when she started getting serious. Maggie hated the thought of being a substitute for another woman. However, the temptation to try to capture his affection for herself through passion became more irresistible with every passing day. Particularly as Tom grew more distant and spent less and less time around her.
He wanted her and he’d practically invited her to his bed. Those were two facts she simply could not dismiss from her mind.
Finally the fear of losing what she did have of him decided for her. It was after eleven already and Tom wasn’t home. He’d called and said not to worry about dinner, that he had a study group he was going to. On a Friday night. Like he had ever attended one of those before. He was avoiding her and she couldn’t take it any longer.
She’d known it would be hard to watch him walk away at the end of spring, she hadn’t known it would be impossible to live in the same house and lose what she had of him anyway. Right or wrong, she was going to sleep with him and she just hoped it would regain the closeness they’d shared before the encounter in the living room. It was worth any risk to have a future with the man she loved…even knowing that future might be extremely short-lived.
She donned her nightgown, nowhere near bold enough to actually climb naked into his bed, and turned out the house lights except one in the hall. Then she walked into his dark, empty bedroom with her heart pounding a mile a minute. She had no idea how she would have survived doing this if he’d actually been home.
The prospect of him finding her in his bed seemed much less daunting than to have to go to him and explain what she wanted. He was smart. He’d figure it out.
Even so, she got beneath the covers gingerly, feeling like a thief or something. But he had told her he would not fire her if he found her naked in his bed. She clung to that thought as she snuggled into his pillow, inhaling his scent. They would be intimate tonight and then this awful, empty void inside her chest would be gone.
As she lay there waiting for him, her week of sleepless nights caught up with her and unbelievably, her eyes grew heavy. Her last memory was looking at his digital clock to see that it was now after midnight.
She woke up to whispered voices on the other side of the bed. The mattress dipped at the same time as the small bedside lamp was clicked on and she gasped at what the light revealed.
Tom had his hand on a woman’s shoulder. A gorgeous brunette with deep brown eyes, her blouse unbuttoned to reveal perfect curves encased in black lace.
“Maggie, what are you doing here?” Tom demanded, his blue eyes wide with shock, his hair obviously mussed from what they’d been doing before coming into the room.
“Sleeping,” she blurted out blankly.
An explanation for her motives in being there was totally beyond her and Maggie’s heart shattered while the beautiful brunette looked at her like a particularly nasty bug caught under her shoe.
The light of understanding dawned in Tom’s blue gaze and along with it a wary chagrin that hurt as much as his new girlfriend’s sneering regard.
“Maggie, I…” For the first time in eighteen months she saw Tom Prince at a total loss for words, but his girlfriend wasn’t.
“Why is your housekeeper sleeping in your bed?” she asked Tom, her voice laced with suspicion.
“I forgot to tell her I was coming home tonight. It’s wash day. Her bedding must have been unavailable.” As excuses thought off the top of the head and given without the least advanced warning, it was a pretty good one.
However, the knowledge he didn’t want the other woman to know Maggie might have another reason for being in his bed burned through her like acid.
The beautiful woman’s lips pursed in disapproval. “I should think she’d sleep on the sofa, then.”
“Yes. I should have,” Maggie said with quiet dignity. She stared at Tom, her eyes accusing. “It was a big mistake to come in here.”
“The timing was unfortunate,” he replied, a wealth of meaning in his words.
“Most unfortunate,” the brunette agreed. “However, the problem can now be rectified, can’t it?”
“Of course.” Maggie climbed from the bed, glad she’d worn her white cotton gown.
If she’d been naked, she wasn’t sure she could have survived the humiliation. As it was, she felt angry and mortified, tears burning the back of her throat. She’d been such an idiot not to realize a man like Tom Prince wanting her could only be a temporary aberration.
Refusing to justify herself, and frankly incapable of saying another word, she spun on her heel and rushed from the room. She sprinted down the hall to her own room and rushed inside, slamming the door and locking it before collapsing on the floor and giving into the pain mushrooming inside her.
She’d been so stupid to think he really wanted her. She’d thought he was avoiding her because he couldn’t handle the fact she’d said no, when in fact he’d simply found another woman and had been spending time with her. Her foolish dreams mocked her with painful indictment.
But he hadn’t bothered to tell her he’d found someone else. Probably because in his mind it wasn’t someone “else” but merely someone. What he’d said hadn’t meant anything more to him than a reassurance about her job after the embarrassing debacle the week before. His comment hadn’t been an invitation at all. It couldn’t have been, not with him going out with another woman immediately after.
It had all been a product of her overactive imagination. Nothing more. But he shouldn’t have said it if he didn’t mean it. It wasn’t fair. Maggie felt like she was going to be sick, but she swallowed down her bile. Instead, for the first time in years, she let the silent tears flow.
In that moment, she hated Tom Prince as much as she loved him.
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