Czytaj książkę: «Suburban Secrets»
“Nick, I have a confession.”
Grace decided that since this was a game of Truth or Dare she’d just tell him the truth. “Do you see those women over there?” She pointed to her friends. They all stared back as if they were watching a bad reality-TV show. “They dared me to come over here and give you something.”
Nick grinned. “Like what?”
“Like my underwear.”
He didn’t look the slightest bit surprised. She guessed women offered him their underwear on a pretty regular basis. She sidled closer, dangling her panties in front of him so the girls could see.
Nick gave her panties an appraising look. Then he grabbed her around the waist and pulled her close. “Wanna give your friends something better to watch?”
Oh, my.
The DJ was playing The Cure’s “Just Like Heaven,” and the beat reverberated through the bar beneath her elbow. Nick’s lips were mere inches away.
What was it the Romans used to say?
Oh, yeah. Carpe diem.
Donna Birdsell
Donna Birdsell lives near Philadelphia, where she absolutely doesn’t get any of her ideas from her perfectly normal family, friends and neighbors.
She’s addicted to reality television and chocolate, loves a good snowstorm and cooks to relax.
She spent many years writing press releases, newsletters and marketing brochures until a pregnancy complication kept her home from the office. She needed something to keep her busy, so she started her very first novel.
Five years later her dream of becoming a published fiction author came true when The Painted Rose, her first historical romance, was released.
She is excited about this, her first book for Harlequin NEXT.
You can reach Donna through her Web site at www.DonnaBirdsell.com.
Suburban Secrets
Donna Birdsell
MILLS & BOON
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To all the girls who kept my secrets.
We sure had some good times, didn’t we?
CONTENTS
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 1.5
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 2.5
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 3.5
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 4.5
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 5.5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 6.5
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 7.5
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 8.5
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 9.5
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 10.5
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 11.5
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 12.5
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 13.5
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 14.5
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 15.5
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 16.5
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 17.5
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 18.5
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 19.5
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 20.5
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 21.5
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 1
Friday, 7:17 a.m.
Weird Eggs
“Kevin, let’s move! It’s 7:17.”
From the bottom of the stairs, Grace Becker heard the telltale thump of a body rolling out of bed. Jesus. They had thirteen minutes. She’d better find something he could eat on the way to school.
Megan and Callie were already in the kitchen, poking the food around on their plates.
“Finish your eggs,” Grace said.
Callie stuck out her tongue. “What’s in them?”
“Camembert and shallots,” said Grace. “Why? Don’t you like it?”
“What’s wrong?” said Megan.
“What do you mean, what’s wrong?” Grace grabbed a Pop-Tart from the pantry and stuck it in the toaster.
“You always cook weird stuff when you’re upset,” Megan said. “So, what’s wrong?”
Grace bit the inside of her cheek. What was she supposed to say?
Well, girls, I’m upset because your father left me for his older, less attractive assistant; he’s been a complete dirtbag about the divorce; we’re probably going to lose our house; and the closest thing Mommy’s had to a date in the last ten months was drinking a Dixie cup of warm Gatorade with your field hockey coach, Ludmilla?
She sighed. “Nothing’s wrong. Eat your breakfast.”
“Mom, nobody eats breakfast. And I mean nobody.” Megan, at twelve, had some sort of detailed list in her head about what everyone did or did not do, which she checked with agonizing frequency.
“They especially don’t eat eggs for breakfast,” Callie added.
“Yeah?” said Grace. “When I was your age, I would have killed to have eggs for breakfast. But it was cold cereal and a vitamin pill everyday for me. Grandma actually had a job.”
“You could get a job,” Callie suggested.
“Be careful what you wish for.” Grace tried to draw a deep breath, but it got stuck halfway down.
She was going to have to get a job. But where? She hadn’t held a position outside her yoga class in thirteen years.
Everything in her life had revolved around Tom, his career and their kids. His bosses had loved her, his coworkers’ wives had envied her, and his clients had jockeyed for invitations to Becker parties. She’d been the events coordinator, secretary, moral support beam, taxi service and butt kisser extraordinaire, all without ever drawing a paycheck.
But it was time to face facts. Tom was gone. He was making a new life, with a new woman who would be all those things.
So who would she be now?
She forced a smile. “If I get a job, who’ll take care of you guys?”
Megan rolled her eyes. “Please, Mom. I’m almost thirteen. I think I can get my own breakfast.”
“What? A handful of grapes and a Diet Coke? I don’t think so. You’re going to have a decent breakfast if I have to give it to you through an IV. You’re not going to end up looking like Lara Flynn Boyle.”
“Who?” said Callie.
“The walking corpse on Twin Peaks.”
“Twin what?”
“Never mind. Eat your eggs.”
“I’m with Callie. I think you should get a job,” said Megan. “You need a change. Don’t you want some excitement?”
“There’s plenty of excitement around here,” Grace said. “Just yesterday while I was folding towels in the laundry room, I saw Mrs. Pollack’s dog bite the mailman in the crotch.”
“Mother!” Megan jerked her head in Callie’s direction. “Was that really an appropriate thing to say in front of the child?”
“Who are you calling a child?” Callie shouted. “I’m almost nine!”
The Pop-Tart started smoking in the toaster just as Kevin flew into the kitchen and slid across the floor in his socks. “Four minutes!” he said, breathlessly.
“Wow, you can hardly tell,” Megan said.
Grace examined her son. His hair stuck out from his head like he’d spent the night in electroshock therapy. His shirt was wrinkled, and she was pretty sure he’d taken the jeans he was wearing out of the hamper.
“No way. Get up there and do it right,” she said. “Meet us at the car in—” she checked her watch “—three minutes. I’ll have your breakfast with me.”
“Why can’t I have a Pop-Tart, too?” Callie whined. “You only get something good around here if you’re late.”
“Is Dad coming to my game this afternoon?” Megan asked.
“I’m sure he is, but I’ll ask him when I see him.”
She’d be seeing him this morning. Damned Tom and his damned lawyer. Big Prick and Bigger Prick, as she liked to think of them.
They’d scheduled the fifth meeting in two weeks to discuss the settlement. This divorce was such a joke, all they needed to get it onto network TV was a laugh track.
Grace plucked the molten hot Pop-Tart from the toaster and wrapped it in a paper towel. “Okay, let’s roll. We have seven minutes to get you to school.”
The girls happily dumped the rest of their eggs down the garbage disposal and grabbed their backpacks from the hooks by the door.
Friday, 8:25 a.m.
Foot Powder and the Mouth
The Grocery King piped a Muzak version of U2’s “Sunday Bloody Sunday” into the aisles. Grace was just the age to find this both entertaining and disturbing.
She checked her list.
Salmon. Fresh dill. New potatoes. She was going to make herself something special tomorrow night to celebrate her freedom. Her parents were taking the kids for the Columbus Day long weekend and solemnly swore to get them to all extracurricular activities on time and dressed in the correct uniforms.
Maybe it would be good to have a relaxing weekend alone. Completely alone. She could think about what she was going to do with her life when she was the ex–Mrs. Thomas Becker.
The thought made her break into hives.
She hung a left into the pharmacy aisle and threw things into her cart.
She stopped in front of the Dr. Scholl’s display. A lump crept up her throat, and before she could stop them, the tears came. She couldn’t believe she hadn’t had to buy foot powder in ten months.
Tom had notoriously damp feet. And it wasn’t as though she missed his feet—they really were gross—but she’d loved him so much, she’d been able to overlook the grossness. Would she ever feel that way about someone’s feet again?
As she fished through her purse for a tissue, she felt a hand on her shoulder. It was Lorraine Dobbs, otherwise known as the Mouth of South Whitpain.
“Grace? Are you alright?”
Grace nodded. Her blouse, now soaked with tears, stuck to her chest. “I think I’m allergic to foot powder.”
Lorraine gave her a funny look. “O-kay, then. Are you going to Misty’s later?”
Grace nodded again.
“Alrighty. See you there.” Lorraine hurried off, one of the wheels on her cart shuddering in time with the Muzak version of “Rock the Casbah.”
Grace checked her watch. Already nine minutes over her scheduled grocery shopping time.
Friday, 9:33 a.m.
Poster Girl
“We were about to send out the National Guard,” said Tammy Lynn. “You’re three minutes late.”
“I know. I’m so sorry.” Grace threw her coat and purse on a hook in the closet and rushed over to the chair at Tammy Lynn’s station at Beautific, the salon where Grace had been getting her hair done for the past ten years.
“Grace, I’m only kidding,” Tammy Lynn said, laughing, as she fastened the black polyester cape around Grace’s neck.
“Right.” Grace laughed with her.
But the thing was, she didn’t really think it was funny. Punctuality was important. A minute here, two minutes there. They all added up. When you had three kids you learned how to manage your time, or else dinner was chronically late, homework time was chronically late, and you ended up cleaning the bathroom at ten-thirty at night instead of watching the rerun of Murphy Brown on Lifetime you’d been looking forward to all day.
Her shoulder muscles bunched painfully. She had to relax. Maybe she could squeeze a few minutes of meditation in before lunch.
“Cover the gray and trim the ends?” Tammy Lynn asked, plucking the barrette from Grace’s shoulder-length, brown hair.
“Mmm-hmm.”
Tammy Lynn spun the chair around to face a poster of a slender, sophisticated woman with a soft, blond, bouncy cut that looked like at least twenty minutes worth of work every morning.
“Wait,” Grace said. “I want that.”
Tammy Lynn stopped the color bottle in midair. “What? The do on the poster?”
Grace nodded.
“Really? You sure? You gotta blow it out with a brush and curl it. You can’t just put it back in a barrette.”
Grace studied the poster again.
It wouldn’t be a completely off-the-wall thing to do. She’d been blond once, a long, long time ago. Before Tom had hinted it wasn’t quite sophisticated. Not quite who he thought she should be.
Maybe Megan was right. Maybe she needed to shake up her life a little. Hell, she could get up a few minutes earlier.
“Do it,” she said.
Friday, 10:58 a.m.
Big and Bigger
As Grace waited for the elevator in the four-story, brick-and-tinted-window building that served as suburban Philadelphia’s answer to the high-rise, she raked the wispy hairs at her neck with her fingernails.
What had she been thinking? She felt naked without her ponytail. And the last thing she wanted to feel around the man who was almost her ex-husband was naked.
She hadn’t actually wanted to be naked around him, either, for a long time.
She supposed she had a sixth sense that he’d been cheating on her, which was probably why she’d skipped the meeting with the decorator that day and gone straight home, only to find Tom stretched out on their bed, covered with peanut butter. His assistant, Marlene, was on top of him, wearing nothing but a Smucker’s negligee. A nauseating sight, considering that on her best day, wearing her best Donna Karan power suit, Marlene looked a lot like a broomstick in a red wig.
Grace had been angry as hell. In retrospect, she realized it was mostly because they’d ruined a pair of really good sheets, but also a little bit because she’d been married to Tom for thirteen years and they’d never made a PB&J sandwich together. The most creative thing they’d ever done in bed was fill out their taxes.
She supposed part of it was her own fault. Tom knew she lived and died by her Day-Timer, and if the Day-Timer said she’d be at the decorator’s at two o’clock, then that’s where she’d be.
If she’d been a tad more unpredictable, maybe they’d have had “lunch” at Marlene’s place instead, and ruined her good sheets.
Grace stepped out of the elevator on the fourth floor at Kemper Ivy Kemper, where Tom’s lawyer, aka Bigger Prick, practiced. The receptionist directed her to the conference room, where Big Prick, Bigger Prick and Grace’s own lawyer, Debra Coyle, waited.
Tom raked his long fingers through salt-and-pepper hair. She could see the tension in his squared jaw. His bone structure was impeccable, really. He would undoubtedly age like Sean Connery, remaining breathtakingly handsome well into his retirement days.
She took a deep breath and pushed the door open.
Big Prick’s eyes bugged. “You cut your hair. And it’s blond.”
Bigger Prick flashed his client a look.
Grace felt a moment of grateful relief before she considered where the compliment had come from. She gave Tom a bitchy look. “I’m getting the kids’ hair cut, too. I figure we’ll save money on shampoo.”
“Oh for God’s sake, Grace. You know the children will be well taken care of, and—”
“Just hold on, Tom,” his lawyer interrupted. “Debra, will you keep your client quiet for a few minutes?”
“I think she has every right to be pissed, David. Don’t you?” Debra motioned to the chair next to hers, and Grace took a seat. “How many times are we going to rehash this pathetic settlement?”
“She signed a prenup, Debra.”
“Then what are we doing here?”
“My client just wants to be fair. He wants to do what’s right.”
Grace snorted. “He should have thought of that before he decided to audition for the role of mascot for Skippy’s porn division.”
Tom pushed away from the table and stormed out the door.
Grace rubbed her temples. “Can we just get this over with?”
Bigger Prick slid the latest draft of the divorce settlement across the wide conference room table.
“Will you leave us alone for a few minutes?” Debra asked Bigger.
The other lawyer nodded and followed Tom from the room. Grace could see them through the floor-to-ceiling windows, waiting just outside the door.
Upon closer inspection, Tom didn’t look well. The bags under his eyes matched the gray suit he was wearing. Maybe the strain of the divorce was catching up to him, too.
Yeah, right. More likely he and Marlene had been dressing up in condiments all night.
A vision of Marlene’s bony ass, covered in ketchup, flashed in Grace’s mind. Blech.
“Grace, I don’t think we’re going to do much better than this,” Debra said. “The terms are shitty, but you did sign a prenup. He gets all property and monies generated by his inheritance, including the house. You get half of what you’ve both made since you got married.”
“You mean half of what he’s made. He wouldn’t let me work, Debra. God, I was so stupid.”
Debra reached out and squeezed Grace’s hand. “The child support is good. Some would argue that he’s being generous.”
“Generous? Listen, I don’t give a crap about the money. Well, okay, maybe a small crap. But I’m going to lose the house. My kids are going to lose their house.”
“Maybe you could offer to buy him out.”
“How? The house is worth three-quarters of a million dollars.”
Debra thought for a minute. “Can you borrow it from your parents?”
Grace shook her head. “They don’t have that kind of money.”
“Do you have anything you can sell? What about stocks? Jewelry?”
She shook her head. “It wouldn’t be enough to buy him out.” For the second time that day, tears threatened.
She’d worked so hard to make that house a home for Tom and the kids. It was a gorgeous, historic colonial manor house, once owned by William Penn’s sous-chef or something. When they’d moved in, it was hardly more than an old pile of bricks. She’d restored it, room by room, over the years, finding authentic fixtures at flea markets and on the Internet. She loved that house, and now she’d never even be able to afford the taxes. But there were more important things than houses.
At least she’d won custody of the kids. Probably because—unlike the house—Marlene didn’t want them.
“Screw it,” she said. “Give me the papers.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure.” She signed the papers, and Debra waved Tom and his lawyer back into the room.
“You did the right thing, Grace,” Bigger Prick said. “The sooner we end this hostility, the sooner you and Tom can get on with your lives.”
Right. Only now, hers would be almost unrecognizable.
Grace rose. “Good luck with Marlene.”
Bigger Prick stuck out his hand. Grace ignored it.
She made it to the door before Tom said, “Wait, Grace. I want to talk to you. Alone.”
Both lawyers looked stricken. But Grace nodded, and Tom held the door open for her as they left.
“What?” she said. “You want to thank me for signing that piece of shit agreement?”
He came closer. “No. I want to ask a favor of you.”
“A favor?” She laughed. “You haven’t changed a bit, have you?”
Tom closed the distance between them and guided her to an alcove in the lobby. “I need you to do something for me. In return, maybe we could work something out with the house.”
She looked into his eyes. “You’re serious?”
“Yes.” He lowered his voice. “I need you to sign some papers.”
“What kind of papers?”
“Work-related stuff.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Why would you want me to sign work-related papers?”
He reached out, almost touching her hand before pulling back. He whispered, “Not your name.”
Her insides went liquid. “No-oh. No way. Forget it.”
Now he grabbed her hand. His voice was low and quick. Persuasive. His sales voice. “Come on, Gracie. You’re the only one I know who can do this for me. You’re the best.”
“Are you crazy?” Her voice rose, and she made a concerted effort to quiet herself. “Are you nuts? Do you want to send me back to jail?”
“You won’t get caught. I promise. It’s a one-time deal.”
She pulled her hand from his.
“Think about it, Gracie. Five minutes of your time and the house is yours.”
“What about Marlene? I thought she wanted the house.”
“Yeah, well. She’ll just have to live without it.”
He must have known how tempting this all would sound to her. He’d always been a great salesman, finding just the right carrot for the mules.
He’d found hers, alright. But it wasn’t a big enough carrot.
“I’d want the ’Vette, too,” she said. Tom’s white 1976 Corvette was basically a fifteen-foot extension of his penis.
He frowned. “Grace—”
“Okay, then.” She started walking toward the elevator, and he grabbed her arm.
“Wait. Alright. The ’Vette, too.”
She realized then that he was really, truly desperate.
She chewed the inside of her cheek. “I’ll think about it.”
“Think fast, okay? I need this done quickly.”
She nodded.
Before she could figure out what his intentions were, he leaned in and kissed her. “I’ll call you.”
She got almost to the elevator before she remembered to ask him about Megan’s field hockey game.
“Hey,” she shouted over her shoulder. “You know Megan has a game today?”
“Of course. I’ll be there,” he said. “I wouldn’t miss it.”
Grace walked out of the building and into the sunshine. She’d made a decision.
She didn’t need meditation. She needed a margarita.
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