Once Around (25 page)

It was the most intriguing
activity two reasonably healthy humans could engage in and, in most ways, the least satisfying. Nothing left him feeling less connected to the human race than the afterglow of love. Mostly because there was no afterglow.

He had just spent the last
three hours making unexpectedly passionate love to Jessy Wyatt, and now all he could think about was how to get her out of his bed and back to her own. She was sprawled diagonally across the mattress. Her face was buried in his pillow, her tiny feet angled toward the opposite side. Before tonight he'd thought of her as skinny and plain. Now he could see the delicate bone structure, the perfect skin, appreciate the supple limbs and laudable flexibility.

I love you
,
she'd said to him, and he'd pretended not to hear. She'd said it once more before she fell asleep, and whatever remained of desire died with those words.

People said things during sex they wouldn
't say over dinner. He'd said things himself, things he later wished he could erase from that universal tape that captured all human folly. That's the kind of thing you learn how to control as the years roll on and the disappointments pile up on the pillow next to you. He could always see the ending implicit in the beginning. It was always out there in the middle distance pointing out the futility of it all.

Or maybe that was his father.

Can you see me, Dad? I'm the second son . . . the one you're stuck with.

That
's what he got for ducking his old man's call the other. afternoon. No matter which side of the guilt fence he came down on, he felt like a. bastard. Hell, being Owen Mackenzie's bastard son would be easier than being the one who'd lived. What was the headline when Owen, Jr. died?
Mackenzie. Dynasty Hopes Shattered in Crash.
Owen, Jr. and Spencer had been tooling up from Virginia in Owen, Jr.'s flame red Austin-Healy. Owen had just asked Glory Mathers to marry him, and Owen, Sr. had been over the moon.

"
I'm on the fast track now," Owen, Jr. was saying just before the crash. A seat in the State House of Representatives was opening up, and he was the golden boy. The heir apparent. "Dad's talking to Glen Alcoa tomorrow about . . ."

Spencer had been listening to this since they passed Timonium
, Maryland, but he'd quit actually hearing the words near Dover, Delaware. That was at least an hour ago. The good thing about his brother was that he didn't particularly give a damn if Spencer listened to him or not. All Owen, Jr. wanted was center stage. Spencer had been drifting, daydreaming, when he looked out the window in time to see an eighteen-wheeler spinning across six lanes of Jersey Turnpike traffic, heading straight for them.

When he woke up two days later
, his brother was dead, and so were his father's dreams. Spencer had a broken right leg, a concussion, three broken ribs, and damage to his spleen. That was the good news. The bad news was that he was the brother who'd lived.

Next to him Dr. Jessica Wyatt murmured something in her sleep then slid
closer to him. She pressed her small straight nose against his side and sighed. Spencer reached for a cigarette on his nightstand, and settled back to wait for dawn.

#

All along Jessy had told herself that one night with Spencer was all she wanted. One night in his arms would be enough. She would live off that for the rest of her life.

She
'd believed that. With her entire heart and soul, she'd believed it. Right up until the second he took her in his arms and she found out how wrong she'd been. One night wasn't near enough. She wanted a week, a month, a year. She wanted forever. He made her feel beautiful and desirable. He made her feel womanly and soft.

And he didn
't want her.

He was too much of a gentleman to say so
, but she knew just the same. She'd dozed after they made love, and when she woke up he was sitting with his back against the headboard. He was smoking a cigarette, and somehow she knew exactly what he was thinking. She pushed her face deeper into the pillow and pretended to be asleep, because the second he knew she was awake he'd be pushing her toward the door.

"
Sorry about breakfast," he said later as he turned onto Lilac Hill. "I have to be up in Greenwich by noon."

"
You don't have to apologize for anything, Spencer." She aimed a big bright smile in his direction. "I appreciate the ride home."

He looked vaguely uncomfortable
, and she found herself torn between sympathy and glee.

"
Do you work today?" he asked.

"
Does it matter?" she asked him.

His face reddened. She almost regretted her remark. Almost. She knew she
'd never see him again, not this way. She could say anything. She could tell the truth. It didn't matter.

He pulled up in front of Molly
's house, then came around the front of the car to open her door. Good manners, even at the end. There was the difference between the boys she'd grown up with in Mississippi and a real live Yankee rich boy. Good manners. One of her hometown boys would have gunned the engine impatiently while she fiddled with the door handle. Not Spencer. Spencer made her feel wanted even when the only thing he really wanted was to get rid of her.

That took talent
, she thought as she climbed out of the car. That took class.

This time she was being dumped by a pro.

#

Spencer sat behind the wheel of his Porsche and watched Jessy walk up the pathway to the front door. He felt guilty
, driving her home early on Sunday morning without even taking her for breakfast. Hit-and-run wasn't his style, but she hadn't given him a choice. At least not a choice he could have made. When a woman strips down to her skin in the front seat of your car, the matter has pretty much been decided for you.

Once a year the Mackenzie clan gathered to commemorate the life and times of Owen
, Jr., the son who hadn't lived long enough to disappoint anyone. This was the day of the command performance. Attendance was mandatory. No exceptions, not even if it meant you had to turn a woman out of your bed.

He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. It seemed to be taking her a hell of a long time to get to the front door. If he didn
't hit the parkway soon; he wouldn't make it to Greenwich in time for the church service at noon.

She turned once
when she reached the porch and waved, then she opened the door and disappeared into the house.

The relief he felt
embarrassed him even though there was nobody there to see it.

Twenty minutes later
, he was on the turnpike headed north.

Greenwich and Princeton had a lot in common. The similarities struck Spencer every time he made the trek up to the family home for one of his infrequent command performances. Both towns were verdant
, both in landscape and in affluence. Both towns fancied themselves highbrow bastions of respectability. He could see only one discernible difference, other than the obvious geographical one: Princeton was built around intellectual pursuits; Greenwich revolved around financial ones.

He
'd always thought he'd live his life right there in the town where he'd grown up. The rest of his family had. Owen, Jr. would have set up shop there. Everyone knew it would have been a short and easy jump from partner in a local law firm to a run for the House. Owen's death had changed everything. His parents became keepers of the shrine. His sisters dedicated themselves to raising perfect children who would follow in Owen, Jr.'s giant footsteps. Their husbands were both ambitious men who understood the way the Mackenzie name opened doors that would remain locked before mere mortals.

They were holding a memorial this afternoon to Owen
, Jr. One in a never-ending series of elaborate homages designed to remind the rest of them that they could never live up to the things Owen, Jr. might have accomplished if he'd lived long enough. How the hell did you compete with smoke and mirrors and broken dreams? Damned if Spencer knew. But there he was, rolling toward the Greenwich exit, the second son on his way home for .a command performance.

Sometimes Spencer felt like the kid in that old story
, the one who shouted, "The emperor has no clothes." His whole damn family was so blinded by the past, so mired in what could have been that they couldn't see what they had. He'd tried to fill Owen's shoes, but his father made it clear that nobody could do that. Especially not his second son.

So Spencer quit the family firm
, packed up his condo, and moved south to Princeton, where the winters were a little milder and expectations were lower. Nobody at Steinberg, Corelli, and. Winterbourne expected more from him than billable hours. He didn't have to save the world. He didn't have to defend freedom of speech, women's rights, or the environment. All he had to do was sniff out couples in trouble and be there to catch the wife before she found another lawyer to defend her interests against her big bad husband.

That was how he had met Molly. One dance at a party somewhere and he had a client. He might have had a woman if he
'd pursued her, but something had held him back from taking the next step.

One half mile to the Greenwich exit. He eased into the right-hand lane and reduced speed. Not that the Greenwich cops would give him a speeding ticket. The Mackenzies had a pass on things like that. A Mackenzie could do ninety in a thirty-miles-per-hour zone
, and nobody would notice.

He knew one thing a Mackenzie
couldn't do. He couldn't bring home a pregnant, married, underemployed Irish-Jewish woman and call her his date. Two centuries of judgmental Mackenzies would rise up from their graves and beat him senseless. He'd thought about it. Any red-blooded man with the requisite percentage of testosterone would have thought about it. Most of them would have given it a shot.

Not Spencer. The weight of disapproval easily spanned the distance between Greenwich and Princeton
, and ,so he'd angled his interest from the personal back to the social. The professional always took care of itself.

He doubted if Molly even noticed.

I love you, Spencer.

Jessy
's words curled themselves around his ear as he made the left onto Water's Edge Road; which led to the Mackenzies' private drive.

She
'd said she loved him, and he'd said that he had to make it up to Greenwich by noon and would she like a ride back to Molly's place. She'd looked so damn vulnerable, with the sheet held against her breasts and her new shorter hair tumbling into those big sad eyes, that he'd considered making love to her again, but that would only have complicated things.

She loved him
, and he didn't love her back.

Jessy would get used to it. Everybody did sooner or later.

It was called real life.

#

Molly was sitting at the kitchen table, nursing her second cup of decaf tea with milk, when she heard Jessy come in. She'd been sitting at that table ever since Rafe left, replaying everything that had happened that night and regretting most of it—the things she didn't do as much as the things she did.

Twice she
'd grabbed her car keys and started for the door, determined to throw caution .aside and herself at his feet, and twice she'd talked herself out of it. She didn't know the first thing about having an affair. She didn't know the first thing about sex, and she was glad she'd stopped things before he found out what a pathetic excuse for a woman she was. The women he knew were probably limber and inventive. She had the feeling they weren't pregnant with another man's child. She was quickly moving past voluptuous into cumbersome. Sometimes she didn't even recognize her own body in the mirror—the swollen breasts, the fecund belly, the naked, and vulnerable look in her eyes.

She
'd always looked confident and in control. Whatever she was feeling deep inside stayed there, hidden away where it belonged. Those days were gone. Her emotions were right there at the surface for everyone to see. Emotions she hadn't known she had.

She wanted Rafe. She wanted to explore every beautiful muscle and hollow of his body. She wanted to curl up somewhere inside his brain and absorb his secrets. She wanted to
learn the contour of his heart from the outside in.

You had your chance last night
, Molly. He would have worshipped you, and you pushed him away.

Of course she
'd pushed him away. What would he have thought of her when he saw how awkward and unsure she was when it came to making love? When he realized how little she'd learned during ten years of marriage to a man who didn't love her?

Do you really think that would matter to him
, Molly? Do you think he's looking for an acrobat or a lover?