Marriage To A Stranger. Kay David

to great lengths to avoid contact. Now the whole length of his body was pressed up against hers, the warmth of his arms and legs heating her too sensitive skin, his chest tucked against her shoulder in a perfect fit. Memories of other times they’d walked this way, with her snuggled under his arm, his cologne filling her senses, suddenly flooded her. She could even feel his heart beating, she thought with alarm. His pulse was pounding a rhythm so fast and powerful, it had to be painful.

      Then she realized it wasn’t his pulse she was feeling. It was hers. And it was painful. Each beat spoke to her. This is what it used to be like. This is what you used to have.

      She wondered for a second if he were experiencing some of the same conflicted emotions, then Lara gave herself a mental shake. What was she thinking? Of course, he wasn’t.

      He brought their progress to a halt and looked down at her. She lifted her gaze to his, his mouth so close to her forehead she could feel his warm breath when he spoke.

      “Am I too heavy?”

      “I—I think I can manage.”

      “What about the stairs?”

      “Oh, my God…” Lara looked up at him. “I didn’t even think about the stairs! There’s no way you can go up there.” The master suite was on the second floor. “You’ll have to take the guest room.”

      His expression shifted minutely, then she understood.

      “I’ll move out,” she said stiffly. “It won’t take but a few minutes to get my things.”

      “Don’t.” He tilted his head toward the den. “Just put me in there. I’ll sleep on the couch for a couple of days. As soon as the swelling goes down, I’ll be fine with the stairs.”

      Without any argument, she nodded, and together they made their way into the paneled room off the kitchen. Lara eased him down onto the couch where he settled with a heavy sigh. “You’ll have to get my stuff from upstairs,” he said. “I need my briefcase and my cell phone. There’s a file on the chair beside the bed, too. Bring it and—”

      Lara stared at him in amazement. “Conley, what you need is to rest! You can’t work right now.”

      “I can’t just sit here,” he said in a tight voice. “I’ll go nuts.”

      “Then here—” she handed him the remote “—watch a little TV. Do nothing for a change. Relax. That’s what normal people do sometimes, you know.”

      He started to reply but the telephone rang. Lara crossed the room to answer it, and Theresa Marchante replied to her cool hello.

      “Lara, is Conley there? I stopped by the hospital and they told me he’d checked out.”

      “We got home a little while ago, Theresa. Would you like to talk to him?”

      “I’m afraid I have to. It’s about the Baku situation….”

      Without another word, Lara handed her husband the phone then stepped out of the room. He was going to work, with or without her help, so she might as well leave him to it.

      In the kitchen Lara started dinner, her mind hopping from one thing to another. Her thoughts landed, as she knew they would, back on Conley’s behavior at the hospital. She opened the refrigerator and pulled out a bunch of onions to chop for the soup. He hadn’t wanted to talk to the police, that much had been obvious. If her presence in the room had been the main factor, why?

      Her fertile imagination had Lara coming up with more answers than she needed. The knife flashed as she listed them in her mind, but all the variations centered on one thing: the Other Problem.

      Conley was having an affair.

      Lara didn’t know who the woman was and she didn’t want to know, but she recognized the signs; in her business, she had learned them all. Through the years, though, she’d studied Conley as well and that was how she’d finally figured it out. He’d been hiding something from her for months now. Not to mention the nights he didn’t come home. Or the times he raced to pick up the phone when they were both at home. And then there was the note, of course. The classic giveaway.

      It was so clichéd, she’d wanted to throw up. On her way to the cleaners, she’d found a crumpled e-mail in one of his pockets. The message was clear, the point so personal and graphic, Lara’s guts had been turned inside out. She’d gone home and searched their computer for more. She’d found an encrypted file, but hadn’t been able to get past his security password. She was sure it held other e-mails.

      She’d asked him point-blank if he was having an affair. He’d looked at her as if she’d sprouted horns then denied it—just as she’d known he would. That was when she’d moved out of the master bedroom.

      A sound from the doorway brought her head up. She wondered how long he’d been standing there and watching her.

      Their eyes connected over the kitchen table. “I think I need one of those pills Sorelli gave us. Do you have them?”

      Lara nodded and wiped her hands on her apron. “They’re in my purse. I’ll get them for you.”

      She handed him the medicine and a glass of water a few seconds later. When he finished, he set the glass on the counter with a sigh. He looked worn-out.

      She spoke without thinking. “Why don’t you go back into the den and rest? I’ll bring you your soup on a tray.”

      “You don’t mind?” He ran a hand through his dark hair, leaving it spiked and wavy. “Waiting on me like this?”

      “You can’t very well do it yourself, can you?”

      “No, but it’s been a long time since you did anything like that.”

      “It’s been a long time since you’ve been around so that I could.”

      Without a word, he turned around and went back into the den. Angry at herself for the pettiness, Lara returned to the sink.

      An hour later, when she walked into the den with a wooden tray in her hands, Conley was asleep. Sprawled on the couch, he had a pillow tucked under his swollen knee and another one behind his head. In his restlessness, he’d already managed to throw off the afghan. It lay in a brightly colored pile at the foot of the sofa.

      Lara put the tray on a nearby table and picked up the wool throw. Fluffing it out, she bent over to put it across his sleeping form, but it was too short; it barely covered his torso and the top part of his legs. Stretching it as far as the yarn would allow, she bent to her knees and tucked it in around him, then she stopped and looked at his bruised face.

      Even in rest, Conley looked fierce and anxious, tension etching its way across his features. She reached out and gently smoothed a lock of dark hair that had escaped to curl over his brow. Long and silky, it was softer than she remembered. He was such a handsome man, she thought with a catch in her throat. Lean and hungry-looking, he was the type women glanced at then imagined in bed.

      Her hand drifted lower, down to the edge of his jaw. A line of steel that never bent. His chin was dark with the shadow of his stubble, his skin felt warm, as warm as the rest of his body had been as she’d helped him inside. She let her touch linger for a moment, her eyes on the pulse at the bottom of his throat.

      How many times had she kissed him in that spot?

      How many times had he done the same to her?

      For one crazy minute she thought about pressing her lips against his neck, then she came to her senses.

      What was she doing? She’d told this man she wanted to end their marriage. She’d told him she wanted a divorce. She’d told herself she didn’t love him anymore.

      She’d told the truth.

      Hadn’t she?

      CHAPTER FOUR

      CONLEY HUNG UP the phone and started rearranging the papers