Page 1 of The Husband's Secret
Chapter One
Tuesday, May 5
Los Angeles International Airport
1 World Way
Los Angeles, California, 5:00 a.m. (PST)
Brenda Devers felt exhausted and so ready to get home. She missed her daughter.
Maybe it was the past few weeks catching up with her. She stared out the wall of glass at the planes taxiing past on the tarmac. Realistically she understood that it was a number of things combined. It was the fact that her estranged husband had died just three weeks ago. They hadn’t lived together in nearly a year, but he had fought the divorce process for the past six months as if their relationship wasn’t over. Worse, he had flatly refused to negotiate custody terms—at all.
She pushed aside the troubling thoughts and decided she needed caffeine. Desperately. It was way too early to be functioning…even on West Coast time.
Rising to her feet, she reached for her wheeled bag. She pulled it along behind her as she wove her way through the crowd in search of the nearest coffee bar. The line was fairly long, but she had time. Her flight wasn’t until six fifteen. This trip had been a whirlwind. She had waited until Sunday afternoon to take a flight from Huntsville, Alabama, to Los Angeles. All day Monday and well into the evening had been spent in meetings. If she had been able to get on a flight lastnight, she would be home by now. But that wasn’t possible. Instead, she had settled for the earliest possible flight this morning, and still it would be midafternoon before she was home.
She missed her little girl. Needed to be there for her child, who was missing her mother as well as her father.
Late last week when Brenda received the request for an appearance at this meeting, she had really wanted to decline. But her agent had insisted that if she wasn’t able to attend in person, things might not go as well. She really wanted Brenda to be there.
Frankly, if Brenda hadn’t so desperately needed this deal to go the right way, she would have just said no regardless of the results. Who wouldn’t understand that her daughter needed her—she’d just lost her father. Granted Janey was only four years old, but she fully comprehended the situation. Her father was dead… He would not be coming back.
Considering his sudden death, Brenda supposed on some level it was a blessing that Scott had moved out of the house they shared all those months ago. She cringed at the thought. Felt guilty, no matter that none of it was her fault. As awful as it was for her to think that way, she had to be realistic here. Obviously their daughter had grown accustomed to only spending every other weekend with him. If there was any sort of upside to this tragedy, the distance created by the separation had to be it. Still, Brenda felt like a terrible person for thinking such a thing.
What kind of person looked at death with an eye toward finding the upside?
Anger stirred deep in her belly. Perhaps one who kept her head in books—specifically the ones she wrote—rather than in real life. How many times had Scott said those words to her? He’d accused her of being too busy with her career to be a good wife.
Their world had been picture-perfect, he had insisted, untilshedecided a separation was in order. But the truth was, the picture-perfect part had stopped being true five years ago when she’d learned of his first affair—at least she hoped it had been the first one. Sure, she was a big girl who could overlook one indiscretion—one mistake—if he was truly sorry. If he genuinely intended to make sure it never happened again. And particularly since she’d found out she was pregnant with their first child around that same time.
And for an entire year things had appeared to be better. Then came another affair and the subsequent apology. But it wasn’t until that second one—no, that wasn’t right. It was the third one, at the end of his second period of repentance, that she was done.
Brenda rolled her eyes. She had been such a fool. Or maybe just desperate to keep their family together given they had a child. But sometimes a woman just had to admit it was over and move on.
Last year Brenda had reached that place. Perhaps it was his over-the-top and utterly unreasonable reaction to her book being optioned for a movie only weeks after its release that was the final straw. Yes, she had been hurt and angry when she wroteThe Wife’s Diary. After two affairs and two promises that it would never happen again, the third affair was reason enough to be both. Writing the book had been like a balm to her soul. A way to slough off all the pent-up emotions.
It wasn’t like she had used his name…though she had dedicated the book to him. Maybe it had been just a little nasty of her, but she wasn’t the one who had cheated multiple times.
Since making their separation legal and filing the necessary papers, she hadn’t felt guilty at all…until the explosion. Having him die suddenly in such a horrific way, of course, made her sad. She had been in love with him at one time. Madly in love with him. But he had slowly but surely destroyed that love. She wouldnot live her life with a man who had so little respect for her that he felt having affairs was completely acceptable as long as he apologized.
Finally, it was her turn to order. Brenda bellied up to the counter and suddenly realized she had no idea what she wanted. She’d been in line all this time and should have figured that out by now, but she had been too caught up in all the awful business of her failed marriage.
“Just coffee,” she finally blurted, her frustration roaring in her brain. She really, really needed to be home with her daughter.
The barista stared at her, one eyebrow cocked higher than the other. “What size?”
The grumbling behind her had Brenda glancing over her shoulder.
She opened her mouth to answer the question, then froze…stopped breathing entirely.
“Short? Tall?Grande?” the barista insisted impatiently.
Brenda walked away from the counter, her gaze glued to the man she had spotted in the crowd.
Her brain refused to analyze what her eyes were telling her.
It was impossible. Of course it was. Her mind…
