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eyes following her
until she chirped off the alarm and opened the car door.   She looked up in time to see him turn the
corner and head back to the hotel.
         She slid into her navy blue Acura and
stared straight ahead, going over their conversation again in her mind. She
rested her head against the steering wheel and closed her eyes.
         Before tonight she felt like she was back
on track after the fiasco in Fort
Worth threw everything into disarray.   She was engaged, respected in the community,
and carefully orchestrating the perfect time to launch her own firm and her own
family. She’d been blissfully unaware that David was hiding anything from her.
The whole time she was researching the family backgrounds of Tulsa’s wealthiest philanthropists she never
thought to dig in her own backyard.
         Now she’d pay for that oversight. The fact
that Jon was the one who broke the news ripped at her. Seeing him, smelling
him, and watching his dark eyes made her feel all the more foolish for not
figuring it out and, worse, for moving on so quickly.
         Damn it, she thought. Marcy knew more than
anyone that seeing Jon again would shock her.
         How the hell did it end up that Marcy was
still in Fort Worth
while she was here being made a fool of? Clara would have made partner by now
had she stayed, had things been different.
         She slowly moved her head back and forth,
feeling the knobs of the steering wheel dig into her forehead.
         She couldn’t blame Marcy. There was no way
she’d known Jon was coming. That was the only explanation. She would have sent
up a flag. She wouldn’t have let Clara walk into that trap unarmed.
         And oh God she’d felt unarmed. A year of
crushing back feelings, changing everything to keep from being reminded of him
and he drops the L word as if she’d known it all along.
         He must not know the meaning of the damned
word, she decided. How could he? He ditched her, humiliated her, then shows up
a year later to … to do it again.
         Clara lifted her head and started the car.
         At least this time her mistake wouldn’t
make the front page of the business section.
        

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
    CHAPTER
2

 
         The Acura’s headlights clicked off
automatically as Clara pulled into the garage next to the long black Cadillac,
which gleamed from its weekly detailing. Jon was right. She hated that car. It
floated along the road like Grammy Spritzer’s ancient Oldsmobile.
         To be fair, David hated her car, too. He
complained that the coupe was too confining. Clara suspected that he was more
uncomfortable with the standard shift than with the car’s size, but she never
brought it up to him. She might offend his manhood if she suggested he didn’t
know how to drive a stick.
         He offered to buy her a new car as a
wedding gift but she’d refused. The Acura was the first car she bought for
herself and she wasn’t about to give it up.
         At least that was a moment of clarity, she
thought, slamming the car door. If only she’d given that much thought to moving
in with him.
         David had been so convincing – so romantic
– with flowers and bubble bath and lovely notes inviting her to share his
house. With Jon out of the picture she hadn’t seen the harm in making herself
at home in the well-kept colonial.
         She entered the spacious house through a
side door that led from the garage to the kitchen. She flipped on the light,
revealing her favorite room. It had been professionally decorated long before
she arrived.
         She wondered now if Sally had managed it
all, if the soothing neutrals and greens that she so admired were the handiwork
of a woman she never knew existed, a woman who once called this place home, and
who still called David Carpenter her husband.
         Clara shuddered as the magnitude of the lie
she’d been living sunk