Another Man's Wife

It was back when he was at Nellis years ago. But a man didn’t forget a woman like that.

Her hair had been longer then. With her pictures plastered on the wall of their barracks, every guy in their first squadron was envious of Scott—or Spade, as they called him.

Nate closed his eyes.

Spade…whose career had escalated too fast, who’d died in the prime of life….

The pregnant woman in the elevator couldn’t possibly have been his widow—could she? When he’d crashed and died six months ago, Nate knew his friend’s only regret was that he and his wife had never been able to have children.

Was this woman, this pregnant woman, really his friend’s wife? If so, that could mean only one thing: she’d betrayed her husband.

Dear Reader,

Family relationships can bring us the greatest happiness and the greatest sorrow. One thing is certain. They’re always complicated, complex and intriguing.

In this novel, Another Man’s Wife, and the sequel, Home to Copper Mountain (coming from Superromance in May 2003), I’ve focused on the lives of two extraordinary brothers, Nate and Rick Hawkins, whose worlds are forever changed when tragedy strikes their remarkably close family.

As both men strive to put the pain behind them and make sense of their lives, we see them run the gamut of loss, anger, bitterness, guilt, confusion, self-doubt, struggle and growth—especially when they encounter the strong women whose love is able to heal their tortured souls.

I hope you enjoy their stories! And please check out my Web site, www.rebeccawinters-author.com.

Rebecca Winters

Another Man’s Wife

Rebecca Winters

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

EPILOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

MAJOR NATE HAWKINS GOT READY to climb out of the military transport at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado, aware that the moment his foot touched the tarmac, he’d be a civilian again.

Though he’d planned to stay in the Air Force until retirement, his mother’s unexpected death during an avalanche six months ago had brought huge changes to the Hawkins family. It seemed life had other plans for him.

He reminded himself that he could’ve been like Spade, who’d bought it during that damn air demonstration in Italy at the same time Nate had been burying his mother.

Nate knew he should be grateful to be alive….

The transport door opened. He filed out behind a couple of crewmen. After leaving the milder temperatures back in Holland, the frigid March air came as a shock. You’d never know spring was officially here.

He grimaced to think that his mother wouldn’t be home when he got there, and a sense of grief, of bleakness, settled over him. If this was how his father felt now that she was gone, then Nate understood why his parents’ ski business was in danger of going under.

“Hey, Nate! This way!”

His brother’s voice broke through the heavy shroud of oppression that had enveloped him during the long flight.

““Rick!” Thank God for that constant in his life.

A warm feeling displaced the sadness, and he rushed past people to reach his brother. Only a year apart in age, both men were six feet two, an inch taller than their father. They’d inherited his powerful athletic build, but it was Rick with the gray eyes who looked most like their dad.

Nate, on the other hand, had dark-blond hair and resembled their deceased mother, a statuesque, blue-eyed blonde from Are, Sweden. According to her, when the boys were toddlers people had often mistaken them for twins because Rick’s hair hadn’t turned brown yet.

They gave each other a fierce hug. “It’s good to see you, man.”

“You don’t know the half of it,” Rick muttered.

Nate took a second look at his younger brother. Since tragedy had struck their family, the happy-go-lucky attitude—which had earned him the name “lucky” on the ski slopes and the racetrack—was still missing.

That didn’t surprise Nate, but the set of Rick’s features did.

“I take it you’ve already seen Dad.” Their plan had been to walk into the house together and surprise him.

“You could say that,” came Rick’s cryptic comment.

“Have you told him what we’ve done?”

“Not yet.”

Something else was wrong, something besides the fact that being home again was a painful reminder of their mother’s death.

“Is Dad waiting in the car?”

“No.”

“You’re not going to tell me anything else?”

Rick’s lips formed an unpleasant twist. “You don’t want to know yet. Come on. Let’s get out of here, so we can be private.”

On that mysterious note, Nate followed his brother through freshly fallen snow to the four-wheel-drive Blazer bearing the Eagles’ Nest Ski and Bike Shop logo on the side. He tossed his duffel in the back seat and walked around to the front passenger door.

Nate had to admit he was relieved that Rick had come alone. Nate wasn’t ready to be united with his father yet. The deep lines of grief carved in the older man’s sunbronzed face before they’d closed the casket still kept him awake nights.

For the two hours it would take to reach Copper Mountain, he and Rick could discuss how they were going to proceed from here.

Their mother had been their father’s soul mate, his joie de vivre. Since the funeral, the fear that he might never recover had haunted both brothers.

It hadn’t helped that after her burial, the demands of Nate’s career had forced him to leave his desolate father. Having just returned from another long deployment with NATO forces, he’d been told to report to Edwards Air Force Base in California to get checked out in the MATV jet.

A couple of the guys had flown there in their Vipers to act as bandits. For several weeks, they did tactical fighting before he was sent to Holland. When he was on the ground there, he’d concentrated on his studies of Dutch for the exchange pilot program. Throughout that period there’d been little time to devote to his father’s mental state.

Rick had left the day after Nate for Phoenix, Arizona, the U.S. headquarters for Mayada auto manufacturing, based in Kyoto, Japan. On the professional Formula I racing circuit for the Japanese, he’d accumulated an impressive number of wins around the world.

The heavy demands on his time meant he’d found it as difficult as Nate to keep in close touch with their dad.

Through sporadic, unsatisfactory phone calls to him and to each other, it became clear to both of them that their father wasn’t doing well. Without the woman who’d been his life’s partner in every conceivable way, he’d changed dramatically from the man he’d once been. Even the business they’d run together had started to fail.

Before her death, their father had always displayed an indomitable will, or so Nate had thought. There were Olympic medals and world championship medals for alpine skiing events hanging on the wall in the den. They provided evidence of their parents’ remarkable talents and shared zest for life.

To Nate’s chagrin, her untimely passing had sent their father into a sharp decline. The fear that he might remain in a permanent state of mourning had alarmed Nate enough to cut short his flying career and come home.

On his own, Rick had made the same decision. No one could bring their mother back, but they could try to bring a little happiness to their father’s life. Not only that, Rick had chosen to give up his racing career in order to help salvage their parents’ business, with its inevitable highs and lows.

Nate rubbed his face. He badly needed a shave. Rick looked like he could use one, too.

“Okay.” He nudged his brother’s shoulder. “Let’s have it.” They’d left Colorado Springs and were headed for Copper Mountain on Highway 9. The road was one continuous ribbon of black ice, but Nate never worried when Rick was at the wheel. “I’m assuming Natalie didn’t take the news well. How soon will she be joining you?”

“I’m afraid I didn’t invite her along.”

He turned in his brother’s direction. “Why not? I thought you two were destined for something serious.”

“So did I at first. There’s a strong attraction between us, but—”

“But it never did feel right,” Nate finished the thought.

“No. What about you and Kari?”

“She’d never be happy in the U.S. It just wouldn’t have worked for us.”

“It’s the ‘feel right’ part neither of us has found yet,” Rick muttered.

Nate glanced at him, nodding. “We’re quite a pair, you know that?”

He expected some sort of response from his brother, but nothing was forthcoming. “Rick? You’ve kept me in suspense long enough.”

His brother’s solemn gaze swerved to him. “It’s Dad. When was the last time you talked to him?”

“Two weeks ago, before our wing was deployed on a mission. We didn’t return until yesterday.”

“What was he like on the phone?”

“Preoccupied more than anything.”

“At least you talked to him. After my race last Wednesday, I called him from England. There was no answer so I called the ski shop. Jim said he’d gone to Denver and wouldn’t be back for the rest of the week.”

“What’s in Denver?”

“I asked him the same question. He claimed to have no idea. I sensed he was being evasive about something.”

Jim Springmeyer had worked for their parents ten years. “That means he was covering for him. Not a good sign,” Nate said. “In Dad’s frame of mind—”

Rick broke in. “Since I couldn’t reach you, I decided to fly home from London early. I thought I’d give him a surprise.”

Nate’s patience had run out. “And?”

A strange sound escaped Rick. “I’m afraid I’m the one who got the surprise. You could say I received the shock of my life.” His voice was unsteady.

“You’re not about to tell me he’s turned to drinking—” The facetious comment wasn’t meant to be taken seriously. It disturbed him that he couldn’t get his brother to lighten up a little more.

Rick shook his head. “Sorry. You’re not even close.”

Nate’s chest tightened. “Just spit it out!”

“When I walked through the house, I found our father in the kitchen. He wasn’t alone….”

Nate noticed his brother’s strong grip on the steering wheel. His knuckles had gone white from the pressure.

“Rick—”

“He had this woman in a clinch by the sink.”

A clinch? What?

Nate blinked.

“They were so far gone, they never saw or heard me. I don’t know how I did it, but I managed to tiptoe back to the living room before calling out to Dad that I was home.”

The picture those words conjured up plunged Nate into a different realm of pain than he’d ever experienced before. The kind only a parent can inflict on his child.

“This soon after Mother?” he whispered.

“It gets worse. After dad brought her into the living room and introduced us, he announced that they’re engaged to be married. They’d gone to Denver to pick out her ring.”

Nate felt like he’d gone into an inverted dive and had waited too late to pull out of it.

“Dad said he was glad I’d decided to come home for a surprise visit because that saved him having to phone me with the news.”

“If this woman is someone Mom and Dad knew before the accident, I don’t wa—”

“Noooo. She’s a Texan who came to Colorado a month ago because of a friend’s wedding reception. Apparently she’s never been on a pair of skis. While she was shopping for sunglasses in the ski shop, Dad challenged her to get out on the slopes and try it. He gave her a few lessons, and things went from there.”

At fifty-three, their father was still an attractive man—and he could still outski the best skiers in the area. As early as sixteen he’d been on the U.S. ski team. By the time he’d met their mother five years later, he’d garnered many wins. They were married soon after, and within a year she was pregnant with Nate. People commented on their devotion to each other.

She’d been gone such a short while, it simply hadn’t occurred to Nate that his father would be interested in another woman. Not this soon anyway. The idea of his marrying again…

“Are you still with me?”

“Yes,” Nate murmured, utterly staggered by the news. “Is she divorced, widowed, what?”

“Ms. Pamela Jarrett has never been married. She lives and works on a ranch outside Austin, Texas.”

“What I’m hearing doesn’t make any sense.”

“It does to Dad. Hell, Nate—she’s only eleven years older than I am.”

With a little calculating, Nate realized she was fourteen years younger than their mother had been when she’d died.

“Dad looked so different from the man we saw at the funeral, it’s like another person’s inhabited his body. It made me feel…weird. You know?”

Nate understood exactly what his brother was trying to say. They’d been so busy establishing their own careers, neither of them had settled down to marriage for the first time. Yet their father was already jumping into a second marriage with a younger woman he’d barely met.

“Does Ms. Jarrett know Dad doesn’t have any money except what’s tied up in the business?” Nate’s flare of anger couldn’t be held back. He was stunned to think his father could replace his mother with another woman this quickly.

“I asked him that in private. He told me not to worry about it. She lives on her own piece of the Jarrett ranch.”

His head jerked toward his brother. “What the hell could he be thinking?”

“It’s gone beyond thinking. Our father has the hots for her.” Rick sounded as embittered as Nate felt.

The hots. It was a term younger guys used all the time. But when it was applied to their own father, a man Nate had loved and revered all his life, it sounded crude, distasteful.

“If it’d been anywhere but our home…”

Rick seemed to be reading his mind. “That’s what we get for planning to surprise him,” Nate told him.

“Sorry, man, but I never thought the day would come when I wouldn’t feel free to walk into the house where we were born and raised.”

“You forget we grew up and went away. Isn’t there an old saying that you can never go home again?” Nate was still trying to process these painful new facts. “What’s she like?”

“As different from Mom as you can get.”

His eyes closed tightly. What had happened to love everlasting? “Go on. I’d rather hear it all now and get it over with.”

“Pamela’s a petite brunette. She’s got that Texan drawl.” He shrugged. “She’s nice enough I suppose.”

Anja Soderhelm Hawkins had been a tall, beautiful, athletic blonde. Sometimes when their dad had teased him or Rick because they hadn’t found the right women to marry yet, he’d comment that their mother was probably a difficult act to follow. They’d have to look long and hard to find anyone as perfect.

Interesting how it had only taken him six months to find perfection again.

Texans flocked to Colorado in the winter. When Nate and Rick were growing up, they’d always found a Texan accent amusing, especially on the women who seemed to stuff more words into one minute than any other female they’d encountered. Since neither of their parents were verbose people, Nate couldn’t imagine his dad with a fast-talking Texan.

“Dad’s thinking of moving to the ranch with her, and leaving the house and business to us.”

Nate hadn’t seen that blow coming. His eyes smarted with tears, and he realized that home as he’d known it no longer existed. It made the moment surreal.

He darted Rick a searching glance. “How are you handling it?”

“I’m not.”

“Well, that makes two of us.”

“Dad’s got to be out of his mind!”

“Have they set a date?” Though it nearly killed him, Nate had to ask.

“While they were in Denver, they talked about getting married in Las Vegas. That is, as soon as you and I give the okay. When I told him you were arriving tonight, Dad looked kind of relieved.”

Nate could think of nothing to say.

“Dad said he would’ve told us about Pamela sooner,” Rick went on, “but he’s been putting it off, since he knew our feelings must be pretty raw because of Mom.”

“He’s right about that. Good grief—she has to have some kind of hold over him. We left him alone too long after Mom died. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s had a nervous breakdown and this woman’s taking advantage of his vulnerability.”

After a few moments’ silence, Rick eventually spoke. “As I see it, there’s only one reason Dad would want to act this fast.”

Nate’s thought had been the same. “No matter what, we’re not going to let him run off to Nevada because he’s afraid she might already be pregnant,” he said. “None of our family’s friends or acquaintances would understand. Dad will have to arrange to be married here.”

“Just not at our house,” Rick whispered. This time there were tears in his voice.

“No,” Nate concurred. Not at the home where their close-knit family had once known happiness. “There’s always Vale or Breckenridge.”

Rick cleared his throat. “You know something? Seeing them in the kitchen where he and Mo—”

“Don’t say it.” Nate couldn’t imagine what that must’ve been like for Rick.

His brother pounded his fist against the steering wheel. “I saw Dad’s car out in front. I had no idea what I was walking in on when I let myself into the house.”

“Neither of us could have foreseen this.”

“I don’t know about you, but suddenly I feel…old.”

“I know what you mean.”

“LAUREL? Phone’s for you.”

Laurel Pierce was lying on the couch in the den with her legs propped up. She put down the baby magazine she’d been reading. “I hope it’s Mom.” She mouthed the words as her sister walked into the room and passed her the cordless.

Julie shook her head. “Scott’s mom,” she mouthed back.

Laurel groaned.

“You can’t keep ignoring her. Just talk to her for a minute and get it over with,” her sister whispered.

Julie was right, of course. For the last half year, Laurel had asked her sister to screen her calls and make excuses when she couldn’t face talking to certain people on the phone. It had become a habit and it wasn’t fair to Julie.

She put the phone to her ear. “Hi, Reba.”

“Laurel, dear. Finally! I’ve made several attempts to call you, but it seems like you’re never there. We haven’t heard from you in over a week!”

“I know. I’m sorry. It’s been busy around here with the kids coming and going to music classes and ski lessons. Didn’t Mom tell you everything was fine at my last appointment with the obstetrician?”

“Yes, but it’s not the same as hearing the details from you,” Reba said in a hurt voice. “Have you changed your mind about not wanting to know if you’re having a boy or girl?”

“No. I’d rather be surprised.”

“That’s too bad. It limits the choice of colors for baby gifts. We’re planning a big shower for you, but we can’t mail the invitations without a date. How soon are you leaving Denver to come home?”

Guilt weighed Laurel down. How many times had she heard that question over the last few months? She flashed her sister a look of distress.

Philadelphia was the city where she’d been born and raised, where she’d gone to high school and met Scott. But being married to an Air Force man for ten years had taken her to so many places around the globe, no one spot felt like home anymore—Philadelphia least of all, now that Scott was dead.

More than eleven months had passed since the last time she’d curled up in his arms. Little had she known that after he’d left the next morning for a long deployment with NATO forces, those arms would never hold her again….

Thank heaven she’d been able to get through to him before the air show and tell him the implant had worked. They were expecting.

The joy in his voice was her final remembrance of him before word came that he’d crashed. If she could be thankful for one thing, it was that he went to his death knowing she was pregnant with his baby.

She hadn’t wanted to adopt until they’d tried every other option, including fertility drugs. In vitro fertilization had been their last resort. The doctors had made several attempts to fertilize her eggs using his frozen sperm; finally an embryo had been implanted and the procedure was successful.

It helped her more than anyone could know that their final communication over the phone had brought them closer than they’d been in a long time. They’d expressed their love and had talked about a future that included this unborn child. The three of them would be a family, and Scott would become a father, as he’d always wanted.

She had military friends who’d lost husbands or wives during difficult periods in their marriages. Some still grieved because their last words to each other had been said in anger.

When all was said and done, Laurel felt very blessed. Although the demands of Scott’s career had taken him away a lot, the times they’d spent together she would cherish forever. It was true that if she’d had a child, the periods when he was gone wouldn’t have felt so long and lonely. But all of that was in the past now.

“Laurel?”

“Yes?”

“Why didn’t you answer my question? You only have four weeks left. Scotty arrived ten days early.”

I know. I know it all.

“That doesn’t leave much room for a party, dear.”

The time had come to drop her bombshell. Her gaze clung to Julie’s for moral support.

“You’re right, Reba, but my doctor says it’s too late to fly anywhere now.”

Her sister broke into a smile and gave her a thumbs-up. Before her mother-in-law could react, Laurel decided to get it all said. It was long past time.

“Realistically speaking, I won’t be able to travel anywhere until after my delivery. Why don’t we plan on a shower once I’ve had my six week checkup in May? I’ll fly out with the baby and take turns staying with you and Mom.”

“But that’s months away! I don’t understand you, Laurel. You’ve changed since the funeral. Have you stopped loving us?”

She closed her eyes tightly. “Of course not, Reba. I’ll always love you and Wendell. You’re my baby’s grandparents.”

“But you don’t want to be around us.” Underlying her mother-in-law’s accusation, Laurel felt her pain.

She put her feet to the floor and sat up. “It isn’t that. But I’ve had to face the fact that Scott’s never coming back.”

Those words needed to be said. She’d heard other pilots’ widows say them after the healing process had begun. Now she was able to say them herself.

“I’ve found that being away from reminders of him has made this period easier to bear. Being with Julie and her family in new surroundings—knowing my baby is almost here—everything’s helped me get over the worst of my grief.”

It was true. Six months ago she hadn’t thought it possible.

Julie’s eyes turned suspiciously bright.

“What about our family’s pain? Did you ever consider how much we’ve needed you?”

“Yes.” She swallowed hard. “The only thing that’s helped me in that regard was knowing you and Wendell still have each other and your other children and grandchildren for comfort.”

“So you’re cutting us out of your life. Is that it?”

“You know that’s not true! I told you I’ll come for a visit in May.”