Daniel's Gift (30 page)

Danny nodded, beginning to understand what was happening. "That's why it happened, isn't it? You didn't just make a mistake. It was meant to be."

Jacob smiled and stroked his chin in an annoyingly knowing way. "When the Big Guy closes a door, he usually opens a window."

Chapter Twenty

"I better open a window. It stinks in here," Jenny said as she entered Danny's bedroom.

Luke wrinkled his nose in distaste."Where on earth is that smell coming from?"

"Something's rotting. We have to find it."

"Excuse me?"

Jenny ignored him, intent on finding the offending item. She turned down the covers on Danny's bed. An Oreo cookie fell out. Not the cause of the odor, but definitely the cause of a few chocolate crumbs in the sheets. She got down on her knees and checked under the bed. She came up with a pair of hockey sticks, sweat socks that produced a different but also unpleasant odor, Danny's missing book report, and a magazine.

Jenny tossed everything aside except the magazine. "Oh, my God. Playboy."

Luke looked over her shoulder and smiled. "Danny was reading Playboy?"

"I hardly think he was reading it. He probably got it from Christopher's older brother."

"All boys sneak a peek at skin magazines."

"He's only twelve years old," she wailed. "And the worst part is that he hid it from me. What else is he hiding from me? What else isn't he telling me?"

"You're his mother. A boy is not going to tell his mother that he's ogling naked women after the lights are out."

"Danny and I have talked about sex." She got to her feet. "I thought he could talk to me about anything."

"You're making too much of this."

"I am not. I never make too much of things."

Luke grinned. "You always make too much of things. You're passionate and emotional. I love that about you."

The words slipped so easily from his lips that Jenny wasn't sure she had heard him right. Thirteen years of silence, and then an "I love that about you" phrase. As if they had parted friends or lovers just yesterday.

Jenny tossed the magazine into the garbage can. She didn't want to get into a discussion with Luke about sex or anything remotely related to the topic. She pulled open the drawers in Danny's desk and hit pay dirt. With tentative fingers, Jenny pulled out a moldy piece of pepperoni pizza.

Luke made a face. "That was in his drawer?"

"Why, sure. Along with a ruler, a pen, a package of chewing gum, and a batch of Marvel comics. Where else would he keep it?" She dumped the pizza into the trash, picked up the can and walked into the kitchen with it. Dumping everything into a white plastic bag, she tied the two ends into a knot and set it by the back door.

Luke stood in front of the refrigerator, looking at a photograph of Danny at the science fair.

"That's Danny's spaceship," Jenny said. "He has a bit of both of us in him, my penchant for adventure and your love of science. Danny wants to be an astronaut."

"No kidding. I'm impressed."

"Is that a little fatherly pride I'm hearing?"

"It's a lot of fatherly pride." Luke's eyes softened as he looked at her. "I want to know everything about him, Jenny. I want to go through your scrapbooks, see his school pictures, hear all the funny stories that you hold in your heart. I want you to make him real for me. That boy in the hospital bed seems so cold, so distant. Wake him up for me, Jenny." Luke reached for her hands and squeezed them tightly. "I need to know him."

Jenny searched his face in wonder, noting the vulnerability, the anguish, his feelings exposed for the world to see. It was so unlike the Luke she remembered.

"He wanted to know you, too," she murmured. "I have so much guilt. If only I'd taken him to see you. I was afraid."

"Of me?"

"Of Danny. Afraid he'd love you more than me, want to live with you, want to have the things that you could give him that I couldn't. I was afraid of losing him. That's why I stalled. I didn't want to share. This is all my fault."

"It was an accident."

"There wouldn't have been an accident if I'd taken him to see you."

"Its over, Jenny. You can't punish yourself this way. I have guilt, too. My God, I can't believe I told you to get an abortion."

"Having a child wasn't part of your vision for the future, Luke. But I should have told you to go to hell, that I was having the baby anyway. The truth is, I didn't make a decision one way or the other. I drifted. I debated. I listed my pros and cons until I ran out of paper. You know I could never choose. Well, I didn't choose then. It became too late to have an abortion. So I had him. Then I fell in love with him and knew there had never really been a choice."

Jenny shook her head as she thought about the past. "I've spent my life reacting to things instead of controlling them. You're different. You're in charge. You can make a decision in ten seconds. It takes me ten minutes to figure out if I want bleu cheese dressing or oil and vinegar on my salad. I'm a mess. My life is a mess. Even now, I'm just doing what the doctors say, doing what you say, doing what Alan and Merrilee say. Like I have no mind of my own. Maybe that's why God's taken Danny. He couldn't bear to leave him with such a poor excuse for a mother a minute longer."

"Stop it, Jenny."

"I can't."

"You have to."

"I need to do something, take positive action, change things -- "

"Stop."

"I'm out of control. I -- "

Luke cut off her words with his mouth, taking her completely by surprise. The kiss was filled with pent- up anger, passion, and memories. Her lips parted involuntarily. His tongue plunged into her mouth. Reason disappeared.

Their bodies came together, face to face, breast to chest, hip to hip, groin to groin. He was hard. She was soft. They fit perfectly together. Only their clothes were in the way.

Jenny pushed off his coat and pulled at his tie. His hands slid up under her sweater, cupping her breasts. He moaned against her lips. She unbuttoned his shirt, running her hands through the thick mat of hair on his chest.

The tactile memories came back. The feel of his muscles. The coarseness of his five o'clock shadow against her face, his fingers teasing her breasts.

His mouth left hers to trail soft, wet kisses along her neck and collarbone. Jenny gasped for air. Her mind threatened to function. She refused to let it. She didn't want to think. She just wanted to feel. And, damn, he felt good.

Jenny pushed Luke's shirt off, ripping a button in her haste. He pulled her sweater over her head and tossed it on the ground. Her bra followed, and he kissed her breasts, working his mouth against her nipples in pure magic. She ran her hands through his air, down the column of his spine and around to his waist.

Her hands reached for his belt buckle.

He unsnapped her jeans.

Their eyes connected, their breathing heavy.

"Oh, my God," Jenny said. "What am I doing?" She reached frantically for her bra, her sweater. The bra took too much time, so she pulled the sweater haphazardly over her head, taking pleasure in the moment when her face was completely covered. Then the sweater slid down to her shoulders, and she was face- to-face with Luke.

He had pulled on his shirt and slung his tie around his neck. Slowly, he buckled his belt, drawing her eyes to a place where she didn't want to look.

"Bad idea," she said.

"Probably." He shook his head and a small smile crossed his lips. "When I'm with you, I can't think rationally or logically. I can barely remember my own name."

"Even now?"

"Especially now." He pulled on his coat. "Just for the record, Jenny, I don't make decisions any better than you do. The only real decision I made was to spend that summer with you. The rest of my choices were by default. So if anyone's a coward, it's me."

Jenny followed him out of the kitchen and down the hall to the front door, thinking about his words. Luke had always seemed strong to her, confident, sure of himself to the point of arrogance. With age had come humility, awareness of his own failings. Damn him. She was starting to like him again, and that was the last thing she wanted to have happen.

Luke stopped at the front door. "The desire is still there, isn't it, Jenny?"

"Yes," she whispered. "It's still there. I wish it wasn't."

"So do I."

* * *

Denise was playing solitaire and watching "
The Late Show with David Letterman
" when Luke walked into the bedroom. She wore a sheer black nightgown with spaghetti straps that fell off her shoulders. A candle on the nightstand had burned down to its wick. A bottle of champagne sat in a bucket of water by the bed.

Luke tossed his coat onto the loveseat and sat down on the edge of the bed to take off his shoes.

Denise played a card. "You're late."

"I'm sorry." Luke sighed, dreading an argument. After leaving Jenny's house, he had returned to the hospital, taken another peek at Danny, then spent the rest of the night at his office, holed up with Keith Avery, as they tried to make sense of the medical studies done on coma patients. Five hours of searching had taken them nowhere. There was simply no medical procedure to pull a patient out of a coma.

"Where have you been?" Denise asked.

"At the office."

"I thought you might have been at the hospital."

"I was there for a while."

"How is he?"

"The same."

Silence fell between them. Luke undressed, stripping down to his briefs. He went into the bathroom, brushed his teeth, slapped water on his face, and returned to the bedroom. Denise was still playing cards, and the television blared the annoying sound of laughter.

"Mind if I turn that off?" He reached for the controls.

"As a matter of fact, I do."

"Fine." Luke slid into bed and pulled the covers up to his shoulders. He turned on his side, facing the door to their bedroom. He was tired, weary from too many emotions. He was used to compartmentalizing his feelings, making sense of them. But he couldn't make sense of Danny's condition, or of his overwhelming love for a child he didn't even know.

Nor could he make sense of his passion for Jenny, a woman he had walked away from thirteen years earlier. How could he want her now, when he had put her so successfully out of his mind for so many years?

It was as if a dam had built up in his mind. Danny's accident had opened the floodgates. His feelings were now completely out of control. If Jenny hadn't called a halt earlier, he would have made love to her right there on the kitchen table. And he wasn't a man who did things like that. Spontaneity was not his style.

"I want you to take me to the hospital the next time you go," Denise said. She turned off the television.

Now that the noise was gone, Luke wished it back. Anything was preferable to a discussion with Denise when his thinking was completely muddled.

"Luke, did you hear me?" She rested her head on the back of his shoulders.

"I heard you. Are you sure it fits into your schedule?"

"That isn't fair."

Luke sighed. "We'll go tomorrow."

"Tomorrow is Thanksgiving."

"You always have an excuse."

"Ifs not an excuse. It's Thanksgiving. Your parents will be here. I asked the Willoughbys to stop by for cocktails before they drive up to Tahoe. We can't slip out and go to the hospital. It would be rude." She paused. "I am trying, Luke. You sprung a kid on me. That takes some getting used to."

He stared at the wall. "You sprung a tubal ligation on me. I'd say we're even."

She didn't say a word for a long moment. "Maybe I could have it undone."

It took a moment for Luke to understand her words. He rolled onto his back. "Would you really do that?"

Denise avoided direct eye contact. "I might. I didn't realize having a child was so important to you."

"I have a child now," Luke said quietly. "A boy. Maybe it would be enough if you could accept him as a part of our family. Can you do that?"

"Of course. I can do anything you want. Anything. I love being your wife. I don't want to lose you."

Luke picked up on her choice of words. Loved being his wife. But did she love him? Or just what he could offer her?

Denise ran her fingernails down his arm. "I wanted to be with you tonight. I wanted us to hold each other, comfort each other. The champagne is warm now, but we can still make love."

Her red hair drifted down against his bare chest. She looked beautiful but cold. At least, he felt cold, and he couldn't imagine drumming up enough energy to make love to her. With Jenny so fresh in his mind, it would be impossible to touch Denise without thinking of Jenny. It wouldn't be fair to either of them. "I'm tired."

Her eyes narrowed at his excuse. "Okay. We have a big day tomorrow anyway."

"Yes."

"It will be nice to have everyone together."