Single in Suburbia (16 page)

“You mean you haven’t told them about Tiffany? Or that you’re getting a divorce? Or that you dress up as a French maid and clean houses?”

Amanda shook her head again.

“Wow.” Candace sat back in her chair, trying to absorb it. “That could never happen in my family. If my mother even thought I was keeping something from her, she’d hire rogue CIA agents to capture me and inject me with truth serum. Hell, she’d probably cut out the middleman and inject me herself.”

“I keep meaning to tell them,” Amanda said. “But they’re on this cross-country trip in their motor home that they’ve been planning forever. I don’t want to ruin it.” She sighed.

“My parents have been married for forty-five years and are actually still in love with each other. I just can’t bring myself to admit I’ve failed so badly at marriage.”

“I don’t think you’re the one who failed,” Candace said. “But won’t your kids say something? Shouldn’t you mention it before Meghan or Wyatt does?”

“Oh, I’m going to have to tell them sometime soon. I know that. I’m just trying to get up my nerve. I’m sort of hoping I can borrow some of Solange’s.”

“Ah, yes, the fabulous French one. How’d she do at Sylvia’s? Isn’t her closet to die for?”

“Yes.” Amanda smiled, clearly relieved to move on to a safer topic. “I’m thinking about buying a bumper sticker for her Lexus that says,
I brake for Jimmy Choo
.”

They shared a laugh over that one.

“But she doesn’t look as happy as a woman with that many shoes should,
Candee ass,
” Amanda said. “And that worries me. Because so far, from what I can see, no one’s life is even remotely what it looks like it should be.”

Brooke Mackenzie was not sorry to see the spin class end. Tired and sweaty, she jumped off her stationary bike, slung a towel over her shoulders, and gave a few nods of farewell to the other regulars.

Striding through the health club and out to the parking lot, she sorted through potential meal ideas as she walked. She’d never been much of a cook. In her single days, she’d existed on fast food and restaurant leftovers, but now that she was a married woman, she prided herself on the meals she presented to her husband. Of course, most of them came from the already prepared section of the specialty grocery stores, though she was very careful to destroy or hide the takeout evidence.

It was hard to set a romantic mood when she was playing the wicked stepmother for Tyler, but tonight it would be just her and Hap for dinner, and she intended to make the most of the opportunity. During dinner, she’d grab and hold on to her husband’s full attention, a feat that was becoming harder and harder to accomplish. The meal would be a demonstration of how well she could fulfill her wifely role. Afterward, well, afterward Hap could have whatever he chose for dessert.

At the gourmet grocery Fresh Market, she picked up two salmon filets with a feta and spinach stuffing and the twice-baked potatoes that Hap favored.

At home, she showered and changed, preheated the oven, and assembled the salad ingredients in a beautiful ceramic bowl. By seven fifteen the potatoes were reheating, the salmon sat on the counter ready to pop in the oven, and a bottle of Hap’s favorite white wine was opened and sitting in a cooler.

Running nervous hands down the sides of her tight black miniskirt, Brooke adjusted the low-slung waistband and figure-hugging black silk blouse she’d tucked into it to better display her décolleté.

At seven thirty the garage door went up. She’d just finished pouring his glass of wine when her husband came through the door.

Hap smiled, pecked her absently on the cheek, and took the wine she held out to him. “Thanks. Umm, smells good in here.” He looked around the kitchen with the kind of appreciation he used to reserve for her.

“Salmon and twice-baked potatoes. We can eat in ten minutes.”

“Great.”

She’d pictured them chatting about their days—not that hers were all that full now that she’d quit work—while she got dinner on the table, imagined the exchange of meaningful glances that would make it difficult to get all the way through the meal before adjourning to the bedroom.

Her mind had conjured all kinds of elaborate scenarios for their childless evening, but Hap picked up the newspaper she’d left folded on the counter, and carried it and his wineglass into the family room. She trailed behind him and watched in dismay as he sank into his favorite club chair, put his long legs up on the ottoman, and buried his face in the sports section.

“Hap?” Brooke moved closer.

“Hmmm?” He grunted, but didn’t look up.

Swallowing her disappointment, she stared at her husband. Hap Mackenzie’s hair was beginning to show threads of gray and his once broad shoulders had begun to hunch slightly inward. His clear brown eyes were fixed on the newspaper at the moment, but she had seen herself in them; had seen the sparkle of interest, the burning of lust. When he’d asked her to marry him, she’d believed what was shining in their depths was actually love.

He was sixteen years older than her and was no longer the rock-hard jock she knew he’d once been. But she’d had enough rock-hard bodies in her life. Hap had something more alluring than muscle; an inner confidence that dwarfed her own and a firm understanding of his place in the world. The chain of fast food restaurants he owned didn’t hurt either.

She’d never imagined that in just one short year he’d be able to ignore her so easily. Or that his sexual appetite, which had been formidable, would wane when she was no longer forbidden fruit, but ripe and readily available and hanging right there on his tree.

Back in the kitchen, she broiled the salmon and took the potatoes from the oven, taking great care to arrange everything attractively on his plate. Setting them on the candlelit table, she went back to the family room to retrieve her husband.

“Dinner’s ready.”

Reluctantly he folded the newspaper and set it down. Standing, he stretched contentedly and moved toward her. He was still strong and virile—and surely still interested in her?

She stayed where she was as he approached. Licking her lips, she pushed her shoulders back and her chest forward so that her breasts strained against the black silk blouse. When he reached her, she stepped forward until she was flush against him with her nipples pressing into his chest. Tilting her face up to his, she looked into his eyes and let her own smolder. “Hungry?” she purred.

Six months ago he would have slid his hands down to cup her buttocks, lifted her skirt, and pushed her back against the kitchen island. Now he looked down at her quizzically, as if he didn’t understand what she meant.

If she didn’t watch out, he was going to turn her into another Sarah—homey and comfortable and completely forgettable. Still, this didn’t seem the moment to seduce him on the kitchen floor or chastise him for treating her like the wife she was.

“Now that I think about it,” Brooke said, “I’m absolutely famished.” She hooked her arm through his and made a show of being eager to get to the table, but the calculator that was her brain was analyzing the status of their marriage and thanking God that she’d already booked an appointment with Paul LaPrada, one of Atlanta’s most prominent plastic surgeons.

Over dinner their conversation was desultory. She asked questions about his work and he answered. He asked about her day, and she did her best to give her workout and errands an interesting spin.

Brooke found herself wishing that she could tell him about Amanda’s troubles. She would have loved to hear his thoughts and pick his brain a bit about the business aspects of Amanda’s undertaking, but Amanda’s secret wasn’t hers to reveal. And a conversation like that could all too easily lead to questions that Brooke was nowhere near ready to answer. For the first time the wall she’d erected around her past felt like brick and mortar between them. She’d accused him of keeping her at arm’s length, but she had no right to complain. How close could you get to someone you were afraid to share your past with?

She studied her husband, looking for clues as to what to do. He seemed perfectly satisfied with the past she’d created for herself. Even if she wanted to, how could she suddenly admit it was a complete fabrication?

No, she couldn’t risk it. Better to simply be the woman he thought she was. Even if it left her on the other side of the wall, unable to get in.

chapter
14

I
n her rattiest jeans and one of Wyatt’s old baseball jerseys, Amanda scrubbed her bathtubs, folded the kids’ laundry and put every piece of it away. Then she cleaned out the refrigerator and both of her freezers, tossing out the science projects and rock-hard ziplock baggies that had been in the freezer since the last ice age.

When even she couldn’t find anything else in the house that required her attention, she picked up the stack of bills that had been teetering on her desk and carried them to the kitchen table. Retrieving a legal pad, a pen, and a calculator from the desk drawer, she placed those next to the pile of envelopes then sat down at the table, scooted her chair closer. And eyed them.

She’d told herself that going through them would help her put things in perspective, but just looking at them—and acknowledging their existence—sent a shiver of dread coursing through her. They were visible, tangible symbols of how completely her life had changed.

Once her role had been clear-cut—she ran their home, saw to her family’s well being and served as chief cheerleader, counselor, and organizer. She still had all those jobs, but now she was supposed to be the breadwinner too. Everything she did now produced all kinds of conflicted feelings and reactions.

Cleaning houses was hard physical labor; doing it while pretending to be someone else was both exhilarating and draining. And then there were Meghan’s mood swings, which ranged from ecstasy over the coming prom to fury over her father’s desertion. Too often Amanda felt as if she was tiptoeing through a minefield and that one wrong step would set Meghan off and cause them all to explode.

With a sigh, she opened the first bill, wrote the amount and the due date on the legal pad then moved on to the next. Thirty minutes later she knew exactly where she stood and wished that she didn’t.

At the moment Solange earned a whopping total of $405 a week; not nearly enough to pay these ongoing bills and keep current on the mortgage, when the five thousand Rob had deposited to cover the month of April was gone.

Feeling old and not at all French, Amanda put the bills back in a pile, tied them and the dismal yellow sheet with a rubber band, and stashed them out of sight. She needed to call Candace to see if she had any more potential clients, but first she needed to pick up cold cuts for the kids’ lunches and something she could cook for dinner. She’d best stock her pantry while she could. If she didn’t start earning more money soon, she was going to be cooking Casseroles d’Alpo instead of Beef Bourguignon and Coq au Vin.

At the grocery store the crowd in front of the deli counter stood three deep. Jockeying for position, Amanda wrestled a number out of the dispenser then angled her grocery cart over to the side. She had number 102. Eighty-nine was currently being served.

With a sigh she checked her watch then hunkered down for the duration. Wyatt had a ride home from an after school meeting and a house key. As long as she got to dance in time to retrieve Meghan, she’d be OK.

Behind the counter, two people who spoke more heavily accented English than Solange were slicing breasts of meat and holding the slices up—one at a time—for inspection. Their movements were slow and deliberate. Very slow and deliberate. They made oozing molasses seem fast.

Trying to control her impatience, Amanda scanned the crowd for familiar faces. She spotted Susie Simmons, impeccably dressed and in full war paint, edging closer to one of the few men in the crowd. He was tall and broad shouldered, the top of his sandy blond hair stood out well above the others. He’d just taken his bags from the deli person and was dropping them in his basket.

Susie inserted herself to his left, directly beside a nicely sculpted shoulder. In a completely calculated move, she opened her fingers and released her number, letting it flutter to the ground at his feet. She fluffed her hair, moistened her lips, and smoothed the arch of an eyebrow while he bent to pick it up.

The crowd shifted and Amanda got an eyeful of nicely rounded buttocks. She watched the man straighten and hand the number back to Susie, then recognized the angled jaw and ready smile of Hunter James.

Susie Simmons batted her eyelashes at him, touched her hair, leaned in closer. Like a fisherman casting her lure, Susie sent out every “come and get me” signal known to womankind.

“Number ninety-five!” a deli person shouted.

One of the customers yelled “Bingo” and stepped toward the counter. The remaining crowd shifted again and the press of bodies thinned.

Susie was decked out for “fishing.” Amanda was still wearing worn jeans and Wyatt’s old baseball shirts. Her hair had dried au naturel, which meant it was probably board straight with a funky frizz by now and she hadn’t taken the time to put on the first drop of makeup. The best thing that could be said for her was that she wasn’t presently clutching a gross of condoms.