The Secretive Wife (More Than a Wife Series Book 2)

by Jennifer Peel

  “I hope you didn’t let that idiot into your head.” Joan looked up from her phone. “He was only trying to get a rise out of you. All that crap about secrets and vulnerabilities. You’re a tough cookie and he only wanted to taste you. The pig. Did you notice how much he balked at photographing you in the sweater and jeans? And did you see that he picked a sweater that showed off your shoulders from his ‘prop’ room. I’d like to go in there and see what else he has. Where did he get all those clothes?”

  I had wondered that too.

  “Total perv,” Joan snarled. “I will be steering clients away from him in the future. I don’t care if everyone in this town thinks he’s a god.”

  I agreed with Joan that he was a pervert, but it was unnerving how right he was about me. No one knew all the secrets I kept or how much I wanted to share them with someone. To share the pain I’d tried to forget but couldn’t because it would mean forgetting her. She was a part of me. I wanted to share it all with Peter, but how could I tell him after all this time? Would he understand why I couldn’t bring myself to tell him when we were first together? Why being with someone like him was so intimidating and almost daunting? I didn’t want to rock the boat that had taken so much effort to set sail in the first place. Peter changed his entire life for me. For a woman who had grown up vastly different than him, with opinions about love and sex that didn’t exactly match his.

  His silence was noted when he had asked about my previous relationships and I revealed my less than innocent sexual past, at least most of it. I knew he was trying not to react negatively, but I saw the surprise in his eyes. How he’d left early that night. How he came back the next morning as if he thought about it all and determined we were still meant to be together, but he never brought it up again. Even now he skirted the topic of old love interests.

  I continued to examine the situation in my head over lunch while I should have been engaged in the conversation surrounding marketing strategies and weird things like the different types of balls and events they had at this romance conference. I heard something about me having to attend the Sweet and Sexy Ball, and something about the model who portrayed Hunter Black on my book covers being there for women to take pictures with. That was bizarre to me. Besides, I would be bringing the real man behind Hunter as my date. That was, if he didn’t leave me after I told him about her, the baby—I could hardly say it.

  Baby X, I called her. I knew she would never be mine, so I never gave her a name and refused to know what it would be. As hard as I tried not to love her, I couldn’t help myself. I hated to admit that I wanted to hate her at first for what she had done to me. She made me a statistic. And at the time, I blamed her for taking away the first person I ever thought I belonged with. My stomach roiled at the thought now. Despite all that, a fierce need to protect her overcame me. From there, love swelled as she grew. Then with every kick and move, my heart shattered knowing I couldn’t keep her.

  I had to stop thinking about her. I hadn’t allowed myself to go this far in a long time. Tears were on the cusp of falling. “Excuse me.” I pushed back my chair and briskly walked toward the ladies’ room. I had to pause to sign an autograph and fake a smile on my way.

  Once in the restroom, I realized I was no longer in Kansas. I was in the Taj Mahal of bathrooms, with actual gold sinks. I half expected gold thrones in the stalls. Once safely behind the stall door, I leaned against it, hoping it was as clean as it looked. I took deep breaths in and out, in and out. I held onto my bare abdomen. It felt emptier than ever.

  Peter would understand why, wouldn’t he? Did I even understand why? My head did, but I don’t think my heart ever had. The tears wanted to flow, but they couldn’t. All that ridiculous makeup from the photoshoot weighed heavy on my face. There would have been no hiding the evidence, and I was good at hiding the evidence. Too good. But I had no other choice. I had to protect her. But what if I couldn’t now? What if Autumn exposed her?

  My heart raced.

  I began weighing the pros and cons of telling Peter. The overwhelming pro was being able to share the burden I’d carried by myself for so long. To allow myself the opportunity to share everything with my husband. For him to tell me it was okay. And maybe he could help me get over the shame I’d felt for the choices I had to make. The thought filled me with imaginable relief and felicity.

  On the opposite end of the spectrum, there was anxiety and despair. What if he hated me for keeping her from him? What if he thought I’d brought it upon myself because I chose to be with Blair? I could hardly think his name. I had never hated someone so much in my life. Sarah’s betrayal had nothing on his. His name hissed in my head. I shut my eyes. If the press really wanted a sensationalized story from my past, they chose the wrong man. Yes, I had a story for them, filled with power, money, deceit, intimidation, and fear. Fear I still felt. I grabbed my heart. I didn’t want to think about this anymore. I couldn’t. I was supposed to be in the middle of a meeting.

  Deep breaths in and out.

  What should I do?

  I had no other choice for now but to walk back out and join my colleagues and pretend as if I wasn’t having a crisis the size of the Empire State Building.

  They hardly even took note when I returned. Most of them were in deep discussion about if they should have some new Autumn Moone bookmarks made with my face plastered on them. Lucas was arguing against the added expense and Shaylee countered that the readers at the conference would be more willing to seek out LH Ink’s booth if the swag was more personalized. Joan, on the other hand, was intently reading something on her phone, either bored by the ridiculous conversation or working per her usual.

  After some contemptuous debate, Shaylee turned my way. “What do you think?” she asked.

  What did I think? I think there were children with no shoes or clean water and nine-year-old girls that were far more important than a bookmark that someone was probably going to throw away. And there were women with painful secrets and choices to make that would alter their lives dramatically who didn’t care, not even for a second, if her photo was on a piece of paper.

  I didn’t say any of those things. I hid behind a faux smile and replied, “Bookmarks seem frivolous nowadays since most people buy digital books.”

  Everyone paused as if what I said was profound before they went right back to arguing.

  I was happy yet terrified to let them. It gave me time with my own thoughts. Thoughts that frightened me. Could I really keep hiding the truth from Peter? Should I? I had rationalized for so many years that I wasn’t lying to him. He’d never asked me if I’d had a baby. And the situation was both embarrassing and terrifying. That and I didn’t like talking to Peter about previous sexual relationships. I was Peter’s first and only. I wished I could say the same. No one had ever loved me so tenderly and deeply, both physically and emotionally. But what if I told him and it all went away? My heart kept telling me that Peter would understand if he knew why. He’d never expected me to live up to his standards or to ascribe to his way of living. He loved me for who I was, tattoos, piercings, swearing, and all. Not once had he asked me to change.

  I took a silent deep breath. I should tell him.

  “Oh, hell,” Joan groaned.

  Talking ceased and all heads turned toward her, but Joan only gave me the time of day. Which wasn’t all that surprising since she’d been ignoring Lucas all through lunch, though he sat next to her and had tried to engage her in conversation on several occasions.

  “What?” I asked her.

  She sighed in resignation before holding up her phone for me to see. I was beginning to learn this always spelled bad news.

  With trepidation, I took her phone that was more like a tablet and tried to casually glance down at it, but it quickly turned into a wide-eyed gawking session when I saw that the site was from a local Portland channel where I had grown up. My parents were clearly in the paused video frame. Above it read, Autumn Moone’s Parents and Classmates Tell All. Tell a
ll what? My head tipped up to meet Joan’s eyes that said she was sorry. That couldn’t be good.

  Joan slid her chair back and stood up. “Come with me.”

  She practically hoisted me up and dragged me over to the bar where we grabbed two chairs at the end, away from the lunchtime crowd. Lots of eyes were on us and I noticed a couple of women acted as if they wanted to come say hi. I could only hope they read the signals right and stayed away. I didn’t need Joan snapping at fans who would probably write all about it on social media.

  Only the bartender approached and asked what he could get us once we were settled. It was hard not to tell him to bring me a mango margarita and keep them coming. Joan had no problem ordering a double shot of whiskey.

  We put our heads together and I scrolled down to read the story below the video. I digested print better and wanted to keep it private. Private? I was beginning to think there was no such thing. Guaranteed national news channels would be picking up this story. I would be all over CNN, MSN, and everything in between before the night was through.

  While taking shallow breaths I read first about my parents. They basically took credit for all my success and touted their books as often as they could. They even talked about the red manual typewriter they bought me and how I wrote my first story with it. When asked if they had a copy of that story they regretfully said no. What a joke. I had the story. You know why? Because after they patted themselves on the back for my achievement, I later found it in the trash. They only cared that I had written it. I doubt they even read it. If they had, maybe they would have known how lonely I was. The kicker came at the end of their portion of the interview when the reporter remarked that they must be proud. Cat is quoted as saying, “We are pleased to see that our childrearing methods not only work but produce successful human beings.”

  That was touching. I supposed I should be happy that I had been upgraded from a subject to a human being.

  Next up were my high school classmates. Where they dug them up, I didn’t want to know. It seemed like anyone connected to me wanted their fifteen minutes of fame.

  A few said I was nice. One woman remembered I helped her pass Spanish. But that was boring, so they were buried in the article.

  Joan squeezed my arm as if she knew I was getting to the “good” part and wanted to brace me. In bold letters it read, Juvenile Delinquent or Social Justice Warrior?

  I had an inkling about what might come next, but I had no idea how blown out of proportion it would be or the outright lies that would be told.

  It seems as if Autumn Moone, or Delanie Monfort now Decker, was quite the troublemaker at Fordham High School. As editor of the school’s newspaper, she did more than write the headlines, she made them. Her former classmate Eli Guthrie remembers her as the girl who wasn’t afraid to speak her mind and made sure she was listened to.

  What he said was true, even if I had no idea who Eli was.

  One of her more memorable stunts was placing a toilet filled with human feces in the principal’s office with a vulgar note telling him he was full of ####.

  My lip may have twitched remembering my well-coordinated plan of attack protesting the unfair dress code that in essence gave boys a free pass. While I’m not a dress code kind of person, I could understand the need for some guidelines, but they’d better be fair for all sexes. I had to spend two days in in-house suspension because I wore boys’ tennis shorts to school. The same shorts boys were wearing every day at the time, but when I wore them I was told they were too short. When I refused to change I was punished, even though I had a signed petition with over a thousand signatures from parents and community leaders who agreed a more balanced approach should have been taken. When the principal refused to back down, I made a statement. A big, smelly one.

  She was never formally charged since they could never prove it was her, but it is widely believed that she was the perpetrator.

  You’re darn right I was.

  As editor, she also published an unauthorized copy of the failing grades of athletes, questioning why the school was going against its athletic code by allowing these players to continue to play while ineligible. She and her fellow newspaper staff members also prevented the hiring of a vice principal by discovering inconsistencies in her resume. Both incidents were highly embarrassing to the school and were cause to expel Ms. Decker, though she was never punished for either event. Which is still a mystery to some of those we spoke with who would like to remain anonymous.

  Who were those anonymous cowards telling lies? I was punished by being let go as editor even though I was telling the truth.

  But perhaps her most outrageous stunt, according to Selah Woods, was when she ran across the football field in the middle of the state championship game while naked and wearing only a sign that complained about the disparity in funding between arts and athletics. We couldn’t find a record of her being arrested for public indecency, which makes us question how she skirted charges for such an offense. Which leads us to ask, who is Autumn Moone really? Juvenile Delinquent or Social Justice Warrior? We will let you decide.

  I looked up, my face flushed and heart pounding. I never did such a thing, at least not at a game. My friends and I may have streaked through the woods on a dare once, but that was innocent. And what was this crap about letting the reader decide? The article in no way offered an unbiased approach. They obviously didn’t interview anyone who could have discounted the stupidity of some of those accusations, and if they had, they didn’t report it.

  Joan squeezed my hand. “You okay, kid?”

  No. I wasn’t okay. This wasn’t okay. “So much of this isn’t even true.” I handed her phone back to her before I threw it across the bar.

  “Del, I don’t care if it’s all true. I’d be proud if it was.” She smirked. “I only care about how it affects you and if we need to sue anyone for libel.”

  Ugh. I rubbed my temples. “I don’t want to go down that road. I have a feeling it would never end.”

  “Buckle up, kid, this is going to be a long, bumpy road.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  I finally had more than a minute alone outside of a bathroom stall. Joan was meeting someone who she wouldn’t mention for drinks. I had a pretty good guess who. Lucas cornered her after lunch and leaned in close to whisper in her ear. I swore she blushed right before she pushed him away, leaving him to admire her backside. I wanted to know what he’d said to her, but I figured if she wanted to tell me, she would.

  I sank into Joan’s couch, exhausted. It had been a nonstop day. After lunch I was ushered to an interview with IN TREND, where more of the same uncomfortable questions came. Then to a dinner appointment with an exec from a national chain of shoe stores who was interested in partnering with Sweet Feet. It felt good to be able to openly work with our foundation. It was the highlight of my day and helped me forget for a moment my entire life was being played out online without my consent.

  After I took a breath and kicked off my shoes, I grabbed my phone. I needed to hear my husband’s voice.

  He picked up after two rings. I expected to hear his voice, but all I could hear was James laughing and yelling, “DE-LAN-IE, you are my new hero! Please tell me how you got that toilet in the principal’s office.”

  My head dropped. I’d been hoping Peter hadn’t seen that yet. I wanted to give him some warning. “Hi, honey,” was all I could say, which was weird because I don’t think I’d ever called Peter that, but it seemed apropos.

  “Hey,” he sounded more tired than I was, which was saying something.

  “Are you still working?” It was nine there and had been dark for a while now.

  James was still spouting off nonsense in the background. “Saintly Peter got himself a wild woman while I ended up with the good girl. God definitely has a sense of humor.” He was not helping any.

  “Let me walk back to Dad’s office.” No doubt James was irritating him.

  I heard a door close.

  “That
’s better,” Peter sighed.

  “Why are you at the office?”

  “It’s been crazy here, and without Sam to help, and with Avery supporting her today at the signing. And . . . it’s just been busy, so we are playing catch up.”

  I rested my head against the couch cushion. “I’m sor—”

  “Don’t say it.”

  “At least tell me how Sam’s signing went.” Anything to not talk about the elephant that not only filled the room but every corner of our lives.

  “According to Avery, they sold every copy and they were there for hours.”

  “That’s great. I’m happy for her.”

  Uncomfortable silence crept in between us, a kind of quiet that had never happened before.

  The elephant needed to be addressed. “I take it you saw the piece done about me back in Portland.”

  “Yeah,” he breathed out.

  “And?”

  “I’m just surprised, is all. You’ve never really told me a lot about that time in your life.”

  “You’ve never asked, and I didn’t think it was important. Besides, half of that article was lies.”

  “Which half?”

  I was stunned by his question. “Does it really matter?” Because if it did, how could I ever tell him about her?

  “No,” he sighed.

  My heart felt as if it had stopped. “Peter.”

  “I’m just tired, baby.” He’d been saying that a lot lately.

  “I know you are. I am too. And I wish I could make this easier on you. Try to stay offline for now.”

  “It doesn’t matter if I do or don’t. Everywhere I go, people are happy to fill me in and are hoping I will return the favor.” His voice teetered on anger and anguish. I’d only heard him sound like this one other time. The day he came to tell me he had been reassigned because of his feelings for me. Now, once again, it was me causing his angst.

  What could I say? Sorry wouldn’t come close to making it better. “I . . .” my voice quivered.