“I told you once you started picking out plants you would be throwing house parties.”
I groaned at the lunacy of it all. “Don’t expect edible cookies anytime soon.” Except Sam had specifically marked a recipe in her new cookbook for me. It was one of Peter’s favorite breakfasts, blueberry bake. Sam promised me it was Delanie-proof. I meant to prove her wrong someday and burn down my house while attempting it. Maybe I should do that tomorrow, then we couldn’t have Sam’s and Reed’s reception here.
Peter laughed while continuing to stroke my hair. “I think Dad’s right; this is a good thing.”
I lifted my head to meet his eyes, which I could barely make out in the dark. “You really think so?”
He nodded. “Don’t you?”
I thought for a moment. “I can’t shake the feeling that . . .”
Peter brushed my hair back. “That what?”
“Something doesn’t feel right about it. I’m sorry, I’m just having a hard time believing that all of a sudden your mom wants to be my friend.”
Even in the dark I could see the warmth emanating from his eyes. No judgment or disappointment.
“I understand that, but I think Sam eloping has shaken her up.”
“Maybe.”
“Delanie, thank you.”
“For what?”
“For allowing the small glimmer of hope a chance to grow.”
I wasn’t sure how hopeful I was, but I didn’t want to dash Peter’s hope. My head fell back on his chest. “The timing of this could have been better. I have to get those chapters to Chad this week.”
“Dad said he would come and oversee the backyard, so you shouldn’t have to worry about that. The house should be pretty quiet until Friday.” Peter wanted to take care of our backyard, but he needed to help James this week with their biggest client, the town of Clearfield.
“I won’t be able to work in my office.”
“That’s probably a good idea. You can work in bed like you used to.”
It was my favorite spot, but it wasn’t all that great for my neck and back. My new setup was much more ergonomic. “Don’t say that out loud or your mom will start telling everyone I make all my money in bed.”
He chuckled. “Not many people can say they’ve made millions from bed.” He got me to laugh.
“True. Maybe someday I’ll write a book titled, How to Make Millions on Your Serta Mattress.”
“Sounds like a best seller. Speaking of which, I checked the New York Times today.”
I froze. “You’re not supposed to.”
“So, you don’t want to know?”
I thought about it for all of two seconds. “Tell me.” I squeezed my eyes shut.
He hugged me tight. “Congratulations, baby. Number one.”
For some reason I felt guilty for being happy about it or relieved that it was doing as well as my previous books. It made me feel like I wasn’t an impostor. Was it ridiculous I felt almost ashamed that I was successful and liked it? I kissed Peter’s chest. “Thank you.”
“I’m proud of you.”
“You give me my best material.”
“I do enjoy that, but that’s not the only reason I’m proud of you. You quietly do so much good, including putting up with my crazy family.”
“I like most of them. I’m even looking forward to meeting Mimsy’s lover,” I teased.
“Do you think she’ll bring him to the reception?” He sounded alarmed.
“I forgot to tell you—when you went out to talk to James, she called him. They have a hot date for Saturday night, but your parents will have to drive them. Giovanni had his licensed revoked in 2002 for drag racing, so he says.”
Peter groaned.
“How’s James?” Sam and I had both noticed Avery’s reaction and we tried to get her to talk, but she played it off.
“He’s troubled.”
“About what?”
“He wouldn’t say. Told me to mind my own business.”
Ouch. That was harsh. “I’m sorry.”
“That’s James for you. We ended up tossing around a football, talking about the Cubs’ chances for going to the World Series this year.”
I didn’t know much about baseball, but from all the yelling they did during the games, I was going to assume their chances were low this year. “Do you think they are having a rough patch in their marriage?”
Peter thought for a moment. “I don’t think so. Avery’s his world. She has been from day one.”
“Hopefully whatever it is will get better soon.” I yawned, exhausted from the day.
Peter kissed the top of my head. “Sleep well. We have a big week ahead of us.”
I had a feeling big wasn’t going to be an adequate adjective.
~*~
Monday started out good with congratulatory emails from Chad, Joan, and Fiona. Chad’s email wasn’t entirely friendly, more like snarky on steroids.
You don’t want to see me become a thirstbucket. That isn’t going to be pretty for anyone, especially for you when I crash your love nest and make good on my earlier threat of babysitting your butt all day long. So get me those chapters. By the way, congratulations. You make me proud. Love you.
The love really oozed off the screen there. It was a good thing I had learned to speak New Yorker and knew that thirstbucket meant desperate or I would have been wasting more time looking up New York slang words like I had had to a few years ago. Sometimes I honestly felt like I lived in a different country than my New York friends.
I took a deep breath, flexed my fingers, ready to start shaking things up with the appearance of Mr. Black’s mistress, who felt that discretion had gone out the window with his passing. With her would come the unraveling of the secrets Laine desperately wanted to protect Hunter from. I had barely gotten a few lines in when our doorbell rang. I wasn’t expecting Joseph until 9:00 a.m. and it was 8:30. I climbed out of my bed, my office for the week, and hurried downstairs.
Joseph beamed brightly at my door. “Sorry, I’m early.” He held up a bakery bag and a drink carrier with two steaming, lidded cups. “I thought we could have breakfast together. Peter mentioned you loved kolaches.”
What was there not to love about puffy warm bread filled with fruit? I smiled at Joseph. He wore a look reminiscent of a teen boy who on a hope and a dare knocked on the girl of his dream’s door. It was very sweet. Any annoyance I had from being interrupted evaporated.
I hardly knew how to respond. I wanted to tell him how touched I was and that I’d dreamt of a moment like this with a father. All I managed to get out was, “Thank you. I do love kolaches.”
Joseph didn’t seem to care or notice my greeting wasn’t as heartfelt as I wished it to be. He came right in and I led him to our couch. We hadn’t invested in a table yet. We should at least get some stools to go around the island. Sarah had not so subtlety suggested that, which made me not want to do it, but perhaps she had a point. Peter and I would probably still eat on the couch, at least until we had . . . Were we ever going to have a baby? Maybe the universe was punishing me for . . . her.
I shook myself out of my thoughts and sat next to Joseph, who handed me a warm cup. “You like green tea, right?” He’d obviously talked to my husband.
“It’s my favorite. Thank you.” The warmth from the cup had nothing on how I felt toward Joseph at this moment. “I hope you didn’t have to go out of your way for all this.”
The twinkle in his eyes said he did, but his curled lips said he wasn’t going to own it. “It’s been a while since I’ve had a good kolache.” That was a nice way to spin it.
“I’ve never had a bad one.” I grinned.
Joseph laughed while handing me my favorite—raspberry filled. Peter was definitely behind this.
We silently indulged in bliss for a moment. No need to talk when you could eat a kolache. That could be the motto of the bakery.
“How’s work?” Joseph attempted small talk. I liked it. It was a good place to
begin.
I tossed my head from side to side. “Busy. Lots of deadlines, but I can’t complain.”
“You write for some internet company, right?”
I nodded, thankful that was true. Well, it wasn’t really an internet company, but I knew what he meant. Besides, less specifics were better for me. “I’m working on a piece now about human trafficking in the U.S.”
It was another thing I was behind on. I made a mental note to ask Fiona if she could get me an interview with a group out of Utah that was waging a war on child trafficking. I’d run across them in the minimal research I’d been able to do.
Joseph’s eyes widened. It wasn’t normal small talk, or even pleasant. “Is that a big problem?”
“Unfortunately, and you would be surprised how much of it happens in our own backyards.”
Joseph swallowed hard. “That’s got to be tough to write about.”
“It’s frightening, but it’s the only way to bring it to light so we can hopefully end it.”
He tilted his head and studied me as if he were taking inventory, maybe reevaluating. “You sound like you wouldn’t mind leading that charge.”
“I hate to see any child suffer. I try to do what I can, where I can, but it seems so insignificant.”
Joseph took a swig of his coffee and downed his kolache in two bites. “You’re a good woman.”
“I try to be. But I have a lot to work on.”
“Don’t we all?”
“The exception could be Peter.”
Joseph laughed a booming laugh. “I hope you haven’t placed my son on a pedestal, because believe me, in marriage it isn’t pretty when the pedestal crumbles. And it will. Peter has his faults like everyone else.”
“Well, he doesn’t like sushi.”
Joseph’s laughter continued to fill my family room. “Can’t say I blame him there.” He turned more thoughtful and rested his large hand on my bare knee. Today was one of those rare days I wore shorts instead of a skirt. “Delanie, can I give you some advice?”
I nodded.
“Don’t do Peter or yourself the disservice of believing he is better than you.”
My eyebrows shot up.
Joseph gave a knowing smile. “I’ve noticed the way you look at my son. The way you both look at each other with those blinding stars in your eyes. I’m grateful he’s found someone who loves him as much as you do, but don’t forget he’s a man. Speaking from experience, we tend to do and say stupid things from time to time. And sometimes the better we are, the bigger our mistakes tend to be.”
I leaned back against the cushions of the couch, letting that ominous piece of advice bounce around in my head. There was some truth there. I could even see it in my imaginary friends I’d been writing for the last few years. But it was hard to imagine Peter doing more than leaving the toilet seat up or forgetting my birthday, which I wasn’t all that sentimental about anyway.
Joseph patted my knee. “I didn’t mean to worry you. Peter is a good man. I know. I raised him, and sometimes I thought he was abnormally good. Kind of wish Reed got him into more trouble on occasion. But from what I’ve observed, you’re good for him. And if you don’t mind me saying, I hope you both get into a little trouble together. Every relationship needs its ups and downs.” He stood up and stretched his back. “Now it’s time for this old man to get to work.”
I stood up too, still trying to process our conversation. “Thank you for breakfast.”
“It was my pleasure. Thank you for being willing to invite some trouble into your life this week.” He gave me a wink.
“Yeah,” I sighed.
“Sometimes the only way to fix things is to shake all the pieces together and see what new configuration you get out of it. If that doesn’t work, you keep trying until you get the right one.”
“Sounds painful.”
“Yes. Always.”
Chapter Fourteen
Joseph was right. My week was painful, but not because of him. I could honestly say I was beginning to adore him. He brought me breakfast every morning and was transforming my backyard along with the day workers Peter had contracted with, and it was turning out beautiful. He truly behaved as if he wanted to get to know me. He even kissed my cheek when he said goodbye yesterday. He was becoming the father-in-law I had hoped for when we moved here. His wife, on the other hand. . . The one who said she only needed to take a few measurements? She didn’t mention that was going to be an every-freaking-day thing. She even dragged Sam into the mix after telling her she didn’t need to lift a finger.
Most of the time Sam and I stood there watching and hoping it would all go away, but no. My house was filled with tulle—I wasn’t even sure what that was or what they were using it for, but there were rolls of it everywhere. On top of that colored net stuff there were tubs and tubs of who knows what, but I was sure to find out soon.
That wasn’t the worst of it. Sarah had lots of friends that came too. Who knew she had friends? Okay, that was petty. I was in the process of trying to retrain my brain, but it was hard when Sarah was turning my life into a sequel of The Wedding Planner. This movie, though, was going to be more along the lines of a horror film. I was calling it Chucky’s Bridezilla Mother. And heads were going to roll at the end of it if I didn’t get some writing done. Chad was now frequently sending me texts laced with friendly threats and four-letter words. My responses were not all that friendly. I upped his four-letter words with some trashy mash-ups of those vile words and accompanied those responses with pictures of the Little Shop of Horrors Bridal Boutique that had thrown up in my house. Soon I would be begging Seymour to feed me to his overgrown Venus fly trap, or better yet, that’s where I would dispose of the heads that were going to roll.
Maybe I needed to lay off the sadistic pop culture references.
The scariest thing, though, was how nice Sarah was being to me. I’m not kidding when I say I had taken major precautions before she set foot in our house again. I had not only locked the attic, but every bedroom door. I even took down all the framed New York Times posters and any other incriminating evidence and placed them in boxes just in case. But Sarah and her minions never went upstairs, except to measure the staircase for that tulle stuff.
I watched them like a hawk, but Sarah didn’t so much as look in the direction of the bedroom that led to the attic. Instead, when Bethany surveyed the bottom floor from above and said, “Whoever designed this house deserves a medal. It’s stunning,” Sarah smiled and nodded. Sarah also greeted me every day and introduced me as Peter’s wife without once choking on her words. That was more alarming than anything. What was she playing at? Or was I being paranoid?
While Sarah invaded my home, Sam and I caught up on her life in between Sarah asking for Sam’s opinion on everything and begging her to invest in a wedding dress—a white one, preferably. Sam rolled her eyes so many times I was getting motion sickness from it. I could hardly blame her though. She didn’t want this shindig and, like me, she had better things to do than watch grown women get excited over paper flowers, several of which were placed above my fireplace.
Poor Sam was also dealing with the first day of school blues. She sat tearing up on my couch while we faced each other with our feet tucked beneath us. “I can’t believe Cody is a junior. I wanted to hold onto his legs this morning and beg him not to leave like he used to do to me when he was two. Reed talked me out of it.”
I laughed at her. “That was a good call on his part.”
“No one warns you about this part in life. They always tell you to hold on tight to them when they’re little. They don’t prepare you for the gut-wrenching ache when they can walk out your door and drive off without a second thought about you.”
“Cody loves you; he’s just a typical teen boy.”
“I think he loves Reed more.”
“I doubt it, but that’s not a bad thing.”
Sam let out a heavy enough breath she ruffled some of her hair. “You’re right, especi
ally since Neil has decided to father a child with every woman under twenty-five he meets. Can you believe he had the audacity to tell me that eloping was immature?” She gave me an evil grin. “I may have responded that at least Reed didn’t need to have his parents’ permission.”
“How did that go over?”
“He mumbled something about this still being all my fault and we could have worked it out.”
“Someone’s delusional.”
“I suggested medication.”
“How’s his mother dealing with all this?” Gelaire was like a second mother to Sam. Sam still took her grocery shopping once a week. I could never picture Sarah and I alone like that, especially if Peter and I were no longer together.
“Gelaire, while unhappy about her son’s poor choices, is happy for me. She’s coming Saturday, along with everyone else Ma invited, unfortunately,” she tried to say quietly.
“I heard that,” Sarah called from the dining room. “You should be grateful so many people love you.”
Sam rolled her eyes. “They don’t love me. They all want to say they went to the Sidelined Wife’s reception.”
Not that I didn’t think people loved Sam, but I had a feeling she was right. It was bizarre how many people RSVP’d on such short notice. A woman with a small cake decorating business had even volunteered to make a massive four-tiered cake and cupcakes for the soiree, free of charge I might add, unless you counted that she wanted to be able to post pictures of her creations on her website. I had no doubt the benevolent baker would make sure to have Sam and Reed in some of them.
All the attention Sam was receiving made me even more thankful no one knew who Autumn Moone was.
“Speaking of your alter ego, did you sign on the dotted line for Weekend Musings?”
Sam clasped her hands together. “Yes. I’m so nervous. I start in a few weeks.”
“Congratulations. You’re going to be fantastic.”
She took my hands and squeezed them. “I hope so. I also have two book signings next week. Can you believe it?”
“I can.”
“How do you think I should sign my name? These are the things that are keeping me up at night now.”
The Secretive Wife (More Than a Wife Series Book 2) Page 11