separation it was both wholly new and wholly familiar. She and her daughter had sniffed two dozen scents last Christmas before settling on this one. One day two weeks ago, Russ had gotten into it after his bath, and she'd cried smelling David on her baby's skin.
It was the closest he'd been to his father in months.
Tears stung her eyes now, but she pinched the bridge of her nose to keep them at bay. How could David have done this to her? To them?
She drew up her knees to her chest and wrapped her arms around her shins. Her gaze drifted to the right, and she watched the calm surf spread its white apron across the sand with a soft shush. Any other time it would be a comforting sound.
But only the truth would comfort her now. "Are you having an affair?" she blurted out.
His stare poked at her. "What?"
"Are you - No! Don't answer that!" What was she doing, she thought in a panic. A "yes" wouldn't comfort her at all. She drew her legs closer and squeezed shut her eyes. "I can't do this," she muttered against her knees.
"Then don't do it," David urged. "Come back to the house. Move back in with the kids, and it will be just like before."
She lifted her head. "Like it was a week ago? Like it's been for months?"
He hesitated. "I'm a good provider." It sounded defensive. Guarded.
As he'd been since his fortieth birthday.
Then words she hadn't planned tumbled out of her mouth. "I've been thinking of having an affair myself."
"What?" David erupted from the tent, then rocked back, so that he was half in, half out. "Has that bastard Reed Markov been after you?"
"No," Tess said, waving a hand. "Geez, David, he's sleazy."
"You were the one cozying up to him at lunch."
"Because he actually might have work for me. And the sleaze is automatic with him. He puts it on in the morning when he gets up, just like you put on your...your dress shirts, lightly starched."
She thought she heard her husband's teeth grind. "So the other half of this affair you've contemplated is some fantasy man?"
Agreeing to that would be the easy path. But hell, if she wanted no barriers between them, then she couldn't lie. "Tee-Wee - Teague White. He had a crush on me when he was a kid."
"Him and probably three hundred thousand other men thanks to that damn OM commercial," David said, his voice tight. "I'm going to kill him."
"You can't do that. He's been a perfect gentleman. As far as I know, I'm the only one with naughty thoughts."
David twitched at that. It drew her gaze, and she could see more of him in the moonlight. The sleeping bag had pooled at his hips to bare his torso. Since all the gym time, she'd only caught glimpses of him as he'd crossed from the shower to his closet. Yes, those fifteen pounds he'd grumbled about were gone, but until now she hadn't made note of what had taken their place.
His chest was chiseled. Slabs of pectoral muscles were situated above rippling abdominals. His shoulders were heavier and wider now, with biceps that bulged when he shifted to lean back on his hands.
Whoever said women weren't aroused by visual stimulus were full of baloney.
Except, she thought, her heart contracting, she'd take her softer, loving David any day over this finely cut stranger who wouldn't look her in the eye or hold their youngest child in his arms. I'm sorry, she thought. I'm sorry that I got pregnant when we weren't planning another.
Just like they hadn't planned the first.
She wondered now if that was the explanation for the change in him. He'd never expressed feeling trapped into marriage after she'd told him about Rebecca, but maybe when baby Russ arrived those feelings had finally arrived too. Of course it took two to make new life, but she'd hated the pill, and the diaphragm was clearly not as effective when it came to them. After both unplanned pregnancies, she'd had the guilty yet pleasurable notion that their exciting, vigorous sex was to blame.
"So you've been having thoughts about another man," David ground out.
She shrugged. "You haven't denied thinking about women."
"Oh, I've had plenty of carnal thoughts, Tess."
Her heart squeezed.
"About one woman in particular."
Her lungs contracted.
The stranger who had once been her husband spoke again. "I'm going to get my hands on her."
Dying on the beach might be all right. The tide would come in and sweep