The Life You Stole (Life Duet 2)

“It’s a generous offer, Graham. I appreciate it. I’ll talk with Evie tonight.”

He slammed the accelerator and veered off to the right, again … nowhere near the cart path. “I can call her if you need me to sell it.”

“I don’t need you to sell anything to my wife.”

Graham grinned. “True. I don’t sell her things; I just give them to her. Like the building. I know she thought I overstepped some boundary, that it was too much, but it wasn’t. We’re friends … family really. And family takes care of each other.”

Scratching my cheek, I asked the question I hated to have to ask, but I had no clue. “What building? What are you talking about?”

“Whoa!” He stopped so quickly, I had to brace my hand against the dash. “She didn’t tell you I signed over the deed to her building so she wouldn’t have to worry about rent or anyone else making the decisions about the building?”

My anger started to boil. I wasn’t even sure who was feeding it at that point. Graham? Evie? Myself?

“She didn’t mention that yet. How kind of you. I’d have to agree, it’s a bit too kind. She can’t accept it.”

“Oh …” He hopped out and handed me my pitching wedge. “I didn’t give her a choice. It’s ridiculous and completely ego-driven to not accept it. I don’t need the building, the rent, the hassle. I know, if the tables were turned, she’d do the same thing for me.” He nodded to the sand trap. “You’re going to have to get some air on it or it will roll back into the bunker.” Again, without sounding judgmental or condescending, he coached me on my golf game like a friend or brother.

I understood Evie’s frustration with his personality. One minute you wanted to break his nose, the next minute you found yourself begrudgingly mumbling the words “thank you.” Still, she should have told me. I didn’t appreciate feeling like the uninformed husband. It gave Graham the appearance that we kept secrets from each other. That thought made me cringe. I had kept my fair share of secrets from Evie, but I did it to protect her.

Biting my tongue and unclenching my fist to take the club from him, I walked the fucking thin line between embracing Graham as a friend (that he most likely was not) and the enemy I feared most. Whatever the saying was about keeping your friends close and your enemies closer definitely applied to Graham Porter and his obsession with my wife.

I squeezed in a few hours of actual work after golfing and picked up bread, bananas, a jar of pasta sauce, and toilet paper on my way home. Three sets of eyes and accompanying smiles greeted me before I shifted my Subaru into park a few feet from the toy-scattered driveway. Franz and Anya abandoned their plasma cars, charging at me as I climbed out of my vehicle. I barely got the door shut before they tackled me. Giving into their play, I stumbled back, folding to the ground to be their new jungle gym.

“Da-ee!” Anya straddled my neck, planting her hands on my cheeks and showering my face with kisses while Franz shoved my knees toward my chest to hop onto my legs for me to teeter-totter him.

“Oof! What did I do to deserve this? And what’s Mommy doing?”

“Sweeping,” Evie called from the two-stall garage, all legs in her frayed-edge denim shorts, tight pink tee, and old, not-so-white Chucks. “Some of us had to work the whole day and clean out the garage.”

“I love that we share our locations with each other. But you know … those aren’t always accurate, especially at this altitude.”

“Pfft …” She pushed the broom behind a pile of debris to the middle of the garage floor.

I lumbered back to standing, shedding two kids like a mama dog calling it quits on mealtime for her pups. They wandered back to the driveway clogged with way too many toys, and I retrieved the sack of groceries from the backseat.

“What can I say?” I sauntered into the garage as her dirt-smudged face gave me the stink eye. “Graham wouldn’t take no for an answer. You know how that is … like when he gifts you an entire building.”

Her scowl dropped from her face in less than a single breath, instantly replaced with a cringe. I continued toward the back door without giving her a second glance.

“It slipped my mind.”

I opened the door. “Like winning the lottery slips someone’s mind.” The door slammed shut behind me.

Two seconds later, she opened the door, straddling the threshold to keep an eye on the kids while I prepared for her shitty excuse. “It was the day I saw you sharing a booth with the notorious home-wrecker. The building slipped my mind in the midst of feeling like my marriage was over.”