Second Time's the Charm

CHAPTER ONE

Five years ago

HOT AND HEAVY with baby, Lillie Henderson knew the pains would pass. She wasn’t going to deliver for another month, at least. False labor was common. Birthing class said so. The pains weren’t acute enough to be labor. They were symptoms of dread. Alone in the elevator, she held the basketball-like protrusion that used to be a flat tummy and pushed the button for the eighteenth floor.

“We have to talk, Lillie,” Kirk had said when he’d asked her to meet him at his office—a top-floor suite with a windowed view of Camelback Mountain in his father’s Phoenix PR firm.

Jerry Henderson, Kirk’s father, and his third wife, Gayle, were out of town for the summer. Which made Henderson Marketing Kirk’s sole territory. He’d called a meeting on his ground—not on mutual or neutral ground. Lil

lie didn’t miss the ploy. In the almost three years they’d been married, Lillie had figured out that many of Kirk’s actions were strategically devised to get the results he wanted.

The elevator slowed to a smooth stop and the door opened, showing her the plush blue-gray carpet that covered every inch of the Henderson offices except the kitchen and bathrooms. Original Picasso sketches lined the walls in between solid mahogany doors that remained open—unless private business was being discussed—to get the maximum benefit from the walls of windows inside the rooms. The entire floor had been designed to convey a sense of openness that was meant to translate to an atmosphere of trust.

Lillie had been breathlessly nervous the first time she’d visited the offices as Kirk’s fiancée. She’d been a college senior then, studying child and family development.

In the three years since, she’d graduated and become employed as a child life specialist, but the nerves were as bad as ever. Some things didn’t change.

Her long, chocolate-brown hair curled loosely down her back and she could feel its weight on her shoulders. She’d left it down for the interview, in spite of the triple-digit heat outside. And she’d donned her one pair of expensive maternity dress slacks, purchased before Kirk had learned that the baby she was carrying was going to be born with serious birth defects.

The nice thing to do would have been for Kirk to meet her at the elevator. She’d texted to let him know she’d arrived, just as he’d instructed. He’d texted back, telling her to come on up.

Since the doctor’s distressing diagnosis two months ago, Kirk hadn’t shown any deference to her pregnant state. He hadn’t spent many nights in their mountain-view home, either, leaving her to tend to her grief and worry and growing discomfort alone in their elite gated community.

He’d spent a lot of nights away before the doctor’s pronouncement, too. Just not as many.

Kylie, the firm’s latest blonde receptionist, smiled from behind the massive, curved desk directly across from the elevator.

“Good morning, Mrs. Henderson,” she said in her lilting saccharine voice. “He’s expecting you.” Kylie’s smile didn’t quite reach her eyes, but Lillie had never felt any animosity from the receptionist, who was likely a year or two older than Lillie’s twenty-three. What she felt coming from the other woman was more like pity.

She was sick of pity.

Kirk’s was the third office on the right—directly across from his father’s. His door was the only one closed. And, based on the rooms she’d passed on her way in and the morguelike silence of the space, his was the only one occupied, too. Not unusual for July in Phoenix. Half of the population left the scorching desert temperatures in the summer for cooler climates.

Standing in the hall in front of that closed door, her black Coach purse hanging from her shoulder, Lillie contemplated turning around and heading back the way she’d come. She was not a possession, or a pet, who had to perform on command.

It was possible Kirk wasn’t alone, but not likely. Kylie didn’t usually make mistakes.

That closed door was as deliberate as everything else Kirk did. As orchestrated as his smooth-talking charm had been during their senior year of college when he’d wooed her—an orphan without a home to visit during holidays—into his bed.

He was making her knock on her own husband’s door. Making her ask for permission to enter his abode. Treating her as little more than a stranger.

He was going to ask for a divorce.

She’d come because she didn’t want the conversation to happen at home, where she’d found a measure of peace.

Knocking, she thought about one of her patients, little Sandra, the six-year-old who’d recently undergone surgery to fix the damage done to her back in a car accident the previous spring. Employed by a local children’s hospital, Lillie had supported Sandra through every procedure since the accident, and had learned far more from the spirited redhead than she’d been able to impart as Sandra’s child life specialist.

No matter how much pain she was in, Sandra never lost the smile on her face—even when there were tears in her eyes. She never backed down from her willingness to take life head-on.

Kirk kept her waiting a full minute. She heard him clear his throat once as he approached from the inside.

“Lillie, come in,” he said, pulling open the door.

Without meeting his gaze, she entered, taking in the spectacular view, the pristine room and the uncluttered desk before settling in an armchair on the other side of the room. She’d be damned if she was going to be dumped sitting like a client in front of his desk.

Couldn’t he have waited until after the baby was born?