The Secret Son. Tara Taylor Quinn

had been on one of the tables set for two along the side wall of the pub that Jack’s fingers had found hers. And clung. They’d been talking about their favorite television sitcoms at the time.

      Shaking her stylishly cropped head of short dark hair, Erica still couldn’t understand why she hadn’t carefully pulled her hand free. Or why she’d gone back the next night.

      When she’d married Jefferson three years before, she’d promised him loyalty.

      He’d known she wasn’t in love with him.

      A longtime friend of her family’s, he’d been one of the guests at her wedding to Shane. She’d been a naive, idealistic twenty-two.

      Four years later he’d been there to help Erica pick up the pieces when that marriage ended. She was already working in his office by then, Congress had been in session, and he’d given her very little time off, insisting that work was what would see her through.

      He’d been right.

      As he almost always was.

      He’d told her, one night when he’d come into the office late and found her crying over the writing of what should have been a simple speech, that the happiest years of her life weren’t behind her. That eventually she’d love again.

      She’d refused to believe him.

      Jefferson had shaken his head, telling her to give it some time.

      But love hadn’t come to her a second time, and after Shane, it never would. Or so she’d thought until this past week.

      The possibility that Jefferson might have been right—and that she’d found out several years too late—scared her to death.

      Until this week she’d consoled herself with the thought that she’d already endured the worst life had to offer. That nothing she had yet to face would be harder than surviving Shane’s betrayal.

      She’d been wrong.

      Leaving Jack was going to be worse. Far worse.

      Walking around the corner to Forty-seventh Street, Erica could see Maggie’s Place just ahead. She’d been telling herself all day that she wasn’t going to the pub that night. Jack had given her a quick good-night kiss the night before. The affectionate kind of kiss shared by friends.

      And she’d felt it all the way to her toes.

      Jack was danger. Making her want things—believe in things—she couldn’t have. She was better off not knowing they existed. She had to stay away from him.

      Her feet carried her toward the pub, anyway.

      Jack risked his life whenever he went to work. He walked into highly volatile situations to save the lives of strangers, negotiating with madmen and extremists and desperate people who had nothing to lose. He’d told her she was the first person he’d connected with on a personal level in more than five years.

      She couldn’t just leave him sitting there. Couldn’t go without thanking him for giving back to her what Shane had stripped from her all those years ago. Her belief in herself—and in a chemistry that made life exciting. In possibilities.

      She couldn’t go without telling him goodbye.

      Jefferson had her life. She could at least give Jack goodbye.

      He was sitting at “their” table. The one halfway down the row. “You look beautiful,” he told her, smiling, his eyes warm with seductive appreciation as she pulled out her chair.

      She’d worn the black ankle-length pants and red blouse more for him than for the Journal reporter.

      “Thank you,” she said, her trepidation disappearing as she took her seat across from him.

      In this city where anyone could get lost in the crowd, her time with him existed in a universe all its own.

      It seemed to Erica that being with Jack brought her face-to-face with the person inside herself, the person she really was. How could anything that felt this natural, this destined, be wrong?

      He was wearing jeans and a black polo shirt that hugged his chest, the bands at the bottoms of the short sleeves tight around his biceps.

      “Did you get your call?” she asked, although it made no difference.

      Hours were all they had left. They’d both known that from the beginning.

      “Did you have your meeting?” he countered, glancing down into his beer.

      He hadn’t answered her question.

      Erica waited until he looked up, his beautiful eyes meeting hers, before she nodded.

      In his gaze she saw a flash of the same desperate sadness she felt herself.

      “When are you leaving?” he asked.

      “In the morning. I have a seven o’clock out of JFK.”

      “I go in the morning, too.”

      Although it made no sense at all, disappointment crashed through her.

      “Where?” she asked, telling herself not to be afraid for him.

      “Florida.”

      A teenage boy was being held hostage by a suspected drug dealer who wanted safe passage to Cuba. The FBI Crisis Negotiation chief had called Jack earlier in the week to speak with him about the situation. They’d still been searching for the boy at that point.

      “The hostage-taker’s ready to negotiate?” she murmured.

      Jack nodded.

      “So why do you have to go?” She cringed, hoping that didn’t sound as bad to Jack’s ears as it had to hers.

      “I speak the language, for one thing. The guy’s Latin American.”

      “You can’t be the only one.”

      He took a sip of his beer, studying the suds. “A few years ago I had a successful negotiation involving him. He’s agreed to talk, under the stipulation that I be the one he speaks to.”

      “He’s taken hostages before?”

      “No.” Jack shook his head, frowning. “He was a hostage.”

      “Oh!” Taken aback, Erica studied him.

      And she’d thought she had a tough job.

      “So—” he looked across at her, his weathered face solemn “—tonight’s it, then.”

      “Yeah.”

      His hand was close to hers on the table. Just the smallest movement would bring their fingers together again.

      “Maybe we should go upstairs to the dining room or something as a sort of send-off.”

      “I’d rather stay right here.” Where they’d spent every minute they’d ever had together.

      He sat back, his hand sliding off the table. “I’m glad we had this week,” he said.

      “I am, too.” The words were almost a whisper. Her throat hurt with the effort to get them out at all.

      How was she going to live the rest of her life without ever seeing him again?

      He finished his beer and motioned for another. “Knowing that you’re in the world gives my life a whole new dimension,” he said quietly.

      She couldn’t speak, afraid of what might spill forth, afraid of the regrets she’d have to face when she left their world and returned to her own.

      “It’s something we can take with us,” he added.

      Erica tried to smile. “Thank you for that.”

      “Hey.” He leaned forward, his thumb following a path down her cheek. “We have hours yet.” His face was softly lit with a half smile that almost made