Misty Reigenborn Romance Boxed Set (16 page)

She heard his footsteps retreat down the stairs, and then the front door opened and then slammed shut.  She heard his car start and then roar out of the driveway.  She lie back on the bed and let the tears flow. 

She cried for what seemed like forever.  Then she got up and used the bathroom.  She washed her hands and her face and then went back to the bedroom.  She had Paul and Sierra’s home phone number written on a pad in the nightstand drawer.  She wasn’t sure whether telling Paul would be better or worse than telling Luke had been, but she knew she had to do it all the same.

She took a deep breath and then let it out.  She picked up her cell phone and dug the number out of the drawer and dialed the number into her phone with a shaky hand.

A woman’s voice answered on the third ring.  Kimber knew she had to be speaking to the other woman that her husband loved. 

“Hello.”

Kimber cleared her throat.  “Um, is Paul there?”

“No, he’s still at work.  May I ask who’s calling?”

Kimber wasn’t sure what to say.  “Um.”

“Just a second please.  I need to get my baby.  He’s wailing like the world is going to end.”

“Okay.”  Kimber waited with a pounding heart for the other woman to come back to the line.  She was tempted to hang up, but that would have made her feel like more of a coward than she already did.

“You still there?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay.  I have a piece of paper to take down your name and your number. Go ahead whenever you’re ready.”

“Um, this is Paul’s wife right?”

“Yes.”  A cautious note had entered her voice.  “This is Sierra Brooks and I am Paul’s wife.  Did something happen to him?  Well, I guess not since you’re calling to talk to him.  Can I ask what’s going on?”

“I don’t mean to sound rude but I really need to talk to Paul.  Is it okay if I call back?  What time do you think he’ll be home from work?”

“He’s going out for drinks afterwards I think, so he probably won’t be home until seven thirty or so.  Are you sure you don’t want to leave your name and your number so he can call you back?”

Kimber took a deep breath and then let it out.  Her heart didn’t stop pounding.  She knew that if she didn’t calm down, she was going to be in the grip of a panic attack before she knew it.  With the anxiety she’d been feeling since she’d realized she had to tell Luke the truth, she was becoming more and more concerned about the stress she was putting on the baby. 

“My name is Kimber Stone.  My phone number is 555-818-0246.”

“Kimber Stone.  555-818-0246.”

“Yes.  Thank you.”  Kimber started to hang up the phone, not believing that Sierra didn’t recognize her name.

“Wait.  Hold on a sec.  Kimber Stone.  As in Luke’s wife?”

“I am Luke’s wife yes.”

“This might not be any of my business.  Wait, what in the hell am I saying?  He’s my husband so it is my business.  I don’t mean to sound like a bitch, especially since I had an affair with your husband, but why are you calling mine?”

“Sierra, I’m not trying to be rude, and I’m sure that everything will be explained to you, but I can’t talk to you about this without talking to Paul first.”

Sierra let out a harsh laugh.  “You fucked my husband didn’t you?”

Kimber had a sudden urge to laugh too.  “You sure as hell fucked mine.  But no, he called it making love.  I have to go Sierra.  I’ll call back later.”

Kimber hung up her phone.  Her phone rang almost immediately but she let it ring because she could see from the caller ID that it was Sierra.

She didn’t want to deal with Paul’s betrayed wife.  She didn’t think that Sierra had the right to feel so betrayed when Luke had said she had made the first real move to cement their affair, but then again, the other woman didn’t know that there was a possibility that she was carrying Paul’s child either.

Her phone rang several more times.  She glanced at the caller ID each time, hoping that it might be Luke, but it never was.  She fell asleep.  When she awoke it was dark outside and the clock on her nightstand read 10:15.

“Damn.”

Kimber used the restroom, washed her hands and then went back to the bedroom.  She picked up her cell phone.  Paul hadn’t called her back but Luke had called her several times.  She dialed his cell phone number but it went straight to voice mail.  She didn’t bother to leave a message. 

She wished she had Paul’s cell phone number so that she could call him and not have to face the chance of having to talk to his wife again, but cell phone numbers weren’t listed the way that land lines were.  She’d been glad that they had a home phone and that it was listed in the phone book, and that Paul had told her where they were moving and that she’d remembered.

She went downstairs and made herself a light supper.  She was glad that Alexis was gone, because she didn’t think she could face her daughter’s inquiries as to where her father was.  Their daughter was so young.  She had lied to her when Luke had been gone before.  How can you explain to a three year old that her father is gone because Mommy kicked him out for sleeping with another woman?  But Kimber knew that she had screwed things up even worse than before.

She did her few dishes and then went back upstairs and took a long hot bath.  It didn’t make her feel any better, but it did make her sleepy.  Though when she put her pajamas on and crawled back into bed, she tossed and turned for hours before she fell asleep.

Paul

When Paul walked in the door after work he expected to find a smiling wife and a baby that was happy to see him.  Instead, he found his pretty wife looking like her face was set in stone.  Her emerald eyes looked like they wanted to shoot daggers straight through his head.

He picked their son up out of the playpen and dropped a kiss on top of his blonde head.  Nathan looked up at him and smiled.  “Da.”

Paul smiled.  “That’s right.  At least somebody is glad to see Daddy.”  He turned back to his wife.  “Why the long face beautiful?”

“We had an interesting phone call today.  I’ll talk to you about it after the baby’s asleep.”  Sierra crossed the room and took Nathan from his arms and without another word, carried him with her up the stairs.

Paul sighed as he looked at his wife’s retreating back.  Sierra had quite a temper.  He wondered what he could possibly have done to piss her off this time.  A nagging thought entered the back of his mind, but he tried to brush it away.  There was no way in hell she could have found out about his night of passion with Kimber, the wife of the man that Sierra had had her own affair with. 

They hadn’t exactly agreed not to tell their respective spouses, but it had hardly seemed like a good idea to him to stir the pot of shit again when he had just decided to take Sierra back and get them the hell away from the town where she had ran into her old lover.  Sierra claimed that if Paul had made love to her then the way he made love to her now, that she wouldn’t have run straight into Luke’s arms when she was pregnant with his child, but Paul had never been completely sure if he’d believed it.

The day he had broken the news to Kimber, he had wanted to kiss her so badly, to make Sierra feel a fraction of the pain he’d been feeling since she had confessed her affair to him.  But he hadn’t even been able to do that.  He’d felt pathetic, not like a man at all.  But they had certainly had hot passionate sex when he’d gone back to the bookstore to tell Kimber that they were leaving town and that she would no longer have to worry about Sierra turning her husband’s head.

He knew that his wife was beautiful.  He saw the way other men checked her out when they went out in public together, even when she was pushing a stroller and wearing her wedding ring and their hands were joined.  When he had first decided to go back home after learning of her affair, he had watched his wife like a hawk to see if she was looking at other men the way they looked at her.

But she didn’t look at other men.  She might admire one now and again, but he knew she was only human.  And she seemed perfectly oblivious to the fact that so many men noticed how sexy she was even if she hadn’t lost all of the weight from her pregnancy.  He thought that the ten pounds or so that had hung on after she’d had Nathan made her look even more like a woman. 

Sierra had always turned him on so much that he’d thought his carefully controlled hormones were going crazy.  He enjoyed sex.  It had just always seemed to him that too many relationships were about sex first and foremost.  He had been half in love with Sierra before he had gotten the courage to ask her out.  He had never wanted her to believe that he only wanted to be with her because she was beautiful.

Paul went to the kitchen.   He’d eaten dinner already.  Sierra wasn’t much of a cook and he didn’t think that was ever really going to change.  But he didn’t care.  He could cook just fine.

He grabbed a beer from the fridge and took it back to the living room with him.  He wanted to get out of his work clothes, but he didn’t want to bug Sierra further.  When she was mad at him, she didn’t want him anywhere near her until she said so.  And she’d certainly seemed plenty mad at him.

Their home phone rang.  He picked it up from the coffee table, not bothering to look at the caller ID.  He figured that it was probably a salesman, though their number was on the do not call list.  Not much of anyone called their home phone anymore.

“Hello.”

“Is this Paul?”

The male voice on the other end of the line was slurred.  “This is Paul.  Who is this?”

“The husband of the woman who is knocked up with your baby.”

Paul’s heart felt like it had jumped into his throat.  He knew that it had to be Luke.  He certainly hadn’t slept with another woman besides his own wife.  He couldn’t believe that Kimber was pregnant though.

“You still there asshole?”

Paul sighed.  “I’m still here.”

“Did you enjoy fucking my wife?  If you’re supposed to be such a smart guy why in the hell didn’t you stop long enough to think about using a rubber?  I know she’s beautiful, but damn dude you two got us all into a big mess.  Huge.”

Paul snorted.  “You fucked my wife first.”

“I didn’t fuck your wife.  She was my girl first and it’s not my fault you’re such an idiot that you couldn’t please her in the bedroom.  I made love to Sierra because I love Sierra.  How do you like that?  My wife said that you fucked her though, so take that and shove it.”

“You disgust me Luke.  If you want my wife so damned bad you can have her.  I think she still loves you anyway.  I’m never going to live up to her idealized memory of you so why bother?”

“Dude, you really are a fucking idiot. I’m drunk off my ass and I can still see more clearly than you can.  You can love more than one person.  Even if we would have parted differently, Sierra and I wouldn’t have stopped loving each other.  Where we fucked up was we acted on it.  She loves you and I love Kimber.  I am with the woman that I want to be with, the woman that I was meant to be with.  And for some strange reason Sierra seems to think that you’re the guy for her.  But just when we got past all of the bullshit you had to fuck my wife and get her pregnant.”

“How do you know the baby isn’t yours?”

“I don’t know that asshole.  You really are an asshole.  I can’t believe you told me I could have your wife.  I sure as shit wouldn’t give you mine.  Then again I don’t think I can raise your kid either.  So it’s looks like we’re all in a bunch of shit huh?  How are you going to tell Sierra?”

“I have no idea how I’m going to tell Sierra.”

Sierra happened to walk into the room right then.  “You have no idea how you’re going to tell me what Paul?”

Paul looked up at his wife.  He hoped that the panic he felt wasn’t showing in his eyes.  “Just a minute honey.  Let me finish this conversation and then we’ll talk.”

“Who’s on the phone Paul?  Is it Kimber?  You did fuck her didn’t you?”  She picked up the pillow from the couch and hit him with it.  “Asshole.”

“It’s not Kimber on the phone.”

“Who is it then?  Is it Luke?”  She reached for the phone.  “Let me talk to him.”

“No.  The last thing we need is for you two to get started again.”

“You’re an idiot Paul.  I wouldn’t have slept with him if you hadn’t made me feel like you didn’t want me anymore; as if Nathan was the only reason you wanted me around.  I’m not a baby carrier.  I’m your wife.  Give me the damned phone.”

Sierra grabbed the phone out of his hand.  “Luke?”

Luke

When Luke heard her voice, he felt tears fill his eyes.  He grabbed his cigarettes from where they were sitting on the bar, left a tip and took his phone outside. 

“Sie.”

“What the hell is going on?  I guess it’s pretty obvious that my husband had sex with your wife, but there’s something else isn’t there?  What the hell can we say when we had sex a bunch of times?  I’m guessing they only did it once.  Or maybe not.  Are they still messing around?  Luke please tell me.”

“Honey, I think you should let Paul tell you.  It’s not my place.”

“Luke, you were the first man that I loved.  You made me feel good about myself when I thought that no one could.  We screwed up royally when we started sleeping together again and we both know it.  There was a time when I thought that I would have left Paul for you if you had asked me to, but I couldn’t have done that.  I love Paul.  Paul is uptight and he’s never gonna like sex as much as I do, but he’s my man and he’s the one I was meant to be with.  Why can’t they understand that we can still love each other and not love them any less?”

Luke sighed.  “I don’t know babe.  This is a mess.  I’d tell you darlin’ but it really needs to come from your husband.”

“This is bad isn’t it?  Oh Luke.”

“Honey, I’m gonna let you go now.  I hope everything is going well for you.  Bye Sie.  Take care.”

Luke hung up the phone before she could say another word.  He lit a cigarette and crossed the parking lot to his car.  He knew that he shouldn’t be driving, but the motel he had checked into was only a few blocks away from the bar and he was sure he could make it.

He made it the motel with no problems.  He got out of his car, locked it, unlocked the door to his room and entered.  It was not where he wanted to be.  He wanted to be in his own bed, with his
wife beside him.  The weeks apart from her during their first separation after his affair with Sierra had come to light, from their beautiful daughter, had been hell.  And now, he wasn’t sure if he could ever go home. His love for Kimber was a powerful thing, but he didn’t know whether love was enough when it came to raising another man’s child. 

He didn’t like the way he had left things with her though and he thought that he’d really like to talk to her before he went to sleep.  He’d left his wedding ring because he was being an asshole.  He’d thought at first that he could go out and sleep with another woman and feel better.  Women had hit on him at the bar.  But he hadn’t been able to look at any of them and not see her face.  He knew he was fooling himself thinking that a night with another woman would change anything.  It would have pissed Kimber off and probably made him feel sick and disgusted with himself and it certainly wouldn’t change the fact that the child his wife was carrying might not be his.

He took his shoes off and then lay back on the bed and dialed Kimber’s cell number.  They didn’t have a home phone.  He had gotten Paul and Sierra’s number from a phonebook online and had dialed it without thought. 

Kimber didn’t pick up the phone, so he sighed, undressed the rest of the way and pulled the covers over him.  He passed out soon after.