When John is gone, Grace lifts her golden gaze to find Craig watching her, his blue eyes brimming with curiosity.
"I thought you said *he* left you?"
"He did." Grace leaves the papers scattered across the desk and moves out from behind the barricade. "But he's changed his mind." There is no sign of emotion on her beautiful face as she speaks. "His problem is that I haven't."
She moves across the room and closes the office door.
"Aren't you the least bit interested in saving your marriage?" Craig looks surprised as he tries to work out what Marlena's intentions are. He thinks he knows, but then she's been fairly inscrutable lately.
"What am I supposed to do?" Grace tosses her blonde locks behind her shoulders as she crosses back towards the desk, the short lilac dress flipping around her legs as she walks. "Forgive him and take him back so that he can betray me all over again?" She shakes her head, her eyes maintaining a dangerous glitter. "I don't think so."
"But what if he's genuinely repentant?" Craig asks as he finds the distance between them shortening. Once again he knows he is lost to her and he finds himself hoping inexplicably, that she has locked the office door.
"Somehow I doubt it," Grace shrugs, "but I guess there is that possibility. Even if he is, I don't know that I could ever trust him again." Her expression is enigmatic for a few moments and Craig, almost against his will, hopes that he hasn't just talked her into taking her idiot husband back. She can do much better than that asshole.
Then she smiles wickedly at him. "I guess it's going to take a whole before I know what I want to do. But that doesn't mean that I have to wait around for him this time does it?"
"Uh.." Craig battles the frog which has suddenly settled in his throat. God, he shouldn't be doing this. He *definitely* shouldn't be doing this to Nancy. And he works with Marlena. He's her *boss* for God's sake. Not that he has the power here by any stretch of the imagination. But what happens once it's over...?
Oh, to Hell with shouldn'ts, a little voice says in the back of his head. She's gorgeous and she wants you. You think you have the strength to say no?
Grace can see the struggle as it plays across his face and is briefly amused. Men are such fools. They think they are strong, but when it comes to matters of the flesh, they are all controlled by one thing. And it is not their conscience.
"Craig," her voice is soft and bewitching and she touches his tie with a seemingly chaste look. "I'm not asking you to do anything you don't want to do." She flutters dark, luxuriant lashes and the impression of innocence is irrevocably shattered. "I'm just tired of being a good girl. I want to try playing bad girl for a change." She pulls on his tie, straightening it with a lascivious grin. "Do you think you might like to help me out?"
Craig can feel his head swimming as she presses her body close to his and it is almost without conscious thought that he nods.
"Good," Grace whispers as she loosens his tie with expert fingers. "I was rather hoping you would."
~
John stares at the closed door to Marlena's office for long minutes as he tries to work out what to do next. This thing has him so turned around, he can concentrate on nothing but what is happening between him and Marlena.
He doesn't understand her, she has every right to hate him, but this isn't like her. Sending Belle away without so much as a second thought? Why would she do that, it doesn't make any sense. In times of stress or distress, Marlena usually gathers her family around her, takes comfort from their love and their strength. She doesn't shut them out.
And more than that, she never walks away from a problem between them. She's a psychiatrist; she knows that the only way to get through something as difficult as this is to talk it out. Her natural tendency might be to try and ignore it, or deny it's effect on her, but she doesn't usually do *this*.
He watches the door, willing it to open, wishing without hope that she might come rushing out of her office to tell him she has changed her mind. But it remains closed, closeting her in there with the Chief Of Staff, a man John doesn't like, and trusts even less.
"John?"
The voice behind him makes him cringe like none other. Even Kristen's voice didn't have this effect on him.
"John, what's wrong?" Hope waddles into view with Bo behind her. "You look like you just lost your best friend."
"I think I just did." His voice is swamped in anguish and John doesn't even look at her. He can't stand to look at the face that stole his dreams from him. If he does, he fears what the mercenary that lingers within might be tempted to do. So instead he just turns and walks from the junction of the corridor, leaving a bemused Hope and a concerned Bo in his wake.
~
"Oh hell!" Craig delves his fingers into Grace's rich, golden hair and pulls her to him, kissing her almost ferociously. Grace gasps as one of his hands sweeps down her body and seeks out the hem of her dress.
She pulls desperately at his tie and discards it on the sofa and then rips his shirt open, unconcerned as a button pings off the mahogany of her desk. Craig groans as her lips clamp on the sensitive skin of his throat and she wrenches the white lab coat and his shirt off his shoulders all at once.
She pushes him and he stumbles backwards, landing on the soft sofa that Marlena uses to lend a feeling of comfort to her patients. But it's not comfort that Craig is seeking right now. He pulls on Grace's wrist and she climbs onto the sofa, straddling his lap, her eyes shining with lust. His hands skim the back of her thighs as his head dips into the cleavage revealed by her low-cut dress.
Grace lets out a groan of exasperation when Craig's beeper goes off. He looks up at her, torn between duty and his desire for this woman. Maybe if he just pretends the batteries have gone bad and he didn't get the message...
There is a question in Grace's eyes as she watches him struggle with his conscience. She knows she has him, even if this moment is a bust. And maybe it will just make life that little more interesting if she makes him wait a little longer...
With an exaggerated sigh, she climbs off his lap just as he seems to have made his decision. He reaches for her, but she moves just out of his reach with a regretful shake of her blonde mane. "No. We both know you have to answer that."
She can just about see the curses as they flow through his head as he stares up at her and she wonders with some amusement how he is going to hide the 'evidence' of what he has been up to. Perhaps the lab coat might come in quite handy.
Craig says nothing but nods and shrugs his shirt back on as he digs for the pager. It's an emergency with one of his patients and he is suddenly simultaneously thankful and guilty that it had to be Marlena that insisted he check it.
"I have to go," he says in a strained voice.
Grace, who has just finished straightening her dress, nods. "Maybe it's just as well."
"Don't say that," Craig shakes his head vehemently as he buttons up his shirt rapidly. The top button is missing and he hopes that his tie will hide that fact. "I'm not doing this out of pity, Marlena."
"I never said you were," Grace runs fingers through her tousled hair, knowing full well what kind of an effect it is having on Craig. "But you *are* married."
"And I love my wife," Craig advances on Grace and backs her up against the desk, eliciting a coy smile from the tall blonde. "But what she doesn't know won't hurt her. Hasn't in the past and won't now."
"Oh," Grace's lips form a perfect little 'o'. And then they curl upwards into a smile of satisfaction. "Well then. It seems that we have an understanding."
"That we do." Craig nods before kissing her again, his tongue teasing hers with an intimacy that serves only to fan the flames of Grace's desire.
Then he grabs his tie and leaves the room, knowing that if he hasn't got the better of Marlena Evans, then at least he has served up as good as he has been given.
~
John clutches at his throbbing head as he finds himself staring at the waters of the Salem River yet again. He doesn't know how many times he has found himself at this spot on Pier 29 in the last few days. Its as though it holds some kind of power that keeps drawing him back, or maybe it's only that he hopes to find Marlena down here, asking the same questions that he finds constantly echoing in his ears.
Instead, he is alone and miserable. He keeps thinking of all the things he could have done differently. He could have told Marlena the truth when he remembered; he could have not gone into the water after that woman. More regrets in a list that has run far too long.
Maybe Marlena is best to walk away now, maybe he should let her go before he brings irrevocable ruin to her life. He knows he should. This mercenary personality that keeps surfacing is enough proof of that. But if he is to let her go, to cut himself adrift, he will lose everything that he is, he knows that with utter certainty. She is the only thing that keeps him anchored to this life. She is the sun that he revolves around and without her; his very sanity is at stake.
"Oh Doc," the misery is unrepentant as it seeps through the very timbre of his voice. "I'm so sorry."
"Ah, John," Stefano DiMera steps out of the shadows with a cruel smile. Behind him, there is a movement and John can surmise the form of a burly minder. "The fair Dr. Evans cares little for your sorrow, I think."
"What the *hell* would you know about it?" John growls, his face contorted by anger and desolation as he looks up from his makeshift seat at his tormentor.
"Ah," Stefano waggles his fingers, a viciously gleeful smile spreading across his lips, "I know more than you can imagine, John."
"Of course you do," John rises, stumbling a little in his haste to face Stefano. "This is all your doing to begin with, old man. If it wasn't for you..."
"What John?" The glitter of Stefano's obsidian eyes is almost obscene. "I fail to see how it is my fault that you could not control your 'legendary' libido, once again. After all, I was not there. I did not hold a gun to your head. So, tell me again." His eyes narrow nastily. "How was this my fault?"
"You got inside my head and you got inside Hope's and you played with our minds," John's anger is rousing the droning inside his head once again and he feels his control slipping away from him. "You had us like damn puppets, jerking us around on strings while you played your *sick* games."
"You can believe that, if it makes you feel better, John," Stefano's sneer registers his contempt for the man before him. "But you and I both know that you had full control of your free will on that sub. You wanted Gina and you had no qualms in making love to her."
"That was *not* making love." A note of desperation sneaks into John's voice. "If I had known, if I had remembered my life with Marlena..."
Stefano laughs, the sound chilling in the dark night air. "But you did *not*, did you John? It did not take much for you to forget your life here in Salem. Do you not wonder, if your love for Marlena was so strong, so pure and *righteous*, how it could be so easily erased?" The malicious smile never wavers as he circles John. "Do you not question why there was not the slightest essence of the man you are now, fighting to preserve that great *passion* that you share with your lovely wife?" His smile falters as he zeroes in on his prey. "Let me answer that for you John. The answers are that you are *weak*. That your will serves *nothing* but your own selfish interest."
"I don't have to listen to this," John's face contorts in fury. The droning is growing once again, and this time, there is no Marlena to save him from making matters much worse. "I *love* Marlena, I love her and she *knows* that. She *knows* that I never would have slept with Hope if I'd had *any* kind of free will."
"Pah," Stefano waves his hand, "you are a *fool*, John. You cannot expect Marlena's blind adoration to last beyond such betrayal. If she knows these things as you say, then why is she not down here with you? Why is she still in your lovely home while you spend your nights on the hard beds of the Salem Inn?"
"Shut up," John grits his teeth, the muscle in his jaw twitching like someone is tapping out Morse code under his skin. "Just *shut* up!"
"They say the truth hurts John," Stefano waves his goon back out of sight. "It certainly hurt Marlena, no? Maybe it is your turn now?" He grins, baring white teeth to the cool night air. But before John can react, Stefano turns, and with a swish of his coat, he and his goon are gone.