Seducing the Wolf (56 page)

When they reached the living room, she sat in the chair she’d vacated and topped off her wine as her mother slowly roamed around, admiring the sumptuous décor before stopping at the wall of floor-to-ceiling windows that bathed the room in sunlight.

“I must say, Manning has magnificent taste. In homes…wine…women.” On the last part, Elyse’s eyes met Taylor’s. “I owe you an apology for the way I reacted after you turned down Aidan’s proposal.”

Taylor stared at her mother, surprised by the admission.

“I was embarrassed,” Elyse confessed. “And I was so worried about what my guests would think that I didn’t stop to consider how difficult that moment must have been for you. That was selfish of me, and I am truly sorry. I hope you can forgive me.”

Taylor nodded slowly. She’d received an apology from one parent today, but not the one she’d been hoping for. “I forgive you,” she said softly.

Elyse gave her a small, gratified smile. Sipping her wine, she walked over and sat on the sofa.

“Did you know Aidan was going to propose?” Taylor asked.

“No.” Elyse grimaced. “I had a suspicion, but I didn’t know for sure. Your father knew, of course. That’s why he was there that evening. He and Aidan had it all worked out. Given that it was
my
dinner party, it would have been nice if they’d let me in on their little plan.”

Taylor smiled ruefully. “Sounds like I’m not the only one who was put on the spot that night.”

“Ah, but you’re the only one who found herself in the unenviable position of being proposed to by a man she didn’t love. In a roomful of virtual strangers, at that.” Elyse’s expression softened with sympathy. “Tru told me about your conversation with Aidan. I know that must have been very painful for you.”

“It was,” Taylor said quietly. “It was painful for both of us. Hurting Aidan was the last thing I wanted to do, and I’m sure he never intended to hurt me by sleeping with another woman. But we both have to live with the consequences of the choices we made.”

“That’s true,” Elyse murmured, gazing reflectively into the ruby contents of her glass. “For every choice we make in life, there are consequences. Some are good…some are devastating.”

Something in Elyse’s tone sent a whisper of foreboding down Taylor’s spine. She stared at her mother. “Are we still talking about me and Aidan? Or something else?”

Elyse lifted her glass to her mouth and sipped slowly, as if she were stalling for time. “Have you spoken to your father?”

Taylor stiffened at once. “I have,” she said flatly. “He followed me here.”

Elyse frowned. “What do you mean?”

“He came to Atlanta. He went to see Manning at work and told him to stay away from me.”

Elyse grimaced, though she didn’t look surprised. “He was very upset after you turned down Aidan’s proposal. I had a feeling he might show up here.”

“Did you also have a feeling he would steal my letters from Manning all those years ago?”

Elyse went still, staring at Taylor. “What are you talking about?”

“Remember the letters I never received from Manning? The letters we thought he never wrote? Well, it turns out we were wrong. He
did
write me back. Several times. But I never received any of his letters because Dad took them.”

Elyse gasped. “
What?
”

“He intercepted Manning’s letters, as well as the ones I wrote to him.” Taylor’s eyes narrowed on her mother’s stricken face. “You didn’t know, did you?”

“Of course not! I wouldn’t have allowed him to do something like that!”

“Then how did it happen, Mom? That was
your
house.”

“I know, but...” Taylor could see her mother’s mind racing, plundering the depths of her memory for answers. “No wonder…”

“No wonder what?”

“When your father came to stay with us, he always insisted on checking the mail. There was so much going on at the time, worrying about the mail was the
last
thing on my mind.”

“I checked it sometimes,” Taylor reminded her. “I was always hoping to find a letter from Manning.”

“I remember,” Elyse said. “I also remember that your father was on friendly terms with the mailman. He must have made some sort of an arrangement with him. He must have asked him to withhold Manning’s letters. I know he’d set up a post office box for business, so maybe he had Manning’s letters rerouted to that address so he could pick them up on his lunch break or something.” Elyse’s lips twisted cynically. “Turner is a very resourceful man. Resourceful and devious.”

“Apparently so,” Taylor said bitterly. “Not only did he steal our correspondence to each other, he also sent Manning a forged letter from me. Manning told me some of the things Dad wrote. They were awful, outright lies. And Manning says he had my handwriting down to a
T
.”

Elyse shook her head in stunned disbelief. “That man’s depravity knows no bounds.”

“None whatsoever,” Taylor agreed. “When I spoke to him today, he had no regrets. No remorse. Instead of apologizing for what he’d done, he doubled down and threatened to destroy Manning’s company if I don’t stop seeing him.”

“Oh, darling.” Tears of regret welled in Elyse’s eyes. “I’m so sorry. This is all my fault.”

Taylor scowled. “How are
you
responsible for—”

“Your father is punishing you for my sins.”

Taylor stared at her mother, her stomach knotting with dread. “What are you talking about? What sins?”

“The reason I came to see you today…there are things I’ve been wanting to share with you for a long time now.”

“Things like what?”

Elyse hesitated, nostrils flaring. “I had an affair,” she confessed in a pained whisper. “I cheated on your father.”

Taylor gasped, her head jerking back in shock. “
What?
”

Her mother’s hand trembled as she set her glass down on the table, then sat back against the sofa and blindly stared off toward the windows.

“You had just turned six,” she began in a voice so raw it was hardly recognizable. “Truman was twelve. We were living in Arlington at the time. In the house with the big oak tree in the backyard, the one you and Tru used to climb. Your father…he was going through something. I don’t know what it was, but it made him very cold. Distant. It was like living with a stranger. He wouldn’t touch me. He wouldn’t smile at me. He wouldn’t talk to me unless we were talking about our finances or you and your brother. He never wanted to discuss our relationship, even though he knew we were in trouble. The more I tried to get him to open up to me, the more he shut down. I was miserable, and I didn’t know what I had done to push him away. I told myself he was just stressed out from his cases. He’d never been very good at separating work from home. But the problem with that explanation was that his demeanor was completely different with you and Tru. When he interacted with you and your brother, he was relaxed and attentive, even playful.” Elyse’s lips twisted bitterly. “One time I watched him laughing and roughhousing with you and Tru, and I became so jealous that I had to get up and leave the room. That’s what your father’s alienating behavior had reduced me to—envying the attention he gave to our children. I wanted him to enjoy being with me again. But the way he looked at me sometimes…I thought he hated me. And I thought maybe he’d met someone else.”

Elyse swallowed tightly, her eyes closing for a long moment. “Even though I had a law degree, your father didn’t want me to work. He insisted that he made enough money to provide for our family, so he preferred for me to stay home and take care of the household. He used to say he had enough to worry about when he was on the job; he didn’t want to come home to a messy house and neglected kids. He wanted balance and order. I knew his own father had died when he was very young, so he’d grown up watching his mother work tirelessly just to make ends meet. He and his sister pretty much had to fend for themselves, and he didn’t want that for you and Tru. So I agreed to put my law degree on the backburner until you and your brother were older.

“It wasn’t an easy decision,” Elyse admitted. “I’d worked my ass off to get through law school, and part of me resented having to put my career on hold. But I loved being a stay at home mom, and I know you and Tru benefited from having me around. If I’d worked at a law firm, I don’t know how much time and energy I could have devoted to your violin playing. Between that and keeping up with Tru’s various sports activities, I had my hands full. But I still needed an outlet. I felt like I was starting to lose myself, and that was the last thing I wanted to happen. I’d always been interested in politics, so I became a campaign volunteer for a state senator.” Elyse paused, meeting Taylor’s gaze for the first time. “That’s how I met Jonas.”

Taylor’s fingers tightened on the stem of the glass she’d forgotten she was holding.

“Jonas was several years younger than me—a doctoral student at George Mason. We clicked almost from the moment we met, but not in a sexual way. Jonas was attractive, but he didn’t set me on fire or anything. What drew me to him was his personality. He was warm, kind and funny. The way your father used to be when we were in college,” Elyse added sadly.

Taylor drank some wine to ease the tightness in her throat.

“One Friday night,” her mother continued, “Jonas and I found ourselves working late at the campaign offices. It was almost election day, so there was a lot to do. Your father had taken you and Tru to Detroit to visit his mother for the weekend, so I didn’t need to rush home. After the other volunteers left for the day, Jonas and I stayed behind to finish running off some flyers. We grabbed a couple beers from the fridge in the lounge, sat on the sofa and started talking about everything from the campaign to our views on existentialism. It felt so good to hold an intelligent conversation with an attractive man who showed an interest in me, a man who actually wanted to hear what I had to say. Until that night, I hadn’t realized just how lonely I’d been…how starved for affection. One moment Jonas and I were chatting and laughing. The next moment we were kissing and then…we were having sex. Right there on the sofa.”

Elyse closed her eyes as a solitary tear rolled down her cheek. “He made me feel alive.
Desirable
. But immediately afterward, I was ashamed and devastated. I couldn’t get out of there fast enough. When all of you came home on Sunday, I could barely look your father in the eye. Ironically enough, he was warmer toward me. He must have had a talk with his mother or something. I don’t know. That night when we went to bed, he wanted to make love. It was the first time in months that he’d even touched me, let alone initiated sex.” Elyse shook her head slowly. “I couldn’t enjoy it. He felt like a stranger to me, and I was too wracked with guilt over what I’d done with Jonas. I think your father could sense that I was just going through the motions, but he didn’t say anything afterward. He didn’t explain his sudden desire for intimacy. He didn’t explain why he’d been freezing me out for the past year. He didn’t say a damn thing.”

Elyse picked up her drink and took a long sip, then wrapped trembling hands around the bowl of the glass. “Three weeks later, I found out I was pregnant. Jonas and I had used protection, so I thought…I naively assumed the baby was your father’s. But I was wrong.” She paused, nostrils flaring. “Micah was Jonas’s son.”

The revelation hit Taylor like a hard fist to the stomach, knocking the breath out of her lungs. She stared at her mother in stunned silence, struggling to absorb the magnitude of what she’d just heard.

Elyse gulped down the rest of her wine before continuing in a shaky voice, “When Micah was five, your father and I agreed to participate in a research study for parents of autistic children. We had to provide blood samples for genetic testing. That’s how we found out that Micah wasn’t your father’s.”

“Oh, my God,” Taylor whispered.

“Words cannot express how devastated I was. I hadn’t told your father about the affair, so he was completely blindsided. When I shared everything with him, he was understandably furious. Our marriage had already been on the rocks for years. The news about Micah was the final nail in the coffin. Your father demanded a divorce and told me he wanted full custody of you and your brothers. Even though Micah wasn’t his biological son, he’d bonded with him from birth, and he loved him as much as he loved you and Truman. Given Micah’s condition and his attachment to you and Tru, I knew it would traumatize him to be separated from both of you. I desperately wanted to keep our family intact, but your father wanted out. I pleaded with him not to take my children away from me, but he wouldn’t budge. No matter how much I apologized and begged his forgiveness, he was hell-bent on punishing me for my betrayal. I knew how hard it would be for me to win custody as the spouse who’d committed adultery. But I had to try. I couldn’t go down without a fight.”

Elyse paused to set her empty glass down on the table. “I hadn’t seen or spoken to Jonas in years, but I’d heard through the grapevine that he’d gotten married. I didn’t want to bring chaos into his life, but I thought he had a right to know he had a son, and I needed his help with the custody battle. If he came forward as Micah’s biological father, no judge would have granted custody to your father. So I tracked Jonas down and told him about his son. He was shocked, to say the least. He wanted to see Micah, but I asked him if we could get together and talk first.” Tears glazed Elyse’s eyes. “The day before we were supposed to meet, he got into a car accident. He must have been speeding, rushing to get to me. He lost control of his vehicle and slammed into a guardrail. He…he was killed on impact.”

“Dear God,” Taylor breathed.

Elyse shook her head mournfully. “I was in such a dark place, I thought your father may have had something to do with the accident. Like he’d tampered with Jonas’s car or run him off the road.”

Taylor stared at her mother in horror. “You thought Dad was capable of
murder
?”

“I did,” Elyse confessed. “He was a hardened FBI agent who encountered all types of dangerous criminals. He was no stranger to violence, and he’d already demonstrated a ruthless streak I never knew he possessed. Did I want to believe he was capable of murder? Absolutely not. He was my husband and the father of my children. But he’d become a stranger to me over the past several years. A cold, unfeeling stranger whose behavior I couldn’t predict.”