My Soul Then Sings Page 10

  Patricia gathered her courage and her coral suit jacket. On her way home, she plotted her moves. First, I’ll put on that new French maid outfit I bought online. Patricia had bought it months ago but had yet to wear the hot little number. She pictured Ryan ripping it off her body. Oh yeah! Oooh. I’ll search for the “One in a Million” song to play at the right time. They both loved Aaliyah’s compilation with Timbaland.

  Red light! Patricia hit the brake. She drummed her nails on the steering wheel while she waited for the light to change. Ooh, I’ll light some candles. Maybe draw us a bubble bath. Put the wine on to chill. What to do for food? Takeout. She did not have time to cook.

  The light changed. Patricia smiled. She could not wait to get her seduction started. But when she entered the house, she froze. Her eyes widened.

  Lit candles of Cranberry Mandarin Splash—her favorite scent—lined the hallway into the living area.

  “What’s this?” Patricia’s mouth hung open as she scanned her foyer. She saw a Post-it on the huge mirror she had bought on impulse from Pier One:

  Take off your clothes.

  She sniffed the air and took in the soothing scent. She heard the Midnight Sax instrumental music playing and smiled. Nice to know she and Ryan were in sync. Felt like old times.

  From the corner of her eye, she saw Ryan hiding behind the curtains in the living area. She smirked. He had no clue she had spotted his shoes sticking out. Might as well give him a show.

  She dropped her jacket to the floor. Her skirt and undershirt followed. Clad in her undies and pantyhose, she made a show of turning her back in Ryan’s direction before wiggling out of her pantyhose. Hearing Ryan’s heavy panting, she bit back a knowing smile.

  Patricia swayed her hips to the music. She pretended to reach for her underwear but decided to stretch the teasing. Making her way toward the living room, she saw another Post-it:

  Take a sip of wine.

  There was a decanter chilling in ice. Her husband had thought of everything. She poured the red liquid in the Olivia Pope-sized glass. Licking her lips, she sipped, making sure to “accidentally” spill some on her chest staining her Very Sexy Unlimited ivory bra from Victoria’s Secret.

  Pretending to fuss over the lacy material, she snapped it open.

  Ryan groaned. Loudly.

  Patricia threw back her head and laughed.

  He’s back, she thought. Slight tears grazed her eyes. Thank you, Lord, for answered prayers.

  She executed a dance move seductive enough to make a stripper blush. Boy, was she glad for the belly dancing classes at the YMCA. That did it.

  Ryan came out of hiding. He held a third sticky note on his lips:

  Tonight, I’ll make you scream.

  Patricia released a quick breath at the bold sentiment. Ryan’s note heightened her senses, and his eyes held promise. She knew from experience that he always kept his promises. Patricia plucked the note off his lips.

  Ryan pounced into action, kissing her like a man who had starved for days. With a sigh of bliss, she obliged him, anticipating that she would need a day off tomorrow.

  Ryan loved his wife, holding nothing back. He had to. When he confessed the truth, it might be the last time he held Patricia.

  For a long time.

  His fear made him passionate and desperate. He made love to her three times before his body gave out. “You’re going to be the end of me, woman,” he said, giving her a love pat. While he spoke, his hands roamed her body, committing every nuance and curve of her perfect-for-him body to his memory.

  Don’t tell her. How can you give this up?

  The familiar fear rose within him. Ryan tensed.

  She’ll hate you. There must be another way.

  Ryan rolled onto his side and pulled Patricia until she faced him. He gulped, ignoring the fearful thoughts. Instead, he grabbed onto Joshua 1:9 for courage, “Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the LORD thy God is with thee whithersoever thou goest.”

  “Patti, I have something to tell you.”

  She touched his cheek. “Are you finally going to tell me what’s bothering you?”

  “Yes, I am.”

  Her sigh was mixed with contentment. “It’s about time. Your teeth grinding drove me from our bed.”

  Her attempt at humor made him hesitate. No, he wasn’t backing down.

  He held her hand and uttered his secret of the past five years. “Five years ago, I paid the lab tech to tell me Karlie’s paternity results before anyone.” He took a deep breath. “Karlie is my daughter.”

  Ryan prepared his body for the slap he was sure was coming. Patricia lifted her hand. He squinted as her hand came close to his face. To his surprise, she caressed him.

  Caught off guard, he had to ask, “Did you hear me?” Her odd reaction was scaring him. It took every bit of willpower he possessed to reject the urge to jump out of bed and put some distance between them.

  Patricia nodded before uttering the last words he expected her to say. “Baby, sweetheart, is that what this is about? I already know.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  How could a person drop that revelation, and then prance about pretending not to know she had sucker punched him?

  Thirty minutes had passed since Patricia’s revelation eclipsed his own. They had cleared the candles, and Ryan suggested they move their discussion to their bedroom. She sent him ahead while she washed the wineglasses. Patricia returned with two glasses of water and placed one on his nightstand before going to her side of the bed. For once, his mind wasn’t on admiring her attributes. Ryan watched her progress trying to temper his patience.

  “What do you mean you already know?” he asked, turning on the ceiling fan.

  The woman had the nerve to make him wait. He gritted his teeth. Now she needed to tinkle. Ryan slinked into the chair while he waited until Patricia returned.

  She gulped her water before easing under the covers.

  “How about you start first?” she suggested. “We’ll piece the whole story together.”

  All right. He would start first. “When Tiffany scheduled the paternity test, a panic set in. I don’t know why I felt the need to know before anyone else. But I hated not knowing. Once I submitted my sample, I flirted with the front desk clerk to get the name of the tech responsible for the results. Tiffany ensured complete privacy, but everyone has a price. I paid him twenty thousand dollars to provide me with the results before anyone else.”

  “Why?”

  Ryan shook his head. “Maybe it’s my control issue. Who knows why I did it.”

  “I followed you,” Patricia said.

  His eyes were wide with shock. “What do you mean you followed me?”

  “You think I would let my husband take the most important test of his life without being there? I came, but it must’ve been too late.” She touched her chin. “I was about to pull out of the parking lot when a call came in. I parked my car to answer the phone. It was about a patient. When I finished the call and started to pull out of the lot, I saw your car. You rushed back into the building although you didn’t stay for more than five or ten minutes.”

  “And you didn’t call to me?” Ryan asked.

  “No, I was more interested in finding out why you returned so quickly.” Patricia shivered. She reached for a robe.

  “Finish your story,” he commanded, rubbing his arms. Never would he let on how he hated her mistrust. Not when she was right to do so. He pushed himself to his feet and joined her on the bed.

  “I asked to visit the tech—Geoffrey Turner—the front desk clerk provided his name.”

  “That’s right,” Ryan said. “I had forgotten.”

  Patricia placed a finger over his lips. “No more interruptions. This has been a long time coming.”

  Ryan nodded.

  “Unlike you, I didn’t flirt to get information. I played the doctor card.” She chuckled. “I made him tell me why you were there. Geoffrey spilled
it and told me you paid him for the results. I paid him thirty thousand to tell you Karlie was your daughter.”

  Ryan’s mouth dropped open. He reared back and pinned his eyes on her. “What? Why would you do that?” Who was this woman he had married? She looked like the woman he knew, but she didn’t sound like her. The woman in front of him was deceitful. His Patti wouldn’t have played such a cruel joke on him.

  Would she?

  “Two years passed before I understood my motives. We’d lost Anna. I was grieving. Having Karlie for a daughter would’ve soothed my aching heart. I was already spending time with her, and I’d come to care for her as if she were my own.”

  “You wanted Karlie as your substitute?” Ryan asked.

  “When you put it like that, it sounds . . . contrived.” Patricia bit her lip. For the first time she sounded less sure.

  “Thanks to your interference, Geoffrey made another thirty thousand from me to declare Clifford as Karlie’s father.” He rubbed his temples.

  “I thought you would come to me with the news. We would’ve had a daughter and a son.”

  Through gritted teeth, Ryan said, “Karlie’s not Anna. There is no replacing our child.”

  Patricia nodded rapidly. “I know that. Now. It was a mistake, honey. I was overcome and I . . . I . . .”

  “You what? You wanted to make me pay, is that it?” He swallowed before ripping the pain of the past open. “It was payback, wasn’t it? Payback, because you blamed me. Admit it. You blame me.”

  He lowered his head. Ryan registered the slight rustle of the covers being pulled back before Patricia touched his arm. He hated the tears rolling down her face and shrugged off her arm.

  “I don’t blame you,” she said. “I wasn’t thinking.”

  How could he believe any word out of her lying mouth?

  “You’ve got to believe me,” Patricia pleaded.

  However, Ryan was past the point of listening to her. “All this time I carried the guilt of hiding my daughter from you when you knew. You knew. You did it because you blamed me for Anna’s death.” He remembered the night she had miscarried. “We had just made love because, as usual, I couldn’t keep my hands off you.”

  Her lower lip trembled. “I, I don’t blame you,” she wept. “The cramping wasn’t because of anything we’d done. She just wasn’t meant to be. We cannot control God’s will.”

  Ryan didn’t want to hear that. Her explanation wouldn’t soothe the guilt stewing within him. Instead, he found himself becoming angry at Patricia’s thoughtless actions. His anger transformed his voice into steel. “Tell me something, wife. Why did you accuse me of wanting Karlie if you knew the truth all along?”

  “I wasn’t sure of the truth anymore.” She ignored her runny nose. “I thought Geoffrey betrayed me when you told me Clifford Peterson was the father. I figured he’d pocketed the money and told the truth. I couldn’t very well expose him without exposing myself, so I took a loss. What’s thirty thousand, I told myself. I put the whole thing behind me as a bad experience and moved on.”

  “A bad experience? That’s how you see it?”

  Patricia’s robe fell open. Her half-naked body taunted him, reminding him of how his passion had killed their baby. No matter what Patricia offered as a clinical explanation, he knew the truth.

  Ryan inhaled. “Put some clothes on.”

  “Ryan, we need to get on our knees and throw all this pain to Christ. Only He can help us. When we got baptized, God washed away all our sins, including these.”

  No, that’s too easy. Ryan was not in the mood to pray or accept salvation as justification for treachery. In a tone laced with scorn, he said, “How convenient. You want to bring God into this conversation now. Where was God when you paid someone to lie to me?”

  “Whoa. Don’t put this all on me. You paid him as well.”

  He clenched his fists. “I know that. I’ve been carrying that burden for five years. But I thought Karlie was my daughter. I thought I was doing the right thing. I was a horrible parent to Brian. I was always busy. I didn’t think I would’ve been a good father to her.”

  She curled her lips and pointed at him. “Your excuses might have helped you sleep at night, but they won’t wash when Karlie finds out. She’s going to see you as the weasel who betrayed her.”

  The truth punched him in the guts. Patti was right. He had no justifiable excuse for not being in his daughter’s life. “Is she my daughter?”

  “What do you mean?” Patricia asked.

  “You paid Geoffrey to tell me a lie. How do I know what the truth is? I’ve seen Karlie’s mannerisms, and I see myself. But what if I’m seeing the similarities based upon what I think to be true?” He groaned. This was complicated enough without this added uncertainty. Ryan could not tell Karlie his wrongdoing and shred her life apart, again, unless he knew.

  “There’s only one thing left to do and you must be urgent about it. Brian and Karlie are thrown together. What if they fall . . .?”

  Ryan knew what she was going to say. That thought had given him many nights filled with tossing and turning.

  “I can’t even utter the unimaginable,” Patricia said. “You must confront Karlie and have her take an unsullied paternity test. That’s the only way you’ll know for sure.”

  Ryan shrugged into his clothes and grabbed his keys. “I’ll be back.”

  She creased her forehead. “Where are you going? It’s almost midnight.”

  His rage broiled and bubbled over. “To get some air. I need to put some distance between us or I’m going to say something I can’t take back. I can’t stand to look at your face.” He cut his eyes at her before turning away. He missed the raw pain slashed across her face at his harsh words.

  “We need to talk. Make plans.” She came over to him and grasped his arm. “Let’s go down to Sarasota and tell them together. We can’t waste any time on the off chance something happens between them that cannot be undone.”

  “I’ll book our flights when I get back,” he said. Right now, Ryan needed to get out of there.

  “You did wrong too,” Patricia whispered.

  He glared. “I’m not going to stay here if this conversation is going to become a tit-for-tat.” Ryan tromped over to the closet and threw some clothes in an overnight bag.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Where do you think?” He was not about to add he had not thought that far ahead. “I’ll be at my office.”

  “Don’t leave,” she pleaded.

  “I’ll call you with travel arrangements.”

  And with that, Ryan snatched his bag and stormed out the door.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Lovemaking had loosened her tongue.

  “Why did I tell him? I should’ve kept my big mouth shut.”

  Disquieted and alone in her bedroom, she banged her head on the back of the headboard.

  Ryan had been so fearful to tell her his news. She had seen how he had worked up the nerve to tell her. He must have thought he would lose her with his revelation. Patricia had blabbed to put his mind at ease.

  But, no, he was furious with her. Men and their double standards. Why was it when they did their wrongdoings, it was forgivable? But if a woman did the same, they threw a fit.

  She had recovered from his cheating, yet he was bent out of shape because she had kept a little secret. What was a secret compared to cheating? Patricia squirmed. Well, to be fair, it depended on the secret, and Ryan and Tiffany hadn’t been an emotional affair. It was easier to get past a meaningless one-night stand.

  Patti tossed and turned but couldn’t sleep. It was now 4:28 early Tuesday morning. Sunrise loomed in a couple hours. She might as well head into work. Patricia entered her marble-tiled bathroom. She eyed the large bathtub and wrinkled her nose. She was not in the mood for a bath. Instead, she opened the glass door to her walk-in shower and turned the water on. Within minutes she was showered and dressed. On cue, her phone rang.

  “Dr. Oak
es, it’s Anna and Alyssa. They’re both spiking a fever of over 104 degrees.”

  Adrenaline shot through her system. Her heart pounded. Fevers. Fevers meant infection or seizures, or . . .

  She was a physician. She knew better than to suppose this or that. She had to run tests, get the facts. “Keep them stable. I’ll be right there.”

  “Dr. Newhouse is with them.”

  She breathed a sigh of relief. Tim would watch her babies until she arrived.

  Patricia chided herself. Anna and Alyssa weren’t her babies. They were her patients. She shouldn’t be so attached.

  Yet her hands shook. Patricia prayed, “Lord, please watch out for the twins. I’m not there, and I need you to keep them.”

  When she opened the door, Patricia was surprised to see the light sprinkle. She tore through the slick streets and pulled into the physician’s lot. She scurried up to the twins’ room and pulled their charts.

  Patricia noticed Tim had prescribed Dexamol to lower their temperatures. He also ordered blood and urine analysis. If their fevers remained, Patricia worried she might have to do spinal taps. Hopefully, the fevers would subside within a day or so. She prayed it was a virus just running its course.

  Anna’s feverish eyes followed her every movement. Alyssa was asleep.

  “We want to stay together,” Anna said.

  Patricia went to her side of the bed. “You are together, honey,” she said, touching Anna’s cheek.

  “Yes, but we don’t want surgery. We like being together.” Anna coughed.

  How eloquent for a four-year-old. For the first time Patricia considered that no one had asked them how they felt. Then she dismissed it. Anna and Alyssa were four years old. Babies, still. What did they know? She could give them quality of life. If all went well, they would be running and playing like normal children.

  Patricia nodded. “I know it’s scary, but you will be okay.”

  Anna trembled. “I don’t want to. I want to go home.”

  Patricia’s heart melted. She patted Anna’s head. “I’ll do my best to make that happen.”