The Secret Baby Bond. Cindy Gerard

looked pained and apologetic.

      “But it’s been two years, Michael. Two years,” Grant restated for emphasis. “We’ve heard nothing. Nothing.” He paused dramatically for emphasis. “Life has gone on. Tara has moved on.”

      Michael watched Tara while her father spoke. Despite what Grant maintained, Michael could see that she hadn’t moved anywhere. Not yet. And if he had anything to say about it, the only direction she was going to move was toward him.

      He was back. And he was prepared to fight. For his wife. For his son. For his marriage. It wasn’t a battle he was prepared to start tonight, though, not with Grant Connelly present.

      “With due respect, sir,” he began as he met the older man’s eyes. “I don’t think that’s a decision Tara’s made yet. And when she does, that decision will be between her and me.”

      It was the deepest part of the night, the hour reserved for lovers. Moonlight danced across tall walls cloaked in ivory damask. Fine linen sheets tangled and slid to the foot of the bed in the second-floor bedroom of Lake Shore Manor where Tara Connelly Paige slept.

      The sheer ecru silk of her gown twisted around her hips; a delicate sheen of perspiration misted her throat and her brow. The slender fingers of her right hand clutched a cool spindle of the brass headboard as she moaned in frustration, ached for release.

      Her left hand lingered at her breast in an unconscious caress. She dreamed of her lover’s mouth there, suckling, adoring. She dreamed of Michael, his gray eyes smoky with desire, his broad shoulders blocking the moonlight, his strong arms caging her in as he braced himself above her.

      She sighed his name, arched her back and rode with the wild and stunning pleasure that he gave and took and demanded. His lean hips pumped into hers, his body filled hers as he enticed her to go with him to that place where sensation ruled and passion promised to make her whole again, make her real again, as she hadn’t been real since he’d left her.

      “Michael,” she whimpered and, in her sleep, ran her hand over her ribs, across her abdomen, down to the place that ached for him, throbbed for him. “Michael…”

      She sat up straight in bed, wrenched out of sleep by her own cries. Her breath slogged out in serrated gasps. She looked wildly around the room.

      It was not the apartment she had shared with Michael.

      It was her room in Lake Shore Manor.

      Where she’d slept. Alone. For two long years.

      A dream.

      It had only been a dream.

      She collapsed to her back on the bed, threw an arm over her forehead and willed her heart to settle, her breath to steady. And then she lay there in the dark of night, in a silence disrupted only by her ragged breaths. Aching for him. Burning for him.

      Michael wasn’t a dream. He was alive. She’d seen him tonight, talked to him, touched him. And right now she wanted him so badly she hurt.

      She missed lying with him in his bed. Missed the length of him, the strength of him, the heat of his mouth, the stroke of his hands.

      She didn’t have to miss him anymore.

      Staring hopelessly at the ceiling, she trembled with the need to call him, to ask him to come to her. To make love to her.

      The ache intensified to pain.

      It would be so easy.

      And so wrong.

      The tears came then. Tears of relief that he lived. Tears of grief that she hadn’t let herself shed since the day, two years ago, when the news had arrived with its ghastly presumption of death. Tears for all they’d had, for all they’d lost.

      Michael was alive and she was so glad. And yet the one thing he wanted couldn’t happen.

      He’d made it clear. He was determined to pick up where they’d left off. She dragged her hands through her hair, drawing on her resolve. That couldn’t happen. She could not resume her life with him. She couldn’t go through the pain of loving him again. Loving Michael hurt too much. Loving Michael had always hurt too much.

      She closed her eyes, rolled to her side and hugged her arms to her breasts. And then she hid in the night and clung to the one absolute that overshadowed his miraculous reappearance.

      On this point she could not waiver. For reasons that only she could understand, she was going through with the divorce. She had to. She had to because she knew what no one else did: She was a fake. A fraud.

      The image the media and even her family held of Tara Connelly as a headstrong, independent, gutsy and self-assured woman was a lie. A complete sham.

      The real Tara Connelly was a wimp. She wasn’t strong enough to do much more than drift through life with her emotions tightly under wraps. She wasn’t equipped to do much more than heed her survival instincts that warned her to stay under the radar, to exist with as little involvement as possible. Which meant she wasn’t capable of surviving another attempt at loving Michael Paige.

      And as she lay in the dark, fighting the want, denying the need, she was ashamed of the knowledge that the real Tara Connelly was too afraid to even try.