Not Your Everyday Housewife (15 page)

“I’m too old for you.”

“You’re perfect,” he said, brushing a tear from her cheek.

“You could have anybody.”

“I want you.” He tilted her chin up so she had to look at him. Those blue eyes pierced her with an intensity that made her want to believe his words. “Only you, Shea Donovan,” he whispered, leaning in to place a chaste kiss on her lips.

Shea jumped when the cordless phone rang on the table beside her. “Excuse me,” she murmured, turning away to reach for the phone. Marcus eased back to give her room but kept his hand clasped around hers.

“Hello?” Shea said, grateful for the distraction. Marcus Orelean was too overwhelming, his presence too powerful. She kept hearing his words beating softly into her heart.

“Shea.” Richard’s deep voice filled the line. “Thank God you’re all right. I’ve been trying to get in touch with you since I found out. Ahh, baby, I’m so sorry. When are you coming home?”

Derry was not going to be the one to make first contact. Let him do it, the bastard. He was the one who couldn’t wait to serve her papers. What was the emergency? Maybe he’d scored on one of those cologne-drenched nights and now all he wanted was his freedom.

Derry blinked hard and shoved her suitcase toward the edge of the bed. In the morning, they’d be heading back home, and still there’d been no word from him. Twelve days, and nothing.

Vivien saw to it that Charlie called every night at 7:45 p.m., just before bed and
Good Night Moon
. But Alec had been mysteriously absent, from the phone line and the conversation.

“Shit,” Derry swore under her breath as she gathered up her dirty underwear and stuffed them in a plastic bag. She couldn’t wait to inform her future
ex
-husband that her legal representative, Morton Flenstein had assured her she’d receive significant chunks of Alec’s pension,
and
his retirement,
and
his investments,
and
his properties,
and
the business at Rohan, McGill, and Associates. Dipping into all those nice little gains, too. She’d make him wish he’d never sent those goddamn papers.

She didn’t want his money or the other assets. She had enough of her own. But that wasn’t the point. Derry wanted to make him think of her every time he looked at a bank statement or an investment return. She wanted her name seeping into his blood, oozing out of his brain, until he felt as if he’d go mad.

But most of all, she wanted partial custody of Charlie.

She yanked the rest of her clothes off plastic hangers and hurled everything at the Louis Vuitton suitcase—silk shirts, cashmere sweaters, jeans, Jimmy Choo pumps. Hangers and all, the items flew toward the bed, some thudding on the floor, some bouncing off the patchwork quilt.

Damn him!

Derry ignored the timid knock on the door and flung a shoe in the direction of the suitcase, watched as it skidded along the headboard and crashed into the suitcase.

“Derry?”

It was Cyn. “I’m busy.” Alec Rohan would rue the day he signed those papers. Derry jerked a pair of jeans off a hanger.

“You’ve got a phone call.”

“Christ. Tell that reporter my answer is the same as before. No interview. If he wants a story on Steve Miller he’ll have to read the police blotter.”

“It’s not the reporter.”

Derry flung open the door. “Who is it?”

One look at Cyn’s face told her. She grabbed the phone as if it were a weapon and she could beat the person on the other end of the line. “What?”

“I take it you got the papers?”

Even with hatred thrumming through her body, Alec’s voice still affected her. And that only made her angrier. “The U.S. Postal service sucks but it did its job.”

“I have something to tell you,” he said. “I debated waiting until you got ho—” He stopped himself and said, “…back, but I decided it might be best to prepare you.”

“Prepare me? For what?” She lifted a silk tank top off the bed and let it slip through her fingers. Alec always said her skin felt softer than silk…

“Sit down, okay?” His tone sounded almost gentle.

It was a set-up. She could sniff one from anywhere, even hundreds of miles away slipping out of her future ex-husband’s beautiful mouth. “Have you cleaned out the house yet? Changed bank accounts? Blazed the bed?”

“Can you just settle down for one minute? This is important.”

“You’re seeing somebody, aren’t you? One of those cute little interns, I’ll bet, and now you want a quickie divorce.”

“Stop it.”

“That’s it, isn’t it?” The thought of Alec’s hands on another woman made her queasy. “That’s what you’ve been doing these past six weeks.” She let out a high-pitched laugh and said, “Alec Rohan, soon to be most eligible bachelor in Northern Virginia.”

“Can’t you, just for once, listen?”

If he were banging some young thing and wanted his freedom, he could think again. Morton Flenstein said divorce was like watching a B movie, you could almost always guess the outcome, but you never knew how much unnecessary bullshit the director was going to force you to stomach. And since Derry was the director here, Alec might be in for a whole lot of bullshit.

“There’s no woman,” he said, filling the gaps of silence on the other end of the line.

“And I should believe you.”

“There’s. No. Woman.”

She took a deep breath, clearing her lungs.
There was no woman.
But then an even worse possibility flooded her brain. “Oh, my God, it’s Charlie, isn’t it? You’re going to keep him from me.” She gulped for air. “You can’t do that. You can’t take him away!” she screamed into the phone.

“Can’t we just be civil? Can’t you ever just forget the drama for half a second?”

“I’ll fight you for him, Alec. He might not have come from my egg, but he’s my son, too.” The reality of losing Charlie jabbed her like a quick right hook. “I’ll fight you,” she said again, clutching the throbbing in her left temple.

“This is not about Charlie, Derry.” There was a second’s hesitation before he said, “This is about your sister.”

“That’s low, Alec.”

“Just listen, okay? There’s a woman sitting in the living room who says she’s your sister.”

“Right.”

“I saw the documentation she brought with her, hospital of birth, mother’s name, father unlisted, adoptive parents were Thomas and Teresita O’Neil from Lancaster, Pennsylvania. It looks pretty convincing.”

The pain of her childhood seeped through her, pulling her back to the days with her adoptive parents. How many years had she dreamed someone would find her who shared her DNA? They’d snatch her up and carry her away from the people who’d adopted her but couldn’t love her. All she’d ever wanted was to belong, but no one had come and now she didn’t dare dredge up hope again.

Denial always served the best defense.

“She’s not my sister.”

“I think you should meet her,” Alec said.

“She’s not my sister,” Derry said again, this time louder, needing to squelch the flutter of doubt in her brain.

“She has your eyes. And your hair.”

“Stop it, Alec.” The flutter grew stronger, pulsed into full beats. Denial was failing so Derry opted for offense. “Why would this woman try to contact me now, anyway, after all these years? She wants something from me, probably a way to piece together her mother’s life before she had her.”

“I don’t think so,” Alec said quietly.

“Why do you always give everybody the benefit of the doubt? You know people just try to screw each other. And this woman, whoever she is and wherever she came from, is no different.”

“I’m not so sure about that.”

“Really?” Now, he was starting to annoy her. “You don’t think she’s come to gape at the product of her mother’s indiscretions, a mother who I’m guessing is living and thriving in upscale suburbia with a white picket fence and a cluster of Seven Sister rose bushes?”

“She said your mother died three years ago.”

Derry hadn’t known one sentence could hurt so much.

“And I doubt she’s come to see her older sister,” Alec said, “because
she’s
the older sister.”

***

“Now you girls call me the minute you get in. Tula Rae don’t want to worry no more wrinkles in her face.” She patted her leathery cheeks and grinned. “I gotta stay pretty for my man so he don’t go wandering, ain’t that right, Earl Gray?”

Earl Gray smiled down at her, his topaz eyes soft and shiny. “That’s right,” he said, placing a large brown hand on her skinny shoulder. The look on his face told them all he wasn’t going anywhere.

Tula Rae reached up and kissed him on the cheek. Today she was wearing a hot pink doo rag and matching spandex shorts with a tangerine tank top. From a distance a person might mistake the poochy potbelly for a second trimester spread, until they got closer.

Cyn watched as Tula Rae hugged Earl Gray, her chicken legs moving like a slow dance over the wooden floor. The single braid she always wore swung across the back of her spandex, shifting from side to side like a horse’s tail swatting flies. Cyn would miss this woman who practiced Salsa, loved Johnny Depp, downed a shot of Jack Daniel’s every morning—
to wake up my bones
, she said—and cooked a mean barbecue.

Tula Rae embraced every millisecond of every minute she spent on this universe. And if God would only give her a second chance, Cyn promised herself she’d never take another day for granted.

“If we don’t leave now, I’m either going to have to take the two of you with us, or we’re staying another month,” Derry said.

“That’d be fine by us, right, Earl Gray?” Tula Rae sniffed and blew her nose into a big blue handkerchief.

“You’re all welcome anytime,” he said.

“Oh, we’ll be back, won’t we ladies?” Derry’s eyes grew bright, her voice husky.

“I’d love to come back,” Cyn said, wondering what Sam would think of Tula Rae and Earl Gray.

Only Shea remained silent, strawberry-blond head bent as she picked at a spot on her shorts. They hadn’t seen her since yesterday afternoon when she informed them that Richard was home waiting for her.

“Well, you’re all invited, anytime,” Tula Rae said. “Just give a call and let me know how many is coming. Men, children, and pets included.”

“Thank you,” Cyn said, hopeful there’d be a family left to bring to The Bird’s Nest.

“Sure.” Derry’s tone told them she’d be returning alone.

Tula Rae hugged each one of them, tears sprouting in her dark eyes as she said, “Never had no daughters of my own, but you three come mighty close to making me wish I did.”

“Teach her how to operate that damn computer, Earl Gray,” Derry said. “We’re just a click away. Remember, I left you our e-mail addresses by the mouse.”

“Too many new-fangled gadgets for this old crow to worry about.” Tula Rae sniffed. “Who ever heard of a body wanting a mouse in their living room?”

Derry laughed and hugged her again. “Maybe you can talk Earl Gray into operating it for you, huh? Give him a few Salsa dances and a bowl of jambalaya, maybe that’ll convince him.”

“My man don’t need no convincing,” she said, chuckling. “Now get going, and call me. And don’t forget when you make the banana bread, start and finish with the flour, the sour cream goes in between.”

“I got it.” Derry hugged her once more. “Thank you both”—her voice clogged—“for showing us more in a month than we could have learned in ten years on our own.”

Tula Rae’s dark gaze roamed over each one, pausing just long enough to make them fidget. Then she turned to Earl Gray and said, “Help these girls load up their bags. I got to check on them tomatoes out back. There’s a few ripe ones ready to burst.”

And with that, she turned and made her way out the back door toward the vegetable patch.

“She’s never been very fond of good-byes,” he said in a soft voice, his topaz eyes trailing after her.

“This isn’t good-bye,” Derry said, her words fierce. “We’ll be back.”

***

“So, are we really not going to talk about this for the next five hundred miles?” Derry asked, scanning Shea’s bent head in the rear view mirror. “Shea?”

“Huh?” She looked up from her magazine. “Were you talking to me?”

“You know damn well I was talking to you. I’ve been waiting the last fifty-five miles for you to say something.”

“Like what?”

Derry blew out an exasperated sigh and fixed her gaze on the red and yellow foliage ahead. “Fine. You want to pretend that two-timing, impregnating, husband of yours has seen the light and is ready to pledge undying love
and
fidelity to you? Give me a break.”

“He doesn’t think Tanya’s baby is his,” Shea said in a small, defiant voice.

“Oh, that makes me feel better.”

“Stop it, Derry. I love him.”

“And he loves the ‘open door’ policy. Whenever he gets tempted, he leaves, and when the money runs out, he comes back.”

“It’s not like that.”

“How is it then, Shea? Tell us.”

“Leave her alone, Derry,” Cyn said. “We all have our own reasons.”

“What about Marcus Orelean?”

Shea sniffed. “What about him?”

Derry slapped the steering wheel and scowled. “See, this is what I can’t stand, people thinking I’m an idiot. I saw the way he looked at you, Shea. Even Earl Gray made a comment.” She paused and added, “Okay, so maybe I was half listening from the upstairs window.”

“Derry!”

“I said,
half
listening. I just happened to look on the deck and there you were and there he was.”

“I can’t believe you eavesdropped.”

“So, I picked up a few key words like ‘intoxicating’ and ‘only you’. I could’ve been a deaf mute and one look at the two of you would’ve told me he had the hots for you.”

“I’m married.”

“Yeah, too bad Richard keeps forgetting.”

“It’s going to be different this time.” Her words held conviction, but her voice fizzled.

“Sure.” Nothing was going to change but Shea refused to see it. “So, basically, you just let Marcus walk out of your life.”

“I’m sure he’ll survive. Besides, he just
thought
he was attracted to me,” Shea said. “I probably reminded him of his aunt or something.”

“I’m sure that’s it.” Was she purposely acting ignorant?

“He did seem quite attracted to you,” Cyn said, finally entering the conversation.

Derry laughed. “Which translates into what I said earlier. He had the hots for you.”

“Can we talk about something else, please? My stomach’s feeling queasy.”

“Fine,” Derry said. If Shea liked to be made a fool of, let her. “What subject won’t make you queasy?”

“Maybe we can talk about what we learned on this trip. You know, how we changed, what we hope to focus on when we get back home, stuff like that.”

“God, now I’m getting queasy,” Derry said, scrunching up her nose.