The Secret Wife (4 page)

She opened her eyes and began writing. It didn’t matter that Cole hated her, or that he would probably fire her if he knew what she was doing. This wasn’t about him; it was about the children. Besides, she wouldn’t be dissuaded from her plan. She could have everything in place with just a couple of phone calls. She couldn’t wait to see the looks on the children’s faces. Or the look on Cole’s.

Chapter Three

C
ole stepped into the administration building and heard the sound of female voices. Normally that wasn’t enough to drive him back outside, but he recognized one of the voices as Elissa’s. In the week she’d been working at the orphanage, he’d done his best to avoid her. He told himself he wasn’t being cowardly; he was simply making the best of an awkward situation.

The excuse sounded feeble, even to himself, so instead of disappearing into the afternoon, he continued toward Millie’s office.

Elissa’s work space was in the reception area. He rounded the corner and braced himself for the impact of seeing her. No matter how many times he told himself it didn’t matter, every time their eyes met, he felt the connection clear down to his soul. He hadn’t known hatred and longing could coexist so easily.

But instead of finding Elissa working hard, he found her sitting on the floor surrounded by boxes of photographs and three young girls.

They didn’t notice him at first. Gina, the orphanage’s ten-year-old resident genius, knelt next to Elissa, intently watching as Elissa braided Tiffany’s hair. Shanna stood behind them, peering over Elissa’s shoulder. As usual, the barely eight-year-old motormouth couldn’t stop talking.

“How’d you learn how to do that?” Shanna asked, then reached up and touched her own bright red braid. “Could I learn? Can we learn to do our own? Maybe you could teach us and we could do each other before school. I like my braid. Do you like yours, Tiffany?”

Tiffany tried to turn to see what Elissa was doing. Elissa laughed. “Hold still. I can’t braid if you’re moving around.”

“But I’m still not sure I understand how to do this.”

“We’ll practice for as long as it takes,” Elissa told her.

Shanna leaned forward, resting one hand on Elissa’s shoulder. The trust inherent in that gesture made Cole’s gut tighten. Elissa had been at the orphanage only a few days, yet she’d already made a home for herself with the children. He supposed he should be pleased she fit in so easily. It was better for everyone. Yet he hated the fact that they liked and trusted her. Why couldn’t they see what he saw? That she would leave them as easily as she’d left him? That none of this mattered to her? It was just an act, and as soon as he figured out what she wanted, he was going to throw her out of the orphanage and his life.

But not today. Today it was enough to stand in the doorway and watch her laugh and smile with the children.

In her summer dress, with her long blond hair spilling around her shoulders and the three girls gazing adoringly at her, she looked like a model in a photo shoot. The four of them were a study in contrasts. Elissa fair and blond, Shanna with her freckles and red hair, and the other two girls adding the exotic elements. Tiffany’s Eurasian and African-American heritage gave her a beauty seldom seen. No one knew about Gina’s parents, but Cole figured she had a combination of Anglo and Asian features.

Four different females who looked so right together. It couldn’t be chance. As he’d first thought—a photo shoot. But these kids hadn’t been paid to act as if they liked her. They were doing it because their feelings were genuine. Weren’t children supposed to be good judges of character?

Not in this case.

He leaned against the door frame and folded his arms over his chest. Gina was the first to glance up and notice him. Her shy smile broadened. She jumped up and ran to him. He picked her up and held her close.

“Hi, angel face,” he said as she buried her face in the crook of his neck.

“Cole!” Tiffany tried to turn toward him, and giggled when she couldn’t. “Look. Elissa’s braiding our hair. Isn’t it cool?”

“Very nice.”

“I like my braid,” Shanna said. “It’s pretty. We’re all gonna learn to braid like that, then we can do our hair every morning.”

“Sounds like a great plan,” he said, noticing Elissa offered him a tight smile and nothing else. He turned his attention to the child in his arms.

“What’s new?” he asked softly.

“I want to learn French,” Gina whispered.

He knew better than to laugh. “Why?”

“My teacher played a CD today that had some French words in it and I thought they were pretty.”

“Did you ask her about learning another language?” Gina already spoke Spanish fluently.

Nod. “There’s some cassettes I can listen to, and maybe she can find a tutor.” She raised her head and stared intently at him. “I told her I didn’t have any money.”

Familiar frustration assaulted him. The budget at the orphanage had been stretched past the point of breaking. This was the price he paid for autonomy. There was never enough cash.

He shifted the slight weight in his arms. Gina might be two years older than Shanna, but she was nearly an inch shorter. However, the miniature package housed a brain that bordered on supergenius.

“You tell your teacher to get you the tapes and set up time with a tutor. We can afford it.”

“Really?” Gratitude shone from her brown eyes.

“No problem.” He set her on the ground.

Without wanting to, he glanced at Elissa. She gave him a brief smile.

“Despite how it looks, I’m really working,” she said, finishing Tiffany’s braid and securing the end with a rubber band. “Millie asked me to go through all the pictures and pick out the best ones. It’s for the fortieth-anniversary issue of the newsletter. She said you were planning a special bound edition.”

“That’s right.” They’d discussed it at the last board meeting. The book would be a pictorial history of the orphanage and sold to anyone interested at a small profit.

Tiffany stood and held out her hands. “Come on, girls. It’s nearly study time. We don’t want to be late. Thanks for doing our hair, Elissa.” She grinned at Cole. “You should grow your hair long.”

He tugged on her earlobe. “Not in this lifetime.”

“You wouldn’t look so old.”

He stepped into the room and jerked his thumb in the direction of the door. “Don’t you have to be somewhere?”

“Yes, sir.” She grabbed each of the other girls and ushered them outside.

Elissa leaned back against her desk. “I hope you don’t mind that I’m making friends with the children. You said not to tell them about our marriage, but you didn’t say I couldn’t get involved.”

He shrugged. “Seems like a waste of time to me. You are leaving in a few months.”

“I have a three-month trial,” she said. “Not a death sentence. If you like my work and I like being here, I might just stay on.”

He didn’t dare think about that. He couldn’t bear to have Elissa in his life. Not for any length of time. “I’m sure you’ll find our world very boring.”

“I don’t know. There’s a consistency that provides comfort. I can always count on you to think the worst of me.”

Her quick response made him raise his eyebrows. He stepped closer, then crouched down beside her. Instead of flinching, she glared defiantly. He reached for the stack of photos on the floor beside her and picked them up.

“Were these already sorted?” he asked.

Her gaze narrowed. She seemed to be deciding if she was going to let him change the subject or not. In the end she did, leaning toward him to gaze at the black-and-white photo of twenty children standing in front of the administration building.

“There are boxes of photos by years,” she said. “That helps. Some of them are identified, but others are blank on the back. We have school photos to cross-reference. I’m going to pick out a couple hundred of what I think are the best. Millie said you would take those to the planning meeting and make the final decision.” She pointed to the boxes spread out around her. “The oldest are by the door, the newest over here.”

He set down the pile he’d grabbed, then reached for a box by her left foot. After flipping through it, he put it back and took another one a couple of years earlier.

He settled on the floor and stretched his long legs out in front of him. The pictures were fifteen years old. He looked through them, finding familiar faces, snapshots of himself. But he didn’t pause at any of those. Instead he searched until he found a picture of three girls.

Silently he handed it to Elissa. She took it and sighed. “Oh, my. Look at that. We’re wearing the identical dresses Kayla and Fallon always hated.”

She held the photo out so he could see it, too. Three girls, identical triplets of maybe ten or eleven, stood in front of a tree. The girls wore green dresses, with matching ribbons in their long, curly hair. They gazed at the camera solemnly, as if carrying out some sacred duty.

“We look a little smug,” Elissa admitted. “It must have been our first visit here. I think ‘adopting’ an orphanage had been our manager’s idea. We weren’t really interested until we met everyone. I vaguely recall that first day being a disaster. Did everyone hate us?”

“Yup. You waltzed in here with your big car and fancy wrapped presents. Untouchable princesses.”

She handed him the picture and shrugged. “That’s hardly the truth. I think the whole visit was set up badly. It was better later when we just came out and played. I remember meeting you.”

He didn’t say anything, not wanting to encourage her to speak of those times. She didn’t get the hint.

“You’d escaped for the day,” she continued. “I found you out in the orange grove, reading. You were tall even then. Dark, with a stare that stopped me in my tracks.”

He remembered everything about that moment. He’d been reading a textbook for school. Anything had been better than sticking around to entertain slumming celebrities. A snapping twig broke the silence of the afternoon. He’d looked up and seen a young girl walking toward him. She’d stepped from shadow into sunlight and it was as if she were an angel come from heaven.

He remembered the way the light had caught the gold in her hair. Her warm smile had slipped past his barriers and reached down to his hollow heart, filling him with a sense of belonging. Until then, he’d never been interested in girls, had never thought females had a purpose other than to be annoying. At fifteen, he hadn’t known anything about love, nor had he fallen in love. That had come later. What he’d felt was the connection, the realization that this girl was going to be important to him for the rest of his life.

“Let’s see,” Elissa said. “I believe I walked up to you and said hello. And you told me to go away. Gee, Cole, it’s been fifteen years and nothing has changed. One would think we could make a little progress.”

The pain in her eyes belied her light tone.

He didn’t want to think about her being hurt. “Maybe you should have listened,” he said.

“And gone away?” she asked, then continued without waiting for him to answer. “I don’t think so. We would never have talked, never have gotten to know each other.” Her green eyes darkened with emotion. “Whatever might have happened between us, I don’t regret the relationship. Or the marriage. I’m sorry if you regret either.”

“A lot of things went wrong,” he said, not willing to admit that his only regret was losing her. He took a deep breath and leaned back against the desk. If Elissa had never entered his life, could he feel more empty than he had when she’d left? He wasn’t sure.

Silence filled the room. Elissa continued to flip through pictures, but he sensed she wasn’t really seeing them. While she was occupied, he had an opportunity to study her.

She wore her hair loose and it curled over her shoulders and down her back. He remembered the feel of those curls in his hands, the way the silky strands had slipped through his fingers. Light makeup accentuated her eyes and cheekbones. Her mouth was straight, not quite as mobile as it had been all those years ago, not so intent on giving away her secrets.

She hadn’t changed the way she dressed, and he was glad. Feminine prints in soft fabric flowed over her body, merely hinting at concealed curves. Full skirts flirted with bare calves, tiny sleeves exposed smooth arms. In a world of jeans and T-shirts, she was an anachronism.

He feasted on the vision of her as if he’d been starving. In the past week he’d tried to convince himself that her return to his life meant nothing. He wouldn’t let her matter. But all the telling in the world didn’t change the fact that there was a part of him that had died when she’d left. Rebirth, however unexpected and unwanted, was still painful.

Elissa studied one photograph for a minute, then held it out to him. He leaned forward and saw himself eight years ago, standing proudly in his cap and gown at his graduation from UCLA. A young, shy Elissa stood at his side.

“Our first date,” she said.

“You look about fifteen.”

“I turned seventeen two weeks after this picture was taken. We were both still kids. You look so serious and determined. You always had a lot to prove.” She set the picture down and glanced at him. “Right now you’re a long way from that New York law firm, Cole. I thought you were going to make partner before you were thirty-five. What happened?”

“How’d I get here?”

“Why’d you give it all up?”

He shrugged. “I got tired of the rat race, and the rats winning. Like you and your sisters, I continued to receive the orphanage’s newsletter. There were some financial problems, as well as a lack of administrative talent. I had money, I was looking for something different. This seemed an ideal opportunity.”

“I remember you in suits and ties. The jeans are a change…a nice one.”

“Jeans are more comfortable.”

She angled toward him. “Millie says that you still practice law. You have a small office in Ojai and you do enough there so you don’t take a salary out of the orphanage. She also said you do lots of pro bono work for a women’s shelter.”

Unwelcome embarrassment made him clear his throat. “Millie talks too much. I’m not any kind of hero, so don’t go thinking I am. I do the law work because I like it and because it pays the bills. The shelter needs somebody and I’m convenient. Nothing more.”