Found: Her Long-Lost Husband. Jackie Braun

      Found: Her Long-Lost Husband

      Secrets We Keep

      Jackie Braun

      

www.millsandboon.co.uk

      For my 10 sisters-in-law: Martha, Patti B., Izumi,

       Diana, Diane, Kathy, Barb, Judy, Patti H. and Holly. How did I get so lucky?

      CONTENTS

      PROLOGUE

      CHAPTER ONE

      CHAPTER TWO

      CHAPTER THREE

      CHAPTER FOUR

      CHAPTER FIVE

      CHAPTER SIX

      CHAPTER SEVEN

      CHAPTER EIGHT

      CHAPTER NINE

      CHAPTER TEN

      EPILOGUE

      PROLOGUE

      CLAIRE MAYFIELD STEPPED off the connecting flight in Chicago’s O’Hare Airport on the last leg of her long journey home and breathed deeply. She’d been on airplanes and sitting in bustling terminals in various spots around the globe for the past twenty-some hours, having flown out of Hong Kong International Airport.

      She was jet-lagged, hungry for real food and eager to soak away the grime of travel with a hot bath. She also needed to find a man.

      Not just any man. Her ex-husband, Ethan Seaver.

      Just thinking his name had the air backing up in her lungs. Nerves, she told herself, even as her body’s reaction suggested something else. Claire ignored it, as she always did, exhaling slowly. Her reason for needing to find him had nothing to do with renewing their relationship, even if that were a possibility, which it wasn’t. No, she didn’t want to go back. She wanted to move forward. To do that, the past needed to be settled first.

      As she made her way through the crowd of passengers, she switched the heavy carry-on case to the other shoulder. She was petite, fine-boned and just a hair over five-two in her stockinged feet, but for the first time in her life she had actual muscles defining her calves and thighs, and sculpting her shoulders and upper arms.

      She had been away from Chicago for not quite three weeks, during which time she had bicycled four hundred kilometers through the Himalayas to raise money and awareness for the plight of exploited children. In many ways, though, it felt as if she’d been gone a lifetime. She was a changed woman—or at least a changing one. She felt stronger, more independent. She was determined to stand on her own two feet—this time for good.

      In tackling the Himalayas on a twenty-one-speed bike, she’d begun another journey. This one was about self-discovery and, just as in the mountains, she had traveling companions for this trip too—Belle Davenport and Simone Gray. They made an unlikely trio—an American, a Brit and an Aussie who’d seemed to have little in common except for their gender and their obvious lack of athletic prowess. They were determined, though. Each had had something to prove—to themselves and to the people who looked at their seemingly cushy lives and sold them short.

      They also had secrets. Secrets they had shared with no one until sitting in a tent high in the mountains, hands blistered, knees scraped, backs and behinds ridiculously sore, they’d exposed wounds far more damaging. Wounds that had festered for years.

      In Belle’s case her seemingly perfect marriage was a sham, her well-heeled life a lovely façade intended to conceal an ugly childhood that had seen her and her young sister relegated to foster care and only one of them adopted. It hadn’t been Belle. She’d been forced to scrape and claw her way to adulthood on her own, where she’d become a successful morning television personality. Now Belle was determined to leave her husband and find her sister, Daisy.

      Simone’s secret was equally heartbreaking. As a teenaged girl she’d killed her stepfather, an accident for which she had allowed her mother to take the rap and spend time behind bars. The lies had torn the family apart. Simone’s grandfather hadn’t spoken to her since then.

      In comparison, Claire supposed her secret was not nearly so shocking. Still, it shamed her. A decade earlier she had met and married a man in a cowardly attempt to get out from underneath her father’s thumb. The marriage hadn’t lasted, nor had her spurt of rebellion. Both had been brief, their endings regrettable. She had only herself to blame for that.

      Oh, she’d been genuinely fond of Ethan. At the time she had wondered if maybe she might be falling in love with the hard-working, sweet-talking young man who’d seemed so interested in her opinions, her dreams and her goals. No one before or since had taken her as seriously. God knew, she hadn’t taken herself seriously, which made her treatment of Ethan all the more appalling.

      She’d used him.

      Worse than using him, she’d set him up—his David to her father’s Goliath. Unlike the biblical version of the story, though, this time Goliath had come out the winner.

      She hadn’t seen or heard from Ethan since. Nor had she become deeply involved with anyone else, despite her father’s efforts at finding her the perfect husband and her own attempts at dating. According to Belle, Claire was punishing herself. Simone had suggested she was waiting for a proper resolution to her marriage before moving on.

      Closure. It was, they’d realized, what they all were seeking. And so, before their ride through China’s Yunnan Province had ended, the three women had made a pact. They would make amends and then they would start over. Getting from point A to point B, however, would be no easy downhill ride. It would require an uphill trek over very rocky terrain.

      For Claire, it meant taking full responsibility for her actions and for her life. She would face Ethan, return the ring that had been in her jewelry box all of these years and finally make the apology that had been owed to him for more than a decade. What would he say? she wondered. How would he react when she contacted him? Memories beckoned, at first sweet and then turning sour, just as their relationship had. She’d be kidding herself if she thought he was going to be happy to see her.

      “Miss Mayfield,” someone called. “Welcome home.”

      She glanced over to see Dolan, her father’s driver, standing near the gate. Her gaze veered momentarily past his lanky, black-clad frame, but she recognized no one else. She chided herself for thinking her parents might have ventured to the airport to welcome her home. Sumner and Marianna Mayfield hadn’t wanted her to go on the bike trek in the first place, regardless of its role in raising funds for charity.

      Unseemly, her mother had called it. Just as she had found Claire’s more sculpted physique unfeminine. Apparently it was better to be wisp thin and sickly all the time like herself.

      During the months leading up to the trip, her father had appeared impressed by her dedication to the grueling training regimen she’d put together. Ultimately, though, he’d considered the entire endeavor unnecessary.

      “Write a check, kitten,” he’d suggested.

      Checks took care of all sorts of things—even idealistic young men who were not deemed suitable hus-bands for the debutante daughter of a wealthy Chicago businessman.

      Mayfields were good at writing checks. And Claire had been good at taking her parents’ advice rather than risking her father’s wrath or upsetting her mother, who was always suffering from some malady or another. This time, though, she’d held her ground. This time she’d been determined to do more than donate money, which God knew she had in abundance thanks to her trust fund. Instead, she’d decided to put herself to the test. She’d had something to prove—to the people who believed she would never have to earn her way, and to herself.

      So