Wife in Disguise

by Susan Mallery

  Del munched on a chip. “Remember when we went to Mexico that one time,” he said, taking the fajitas she’d pushed toward him.

  Josie took a bite of her dinner and chewed. Mexico. She and Del had vacationed there during the first year of their marriage. “We had a good time,” she said when she’d swallowed. “Well, except for that one night.”

  He grinned. “Hey, it wasn’t the night that was so bad. It was the next morning.”

  She found herself smiling in return. “Too many margaritas,” she admitted. “I don’t think I’ve ever been that sick in my life.”

  “But we recovered quickly. Probably because we were so young.”

  “We had to have been younger. Older people have matured and know better than to drink that much.”

  They’d also made love, she thought taking a bite of rice. In those days they hadn’t been able to get enough of each other. Nearly every afternoon had included a lengthy session of intimacy.

  “You made me dive off that cliff,” he said.

  Josie wrinkled her nose. “I’d nearly forgotten. You were terrified. I was sure you were going to back out at the last minute.”

  “No way. You’d already jumped, so what could I do? Be a wiener dog in front of everyone in line?” He laughed. “At least I survived.”

  She remembered the long plunge to the water and the contrast between the heat on the top of the cliff and the cool, swirling water below. “It was great. You loved it.”

  His dark gaze met hers. Something almost affectionate glinted there. “Actually I did love it. I’m glad you talked me into it.”

  They shared a few more memories, then quieted to eat. Josie managed to work her way through a fair amount of food. She wasn’t especially hungry but she knew she had to make sure she kept up her strength. Not eating much or well was one of the reasons she’d had the relapse in the first place.

  “Josie?”

  She glanced at him. He’d finished his dinner and was leaning back in his chair. To their left was the family room with its he-man television.

  “What?”

  He wadded up his paper napkin and tossed it onto the table. “When we were married we talked about dividing up the work around the house.”

  “I remember.”

  He shifted as if he were uncomfortable with the topic. Josie pushed away her plate. Suddenly her stomach didn’t feel very good.

  “I automatically took the yard work for myself,” he said. “I guess because it’s a more traditional male chore. Would you have liked to have done it?”

  She hadn’t had a clue about what he was going say, but she would never have guessed the topic to be yard work. It took her a couple of seconds to switch gears and respond to his question.

  “Um, yeah, I think I would,” she said slowly. “I have always enjoyed being outdoors and I like working with plants. Sure. It would have been fun. At the risk of starting trouble, that is a very strange question. Want to tell me what brought it up?”

  His mouth twisted slightly. “Annie May. I spoke to her a couple of days ago. She took great delight in pointing out all my flaws. One of them was my insistence that we compromise on the household chores. But instead of writing down all that needed to be done and deciding together how to split them, I came up with the compromise all on my own. Which, as she said, is the same as making sure it’s going my way. I wanted you to agree, not to give me input.”

  Josie opened her mouth, then closed it. She’d never thought about their problems in that light, but it made sense. Del had insisted on coming up with the compromises when there had been trouble. Some had been fine, but others she’d really hated. And when she’d protested, he’d accused her of not being willing to do her share. She’d been trapped without a way to win.

  “I hadn’t thought about it like that, but you could be right,” she told him. “We had all those fights about cooking. I always hated it. I grew up on a ranch, so I was used to hard work. I didn’t mind that, but I would rather have done anything than get stuck in the kitchen.” She leaned forward slightly. “Not only didn’t I know what I was doing, but I constantly worried about being compared to your mom. The woman is practically perfect. I always knew I was going to come up short. In my effort to avoid spending my life fetching for someone else, I probably went overboard to protect my interests.”

  Del nodded slowly. “I was crazy about the whole thing, too. Somehow cooking dinner and doing the laundry became a power play for us. We lost sight of getting the work done and focused on who had to do it and when. I never saw how expecting you to cook all the meals and be responsible for having food in the house would make you feel. I eat, too. I could have learned.”

  “Or hired your mom,” she teased.

  “I don’t think I could have afforded her.” He shifted closer. “I’m sorry, Josie. I didn’t mean to be such a jerk about it all.”

  His apology made her glow on the inside. After all these years she was finally finding out that maybe she hadn’t been as horrible as she’d thought during their marriage. Maybe they’d both been at fault. She would have to give that concept some thought.

  “I’m sorry, too,” she murmured. “We kind of got stuck in a bad place and couldn’t find our way out.”

  He nodded. “When I think back on it, I still don’t know what went wrong that last year. I wanted to make it all your fault, because that made it easy for me. But it wasn’t. I have blame, too.”

  He finished his beer and set the bottle on the table. “You’re not a quitter, Josie. I’ve always admired that about you.”

  She laughed. “Thanks. As my dad used to say, ‘Fitzgeralds don’t give up.’”

  “Then why did you give up on us?”

  The difficult question—quietly spoken—caught her off guard. She searched her heart for an honest answer. “I’m not sure I gave up so much as I got tired of always losing,” she admitted. “We were both young. I know I was way too young to be married. I didn’t know how to be in that kind of intimate one-on-one relationship. I should have compromised more, but you’re right. You were always the one coming up with the compromise. If I agreed, it felt too much like giving in. I felt as if I was bending all the time. Some days I thought I would snap. Sometimes I wanted you to bend.”

  Del nodded. “And here I thought I was the one doing the giving in. But I wasn’t. I could make a case for it, and from the outside it looked great. But it was for show. I didn’t compromise in my heart.”

  She looked at the man sitting across from her. He had once been her husband, but now he was a stranger. While she appreciated the rehash of old times and the insights, she couldn’t help feeling a little sad. After all, wasn’t the information coming too late to do any good? If only they’d figured this out three years ago.

  “I’m not proud of some of the things I did in our marriage,” she told him. “I was stubborn. You used to tell me it’s because I was so like my dad.”

  “Which you hated me saying.”

  “I did. But it was true. Now, after having been through the accident and a year of recovery, I have to admit I’m glad I’m like him. It can make me difficult, but that same stubbornness and determination also got me through everything else. Without that drive and will, I might have given up.”

  “I agree. Everyone has good and bad inside. You’re no different from the rest of us.”

  “Oh, I think my bad might be a little louder than anyone else’s.”

  They laughed. Then Del surprised her by stretching his hand out across the table. He held it there, palm up, obviously waiting for her to place her hand in his. Feeling self-conscious and exposed, she did as he silently requested. When his fingers grasped hers, he looked directly into her eyes.

  “I want us to start over, Josie,” he said. “This time let’s try to be friends. What do you say?”

  “I’d like that.”

  “Good.”

  He squeezed her fingers, then released them. As she returned her hand to her lap, she wondered wh
at he would think if he knew the truth. That she wanted to be much more than friends. She wanted a second chance. She wanted to heal the old wounds so they could begin again. She wanted him to fall in love with her the way she was falling in love with him.

  Chapter Eleven

  Late one morning Josie set her book on her lap and glanced around the living room of Del’s house. Her body ached from her recent physical therapy session. She was going to finish reading her chapter, then go into the kitchen and make herself lunch. After that, she wanted to take a nap. Despite finishing her course of antibiotics, she still didn’t have her strength back completely. Dr. Sanders kept telling her that it would take time. It didn’t help that her physical therapy sessions were grueling and left her completely drained.

  The good news was, she was healing. Josie could feel the changes in her legs as her strength returned. The temptation to use the walker more than she was supposed to nearly overwhelmed her, but she resisted. This time she was going to do things right. She was going to get well enough to walk again. Maybe this time without the cane.

  She gazed out the front window at the green lawn and sprawling trees. Two months ago if someone had told her she was going to be living with her ex-husband and actually liking it, she would have told that person he was crazy. Yet here she was—living with Del in the same house they’d had when they were first married. There were pockets of awkwardness, but for the most part they were getting along fine.

  Every morning Del drove her to physical therapy and waited until the session was finished. He came home early from work to keep her company. They spent their evenings talking over board games or watching rented movies together. The previous Sunday they’d munched popcorn and hotdogs while watching the Los Angeles Dodgers play Atlanta in the L.A. team’s first away series of the season. As he’d requested, they were becoming friends.

  Josie couldn’t help smiling as she thought about how careful Del was with her. He treated her as if she were a delicate creature. A few years ago she would have chafed under his concern and probably responded with sarcasm. Now she appreciated the attention. It made her feel that maybe he did care about her a little and maybe she hadn’t been such a horrible wife.

  Her smile faded as she remembered all the things Del had said about her when he’d thought she was Rose. She cringed at his assessment of her as a wife and a person. Unfortunately, she couldn’t blame him for his opinions, nor could she point out where he’d been wrong. But the picture wasn’t quite as bleak as it could have been. Because Del had admitted he had some blame in what had gone wrong, as well.

  At first Josie hadn’t been able to believe it. For so long she’d felt like the only flawed one. Del was so willing to compromise, offering to do his share of the chores. She’d been the one to fight his ideas. Now she could see that he’d been right when he’d said he’d been taking too much on himself. Making up his own compromises and not giving her a voice in the process was the same as getting everything his way. He’d been able to paint himself as the good guy, leaving her the role as villain.

  She still wasn’t sure she had completely absorbed the concept of shared responsibility in the failure of their marriage, but she was happy to make the start. Now if only she knew what to do with her growing feelings for him.

  As much as she hated to admit it, Josie knew she was in trouble. Being around Del was an odd combination of old and new. Unfortunately, it was the best of both worlds. She liked the changes in him, while all the things she’d loved about him before still existed. How was she supposed to resist that? How was she supposed to keep her heart safe? While he was being very kind and obviously cared about her, caring wasn’t love. They had affection but not passion. And while she wanted to believe that a happily-ever-after ending was possible, her daddy hadn’t raised a fool. Wishing and reality could be worlds apart. She would have to—

  The slam of a car door cut through her thoughts. Josie returned her attention to the window, wondering if Del had forgotten something at home. The thought of him walking through the front door sent her heart into hyperspeed. She clutched the arms of her wheelchair and ordered herself not to grin like an idiot.

  But the person who came into view wasn’t Del. Instead it was a young woman, maybe twenty-four or twenty-five. She was tall, lean and gorgeous, with flame-red hair that tumbled down her back. Jeans clung to impossibly long legs. A cropped long-sleeved shirt dipped just low enough to expose the top curves of a showgirl-size chest. She moved with the grace of a dancer…or an athlete.

  For several seconds Josie could only stare as the woman approached the house. Her brain offered explanations for her presence. She was selling something. She was lost. She had the wrong house. She was a neighbor.

  Then she pulled a key out of the front pocket of her jeans and Josie knew the truth. She was Del’s girlfriend. Someone close enough to warrant having access to his house when he wasn’t home. Someone…

  The key turned in the lock. Josie gasped and put her hands on the wheels, but there was no time to run and nowhere to hide. Instead she was forced to stay where she was, right in the middle of Del’s living room, and wait to confront someone who was too much like the woman she, Josie, used to be.

  The woman stepped into the foyer and glanced around. When her gaze settled on Josie, she started visibly. Josie didn’t have a clue as to what the visitor was thinking. She was too busy dealing with her own thoughts.

  Del’s girlfriend was everything Josie would never be again. Graceful, straight, unbroken. She could walk or run or dance without effort. She could move her legs and arms, wear a bikini without worrying about scars. She could make love anywhere, in any position. She was physically perfect.

  The woman blinked first. “Who the hell are you?”

  Her outrage, her slightly pouty lower lip, all eased Josie’s tension. For some reason she suddenly found the situation slightly amusing. She was in a wheelchair for heaven’s sake. How much of a threat could she be? Yet the woman was staring at her as if she were the devil himself.

  In that second Josie made a decision. She knew it was both wrong and childish, but she couldn’t help herself. So she gave her guest her best smile.

  “I’m Josie Scott. Del’s wife. And you are?”

  The woman’s gaze narrowed. If her eyes had been a laser beam, Josie would now be a puddle of steaming goo. “I’m Jasmine, Del’s girlfriend. And I know for a fact that he’s divorced. Which makes you his ex-wife.”

  Don’t do it, Josie ordered herself. She had no right to interfere in Del’s personal life. Maybe this woman was someone important to him.

  She mulled over that thought and found she didn’t believe it. He’d been spending all his free time at home. Unless Miss Congeniality had been out of the country for the past month, they weren’t getting along all that well. Besides, Del had kissed her, Josie. He wasn’t the kind of man to do that while he was involved with someone else. Although there was the matter of the key.

  She told herself to be nice.

  She didn’t listen.

  “I’ll admit to being his ex,” she murmured softly. “But haven’t you heard that possession is nine-tenths of the law. That would mean I live here now and you don’t.”

  Jasmine’s full mouth twisted. “I don’t believe you.”

  “You don’t have to. Ask Del yourself. He’ll tell you that I’m staying with him indefinitely.”

  Jasmine took a step back. “No way. He wouldn’t want someone like you when he could have me. Del isn’t into pity and why else would he want a cripple.”

  With that she turned on her heel and stalked out of the house. Josie tried to tell herself that the ultimate victory had been hers, that she’d driven the younger, pretty predator out of her territory. But the words didn’t offer any comfort. Not when she was forced to accept the truth.

  Jasmine was right. Del wouldn’t be interested in Josie. She was too different, and even if her body had been as perfect as it’d been before, he hadn’t liked her per
sonality all that much. His actions were two part kindness and one part guilt. Nothing more. Despite her fantasies to the contrary, he wasn’t falling for her.

  Unfortunately, there was no way to stop herself from falling for him.

  Annie May arrived a little after twelve. She brought with her a large bag from a local burger place, along with a six-pack of Josie’s favorite soda.

  “I heard,” the older woman said when she’d helped Josie into a regular chair at the table and had put out their food. Humor glinted in Annie May’s eyes. “Jasmine flew into that office like her pants were on fire. I don’t usually spend much time there, so I might have missed it all, but Del had called a staff meeting. We’d just finished and most of the guys were long gone, but I was still chatting with Jan about her kids.”

  Josie wasn’t sure she wanted to hear what her friend had to say, but she couldn’t help the curiosity welling up inside of her.

  “She was upset?”

  Annie May bit into her burger and chewed. When she’d swallowed, she raised eyebrows. “Upset doesn’t quite cover it. She was out for blood. She stormed into his office and slammed the door so hard the windows rattled.” Annie May grinned. “It was almost like having the old you back again.”

  “That’s hardly a compliment,” Josie muttered. She didn’t want to be reminded of her past. Nor could she believe Del would get involved with another woman who had a temper. “Has Jasmine always been volatile?”

  “Not that I knew about.” Annie May dragged a couple of French fries through a puddle of ketchup. “But he’s been slowing things down with her for a few months now. I don’t think she’s been real happy at the thought of the relationship ending. I guess this was the final straw.”

  “So what happened?”

  Annie May chuckled. “They were going at each other like two tomcats. She was screaming and he was trying to calm her down.” She sighed. “Don’t men know they only make things worse when they act reasonable while we’re all upset?”

  “I guess not.”