getting up to put on the coffee. Without waking Rachel, who slept like the innocent, he stripped off his sweatpants, showered, dressed, and returned to his computer.
At eight, he saved the file, then emailed it to himself and printed out a hard copy to be safe.
“You look happy,” said Rachel, knocking as she entered his study. She was putting up her hair in an elaborate chignon, something she always amazed Owen by doing without a mirror. And then she noticed his clothes. “And, oh my goodness, you’ve gotten dressed.” She was teasing him, smiling as her gaze met his eyes and travelled down the cut of his shirt and his trousers.
“I have,” said Owen, standing up. He felt a charge on his skin, and he wanted to turn her over the back of the couch, dig his hands into the sides of her skirt and yank it up to expose her pale, slim thighs and her firm white ass. But there was the smell of that musky perfume he liked, and along with it, the whiff of a trap. She had been on the pill, but her doctor had recommended stopping after she’d suffered some recent migraines. There was no way to know anymore if her desire was for him or a baby.
Owen shoved his hands in his pockets, which felt like the only safe place for them. “Have you thought any more about what we talked about?” he asked.
Rachel’s eyes widened. “Sort of. Have you?”
“No. I mean, I haven’t changed my mind. It’s just—”
“What?” Cutting him off, she shook her head as something seemed to close down in her expression.
“I want you, Rachel.” Fuck, his cock was practically tingling with his need for her. Sometimes he tuned in to nature programming during the day, just to be reminded of the extent to which animals would go to propagate the species. Really, it was a miracle he ever managed to get anything done at all. And even more astounding was what one good writing day could do for his libido where his wife was concerned. “But I don’t know…” He was trying very hard not to say what he was feeling. But I don’t trust you. It was terrible, the way she was searching his eyes again. “I don’t know if we have any condoms.”
* * *
—
Without meaning to, he agreed to go buy some. The two of them hadn’t used condoms together in years, not since Rachel had gone on the pill. But thinking of buying them made his cock stiffen again in his jeans, as though he was orchestrating some secret tryst. He usually bought condoms somewhere far from home, always in cash and never at the same place twice. He only allowed himself to keep a few in his car, in a compartment obscure enough to offer plausible deniability by implicating the previous owner.
From habit, he’d grabbed a cloth bag before heading out as if he were picking up groceries. But he ought to have grabbed an umbrella. A light drizzle was intensifying into a shower, and he turned up the collar of his jacket to keep the raindrops off the back of his neck. Two twenty-something girls huddling under an umbrella passed him, hurrying in the other direction. The one with dark hair like Rachel squealed as her foot splashed into a puddle. Her friend, a redhead, kept pulling her along by the wrist, with a laugh crescendoing into a shriek. He turned around to look at them as they moved away from him, half thinking one of them would turn around, too, but neither did.
The closest place to stop was the drugstore, which was one of those franchises he used to hate—the big corporate chain that had put two small family pharmacies out of business. But the convenience of it was undeniable. They had a grocery section and two snack aisles. Even a couple of shelves of DVDS. More than once, he’d run out in a hurry before Rachel came home, to pick up a frozen lasagna for dinner.
The condoms were displayed at the end of a rack at the back of the store, facing the pharmacist’s counter. He took down a box of the ultra-thins and headed straight to the cash. Two registers over, he noticed a woman in line who had the demure sultriness of Catherine Deneuve in Belle de Jour, buying a carton of milk and some Tylenol. She was wearing a khaki trench coat over a low-cut black dress, and her