“I know. I know. That’s why I kept quiet for so long. But then months turned into years. Finally I realized that I couldn’t wait forever. As much as I loved you, I simply couldn’t live in limbo any longer.”
Her use of past tense made Jack’s stomach knot. Despite the divorce, he’d believed that, deep down, Kate still loved him. What they’d had together had been too deep and powerful to just disappear. Ever since he’d received her message, he’d been certain that, on some level, perhaps even a subconscious one, she regretted whatever impulse had driven her to end their marriage and wanted him back.
Fear gave his voice a harsher edge than he intended. “So you just threw away an eight-year marriage?”
The accusation snapped Kate’s tenuous control over her temper. She shot to her feet and began to pace and wave her arms. “Don’t you get it, Jack? What we had wasn’t a marriage.”
“What? That’s crazy. Of course we were married.”
“Oh, no. Marriage is about a couple building a life together, being there for each other through all the pains and joys and all the everyday, mundane minutiae that is part of living. Most of the time you were halfway around the world and I was alone in Houston. I didn’t feel as though I had a husband. Just a part-time sex partner. Yet I wasn’t single, either. I was just a toy that you kept on a shelf and took down now and then when you had time to play.”
“That’s not fair, Kate. You knew what my job was when you married me.”
She stopped pacing and glowered at him with her fists planted on her hips. “Oh, don’t give me that! You weren’t entirely forthcoming, and you know it.
“When we first met all you said was that you worked for the federal government. Silly me, I assumed you meant in some sort of legal or advisory capacity, or maybe you were with the diplomatic corps. Whenever I asked questions I got half truths and evasions. It wasn’t until we were engaged that you finally revealed that you were CIA, and that sometimes you would have to make trips out of the country. What you failed to explain was that was spook speak for ‘I’ll be gone more than I’ll be home.’”
“C’mon, Kate, you’re exaggerating. I was not away that much.”
That impudent little chin lifted again. “Oh really? Do you have any idea how many days you spent at home during the last year of our marriage?”
Jack shrugged. “Off the top of my head, no, I don’t know the exact number.”
“Well, I do. I kept track. It was exactly forty-seven days.”
“What? That can’t be right,” he protested, but uneasiness began to creep in.
“Oh, it’s right, Jack. Trust me.
“I’m thirty-four years old. By this stage of my life I expected to have a couple of children. But you weren’t home enough to get me pregnant.”
“Ah, so that’s it. That biological clock thing.” The pressure in Jack’s chest eased, and he looked her over with a lecherous gleam in his eyes. “If it’s babies you want, I can help you with that, Mick. We can get started right now.”
He made a move to stand up, but she stopped him with a raised hand and a searing glare.
“Forget it, Jack. That ship has sailed. And don’t you dare trivialize my feelings by turning them into a joke. Not this time. Not ever again.”
“Sorry.” He sat back in the chair, his expression rueful. “I guess I never realized how serious you were about having kids. I always thought you were talking in general terms. You know…something we’d get around to someday.”
“I don’t believe you.”
The blunt statement took him by surprise. There was so much anger burning in her green eyes that Jack experienced a sudden fear stronger than any he’d ever encountered on his job, even in the diciest of situations.
“I think you deliberately tuned me out,” she continued, lifting her chin a notch higher. “The same way you tuned out every attempt I made to talk to you about the excessive time we spent apart, the way you always tune out when you don’t want to talk about something.
“I don’t think you want children at all, Jack. When I made it clear that I wanted to start a family your agreement was nothing more than lip-service to pacify me and shut me up.”
She took up her agitated prowl again. “You didn’t want anything to interfere with the convenient arrangement you had going for you. You had a nice little wife at home to take care of any domestic responsibilities and duties that came up and to provide sex and companionship when you could find time to come home. The rest of the time you were free to have your adventures and traipse all over the globe.”
“That’s not true.”
“Isn’t it? Don’t you find it odd that a man who has been trained by the best information-gathering organization on the planet to take note of every single thing, right down to the tiniest detail, to decipher hidden meanings behind every word, to read every subtlety and nuance of human behavior, failed to notice that his own wife was unhappy?”
Jack stared at her, an uncomfortable sensation that he couldn’t quite identify squeezing his chest. As usual when he found himself cornered he assumed an unworried demeanor and responded with glib reason.
“Hey, when I’m home I’m not on duty.”
“Tell me another one, Jack. That training is so ingrained that it’s second nature to you to read people and situations.”
His inability to come up with an adequate response deepened his discomfort and gave his voice a rough edge. “Maybe I’m not as perceptive as you seem to think I am. But regardless, before taking a step like getting a divorce, you should have tried harder to make me understand that you were unhappy. If you had we could have worked out something and avoided all this pain and heartache. On both sides.”
“Worked out what, Jack? Was I supposed to demand that you cut your assignments short? We both know that’s not possible. Or should I have asked you to give up field work? Or quit the agency altogether?”
She gave a derisive snort. “Please. I may not know exactly what it is that you do—nor do I want to know. Imagining was bad enough. But I am aware of how important your job is to national security. And I know that you’re good at what you do and that you think of it as your duty. For you, quitting the agency would be tantamount to treason. I couldn’t put you in that position.”
“Even so, I would have quit to save our marriage.”
“Don’t you think I know that?” she shot back. “But if I had pressured you into giving up field work and you’d settled into a desk job you would’ve hated every minute of it. Even if you could have stuck with it, which I seriously doubt, eventually you would’ve grown to hate me, as well.”
“Never.”
“So you say now, but I think it would have come to that. Ours was a lose/lose situation, Jack. If we stayed together one of us was guaranteed to be miserable.”
“Ah, I see. So your answer was to get a divorce and make both of us miserable?”
“I can do without your sarcasm,” she snapped back. “And yes, divorce is heartbreaking. But eventually time erases that pain.
“Jack, listen to me. No matter how it may appear, my decision was not an easy one. I thought about it long and hard. Finally I accepted that it was time to cut my losses and get on with my life. You need to do the same.”
“Just tell me one thing. Is there someone else?” Somehow he managed to keep his tone conversational, but merely asking the question made him feel murderous.
She shook her head. “No. Not yet. But I won’t lie to you, Jack. I have been dating. Nothing serious yet, but I’m looking. I’m hoping that