"Yes, love. I'm back."
"I missed you," she murmured and smiled at him. "Did you come to tuck me in?"
"Yes." He cupped her face and looked deeply into her eyes. "I love you, Julianna. I always have. Since the first time I met you. Did you know that?"
Even now, after all these years of playacting, she experienced a moment of alarm. A tiny explosion of panic in the pit of her stomach.
He bent closer and pressed his lips to her temple. "I brought you something."
"You did?"
"Mmm-hmm."
Feigning childish excitement, she scooted up in the bed. "What is it?"
He laid his hands on her shoulders. "Were you a good girl while I was gone?"
She nodded, the past and the present blending, creating a weird sensation of fear and excitement, discomfort and pleasure deep in her gut.
"Are you my good little girl now?"
She nodded again, beginning to tremble.
"I can't stay away, Julianna." He stroked her hair. "I've tried but I can't, not anymore. You're mine. You always have been. Always will be. Do you understand?"
"What…do you mean?"
"You'll understand. Soon." A smile played at the corners of his mouth. "You will, I promise."
He carefully drew the covers away, murmuring his satisfaction. "Pretty," he whispered, rubbing the fuzzy fabric between his fingers. "So pretty and sweet."
"John?" she said, working to sound young and frightened.
"It's all right, love. Show John how much you love him." He applied gentle pressure, forcing her back to the mattress. "Show him what a good girl you can be."
So, she did. She lay absolutely still, the way he liked it, as he ran his hands over her, gently at first, then with more urgency.
He didn't undress himself; he wouldn't penetrate her, she knew. He rarely did. Instead, he concentrated on gentling and pleasuring her, first with his hands, then his mouth.
Only when she had climaxed, arching up, crying out as with stunned uncertainty, then falling back to the bed and whimpering meekly like a kitten, did he press himself against her. He was sweating and short of breath, as if he had just finished a ten-mile run. He quivered with the force of his own unfulfilled needs, with excitement.
"My sweet, sweet Julianna. What would I do without you?"
She turned her face to his and kissed him, thinking of their baby, allowing herself a moment's fantasy about how John would take her news. "I love you, John." She smiled and kissed him again. "I love you."
"Show me how much, love." He caught her hand and brought it to his erection. "Show me."
Julianna did. She rubbed and stroked and massaged him, curling her hand around his penis, pumping him to orgasm.
Julianna jumped as a burst of raucous laughter came from the apartment next door. She blinked, momentarily disoriented, then realized she had to go to the bathroom. Had to go so badly she wondered if she was going to be able to make it.
She dragged herself out of bed and padded to the john, the wooden floor cold and gritty beneath her bare feet. The mirror above the vanity was cloudy with age, a crack ran diagonally through its center, warping her reflection by causing the two sides of her face to not quite fit together.
She stared at her misshapen image, breath catching, hardly recognizing herself. She turned to the side, bringing her hands to her swollen belly. Pathetic, she thought, recalling what the other waitresses had said earlier that day. Rejected. Without options.
"You're not going to make it. You or your little bastard."
It hurt to look at herself, and Julianna turned away from her reflection. Why was she doing this? Why was she here, alone and pregnant? She didn't want to be a mother, did she? She didn't want to be one of those hollow-eyed women who came into Buster's, the ones who were always chasing after their children and wiping their running noses, the ones who always looked so tired. That's not why she had gotten pregnant.
Yet that's what lay before her.
She brought a hand to her mouth, realizing the truth. She should have done as John demanded, gotten rid of the baby. Even her mother had wondered if Julianna was certain she was making the right decision. Being on her own, keeping a step ahead of John, would be difficult enough without an infant to care for. She had offered to accompany her daughter to a clinic where the problem would be taken care of.
But Julianna had still been starry-eyed about the pregnancy. About being a grown-up. About her future.
With a moan, Julianna sank to the floor. She rested her cheek against the vanity's doors, the faux wood cracked and peeling. She didn't have any starry-eyed notions anymore. She saw the future-and it frightened her. Almost as much as the past.
She squeezed her eyes shut, tumbling back once more, back to that last night she and John had spent together…
They had lain facing each other on the bed, talking quietly. John had asked her about how she had spent the weeks he had been away. She had filled him in, barely able to catch her breath, going into great detail about the watercolor class she was taking and about her jazzercize group-when all she could think of, all she wanted to discuss, was her pregnancy.
John listened attentively, so attentively it was almost as if he knew she was keeping something from him. And while she spoke, he studied her with an intensity that was unsettling. He knew her so well. As no one else did or ever would.
Just tell him. Blurt it out-about how she had stopped taking her pills and about her missed period, her visit to the doctor, the urine test. Her excitement.
Not yet, she thought, a thread of panic snaking through her. Not yet.
"How was your trip?" she asked instead.
"Successful."
"Where did you go?"
He simply looked at her. He had a rule: she wasn't to ask him about his business, not ever. Julianna knew he worked for the state department, CIA, or somebody like that, and that what he did was classified. But that was all.
And for a long time, that had been enough. She hadn't cared what he did. But lately, she had been curious. Frustrated and annoyed by his secrecy. By feeling shut out of his life. Bored with her own.
So, even though she knew he would be displeased if he discovered what she was up to, she had started to snoop. The first time, he had just returned home from a trip and was in the shower. Heart thundering, she had rifled through his travel bag and jacket pockets.
She hadn't found anything suspicious that time, but in the many since she had unearthed several items that hadn't added up. In a coat pocket she had found a letter, its open envelope addressed to someone other than John, at an address other than his. The letter itself had consisted of a single line of gibberish. In the front pocket of his travel bag, she'd found an airplane ticket stub to Colombia, a place he professed never to have been, the passenger name on the stub a Mr. Wendell White.
Success had made her bolder.
When John was out of town and her nights seemed to stretch endlessly before her, she had gone to his place and searched it. Each drawer and every closet, every piece of furniture for a secret hiding place, baseboards and floorboards, behind framed photographs and the few pieces of art he had hanging on the walls. She had even checked the contents of his freezer. There she'd finally hit pay dirt. Wrapped in white butcher paper, between two packages of frozen meat, she had found a small, spiral-bound, black leather book. Inside had been columns of dates followed by notations in some sort of code.
It was then that she'd figured out why John never spoke of his work; why he never mentioned an associate; why he flew all over the world, yet never left a number where he could be reached.
A spy. John was a spy.