The Once-a-Mistress Wife. Katherine Garbera

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      The funeral wasn’t long but went by very slowly for Mary. Afterward, everyone came to the Duvall mansion for the wake. In the midst of the crowd and condolences, Mary retreated to Grandfather David’s study for a few moments of solitude. She sat in his big leather chair that smelled faintly of the tobacco he’d always smoked. She inhaled deeply, wrapping her senses in her grandfather’s memory.

      There was a knock on the door, and Mary knew the interruption signaled she’d been gone from the wake long enough. She answered the summons to find Emma, Caroline and Lily standing there.

      “We thought we’d find you hiding out,” Emma said, closing the door firmly once they were all inside.

      “I’m not hiding,” Mary said. Though she suspected her friends knew that she was lying, they’d never call her on it. And she needed time away from the pressure of making nice to all those people. After she was forced to be her society self for too long, she felt an itching deep inside to do something bold and crazy. To shake things up. She had no idea how her friends could survive the daily grind that was society life.

      “Not even from Channing? God, that man is an ass,” Caroline said.

      “Maybe. Is he looking for me? Is that why you came to find me?” Mary asked.

      “No Felicity and Vanessa are running interference with Channing, and Abby cornered Lorette. We’re here to find out more about that dreamy man with the British accent.”

      The last thing she wanted to talk about was Kane. She didn’t even know where to begin or what to say to her good friends. “That couldn’t wait until the next Debs lunch?”

      “Who knows when we’ll have time for the next one with everyone getting engaged and planning weddings,” Caroline said, her eyes glittering with that effervescent joy she brought to everything.

      “There’s really not much to tell. I met him when I was in London.”

      “When?” Emma asked.

      “My second week there. I was working in Harrods,” Mary said. She remembered the way he’d stopped at the display of women’s scarves and lingered for almost thirty minutes, never once pretending he was going to buy one but just flirting with her.

      “And that’s it?” Caroline’s voice held a disbelieving tone. “That was ten years ago. The man today looked like he was more to you than a customer.”

      “He was. We had an…affair,” Mary said because she thought her friends would understand that better than knowing that she’d lived in an apartment he’d paid for and that she’d made herself available to him whenever he’d wanted her. She’d been a kept woman.

      “I knew there was more between you,” Lily said. “There was something about he way he looked at you. And that kiss…”

      Mary’s lips still tingled, but she was trying very hard to forget that. To forget everything about Kane except the fact that he was no longer a part of her life.

      “I haven’t seen him in almost three years.” To be honest, she didn’t want to remember the last time she’d seen Kane.

      She’d been so hurt and angry that she’d said something she never should have. When she’d returned to Eastwick, Grandfather had said that her behavior had caused pain to others and herself, and she’d immediately thought of Kane. If she’d had the comportment then that she had now, maybe things would have turned out differently and she would still have her son…alive today.

      “He definitely looked like a man who wanted to rekindle the relationship with you,” Caroline stated.

      “I can’t. Not now. I have too much going on.”

      “Sure you can,” Lily said. “You could at least explore the possibility.”

      Mary shook her head. Kane wasn’t going to be a part of her life again. He was her weakness, and she knew if she allowed him back into her life, she’d have to face her past and the lies she once told. Lies that still haunted her.

      Two

      Kane was up early the next morning, jogging along the beach of Long Island Sound. СКАЧАТЬ