His Perfect Family. Patti Standard

Department stamped across it in smudged blue ink.

      She carried the bag into her bedroom, shut the door behind her and sank down on the bed. She really didn’t want to look again. Unzipping the plastic seal, she reached inside, ignoring the wallet, the comb, the tie clip, and pulled out an airline ticket folder. She didn’t want to see it again, neatly typed in the destination line. Dallas — Fort Worth International Airport.

      One-way.

      Unable to stop, she reached into the bag again and took out the sandal. Red. Siren red. Slender, very high, spiked heel. Wispy straps across the toes, one around the heel. She kicked off her loafer and, careful to keep her sock on, slipped her foot into the shoe. She lifted her leg and examined it hanging from her toes.

      It was two sizes too small.

      Chapter Three

      She’d be slim. Great legs. Short, tight skirts. Anyone who wore heels like that had to have great legs. She’d wear low-cut sweaters, and her implants would bubble up, on the verge of spilling over. A blonde? Redhead? That she didn’t know. Adrianne let the sandal slip off and fall to the floor. She stared at it as it lay on its side on the beige carpet — slinky, sly, as seductively dangerous as a serpent.

      She knew the woman’s voice. Once she’d actually had the nerve to ask for Harvey instead of hanging up in Adrianne’s ear. It had been a husky, breathy voice, one that matched the shoe perfectly. She knew the woman’s scent, could almost smell it now, rising from the shoe, seeping from the plastic bag. That dark, musky perfume had come home with Harvey from every business trip, no matter if it was to Wichita or Oklahoma City or Memphis.

      Idly, Adrianne wondered if Harvey had ever really gone to any of those cities, or if every supposed business trip was actually a quickie in Dallas. Or maybe she met him in all those cities, all those hotels, all those king-size, floral-print-covered beds, Gideon Bibles tucked away in the nightstand.

      She picked up the sandal by the heel, using two fingers, and dropped it back in the bag. For a long time, she held the weight of it on her lap, all that was left of her husband, all that was left of her marriage. Then she got up and stuffed the bag in the top drawer of her dresser, deep beneath her panties and bras.

      She stuffed her pain and anger just as deeply inside her and took a long, slow breath. She had to talk to Lisa. Tell her everything was fine. It had to be, because right now she was too angry for it to be anything else.

      

      The new-home smell of wet paint greeted Cutter as he pushed open the front door with his foot, his arms around two sacks from the lumberyard. The late-afternoon sunlight was still full and warm on his back. An icy Dos Equis, listening to the traffic go by out on his deck, sounded a lot more appealing than breathing paint fumes for the rest of a Friday afternoon.

      “Cutter? Is that you?” Adrianne appeared at the top of the stairs, paintbrush in hand. But that brush was the only sign that she’d spent the afternoon painting. Her hair, instead of stuck sensibly under a cap, fell around her shoulders with a casual wave that he knew wasn’t casual at all. It was too perfect. And her makeup... What was she wearing makeup for? She was alone in the house, working her butt off, hanging from a stepladder. Yet her eyelashes were darkened, her cheeks tinted — and he’d never seen her when she didn’t present just such a polished package. Not once the entire week. And this was on vacation!

      Somehow, that very perfection made her seem vulnerable, achingly so. The more she armored herself, the more he felt the urge to shelter her.

      “What is it? Do I have paint on my nose?”

      “Nope.” He set the bags on the floor, annoyed he’d been caught staring, annoyed at his protective thoughts. The woman had started to get under his skin after a week in each other’s back pockets. A week of reading her mail, leafing through her photo albums, prying into every nook and cranny of her life. A week of sharing coffee in the morning and lunch at noon, talking, teasing — okay, mildly flirting. He told himself again it was all part of the job, to gain her confidence, her trust. That’s what he told himself. All part of the job.

      But he hadn’t dared touch her again.

      “Your father called while you were gone. He said to remind you you’re eating at their house tonight.”

      “Not likely I’d forget that. The rest of the week, it’s nothing but TV dinners.”