Page 535 of Summer Heat
A cold sweat broke on her skin at the thought. Surely she couldn’t be that shallow?
She rubbed her chest, feeling there the knot of thick guilt pressing into her lungs, taking away her breath, stealing all her joy.
Valerie had been selfish and vain and a gold digger. Tamara was old enough and wise enough that she couldn’t deny any of that. But she had also loved Lance Forrest with something akin to obsession.
Tonight, Tamara had held in her arms the man Valerie had adored. She had kissed him and touched him and let him cast his spell over her senses with a kind of hedonistic hunger she had never known.
It had been sheer heaven.
It had also been wrong.
The truth was, Tamara had not given a single moment of thought to Valerie when Lance had so deliciously ravaged her senses. She had thought only of him, of Lance himself, with his jeweled eyes and gorgeous mouth and buoyant attitude. She had been thinking of herself, and the pleasure he gave so willingly.
She closed her eyes. The whole mess was entirely too complicated, riddled with little sins that piled up and piled up until there seemed to be no possible answer.
Lance had been wrong to allow himself to be drawn into an affair with Valerie a second time. But it had also been wrong for Valerie to blame her pregnancy on him, and then hide it.
It had been wrong for Tamara to entertain thoughts of revenge against a man who, by all Tamara could see, was simply a charming womanizer. He didn’t lie or cheat or make bold promises he wouldn’t keep to reach his ends. He didn’t have to—he had to only be himself.
She sipped her cooling tea, frowning. Valerie always said that Lance seduced her with promises of marriage. Knowing him now, Tamara didn’t see that he would have ever done that. It didn’t jibe with the rest of him. Tamara hated to believe that Valerie had lied—but it wouldn’t have been the first time. Her unstable cousin had lied quite boldly and without conscience if it suited her ends.
But that didn’t change one simple, inescapable fact. Whatever she’d done, Valerie had loved Lance, and it was wrong for Tamara to take now what her cousin had most wanted. It was a betrayal.
It didn’t matter that Tamara knew that if the situation were reversed, Valerie would have done whatever pleased her. Tamara’s mother had taught her better than that, had taught her to adhere to her own moral code, no matter how others acted.
That moral code had insisted that Tamara come home when Valerie fell apart. It had insisted that she take her cousin’s child and raise him. It now insisted she could not indulge her longing for Lance Forrest. Not even for the brief, shimmering time he offered.
Bleakly she carried her cup to the kitchen. She rinsed her cup and put it in the drainer, feeling the silence and loneliness of her house all around her. She wanted more than this. More than always being alone, always struggling, her only joy the few hours she could steal from the business of living to spend with Cody. She wanted the freedom to spend her days at work she loved, rather than work she only endured, and time to play once in a while, and freedom from the worry of wondering how she would make ends meet.
Staring out the window at a pool of white cast by the streetlight, she pursed her lips. She was tired of doing everything alone. Tired of not having friends, tired of being afraid to dream of anything for fear it would be stolen like her dream of college.
With a sudden burst of insight, she realized she wanted a husband and more children and the warm, rich family life she’d seen in other families while she’d been growing up. She wanted Cody to have brothers and sisters, and dogs and cats, and supper-times filled with love and arguments and laughter.
What was stopping her?
Why was she settling for an accounting degree when she hated numbers? If she was going to be a woman of modest means, why not shift her focus to something she would enjoy?
Why not apply to Denver again, and return to her degree? Why not become the teacher she wanted to be, instead of an accountant who was miserable going to work every day?
It made her almost breathless to think about it. And for the first time in almost five years, the mist of familial duty was swept away, to reveal the truth: Tamara herself had let herself be trapped into a life she didn’t enjoy. While there had been reason to leave school, and she would not change that, her anger and resentment toward Valerie had been unbearable, and Tamara had shifted the blame inward.
Only she could change her life. Only she held the key to her own dreams, to the life she wanted.
It scared her. Shutting off lights as she went, she climbed into bed with a racing heart. Choices. She’d forgotten she had choices, and somehow the dilemma with Lance had reminded her.
She still could not choose him. One day, she wanted a husband and a father for her children, but she didn’t want one like Lance. He was a charming man, pleasant to be with, and she hoped they could be friends once she confessed the truth about Cody.
But he wasn’t marriage material. Nor would he ever be.
Soon, she would work up her courage to tell him the truth, and she would also tell him she could not continue with their playful relationship.
It was the right thing to do.
Chapter Twelve
She wouldn’t see him.
Lance called Tamara Sunday night. All the way home from Denver, his head had been filled with snapshots of her. Some were memories—her dark hair reflecting the colors of the neon lights at the carnival, her shy smile, her unexpectedly earthy laughter…
