His Best Friend's Wife. GINA WILKINS
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enough, he couldn’t say she had been particularly warm in greeting him. He supposed that made sense; there was too much history between them for a chance encounter to be easy and breezy. Not to mention that their surprise reunion was rather public. He hadn’t been able to read her expression well enough to tell whether seeing him was merely awkward for her or genuinely painful.
He had found her attractive in her early twenties—too much so since she’d been the girlfriend and then the wife of one of his best friends—but she was even prettier at the dawn of her thirties. He remembered her hair being long and tousled, bleached to near white. Now she wore it in a sleek, darker blond bob that nicely framed her oval face. Her eyes looked larger and softer without the black eyeliner she’d favored back then, but they were still the vivid blue he remembered so clearly. Of average height, she was still slim. Maybe she’d gained a few pounds, but the soft curves looked good on her. Womanly, as opposed to girlish.
He knew she hadn’t remarried, but he didn’t know if she was seeing anyone. Did a working, single mom of six-and-a-half-year-old twins even have time to go out? Not that it was any of his business. She had made that clear enough at Jason’s funeral, when she and Jason’s mother had walked away from him without a backward glance.
It hadn’t been the first time he and Renae had parted painfully. Two years earlier, while she was still dating Jason, they had shared one illicit kiss, spurred by forbidden infatuation and a few too many drinks. Though they had never crossed that line again, the attraction between them that night had been strong. Ill-advised, but mutual.
Did she ever wonder, as he did occasionally, what might have happened had he handled that episode differently?
Shaking his head in irritation, he pushed himself out of his chair and his memories. He had things to do tonight. He would call Renae, but when he did, it would be strictly about scholarship business. The past was just that—over and done. They had new lives now, new responsibilities. It was far too late for what-might-have-beens.
He’d have to remind himself of that every time those old memories escaped the deep hole where he’d buried them years ago, until he finally convinced himself.
“Mom, Daniel’s feeding Boomer from the table again.”
“Am not!” Daniel set both hands hastily on the table, an exaggeratedly innocent look on his face.
Renae glanced at the small brown-and-white dog happily chewing something beneath her son’s chair. “Don’t fib, Daniel. And don’t feed the dog from the table or I’m going to have to put him in the backyard when we eat.”
Daniel sighed gustily, his dark hair falling over his forehead. Renae made a mental note to take him for a haircut Saturday. She would have had Lucy take him one day after school, but Lucy always insisted the barber cut Daniel’s hair shorter than he liked now that he was in first grade. Renae figured some battles just weren’t worth the trouble. Daniel was old enough to start expressing his preferences in clothing and hair-style—within the limits Renae set, of course.
“Hunter got in trouble in school again today,” Leslie said, indulging in her favorite pastime of gossiping about her classmates over dinner. “He wouldn’t stop playing with his crayons when it was time for math lessons. Ms. Rice took his crayons away and he was mad.”
“Hunter should listen to the teacher,” Lucy said with a disapproving shake of her salt-and-pepper head. “I hope you two are behaving in your classes.”
“Yes, ma’am,” they chorused dutifully.
It had been at Renae’s request that her children had been assigned to separate classes. They got along very well for the most part, for which she was grateful, but she thought it was good for them to form relationships as individuals and not just as “the twins.”
“You aren’t eating much this evening,” Lucy commented, eyeing Renae’s plate with a frown. Short, plump and matronly, widowed for almost two decades, Lucy dressed and often acted older than her fifty-nine years, resisting any attempts to modernize what Renae thought of as her housewife-y wardrobe, or to add any new activities to her life. She was content to keep house for her daughter-in-law and grandchildren, and attend the many church activities that kept her occupied while the kids were in school. “Aren’t you feeling well? Do you not like the food?”
“The food is excellent, as always, Lucy,” Renae answered patiently, taking a bite of the beef carnitas just to prove her point. Washing it down with a sip of peach-flavored iced tea, she then explained, “I had a late lunch today, so I’m not overly hungry tonight.”
Lucy’s eyebrows rose. “I thought you just took a turkey sandwich and a few carrot sticks for lunch. I figured you would be hungry tonight.”
Lucy hadn’t actually prepared the sandwich, because Renae insisted on making lunches for herself and the twins. It was one of the little things she did to make herself feel that she was pulling her weight around the house, despite Lucy taking the bulk of the cleaning and cooking. Still, Lucy kept an eye on what went out of “her” kitchen in brown bags and decorated lunch boxes.
Renae was reluctant to admit she’d left her turkey sandwich in the office fridge when she’d bolted after seeing Evan. She hadn’t mentioned that encounter to Lucy yet, though she supposed she should. Maybe she would wait until the twins were in bed, and then try to find a way to break the news without unduly upsetting her mother-in-law, who still bristled whenever Evan’s name came up after all these years.
Daniel squirmed restlessly in his seat, making Boomer wag his tail frantically in anticipation of fun. “I’m done with my dinner—may I go play now?”
“We have dessert,” his grandmother reminded him, momentarily distracted from Renae’s lack of appetite. “Fruit tarts.”
Looking torn, Daniel glanced from his waiting pup toward the kitchen. “Can I have dessert later? I’m full.”
“Go play for an hour, then you can have dessert after your bath,” Renae agreed. “Leslie, do you want yours now or later?”
“Later,” Leslie decided. “We’re going to teach Boomer how to fetch.”
“Good luck with that,” Lucy said with a laugh and a shake of her head as the twins carried their plates and silverware carefully to the kitchen, accompanied by the eager dog. They would leave the plates on the counter by the sink for now, but when they were a little older, Renae would teach them to rinse and stack them in the dishwasher. She thought it important that both her children perform daily chores, so that everyone in the household made a contribution to its smooth functioning.
With her usual tenacity, Lucy returned her attention to Renae. “Are you not feeling well? Something seems to be off with you this evening.”
Since the children were out of the room, Renae figured she might as well get this behind them. “There’s something I need to tell you. A new patient came to the clinic today. Turns out it was someone we know.”
“Oh?” Lucy stacked her fork and knife on her empty plate and laid her napkin on the table beside it. “Who was it?”
“Evan Daugherty.”
She could almost feel the chill that settled over the room. Lucy froze in her chair, her eyes blackening to polished ebony. “Evan Daugherty showed up at your office today?”
“Yes. He had an appointment with Dr. Sternberg.”
Every muscle in Lucy’s body seemed to have gone stiff. “Why is he coming around you now? What does he want?”
“Lucy, his visit had nothing to do with me. He didn’t even know I work for Dr. Sternberg.”
The sharp sound she made clearly expressed Lucy’s skepticism. “Did he try to talk to you?”
“We exchanged greetings. He asked about the twins.”
“Their welfare is none of his business.”
“He was merely being polite. People