Truly Married (12 page)

“That should be an easy commute,” he said thoughtfully. “They wouldn’t mind if you moved back home, would they?”

“No, but I don’t want to—”

Fergus forced a smile. “Good. Then it’s settled. Sharon can stay at my suite at the hotel tonight while you start packing.”

He caught Sharon’s mutinous expression.

“Fergus, I can’t—”

He gave her a warning glance, but kept his tone amiable. “It’ll be all right. You’ll have your own room, and after all, we were married at one time. Now, I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m hungry, and whatever it is you have cooking in the oven smells delicious. Will it be long before dinner’s ready?”

Tracey stood up, looking somewhat stunned at the turn of events. “Ten minutes, fifteen at the most,” she said. Then, for the first time since she’d come into the room, she looked directly at Sharon. “Please don’t be mad at me, Sharon,” she pleaded.

She looked so unhappy that Sharon couldn’t be cross with her. “I’m not mad at you, Tracey,” she assured her roommate. “But I am sorely disappointed by your lack of trust in me.”

With a sob, Tracey hurried out of the room, leaving the other three sitting in silence.

Sharon was the first to break it. “Fergus, you could have at least discussed it with me before you told her I’d stay with you at the hotel tonight. I don’t like that idea.”

She kept her voice low so it wouldn’t carry.

He shrugged and followed her example. “I know you don’t. It’s uncomfortable for me, too, but it was all I could think of on the spur of the moment. If you’d discussed this with me earlier we could have decided on a plan of action, but since you didn’t I had to improvise.”

She knew he was right. She’d made a mistake in judgment and had no right to blame him if she didn’t agree with his decisions.

It was Anna who brought up the next objection. “Do we really have to give her this month’s rent back?” she asked softly. “After all, it was her decision to leave. Nobody asked her to.”

Fergus grinned. “That’s not altogether true,” he said. “I more or less forced the issue, although I doubt she’ll ever catch on, but it’s important that she continue to think of you both as her friends. She’s a self-centered airhead, but she’s also expert at playing on people’s emotions. If she thinks she’s being treated unfairly she could do a lot of damage to Sharon’s case. I’ve had experience with her type.”

“Yeah, I suppose you’re right,” Anna said, “but I hope it doesn’t take us too long to find another tenant. It’s tough for Sharon and me to split the rent just two ways. Especially if Sharon isn’t getting paid during her suspension.”

The mention of her suspension brought another wave of despair to Sharon, but Fergus’s reply eased it.

“I promise you, Anna, Sharon will be able to keep up her share of the household expenses. I’ll talk to the hotel’s lawyers in the morning, and I also have a solution to your lack of a third tenant—”

“Dinner’s ready,” Tracey yelled from the dining room, interrupting the discussion.

“We’ll be right there,” Anna called, then turned her attention back to Fergus. “You were saying?”

He shook his head. “We’ll go into that tomorrow,” he said, and stood. “There’s not time now, and besides, I think I’d better discuss my idea with Sharon first. She doesn’t like for me to make decisions for her.”

He reached out his hand to her and pulled her up to stand beside him, leaving her to wonder just what devilish plot he was going to charm her into agreeing to next.

* * *

After dinner, while Anna and Fergus did the dishes, Tracey halfheartedly started packing her belongings, and Sharon changed into slacks and a blouse, then gathered up the things she’d need for her overnight stay at the hotel and tossed them into her small suitcase.

It was a little after nine by the time Fergus and Sharon arrived at the hotel, and so far neither of them had alluded to their earlier conversation. She knew him well enough to know that he’d open the discussion when he was good and ready and not before. As for her, she was emotionally exhausted and wasn’t sure she could handle an argument if that’s what it became.

When he unlocked the door to his suite and stood back for her to precede him she had mixed emotions. She knew she shouldn’t have agreed to this. It was not only unwise, but dangerous.

She hadn’t realized how dangerous until she’d felt the leap of joy that flooded through her when Fergus told Tracey that Sharon would spend tonight at the hotel with him.

Oh, she’d managed to tamp it down and protest, but it flared up again when he overrode that protest. She hadn’t even put up a fight, but meekly, even thankfully, had submitted.

Now they were going to be closely confined all night in these two rooms. How was she going to sleep knowing he was just on the other side of the wall? On Wednesday night when she’d stayed there she’d been so shocked and terrified that sleep had been a welcome escape, but after two days in the company of the man who was her ex-husband, her defender and her protector, she knew that she still loved him as totally as she had while they were married.

As Sharon swept past Fergus and into the living room of his suite he felt a profound sense of relief. All the way over he’d been afraid she’d change her mind and insist on checking in alone at another hotel, or taking a separate room by herself at this one, but she hadn’t.

So why was he relieved? Having her share these two rooms with him would guarantee him a hellish night. He’d spend the rest of the evening striving to keep his hands off her, and the remainder of the night fighting the overwhelming temptation to join her in her bed and seduce her into making love with him.

Just the thought of it made him shiver with desire and escalated the tension headache that had been building all evening.

His memory of their uninhibited lovemaking during their courtship and marriage was only too vivid. Her passion had matched his own, and the result was combustible. They’d gone up in flame so often it was a wonder they didn’t have scars.

But, of course, they did have scars. At least he did, and he was certain she did, too. Not from the fire that had consumed them during those happy times, but from the holocaust that had ripped them apart when his surprising and totally unwelcome attraction for another woman had blurred his judgment and thrown him a curve. A curve he’d fumbled badly.

His wounds had only partially healed during the intervening years, and now that Sharon was back in his life again, no matter how tenuously, they tended to tear open a little more during each encounter, until they were once more raw and bleeding.

If it was painful for him it must be agony for Sharon. He’d not only wronged and humiliated her at the time of their divorce, but now she was charged with a murder she didn’t commit and she was forced to depend on him for her very life.

He knew she didn’t trust him, would probably never trust him again, but still she was totally dependent on his skill and knowledge of the law to save her from a terrible miscarriage of justice.

Consequently she was terrified, bewildered and so achingly vulnerable. He’d be a world-class bastard if he took advantage of her temporary susceptibility to appease his own burning need.

The telephone started to ring just as Fergus shut the door, and he answered it while Sharon went into the bedroom to hang up the lightweight coat she’d worn as protection against the chilly spring-night breeze. He was still talking when she came back, and she could tell from his end of the conversation that it was a business call.

Not wanting just to stand there and listen, she began pacing slowly around the room, until she found herself in front of the locked bar cabinet. The key was in the lock, and she opened it and rummaged through the contents until she found a bottle of Perrier and a can of beer.

She caught Fergus’s eye and held up the beer in a questioning gesture. He smiled and nodded, and she opened both containers and poured them into two glasses from the cupboard over the cabinet, then opened a package of miniature pretzels and emptied them into a glass bowl.

“I’m sorry,” Fergus said as he hung up the phone and joined her. “I left Chicago so suddenly in the middle of the night that I didn’t have time to tie up any of the loose ends at the office.”

He picked up his glass and the pretzels and strode over to the sofa, followed by Sharon. “I’m afraid I’m going to have to start wearing my beeper so I can be contacted more easily.”

They sat down and he put the bowl of pretzels on the coffee table.

Sharon felt a blast of guilt. She’d been so glad to see him and so relieved to have him there, taking over her defense, that it hadn’t occurred to her what a huge sacrifice he was making to drop everything the way he had and come to her rescue. How could she have been so thoughtless?

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I hate it that I’ve disrupted your work so badly. If you need to go back to Chicago please don’t feel compelled to stay here. I’m sure Ray can carry on, now that you’ve taken care of all the preliminaries—”

“Stop right there,” Fergus said. “Are you trying to tell me you’d prefer to have Ray Quinlan defend you instead of me?”

“No!” She was so startled that she practically shouted the denial at him. “That’s not what I mean. I just don’t want to be a burden—”

“Burden, hell!” he roared as he slammed his glass down on the coffee table, spilling part of the beer as he jumped to his feet. “Goddammit, Sharon, will you stop being so sickeningly self-sacrificing and face a few hard truths?”

“Self-sacrificing? Me?” Her volume matched his as she also put her glass down and stood. “Aren’t you being a tad overconfident? What makes you think you’re the only lawyer on earth who can convince a jury I’m not guilty?”

He glared at her. “I don’t
think
I am, I
know
I am. I’m the only one who would put up with your stubborn, egotistical insistence that you’re invincible and don’t need or even want help from anybody.”

“Stubborn! Egotistical!” Her voice rose a decibel with each word. “Look who’s talking. I’ve never known a more stubborn, egotistical man than you.”

“Then I’d say you’ve been damn lucky,” he said grimly. “I’ll be happy to introduce you to a few, but don’t count on one of them to defend you. They’re not burdened with the same motive I am.”

“Oh.” Her tone was sarcastic. “And just what motive are you saddled with? It sure can’t be the size of the fee you’ll get.”

“No, it’s not the fee,” he said, his voice suddenly flat and back to a normal volume. “It’s a much more compelling and painful obsession than that. I’m in love with you.”

For once Sharon was speechless. It was as if she’d had the breath knocked out of her, and for a moment she found herself struggling just to breathe as she watched Fergus put his fingers to his temples and turn away from her.

“That... That’s a low blow, Fergus,” she finally stammered. “I truly didn’t expect you to lie to me. Especially not about...about that.”

“I’m not lying,” he said dully. “I told you the same thing five years ago when you confronted me about Elaine. You wouldn’t believe me then so there’s no reason to think you will now, but it’s true.”

She felt a faint flicker of hope, but ruthlessly pushed it away. “If you’d loved me then you wouldn’t have gotten involved with another woman.” Her tone was as lifeless as his.

He turned around to face her, and she saw anguish in his tight-lipped expression. “I didn’t get ‘involved’ with Elaine in the way you mean until after you and I were divorced, but you wouldn’t believe that, either. You just closed your mind and refused to listen to anything I tried to tell you.”

“But...but you married her.”

He nodded wearily. “Yes, I married her.” Again he put his fingers to his temples. “Look, why don’t we call it a night? It’s been a long day, and I have a pounding headache.”

A wave of compassion flooded her as she remembered that during their marriage he’d been prone to headaches when under an inordinate amount of stress. In her eagerness to relieve his suffering she’d borrowed a book on massage therapy from the college library and had worked out a way of manipulating the muscles of his neck, shoulders and back that had effectively relaxed him and alleviated the discomfort.

Now she was the cause of his stress, and she had an irresistible urge to take away his pain. Without thinking past that urge, she got up and walked over to stand in front of him. “Since I’m probably the cause of your headache, will you let me try to relieve it?” she asked softly. “I think I remember how.”

With a muffled groan he put his arms around her and pulled her so close that she could feel the tension in him as she slid her arms around his neck. “I’d be eternally grateful to you if you would,” he murmured in her ear, “but I have to tell you that stroking me with those soft little hands is definitely not the way to relax me.”

She rubbed her cheek against his. “Would you rather I didn’t?”

“Oh, please don’t back out now.” It sounded very much like a plea. “I’ll muddle through and enjoy every minute of it.”

So would she, but that wasn’t necessarily good. She leaned back a little in his arms and started to unknot his tie. “Would you like to take off your shirt?”

A wicked little grin lit his face. “Why don’t you do it for me?”

The very thought sent a wave of heat coursing through her. It was easy to see that she’d made a serious mistake by getting herself into this, but she couldn’t back out now. Not when he was hurting and she could bring him relief.

“I—I think you’d better do it,” she stammered. “It’s been years since I undressed a man.”

Oh damn! That wasn’t what she’d intended to say. Now he’d know there hadn’t been any other men in her life since their divorce. He’d either think she couldn’t attract another man or he’d know that she’d been pining for him all this time.

She wasn’t prepared for the look of contrition—and could it be relief?—that altered his expression as his arms once more tightened around her.

“Oh, Sharon.” It was clearly a moan of despair. “You’re right. I don’t deserve your forgiveness. I didn’t have the good sense to hold on to you when I had you, but I loved you then and I never stopped.”