ONE NIGHT ONLY

Chapter 16

They made love all night.

In the bed again, doggy style this time after a pause to eat the delicious but-now-cold dinner he’d ordered. With Rosa on top the next time. In the enormous marble tub the last time. An orange dawn was breaking against the black sky by the time they collapsed into the down-covered bed and he spooned her against him with one hand on her breasts, one between her legs and her butt nestled tight against his groin.

When she woke up, the sun was high in the sky and he was gone.

That one night had addicted her to his presence and, drowsy and bewildered, she reached for his warmth, lost without him. He wasn’t anywhere in the enormous bed.

"Philip?" Blinking, she levered herself up on her arms and looked around.

No answer.

It took her a minute of forlorn wandering—she paused only to wrap a white terrycloth robe around her deliciously sore body—to realize that he wasn’t in the bathroom, wasn’t in the other bedroom, wasn’t anywhere. Gone. He’d loved her and left her and now he was gone. She was beginning to reel when she saw the card perched atop a brightly-wrapped blue and gold box.

Dread, sudden and cold, permeated the fluffy warmth of the robe. With shaking hands she opened the note, trying to brace for whatever he’d throw at her now.

Sweetheart—

One night isn’t enough and I’m an all-or-nothing person. I can’t have half of you. I just can’t do it. So here’s what I want:

I want to marry you.

I want to raise Brennan with you.

I want more children with you.

Come to me when you’re ready to discuss our future and you’ve said good-bye to Jake.

I can wait.

I love you,

P

P.S. Call the front desk for the limo when you’re ready to go home.

Thirty seconds of stunned numbness descended on her but then she opened the present and saw what was inside: A silver barbell baby rattle inside a Tiffany eggshell blue box for their unborn children. A new baseball glove for Brennan.

Worst—and best—of all, a diamond eternity band inside a black velvet box for her.

It was the wedding band that did it. Raising her left hand to her face, she stared at the plain gold band she was already wearing and remembered. That she’d had a husband. That she’d sworn to love him her entire life. That her love hadn’t saved him from brain cancer. That he’d died and she’d made love to his best friend with his ring still on her hand.

Shame washed over her in great, sickening waves because what kind of woman was she? Living and loving—yes, she loved Philip and probably always had on some level—while her husband was dead? Leaving her precious son for a night of illicit pleasure in a hotel? Thinking about a life with someone else?

Philip, of all people. Philip. Who was dark, brooding and intense on a good day, so different from her laid-back husband and his boyish smiles. Philip, who touched her in ways no one else ever had, who unlocked secrets of her body even she’d never known.

How could she have fallen in love with two such different men?

And how could she let Jake go when she couldn’t even bring herself to scatter his ashes? What would poor Jake say if he could see her now? When he was sick, they’d talked in general terms about her remarrying, but he probably didn’t mean for her to marry his best friend.