by Bella Andre
He squeezed her hand. “You didn’t need to worry. You and Bob taught me to deal with the tough knocks and keep on going.”
“I have to admit you look better than I thought you would.” She shook a finger at him. “Except that you’re too skinny.”
He laughed for her, because she needed it and he wanted to make up for the worry he’d caused her. Then he made himself pick up his fork and eat a few more bites as Susan told him all about the wedding preparations. But he wasn’t really there with her.
Because no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t stop himself from rewinding back four weeks, far away from this warm and loving family home…
Chapter Two
One month ago…
Whitney had decided to spend Thanksgiving in the south of France. Evan should have missed being with his wife during the holiday, but he was actually relieved. It meant the Mavericks and their families could all have a nice day together, without any of her inevitable drama.
The dinner conversation was as lively and entertaining as ever. But when they went around the table to each say one thing they were thankful for this past year, emotions went deep. One by one, each person at the large table in Matt’s dining room bared a piece of their soul. By the time they got to Evan, he found himself blurting out, “I’m thankful you’ve all been there for me through three miscarriages.”
The table fell silent. Until Paige said, “I’m sure that if Whitney were here, she would say that she’s thankful for how you were always there for her. Especially since she wasn’t comfortable reaching out to any of us.”
Paige’s statement was clearly intended to be kind, but her words hit Evan like a punch to the gut, nearly doubling him over with guilt. Because every time Whitney had miscarried, he’d been out of town on business. Yet, Whitney hadn’t called her sister or any of the Mavericks for help or comfort. Each time she’d lost their baby, she’d gone through the pain and loss all alone, until he could get home to her from whatever locale his business dealings had taken him to. Even though he always rushed home as soon as possible, that sometimes meant it had taken more than a day for him to make it back to her.
But why hadn’t Whitney gone to her sister for consolation? Or called Susan, who’d always been so good to her? Was it because he’d failed her so badly as a husband that she’d felt ashamed for miscarrying? Had she blamed herself?
During the past few years, Whitney had been increasingly difficult to live with—and he didn’t want to make excuses for the nasty things she’d said and done far too often. But that didn’t change the fact that they’d gotten so out of touch with each other that she obviously hadn’t been able to call for help when she needed it most. It was long past time to step up to fix things between them, not just let his marriage keep falling apart because they couldn’t talk anymore.
He strategized exactly how to do that during the remainder of the weekend, coming up with alternatives, vowing to make things right. By Monday, when Whitney walked in the front door, he was armed with fresh, new plans to build the family they’d always dreamed of.
“Whitney, welcome back.”
She looked surprised to see him at home in the middle of a workday. “Oh, hi. Since you’re here, you can help me with my bags. The shopping was fabulous in France.” She was a stunning woman. But the smile she gave him didn’t reach her eyes.
Or maybe that was just his guilt talking.
Ignoring her bags, and the open front door, he moved to take her hands. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you.”
She frowned, clearly confused. “In France?” She shook her head. “You would have been bored senseless at the spa and boutiques.”
“No, not France. I’m sorry for not being there for your miscarriages. And for not making sure that you felt comfortable going to Susan or the Mavericks for help in my absence.” No matter how badly she might have behaved in the past, Evan knew his friends and family would unconditionally support her.
She slipped her hands from his to wave away his concern. “It happened very early on each time. You know I recovered easily.” Then she added quickly, “At least physically.”
“I know you did, but I should have gone with you to your doctor to discuss the situation. Especially after you miscarried more than once.”
“No!” She looked horrified by his suggestion. “You didn’t need to talk with my doctor. She’d simply have told you the statistics on miscarriages in the first six weeks just like she told me.”
“I know how hard it is for you to talk about this, Whitney.” She’d never wanted to talk about the medical specifics of why she’d had three back-to-back miscarriages, and he hadn’t wanted to deepen her distress. But now there was too much bottled up grief between them. And he was determined to fix what was broken. “But there’s still a chance. We can figure out what happened and try again.”
She whirled away, her high heels clicking loudly on the marble floor, one hand to her forehead. “It’s too late for all that.”
He put a conciliatory hand on her back and she turned back to face him right before he said, “We’ll talk to the doctor together, and if nothing can be done, there are alternatives.”
Flinching, she jerked a step back, nearly stumbling over one of her bags on the floor. “I don’t want to have children right now.” She huffed a breath, her nostrils flaring. “I simply can’t go through all that again.” She stared at him with misting eyes. “Can’t we just be together, the two of us?”
Losing the babies had torn his insides out. But he knew that it must have been so much worse for Whitney, especially going through it all alone. “You’re right. I completely understand how hard it would be to try again.” Would either of them survive if she lost another baby?
Which was why he turned to the entryway table where he’d left the papers he’d worked on over the weekend. “Let’s try this instead, then.” He handed her the adoption forms, which he’d already filled out. “I’ve made some calls, and the good news is that we’re prime candidates for adoption.” Surely everything would change for them when they had the family they wanted. It was what he’d told himself every time they’d been on the verge of having a child.
“Are you crazy? I don’t want to adopt.” She tossed the papers back onto the table without even looking at them.
His guts twisted. He was doing everything he could to try to fix things, but Whitney was as distant as ever. “I know we planned to have our own kids, but we can still have that big family we’ve always dreamed of.”
“You know you don’t really want to raise someone else’s child.” She pursed her lips, tiny lines flaring out from her mouth. “And I can’t take the blame when you finally come to that realization.”
“I would love a child with all my heart, whether or not he or she is mine biologically.”
The silence was long, echoing in the huge marble foyer. “Well, I’m not sure I can.”
“Whitney.” He held out his hand, but she didn’t take it. “Once you have a beautiful boy or girl, I know you’ll see the baby as your own. As ours.” Again, the silence beat at his eardrums. “We can do this. We can be parents like we’ve always talked about being.”
Something hard, something cold, flashed in her eyes. “You mean like you’ve always talked about.” She made a face. “I don’t even want children.”
Everything went still. As if they were posing for one of those mannequin challenges he’d seen on the Internet. “Of course you do.” She couldn’t mean what she’d just said. It had to be frustration, grief talking. “We’ve always talked about having children together. Right from the beginning. Even before we were married.”
“You brought it up,” she snapped. “But you never asked me. And I had to agree to keep you happy. My whole life is about making you happy.” She dropped her voice, a little sob creeping in. “But I just wasn’t ready, Evan. And I didn’t know how to tell you because you wanted a child so badly. You can’t even imagine how I felt, always having to walk that
tightrope with you. I didn’t want to disappoint you. But I’m still not ready for a child, and I don’t want to adopt.”
His brain, which his colleagues always told him was so quick, couldn’t process her words. “But if you hadn’t miscarried,” he said slowly, trying to get the pieces of his life to add up to something that actually made sense, “we would already have a child. Three children.”
He could hear a clock ticking somewhere. Maybe it was inside his head, a time bomb seconds away from going off.
Then it exploded as Whitney said, “No, we wouldn’t.” She sighed, as though she wished he would simply connect the dots she’d laid out for him. “I made up the pregnancies and the miscarriages so you’d stop harping on me. What else was I supposed to do? You didn’t give me a choice. You wanted what you wanted without any consideration for me.”
She didn’t hang her head in guilt or shame. She didn’t even seem to recognize the horrific nature of the lies she’d told. The worst possible lies about the worst possible thing. The utter anguish she’d caused. And she’d been doing it for years. He’d never questioned her. Hell, he’d actually blamed himself.
Until, in one fell swoop, at two p.m. on this late fall Monday afternoon, the blindfold was ripped from his eyes.
Suddenly, he could see that every facial expression, every gesture, every smile, every tear she’d shed were all designed to manipulate him.
Struggling not to lose it, his voice was almost too measured as he asked, “Has anything you’ve ever told me been true?”
“Of course it has.” She rolled her eyes as if he were being ridiculous and overly dramatic. “You know I love you.”
Did he?
Five minutes ago, he would have accepted those three little words at face value, despite how difficult she’d been to live with for the past few years. But the last five minutes had changed everything.
“What else have you lied about?”
“Do you really want the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?” She threw down her words like a gauntlet.
“I do.” He’d said those same words to her at their wedding, but they held a vastly different meaning now.
“Fine.” She arched her brow as if she were doing him a huge favor by finally admitting the truth. “I don’t ever want children. And since you never asked me what I really wanted and kept forcing the whole baby thing on me, I had no choice but to take matters into my own hands and have my tubes tied.”
He should have been shocked. He should have been furious. But in that moment, he was simply numb.
He couldn’t wrap his mind around the immensity of her lies. From the moment they’d met, she’d told him everything she thought he wanted to hear, even down to planning the family she now denied ever having wanted.
“Does Paige know?”
Why those were the words that came out of his mouth next, he couldn’t say. Maybe his brain was still trying to catch up with the last few minutes.
“Do you really think I would tell that little Goody-Two-Shoes anything? Especially since she’s always had her eye on you. I see the way she moons over you when she thinks I’m not looking. As if she’d ever have a prayer of stealing a man away from me. Her crush is so pathetic.”
“Get out.”
Of all the things to make him finally snap, it was the callous way she spoke of her sister that did it. Hearing Whitney disparage Paige—who had never hurt a soul—was the final straw.
Whitney stared at him, her lips parting in disbelief. “I know this must be coming as a bit of a shock to you right now—” She moved against him the way she’d done so many times before when she wanted something from him. “—but once you have a little time to think things through, you’ll see I did the right thing for us. We’ll be so much better without kids. Freer. Happier. In fact, since I’ve already got my bags packed, why don’t we go away together? Just the two of us. You’ll see how good it can be for us to be all alone, all day and all night.”
He pushed away from her, walked to the open front door, then signaled to the car and driver who were still there. He turned back to Whitney, the woman who was no longer his wife in anything but name. “Take your bags. I’ll have the rest of your things shipped to you. You can give your new address to my PA, because I won’t be taking your calls.”
She gaped at him, as if he were being horribly unfair. As if she didn’t understand the ruthlessness of what she’d done. Or maybe because she couldn’t believe, after all these years, that he’d finally seen right through to her rotted soul.
“You can’t throw me out of my own home without even talking about this.”
“We have talked. And now there’s nothing left to say.” He put her bags on the front step, and she had no choice but to follow. “Good-bye, Whitney.”
Less than two hours later, he’d gotten out as well, flying halfway around the world to get away from the memories.
And most especially from her.
* * *
Present day in Susan and Bob’s house…
“I did make the wedding cake, though,” Susan was saying, and Evan realized he’d totally zoned out. “It’s a princess cake, with that fondant icing you roll on. But don’t tell Will and Harper anything. It’s a surprise.” Her eyes were shining. She was so happy with all her family around her.
Doing his damnedest to shove away his dark thoughts and return fully to the present, he zipped his lips. “Mum’s the word. It’s going to be great.”
The doorbell rang, and all heads in the living room turned. As Bob crossed to the front hall to answer, Susan rose from the table. “Oh good, Paige must be here.”
Evan’s heart started to pound hard and fast as Paige stepped inside. The other Mavericks closed around her with hugs and kisses on the cheek. He watched like he was wrapped in a fog, like his limbs couldn’t move.
Thanksgiving had been momentous for more than just the unveiling of Whitney’s lies. Other things had been revealed that weekend. Things that had made his guilt skyrocket.
He hadn’t had a clue about Whitney’s lies the day he’d looked at Paige in her gorgeous peacock-blue dress and thought, I married the wrong sister.
It was crazy. He’d told himself repeatedly that it was just his frustrations with his marriage that had been talking. Paige was not only his sister-in-law, she was also the girl next door. She was sweet. Gentle. A nice girl. He had no business thinking that way about her.
Yet even now, as he tried to reason with himself, the sight of her stole his breath. For the flight, she’d worn jeans and a soft sweater that fit all her curves. Curves that made his heart beat faster.
When she’d texted him while he was away, he hadn’t answered her. It was only now that he finally admitted to himself the real reasons why he’d been avoiding her.
Because of the way he’d reacted when he’d seen her in the formfitting Cleopatra costume at the Halloween party.
Because of the desire he’d felt for her over the past month, no matter how hard he tried to push it away and pretend it wasn’t there.
Because of the dreams he’d had about her in the dark of the night when he couldn’t control his thoughts.
Evan was still sitting in the dining room, reeling, when Paige headed in his direction. Standing with an awkwardness he hadn’t felt since he was in his early teens, he counted every one of her steps as she approached, then held his breath as she rose on her toes to hug him.
Her body was full and lush against his, her scent surrounding him. Her hair brushed his cheek, her breath teased his ear, her heat singed him. And he was damned for noticing, for feeling. Damned for his thoughts.
Damned for his desire for the one woman he could never have.
Chapter Three
Evan’s hands remained on her waist as Paige stepped back to look up into his eyes. She’d missed him so much this past month—especially his smile, which had never failed to shine a bright light into even her darkest corner.
He was thinner now, his f
ace a little pale, the circles beneath his hazel eyes darker. She wondered when she’d see his smile again—there wasn’t even a hint of it in the flat line of his beautiful mouth.
She wanted to put her hand to his face and smooth away the lines across his forehead. But she wouldn’t. Because while she felt terrible for what he’d endured in his marriage to her sister, Paige was also furious with him for running out on his family.
“Paige, I’m so glad the whole family is here now that you’ve arrived. You must be starving after your flight,” Susan said. She was always looking out for everyone. “We have plenty of food laid out.”
“Thank you, it all looks delicious.” Paige smiled her appreciation. She wished she hadn’t missed the wedding rehearsal, but the holidays were a difficult time for many of her therapy clients, full of bad memories, loneliness, feeling apart rather than together—so she’d driven straight from her last appointment to the airport.
Truthfully, she’d also been unable to fully push away the worry that, with Whitney out of the picture now, Paige didn’t really have a place in the group anymore. But Susan had quickly dispelled that worry with her comment about everyone in the family being here now that Paige had arrived. And of course the other Mavericks had welcomed her with open arms. It was only Evan whose thoughts, whose emotions, whose response to his soon-to-be ex-wife’s sister, remained a mystery.
“Evan, since you haven’t finished eating yet,” Susan continued as she took Paige’s coat, “why don’t you help Paige fill up her plate at the buffet, and then the two of you can catch up?”
Susan spoke in a light voice with a smile, but they both knew it was an order rather than a suggestion. Clearly, she could see they had plenty to hash out tonight—friends who were also linked by a sister and a wife who had hurt them both—and she wasn’t going to let either of them escape doing just that.
As Evan moved into the dining room with Paige, a wary shadow filled his eyes. He damn well should be wary of her, considering that he hadn’t responded to any of her texts, emails, or phone calls during the past month. What’s more, she’d bet money that no one here had confronted Evan about his behavior.