Free Another Woman's Son (Harlequin Romance) by Anna Adams Page A

deep down I thought a child would make me commit the way I had at first.”
    “Did you accuse him of cheating?”
    “I asked suspicious questions once or twice, but I always hoped I was wrong.” She set the first plate in one of the boxes. “I thought I was supposed to be questioning you.”
    He peeled another top sheet off a section and pushed the rest to her. “Faith thought I worked too much.” He looked at Tony, who’d crawled to the runner in the hall and begun to bang on the rug between smacks on his homemade drum. “I worked longer hours after I started to dread coming home.”
    “Dread?” Isabel wrapped a salad plate. “Faith never told me.”
    “I’m guessing Will heard about it.” He shrugged as if the thought didn’t hurt either of them and then he reached for a salad bowl. “She said she wanted more, that she was bored, alone with Tony all day, no one to talk to. Even you had volunteer work.”
    “Even I,” Isabel said. “As if I was a kindred bored spirit.”
    “Weren’t you?”
    “My best times were playing with Tony and Faith. But I kept busy. You know how volunteer committees operate. The wives of the really important men are in charge. I was a gofer—which Will never understood.”
    “Neither did Faith. She refused to be anyone’s lackey, as she put it, and she didn’t want to leave Tony long enough to take what she called a ‘real’ job.”
    “She said that?”
    “She had a degree. I suggested work might keep her from being so bored.”
    “Why do guys always try to solve your problems with advice?” He looked mystified, as if he’d done his best. It wasn’t his fault advice was rarely what a woman wanted from her husband. “Did she tell you what was wrong?”
    “Never. More than a year ago, I realized she’d withdrawn, but she insisted she only wanted Tony and his dad.” His voice broke. “I couldn’t bring her back, and I never expected Tony’s dad was my friend.”
    His voice, dripping in pain, froze Isabel. She clutched a plate in one hand and crumpled a piece of newspaper in the other. Her sister had been cruel.
    “Her problem was with me,” Ben said. “If I’d been the man she needed, she wouldn’t have turned to Will for more.”
    “I’m speechless.” She couldn’t look at him. “First, we’re on shaky ground because I don’t want to know more bad stuff about my sister or my lousy husband. Second, I don’t think we should blame ourselves because neither one of them was honest or honorable.”
    “Will finally told you.”
    “Because I gave him an ultimatum.” Had she brought down her marriage with an emotional challenge? “I said I wanted a baby or it was time to move on.”
    His surprise startled her. “Did you mean that?”
    “I don’t enjoy making myself sound manipulative, but I was pretty desperate.” She swathed another plate in paper. “You can see why I’m cured of lying or game-playing.” She gave him a look that was pure warning. Then she looked at Tony, happily beating the daylights out of her rug.
    “He’s my priority,” Ben said. “All I care about is keeping him.”
    She didn’t blame him, but she didn’t know him, either. Isabel had seen him as her friend and Faith’s husband. As she looked at him now, he was a large, tough man with dark hair that seemed to erupt from his head in curls. His eyes, dark blue and turbulent, made him seem dangerous.
    He folded newspaper around a bowl, his fingers wide and more than capable. Long fingers, lightly veined. Sparse hair on his forearms.
    Isabel’s heart began a beat that kept up with Tony’s recital. She breathed in a scent that wasn’t newspaper or box or herself or the house.
    Spice and musk and male.
    Ben.
    She hid a quickened breath. Had she stepped on shaky ground? She might be dancing on the edge of a cliff.
     
    “S IDE , D AD .” Tony pointed at the door with his big spoon. “Side, pease. ”
    “You should take him out,” Isabel said with dubious enthusiasm.