The Wife He Never Wanted (Second Chance Billionaires #2)

Chapter One

THE DOG IN KENNEL NINE had a name now, and that was the problem.

Paige crouched on the concrete with the gate open and a strip of boiled chicken balanced flat on the back of her hand, waiting.

Skipper watched her from the back corner, same as always, a Shepherd and Lab mix somewhere north of eight years old, one ear torn to a soft nub, with a rope of scar tissue running pink through the fur along his ribs.

He had been at Harbor Street for sixteen months. Nobody wanted a big black senior dog with a face that had clearly lost a fight or two, and every family that walked the row stopped at the puppies and the little fluffy ones then moved on past him.

“I’m not going anywhere,” she said, and settled deeper onto her heels. “I’ve got all afternoon and a whole bag of this.”

He came to her low and carefully, the same slow approach as every day, taking the chicken with a mouth so gentle it undid her a little. She scratched the good ear. He leaned his whole weight into her shins, and she let him, because that was the deal they had.

He trusted her and nobody else, and she had promised herself she wouldn’t be one more person who left him.

She couldn’t take him home. Her father broke out in hives at anything with fur, and the one time she’d raised the subject of a dog with Maddox, he’d looked at her like she’d suggested livestock in the great room.

Skipper stayed, so she came every day, and that was the arrangement she could give him.

“Paige.” Claire’s voice carried down the row, dry as ever. “It’s four. Weren’t you leaving at three?”

“I was leaving at three.”

“Somehow, it’s four.”

Paige gave Skipper one last rub and stood, her knees cracking, chicken grease on her jeans and the Harbor Street T-shirt she had washed so many times the logo had nearly faded out needing to be tugged down.

Claire stood at the end of the row with a clipboard and the expression she saved for volunteers who couldn’t tell time, which was most of them, which was the whole point of the place.

“You should be home,” Claire said. “Isn’t it your anniversary?”

The word twisted Paige’s stomach. “It is.”

“Two years.”

“Yeah.” She wiped her hand on her jeans. “I’m cooking. I have short ribs braising.”

Claire looked at her for a second longer than the comment deserved.

She always knew things she didn’t say, like every animal’s history stored in her without a chart and every volunteer’s excuse clocked before they finished making it.

Then she jerked her chin toward the door.

“Then get out of my shelter and go feed your husband. The dog will be here tomorrow.”

That was the trouble. The dog was always there tomorrow. Too many of them were, but Skipper seemed destined to become a lifer in the no-kill shelter.

Paige drove home with the windows down and the radio up, repeating every reason tonight might still work, the same as she had every day for a year.

Tonight, she would get it right. She had the whole evening planned out to the minute.

Braised short ribs, because Maddox had told her once, early, back when he still told her things, that his father used to make them on Sundays.

The good wine. The sexy red lingerie she’d bought for tonight.

She had sent Rosa and the evening staff home at noon, all of them, because she wanted the house empty, quiet, and hers for one night, with no one moving through the rooms with a cloth and a discreet nod.

She wanted the two of them alone again, before the house filled up with people paid to keep their life running smoothly.

By seven, the ribs were falling off the bone, the table was set, and she had changed into the deep red set covered by the silky red robe that barely concealed more than it revealed.

She lit the candles, poured herself half a glass to steady the nerves from waiting, and stood at the counter. She rehearsed, a little, the light thing she would say when he walked in, the easy joke that would make this a good night instead of a careful one.

He was late. That was fine. He was always late. She turned the oven to warm, refilled her glass, and told herself the story where the lateness meant he was finishing so he could be all hers.

The garage door went up at eight-forty. She heard the car, the door, and his voice, so he probably had the phone against his ear.

She smoothed the robe, arranged a warm expression, and hoped it looked real, hiding her nervousness at his reception of this surprise.

Maddox came through from the mudroom with his tie loose, his jacket over one arm, and his phone tucked between shoulder and jaw as she had expected. He walked into his own kitchen, past the candles, the table, and the woman standing beside it in a red robe, and he didn’t see her.

“No, the Bellweather numbers don’t work if we carry the Templeton exposure into Q3,” he was saying. “Varlin needs to restructure it before the board sees it, not after. I don’t care what time it is there.”

He set his phone down on the island, screen up, still lit. He loosened his tie the rest of the way. He looked at the mail on the counter, not at her, and thumbed through it. Paige stood four feet away in the robe and the candlelight, waiting for her own husband to notice she was in the room.

He didn’t.

“Maddox.”

He glanced up, distracted, still half inside the call. “Hey. Sorry, that was Varlin. It’s a mess.” He went back to the mail.

Her lungs constricted then released into a cold dread she knew and hated. She set her glass down very carefully so she wouldn’t throw it.

“I’ve been standing here five minutes,” she said.

He looked up again. This time, he saw the candles, took in the table, the wine, and the robe. She caught the moment he remembered the date, too late, with nothing behind it ready to meet her.

“Paige.” He said her name and then stalled on it, checking it against a calendar in his head. “Is it—”

“It’s the Ninth. Yes.”

“God.” He set the mail down. He scrubbed a hand over his face, and for a moment, he looked tired instead of absent, and that almost helped. “Paige, I’m sorry. It’s been... The merger is at a place where if I’m not on it every hour it slips, and I lost the—”

“You lost the day.”

“Yes.” He sounded apologetic but not really.

She had planned to be gentle. She had planned a whole evening of being a wife worth coming home to. She stood there in the red robe with the short ribs drying out in the warm oven and watched the plan go to pieces.

Under the ruined plan was two years of the same conversation, familiar enough to make her scream.

“It’s fine,” she said but it wasn’t, and they both knew it.

That was when the mudroom door opened again.

“Maddox, your driveway is a marathon. I’m going to need a map and a Sherpa.

” A woman came into the kitchen as though certain it was hers.

She stopped, took in the candles, the table, and Paige in lingerie, then arranged her face into a sympathy that was all performance.

“Oh. Oh, no. Did I interrupt something?”

She was tall and gorgeous. Her black architectural bob surely cost more in styling products to maintain than the short ribs and the wine together.

She looked at the anniversary table with an expression of such tender apology that Paige understood, immediately and completely, that the apology was pure performance with a dash of cruelty.

Maddox stepped back from the counter. “Paige, this is Laila Denatto. She’s...an old friend. She’s going to be staying with us for a little while. I meant to—” He stopped. He had meant to a lot of things but never did.

“You meant to tell me?” Paige didn’t bother with an understanding tone this time.

“Yes.”

“Before or after you gave her the guest room?”

Laila kept smiling, but Paige caught the flash of pleasure under it, there and gone before she could be sure. “I can find a hotel. Honestly, I don’t want to be a bother. Maddox insisted.” She touched his arm, briefly but with an air of proprietary. “He can be very insistent.”

Paige looked at the hand on her husband’s arm, and then at her husband, who didn’t move his arm away, and then at the two candles she had lit for a marriage she had spent two years trying to keep warm.

The last thread she had been holding for a year came loose without a sound. There was no snap to it. Just a sudden give. Paige abruptly understood Maddox had stopped trying a long time ago.

She bent forward and blew out the candles one by one, taking her time about it, making a small ceremony of it. “The guest room has fresh sheets. I did those this morning.”

She picked up her wine and walked out of her own kitchen, heading upstairs to put on clothes. Behind her she heard Laila say, warm as anything, “She seems lovely, Maddox.” Lovely. Like a throw pillow, or a well-trained retriever.

She didn’t stop walking, because if she stopped walking, she was going to do something she couldn’t take back, and she wasn’t ready yet.