A Widow's Guilty Secret. Marie Ferrarella

kidnapped from her home. You’re the closest to immediate family that can be located. The Dean of Darby College has put in a plea that the kidnappers get in contact with him and make their demands known.”

      “Get me on the next flight,” Gabe said. “I’m her family,” he emphasized. He was aware that Melinda had siblings, but she never talked about them and he never prodded her. The estrangement, he’d gathered, went way back.

      Melinda had been his first love. Though they became as different as fire and ice, he’d never loved anyone as much as he had loved her. Most likely, he never would.

      If something had happened to Melinda, then he wanted to help get her back. God knew, if money was the issue, it wouldn’t be for long. He had more money than he could possibly spend in a lifetime.

      Two lifetimes.

      Gabe started toward the winding staircase. He needed to pack.

      Wouldn’t it be ironic if the very money that Melinda had once turned her nose up at would come to her rescue?

      He didn’t know if that would come under the heading of poetic justice or not but it would certainly point to the fact that God had an incredibly sardonic sense of humor.

       Chapter 1

      Where was he?

      Frustrated, Suzy Burris dropped the curtain she’d pushed back from the living room window and sighed loudly. Of all the evenings for Peter to be late getting home, he had to pick this one.

      Probably seeing one of his women, she thought angrily.

      And if she asked him about it, he’d look at her with that engaging smile of his and tell her he was busy with official business. “County sheriff business,” he’d clarify, and then he’d tell her that he wasn’t at liberty to share that “business” with her. Because she had “no need to know.”

       Bull.

      That’s all it was. Pure and simple bull. Like all the other times.

      And she was tired of it.

      Tired of the lies, tired of going through the motions and pretending that everything was all right, when it wasn’t.

      And it hadn’t been for a long, long time.

      Suzy could feel her whole body vibrating with impatience. She’d finally, finally made up her mind that despite the beautiful two-month-old baby boy mercifully asleep now in the nursery, her marriage to Peter was not about to recover. It had been on life support for a long time now and it was currently in its very last death throes. And while it really bothered her that she’d never loved him the way a wife was supposed to love a husband, there was nothing she could do to change the situation.

      Like an epiphany, it had suddenly become crystal clear to her this morning that they, she and Peter, both needed to move on.

      Suzy wanted a divorce and although he’d mentioned nothing along those lines himself, she was fairly convinced that her husband wanted it, too. Why else had Peter been tomcatting around like that, turning to other women when she was right there, at home?

      It had been hard for her, with her emotional state less than rock solid thanks to what having given birth had done to her hormones. But she’d had to admit to herself that there was no hope for them. No light at the end of the tunnel.

      Just more tunnel.

      The baby was supposed to have been that light, and his conception and subsequent birth clearly was a tactic that had misfired.

      The baby had been a mistake.

      Not that she didn’t love Andy more than she’d ever thought humanly possible, but as far as his being the miracle that would heal and save their marriage, well, that just wasn’t going to happen.

      Suzy realized that she was back at the living room window, lifting the curtain and staring off into the darkness.

      She wanted this to be over with, wanted it behind her.

      Breaking her own rule, she’d even tried to call Peter a couple of times, to no avail. The phone had gone to voice mail immediately each time.

      He had to be with a woman.

      When Peter was on the job as the county’s sheriff, he never shut off his phone. He’d told her that was because he never knew who might be trying to reach him. So if he wasn’t with a woman, why was it off now?

      Her frustration mounted as she continued to scan the darkness for some sign that he was finally approaching the driveway.

      What was all this drama and mystery about? Or was she reading into things because her impatience insisted on steadily rising with each passing minute?

      Given a choice, she wanted to avoid scenes like this morning at breakfast. Despite getting very little sleep the night before because Andy kept fussing, she’d done her best to give patching things up between Peter and her one more try this morning. She’d made Peter breakfast—waffles with eggs and sausages, his favorite—and tried to get some sort of a conversation going.

      But she might as well have been trying to program a robot. The words she all but wound up pulling out of her husband had been stilted, cold, as if they were two strangers who’d just met and hadn’t clicked, the way they had at that glitzy Dallas nightclub where she’d first met him.

      She had come to socialize that night and Peter had been working private security at the club. The second their eyes met, the attraction had been instant and intense.

      The trouble was, that strong physical attraction had never deepened, at least, not for her. At the time, she’d thought that it had for him, that Peter loved her. When he’d asked her to marry him, she’d accepted because she’d hoped that her own feelings would grow somewhere along the line and turn into the kind of love that was the foundation of every strong marriage.

      She’d said “I do” praying that would somehow trigger the everlasting love she’d secretly always dreamed about.

      She’d wanted the perfect fairy tale, happily-ever-after marriage.

      But it never happened.

      Although Pete seemed to love her, and he’d never laid a hand on her or physically mistreated her, Suzy knew deep down in her heart that she needed more to lay the foundations for a lasting relationship.

      She also felt as if Peter was keeping things from her. Not work-related things but just things. He seemed to lead a secret life apart from the one he shared with her. It got to the point where she felt as if she were dealing with a photograph of a man and the actual three-dimensional man was out of reach.

      On the surface, Peter was friendly, outgoing, gregarious, but after several years of marriage, she still knew very little about him. And no details about his childhood.

      What husband keeps his past from his wife? What was it that Peter was hiding?

      Or was she just being completely paranoid?

       Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean that there isn’t someone after you.

      She supposed that she’d been hoping for some sort of last-minute breakthrough with this baby, and that was why, when Peter, completely out of the blue, had suggested having a baby, she’d agreed.

      It had been an irresponsible way to go about patching up their relationship. First you had a stable home with two people who loved each other, and then you brought a baby into the equation. You didn’t do it the other way around. You didn’t just make a baby, and then hope everything turned out for the best.

      Suzy admitted to herself that she’d been trying to create the exact opposite of what she’d grown up with: two alcoholic parents who were either drunk and passed out on any available flat or semi-flat surface, or going at one another with anything they could get their hands