Liar's Moon by Heather Graham Page A

learned its dangers and its fallacies. He’d been in bed with scores of women whom he would never recognize if he were ever to see them again. But not only had that all been years before he had known Tracy, he had never known anything like the feelings he had experienced with her. The wonder of her innocence, something that made her seduction of him of all the more sweet. The touch of her, the feel of her, the scent of her—they were all things that had lived with him. Things that had plagued him—despite the massive guilt he had endured at first.
    He had loved Celia. Tenderly, dearly. They’d lived together before she had left him; she had been soft-spoken, sensitive, gentle. He’d never in a thousand years have hurt her; losing her had been like taking away a part of his soul—the better part. But even loving Celia, he had often dreamt troubled dreams of Tracy.
    “Will you go away, please,” she asked him with a yawn, casting her arm over her eyes to shield them from the light that exuded from the bathroom. “It’s almost morning. And you’ve done enough for one day! You’ve destroyed my life.”
    “Oh, I did not, Tracy.”
    “You did! My picture—”
    “Shush! Whisper!”
    Tracy bit her lip, remembering that Blake slept between them. She wasn’t done with Leif—but she was determined to keep her voice down.
    “You had—”
    In a like whisper, Leif interrupted her flatly. “It was necessary.”
    “Necessary?”
    “Go back to sleep, Tracy. I want to leave here by noon.”
    She yawned again, and he was convinced she wasn’t really awake at all, only halfway so.
    “Where’s Jamie?” she asked him, a sleepy slur to her voice.
    “In bed.”
    “With whom?”
    “Himself.”
    “Thank God. I’d hate to see him turn out like my father and you.”
    Irritated, Leif found himself looking at Blake again. His son slept soundly, curled to Tracy. Curled so trustingly that it caused Leif another pang. His son, and Tracy. Tracy looking so soft and feminine and lovely and very vulnerable in her tousled state …
    He cleared his throat and remembered her words. “I resent that. I was a very faithful husband.”
    Tracy struggled to open her eyes again; his tone had a bitter and chilling quality to it that dragged her back to awareness. But in the poor light, she could read nothing at all in the dark, dark mystery of his eyes or the shadowed line of his mouth.
    “And your father wasn’t that bad. He didn’t marry your mother because your grandfather wouldn’t allow it. But he stayed with Jamie’s mother for ten years—”
    “During which he cheated,” Tracy interrupted wearily.
    “How do you know?”
    She hesitated, but then she was so tired that it didn’t seem to matter. “I don’t know. But I think that my mother saw him during that time. Oh, God! Would you just go away, please?”
    “How could you have known that? You only saw him once during those years, and that was when Jamie was a toddler.”
    Tracy rolled around, presenting him with her back.
    “There were times when he was supposed to see me. When he was supposedly coming. He never showed up— but my mother disappeared. Now—will you please leave me alone?”
    Leif didn’t say anything else. But he didn’t leave, either. He’d suspected himself that Jesse had seen Audrey now and then over the years—it would explain why the two of them had been close enough to come after Tracy together when they had realized that their little runaway was with him.
    He opened his eyes again, about to speak. He didn’t; he closed his mouth instead, aware that Tracy had let out a shuddering little sigh and that her breathing had become a deep and easy pattern. He started to rise, when Blake’s little eyes suddenly opened.
    “Daddy?”
    “Yeah,” he said softly. “I’m here, son.”
    Blake closed his eyes again, but his hand slipped into Leif’s and held tightly. Leif tried to extricate himself; the little fingers closed more tightly around