to roll up her sleeves and show him the bruises on her arms that even a week’s time hadn’t faded. She could tell him how she’d spat blood for an hour after biting her tongue. What if she repeated Noah’s harsh threats, using the same sinister inflection that had been almost more alarming than the words themselves? Her father wo
uld be as shocked as she had been. He would be ready to find Noah and mete out punishment with his own hand.
That’s why she wouldn’t expose Noah to him now. She would save it for a day when she had things more sorted out in her own mind, when she wasn’t on her way out of town, when she had a workable plan for Matherly Press as well as her personal life. Until she had answers already in place in her own mind, she wouldn’t detail the problems to her father.
Instead, she looked him straight in the eye and, for the first time in her life, lied to him. “Yes. He’s agreeable.”
