Once Upon a Project (21 page)

Her eyes flew open when she felt herself being lifted. Charles placed her on the counter next to the sink, lowered his head against her chest, and began planting soft kisses on her breasts, moving from side to side as he cupped them in his hands. She gasped softly when he took her breast into his mouth. Bruce hadn't done that in so long....

He stood up and spoke to her softly. “I told you, you'll always be beautiful to me.”

She found her voice. “I don't think you've seen the full effect yet. You might not feel the same after you've—”

She broke off. His still-moving fingertips found the defect, and he moved his face to it. When he bent and kissed the protrusion she let out a strangled cry and began to quake, her muscles struggling to hold her eyelids shut and hold in the tears. The fingers of his other hand promptly moved to cup the side of her neck, steadying her trembling body. At last he raised his head. “Now do you believe me?”

She opened her eyes, damp with happy tears. She threw her arms around his neck and hung on like he alone could extend her life. “Yes. I believe you. I didn't mean to have no faith in you, Charles. It's just that—”

He pressed his index finger against her lips. “You don't have to tell me. I don't want you to think about anything unpleasant while we're together. Now, let's get the hell out of this kitchen.” He gripped her hips and pulled them forward. Susan's arms instinctively went around his neck, and she wrapped her long legs around his waist. He lifted her and crossed the hall to his bedroom. The set of weights in a corner told her where he got the strength to lift her no-longer svelte hundred-and-seventy-pound body.

The combination of the basement location plus heavy curtains covering the small windows made it look more like early evening than midmorning. She was glad when he made no move to turn on the light.

He laid her gently on the bed, and in a playful motion she pulled him down with her. She felt so vital, so alive . . . And she couldn't wait to feel him inside her.

As her orgasm built, her guilt dissolved. Instead she thanked God for the snow last winter that kept the Pleasant Prairie schools open a few extra days. Her body exploded in wave after wave of pleasure, and she collapsed into the pillows, sobbing as she shook.

“I can't tell you how happy I feel right now,” she said softly after her body was still and her sobs ceased. “I wish it could last forever.”

On his elbows next to her, Charles stroked her curls. “I know it can't. So the question becomes, what happens now?”

Sadness flowed through her at the forced return to reality. “I don't know, Charles.”

“You know I wasn't just trying to get you into bed when I told you I love you.”

She nodded. “But everything is moving so fast. I've barely had time to adjust to our making love.”

“It's not going to be easy for me to watch you leave me to go back home to Bruce.”

“What else can I do, Charles?”

“I want you to think about leaving him.”

Her mouth fell open.
“Leave?”

“You can't say you haven't thought about it, even before we saw each other at Junior's. You said you'd been unhappy for months.”

“Of
course
I thought about it . . . for about a minute. Charles, as you know, I'm almost fifty years old, I haven't worked in about eleven years, plus I'm a cancer patient. How the hell am I supposed to support myself and my children if I walk out on Bruce?” She looked away. Why couldn't she simply savor the feeling of being loved and desired after being denied for so long? Why did Charles have to bring up all this complicated stuff? Did she get no reprieve at all? It wasn't fair, damn it.

“I'll take care of you, Susan.”

She had no response. This made no sense. Was he proposing that she and her two children move in with him? He had a one-bedroom apartment, for heaven's sake!

“It's complicated,” she said finally, still not looking at him.

He reached out and rolled her back toward him. “I know. We won't talk about it anymore. Just remember that I love you.”

Susan could think of nothing else.

 

 

She felt strangely calm as she got behind the wheel and drove to the kids' school. She'd gone home first and taken a quick shower. It would be just her luck that Bruce would decide to give her a treat when he got home from work, and she couldn't risk that any more than she could risk the kids mentioning that she'd taken a shower in the afternoon. That would raise a red flag.

Bruce might not want her himself, but she had a feeling he'd be out for the blood of any man she might be sleeping with.

When she got home for the second time that day, she checked her phone messages. “Hey,” Bruce's voice said cheerfully. “Just wanted to let you know I'll be late tonight. I'll be home about eight, eight-thirty. Don't worry about holding dinner for me; I'll pick something up here.”

Susan smiled. So he'd be late again tonight. That was just fine with her. It would give her more time to savor her day with Charles.

It beat sitting around wondering what the girlfriend he swore he didn't have looked like.

Chapter 34

 

B
ruce Dillahunt groaned in ecstasy as a stream of semen filled the condom he wore. He gripped Shay's hips and fell forward. That one took everything out of him.

They fell against the mattress together, his groin against her backside. It took several seconds for Shay's body to be still, even with him holding her tightly against him. He slid off her and onto his side, pulling her close.

“That was fantastic,” he said when he caught his breath. He lifted long strands of her hair and threaded his fingers through them. Shay Johnson was one fine woman. She reminded him of Susan in her younger days. The two women in his life didn't resemble each other, but they shared a similar body type. They were both tall—Shay came in at an inch or two less than Susan's five ten—they both had wide hips, small breasts, and legs as long as a week that locked him in ecstasy.

“It always is,” she said softly.

He couldn't argue with that. He'd met Shay in the parking lot of his office building. She worked as a supervisor in customer service for a medical claims service. That particular October afternoon her car had a dead battery and needed a jump.

Right away he'd noticed how lovely she was. Susan had undergone her lumpectomy just six weeks before, and he found that he couldn't stand to look at that damn cone shape sticking out of her breast. It was like making love to Death. He'd told her it didn't matter when she reluctantly considered plastic surgery, and while he could readily understand her not wishing to undergo another surgical procedure—and even agreeing that it would probably be better for her health in the long run to leave the area alone—he'd been unable to reconcile his desire for her with his fear of her disease recurring. Nor could he bring himself to consult a counselor, as Susan suggested. Psychologists were for the confused, for the uncertain. He had no doubts about himself. It was Susan's cancer he hated, not her. It had driven a wedge between them, invaded their marriage at the same time it invaded her body and marred her figure.

He couldn't bring himself to tell her the truth. It would be like knocking down a cripple. Because he had a lot to lose in a divorce—like half of what he'd amassed—he forced himself to make love to her occasionally in a halfhearted attempt to keep her satisfied.
He
wasn't satisfied, and he suspected she wasn't, either. Prior to her diagnosis they'd enjoyed an active, healthy sex life. He had no excuse for his diminished passion, at least none that wouldn't hurt her feelings. Bruce loved Susan. He simply couldn't reconcile his fears.

He hadn't meant for anything to happen with Shay. She'd been so grateful that day; she said she had an appointment she couldn't miss. She asked him for his card, and he gave it to her. That Friday she called and invited him to lunch as a way to say thank you.

Bruce held no illusions about her motives. She was, after all, probably fifteen years his junior. She'd seen his name and the title, president and CEO, on his business card and decided to invite him to lunch and flirt with him a little just to see where it went. If his card said he was a sales rep he knew he'd never have heard from her again.

With that in mind, from the very beginning he made no secret of the fact that he had a wife and two children.

But he found Shay enchanting and had been unable to stay away. He called her less than a week later. Within two weeks he brought her to dinner at the restaurant inside the InterContinental Hotel, and afterward brought her upstairs to the room he'd reserved and made love to her. At last he had an outlet for all the pent-up sexual frustration that had been building inside him.

They started their affair in December, and now it was June. After six months, he knew she was getting restless. Her next action proved it.

Shay sat up, the sheet covering her breasts. “How's your wife feeling these days, Bruce?”

He knew what she meant. He'd been wrong to make it sound like Susan was at death's door when she was thriving, but it gave him much-needed sympathy in Shay's eyes. He didn't want to be ruled out because he had a wife at home. But questions like this from Shay told him she was getting tired.

“She's doing pretty well,” he replied cautiously.

“I'm glad to hear that, Bruce, I really am. I don't wish bad things upon people. But I'm not comfortable with sleeping with a man who's married, even if his wife is ill.”

“I understand that, Shay. But what do you want me to do?”

“If she's doing well, why not file for divorce?”

“Divorce?”

“Yes. It happens all the time. You know, the flame goes out between husbands and wives and they decide it's best to start over with someone new.”

“Well, that's complicated, Shay. First of all, my wife isn't well.”

“You've been saying that for six months now. I'm beginning to think she's a lot healthier than you're letting on.”

She was right, of course, but he didn't dare avert his gaze. That was tantamount to admitting he'd lied. “She's holding her own. But that's not the only consideration. This is a community property state. I'd stand to lose half of everything I have in a divorce.”

Shay got up, yanking the sheet and remaining draped in it. “Bruce, I'm thirty-five years old and I've never had a family of my own. Both my parents were drug addicts. I grew up in foster care. I made sure I didn't get pregnant in tenth or eleventh grade like most of my girlfriends did, or afterward, either. I wanted a complete family, not to be another woman with kids and no husband. I did everything the right way. But I'm starting to run out of time. And I'm telling you now, Bruce, I'm not going to waste the best years of my life on a man who uses his sick wife as an excuse not to commit to me.”

He sat up, the wood headboard hard against his upper back. He knew about her difficult childhood, about how she'd managed to get a college degree through the tuition-reimbursement plan at work. And she had a point. The fact that she had no family made her more accessible to him. It would be awfully difficult to carry on an affair if Shay had family obligations equal to his. She'd never be able to accompany him to conventions and other out-of-town business functions. He could call her at a moment's notice, like he had when Susan stayed at her friend's house overnight when she went to that tenants' reunion. Susan didn't know it, but he spent that night with Shay, arising at 6
AM
to drive home so he'd be there before she and the children got back.

Yes, he understood Shay's position. But he wasn't ready to give her up. “Shay . . . I need you to be patient.”

“It's been six months, Bruce. You
say
you care for me.”

“I do.” Bruce spoke the truth. He loved Susan, yes. She was the mother of his children, and she'd been a damn good wife to him. It pained him to know he was causing her such anguish. Bad enough that his body betrayed him that night when she took off her nightgown. All his excuses about getting older had gone out the window when his erection dwindled before her eyes. That night she hinted that he had to be sleeping with someone. She'd accused him before, but she had no hard proof. He'd been careful, flying Shay out on different flights to meet him and arranging for her airport transfers himself. Susan had said nothing about him cheating on her since that night she slept in the guest bedroom, and of course neither had he. They'd formed a somewhat uneasy truce, but he knew it wouldn't last.

Bruce wished he could feel differently, but he just couldn't help how his body reacted to her. At this point he wasn't sure if plastic surgery would help. He knew that disease lurked in her breast, and perhaps grew elsewhere in her body. Maybe that made him an awful person, but he couldn't control his true feelings any more than he could control the receding hairline that had led him to eventually start shaving his head.

Any way he looked at it, asking for a divorce would hurt his family. In spite of Susan expressing her suspicions to him, he knew it would break her heart to learn that he really did seek fulfillment elsewhere. He also wanted to protect his children against coming from, as it used to be called, “a broken home.” Sure, divorce was the only way to go when it came to truly warring spouses, but he and Susan got along fine. They did all their arguing behind closed doors, and they both worked hard to keep Quentin and Alyssa in the dark about the true state of their marriage. Even when Susan stormed out that time and went to sleep in the guest bedroom, she returned to their bed before Quentin and Alyssa awakened. Their welfare mattered as much to her as it did to him. On the surface they were a happy family, but that was as deep as it got.

He suddenly realized Shay was speaking and his ears sprang to attention.

“Sure you do. But not enough to divorce your wife.”

He hedged. “Shay, you know I love you. But I also care about my wife . . . our family. I'm afraid I can't make you any promises.”

“Then I think you should leave.”

Without a word, Bruce slid to the side of the bed, where he'd carelessly dropped his clothes in his haste to make love to Shay. It sounded like she'd made a decision, and he had no argument. Maybe it was best to let her go. She had a right to make her dream of a family come true, preferably with someone closer to her own age. And he had no right to try to take that from her.

As he drove home, he realized he was going to have to make a decision.

He knew Susan well enough to know that surface happiness wouldn't be enough for her, at least not for any length of time.

Just like it wasn't enough for him.