Johnston - Heartbeat (14 page)

“I guess the ladies have decided to have us spend some time together, doctor,” Jack said.

“Call me Roman, please,” Hollander said.

Jack noticed the doctor seemed distracted and wondered if Hollander really felt some other man could steal his wife away. Jack took another look at Lisa Hollander and snorted under his breath. Lisa was leaning toward Roman, and she hadn’t once taken her gaze off the doctor. The anxiety was all on Roman’s side. Unless . . . Jack wondered if Lisa was keeping such a sharp eye on her husband because she expected
his
eyes to roam.

He remembered she had referred to Isabel Rojas as “the doctor’s nurse.” Shouldn’t she be on more familiar terms with the woman after all these years? Were Hollander and his nurse perhaps having an affair? Or were they just plotting mercy killings together? At least if they were here, they weren’t at the hospital killing kids.

“Jack?”

Jack turned back to Maggie and only then realized she had put her hand on his to get his attention. A surreptitious glance revealed that he wasn’t the only one at the table to notice her touching him. “Did I miss something?”

“I asked if you’d like to dance.”

Jack worked to keep the confused frown off his face. Maggie had made a point of telling him she didn’t dance, yet here she was, asking him onto the dance floor. She gave a slight, jerky nod, and he realized she must want to tell him something without anyone else overhearing them.

“I’d be glad to dance with you, Maggie,” he said, rising and pulling her chair back as she stood. “Excuse us, please,” he said to the rest of the table.

“I think we’ll join you,” Roman said. “Lisa?”

Lisa shot her husband a brilliant smile. “Thank you, Roman. I’d love to dance.”

Two other couples joined them, leaving Tomas and a single woman—one of Maggie’s associates—at the table together.

“Jack? Are you there?”

Jack turned his attention to Maggie and realized she was perturbed with him. “What is it you got me out here to say to me, Maggie?”

She didn’t answer.

Jack gently lifted her chin and asked, “Maggie? What’s going on here?”

“I just wanted to dance.”

Jack heard the yearning, the suggestion that she wanted more. Since he was the one who’d backed off at her house, it was up to him to make the next move. Jack ignored the voice that warned
Be careful, Jack,
and said, “I still want you, Maggie.”

She looked up at him, her eyes wary. “Warts and all?”

“You’ve got warts?” Jack exclaimed in mock horror. “Where?”

Maggie laughed, then sobered. “You know what I mean. Can you deal with the fact I’m an alcoholic? Because if you can’t—”

Jack cut her off with a quick, hard kiss. “I’ll deal with it.” He felt her body relax into his. “Does this mean you’re ready for a relationship?”

“Not a relationship,” Maggie corrected. “An affair.”

Jack pulled her close, as he deftly turned her to the music. “Between the two, an affair isn’t the choice I’d expect most women to make.”

“Maybe they don’t know what they want. I do.”

“Which is?”

“No complications. No commitment. A brief, mutually pleasing interlude.”

Jack looked at her and shook his head. “You only think that’s what you want.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because women always end up wanting commitment. It’s the nature of the beast.”

“Not me, I assure you.”

Her eyes slid closed, and she leaned her cheek against his shoulder. “Oh, God,” she murmured. “I want you so much.”

He could feel her nipples, pointy against his shirtfront, and his body hardened like a rock. “Let’s go somewhere we can be alone. Please, Maggie.”

“All right, Jack,” she whispered.

Jack felt a tap on his shoulder. He turned irritably to brush off whoever had interrupted them and found himself looking into Victoria Wainwright’s pale blue eyes.

She smiled and said, “May I cut in?”

Chapter 9

Roman pulled his wife close on the ballroom dance floor, moving to the nostalgic forties sound of “Sentimental Journey” being played by the orchestra. The decorations at the Cancer Society Gala matched the music. Red, white, and blue bunting had been hung everywhere in Alamo Plaza, and World War II posters adorned the gazebo.

All of the women, including his wife, had donned 1940s fashions—clingy, silky, slinky gowns—and wore their hair to look like Betty Grable and Rita Hayworth and Barbara Stanwyck. Roman thought Lisa, with her short brown hair swept under in back, looked a lot like Navy nurse Patricia Neal when she was wooed by Commander John Wayne in
Operation Pacific.

Roman was aware of other men staring at his wife and felt a sick churning in his stomach. He was losing her. Even after their desperate lovemaking the night she’d come home from Dallas, things weren’t the same as they’d been three months ago. That was when things had started going wrong between them.

At first, he’d been understanding when Lisa turned her back on him, pleading fatigue, but he’d missed the physical closeness they’d always shared. When she was still turning him down two weeks later, he’d stopped asking, waiting for her to reach for him when she was ready. To fight his frustration, he’d worked longer hours and come home so tired he wondered if he’d have been able to make love to her if she asked. But she never had.

He’d thought the problem had finally resolved itself when they’d made love last week after their argument. Lisa had been every bit as excited and excitable a lover as she had ever been. But they hadn’t made love since. Roman had been afraid to ask for fear she’d turn him down and the cycle of rejections would begin again. And Lisa hadn’t reached for him, either.

What was going on? What had happened
to
their perfect marriage? Everything had been so wonderful. What had gone wrong?

It was still hard for Roman to believe how hard and fast he’d fallen for his wife four years ago. How amazing it was that Lisa had loved him back. How intense and uncontrollable his feelings for her still were.

When Lisa nestled her cheek against his shoulder, Roman reached up
to
caress her nape but eased his hand back down to her waist without touching her. His parents had always been appalled at any sort of intimate gesture in public, and Roman had to catch himself whenever he felt such an urge with his wife. It wasn’t much easier for him to make such tender gestures in private. And lately he hadn’t made them at all.

He’d rarely been able to tell his wife in words how much he cared for her. Every time he tried to say “I love you,” his heart pounded and his throat felt like someone had garrotted him. His feelings were stuck inside, and he couldn’t get them out.

But over the years of their marriage he had shown her. He sometimes wondered what she thought of how often and how fiercely he had made love to her. Of course, all that had stopped abruptly three months ago, and the fear of losing her had become a claw tearing at his insides.

“You’re all tensed up,” she said.

Her warm breath in his ear made it even more difficult to relax. “It’s hard sometimes to forget about everything going on at the hospital,” he said by way of excuse. “Are you enjoying the dance?”

She murmured agreement deep in her throat, and the sound made his groin tighten. As simply as that, she could make him ache to put himself inside her. But he hesitated to ask her to come home with him now and make love, because he wasn’t sure what he’d do or say if she refused him again.

Had she fallen out of love with him? Roman wondered.

Roman had never understood what it was about him that Lisa had found so admirable that she was willing to overlook his age and the tremendous commitment of time he gave to his work to marry him. And these days, between his job and hers and the time they gave to their daughter, Amy, there was little left for the two of them. There wasn’t time to nurture their love. No wonder it seemed to be dying.

He had asked Lisa several times to quit her job, but she was adamant about having a career. They’d had harsh words over it last Thursday. “I need my work,” she’d said. “It’s important to me. You never said anything before. Why are you objecting now?”

It should have been obvious to her; it was to him. “I never see you anymore,” he’d said. “I want you to think about quitting your job and staying home.”

For a moment her eyes had seemed . . . frightened. “I’m not giving up my job, Roman. I can’t. I won’t!”

“Why not? What’s so damned important about your job?”

She’d given him a panicked look, opened her mouth
to
speak, then shut it again without a word.

When he reached for her, she’d whirled and run from the house. Thank God she’d gone to see Maggie. Thank God Maggie had convinced her to come home.

Making up had been emotionally wringing for both of them. He’d apologized for yelling, and she’d apologized for running away. He’d started kissing away her tears and his mouth had ended up on hers. He’d made love to her as though it were the last time he’d ever have her in his arms . . . because he was uncertain what the future held for them.

Tonight he’d felt jealous when Jack Kittrick had conferred his wife with an admiring look. Not that Lisa had ever given him reason to be jealous. He didn’t believe their problem had anything to do with another man. But he found himself leaning over to ask, “What do you think of Jack Kittrick?”

“He doesn’t strike me as Maggie’s type,” Lisa replied.

“Why not?”

“In the years I’ve known her, I haven’t seen Maggie with any man who wasn’t too old and stodgy for her-or interested in the wrong sex. Jack Kittrick is a real man.”

Roman’s neck hairs bristled at Lisa’s complimentary assessment of the other man, but he forced himself to stay calm. “What does that make me?” he asked.

She looked up and met his gaze, then laid her head back on his shoulder and said, “The man I love.”

It should have been enough that she’d said the words. Except she hadn’t been looking at him when she’d said them. She never did. It had never bothered him until they had become estranged, and he realized his own shortcomings in the same area.

“Why do you do that?” he asked abruptly. He felt her stiffen in his arms and realized his voice must have been harsher than he’d thought.

“Do what?” she asked.

He forced the fear—and the consequent anger—back down and said, “Why do you always look away when you tell me you love me?”

She looked up at him again, a fleeting glance, before she tucked her head back under his chin. “I don’t know.”

She had to know. She just wasn’t telling him. But he knew better than to pursue the subject. Whenever he pushed, she backed into a protective, noncommunicative shell, like a turtle, and waited safely inside until he no longer threatened her with questions she wasn’t willing to answer.

Consciously, Roman knew that if Lisa hadn’t truly loved him, she could easily have left him anytime during the past four years and supported herself on what she made as a lawyer. For a brief period he had feared she stayed with him only because Amy needed a father.

Stop torturing yourself. Accept what she says at face value. Lisa loves you, and you love her. Don’t worry away your happiness. Things will get back to normal. Just be patient.

But he could feel Lisa drifting away. Fear encircled him like a net, and no amount of struggling freed him from the torment of knowing he was going to lose his wife unless he did something to turn things around. He could cut out a cancerous growth with precision, but he couldn’t heal what he couldn’t see. And Lisa’s problem, whatever it was, remained a mystery to him.

He pulled Lisa more tightly into his arms, and to his relief, she burrowed closer to him, clinging to him as though she needed him as much as he needed her.

“Roman,” she said against his throat. “Amy should be asleep by now. Why don’t we go home?”

His mouth went dry at the thought of what Lisa was suggesting. “Don’t you have to stay and be sociable?”

“You can say you have an emergency at the hospital.”

“What a clever wife I have,” he murmured, wanting to kiss the shell of her ear, imagining it in his mind, but remaining aloof in public, as he always did.

“Let’s hurry, Roman. I don’t think I can wait much longer to have you inside me.”

When she said things like that, the top of his head nearly came off. Maybe tonight would be the turning point. He took her hand and dragged her through the stifling crowd, uncaring of the stares they were getting, single-minded in his determination to get her where he could lay her down and take what she was offering.

“Roman,” she said with a laugh. “Stop. Let me tell Maggie we’re leaving.”

They had reached their table, but everyone was still on the dance floor except Tomas and one of Lisa’s female colleagues.

“Would you please tell Maggie that Roman got a call, and we had to leave?” Lisa said to Tomas.

“I’ll be glad to pass on the message,” he replied.

A moment later they were headed for the Rivercenter. Roman gave the valet his parking stub and gripped Lisa’s hand tighter while he waited for his Mercedes to arrive.

She put her other hand over his and said, ’Tm not going anywhere.”

“Am I holding you too tight?”

“A little,” she said. “But don’t let go.”

He drove home in a sort of mindless state, aware of her hand on his leg, near his hip. Aware of the weight of her breast against his arm. He knew from experience that she would already be wet and ready for him. His whole heart and mind and soul were focused entirely on her.

Before Lisa, he had been following in his parents’ footsteps, devoting himself utterly and totally to being the best doctor he could be. Nothing else had mattered. In one fleeting glance, Lisa had turned his life upside down. He understood now, with the possibility of losing her so real, that without her—without her love—life wasn’t worth living.

He skidded to a stop in the red-brick driveway of their Alamo Heights mansion and heard Lisa’s throaty chuckle before she said, “Patience, my love. Patience.”