Page 1 of Kiss From A Rose

CHAPTER 1

Rose

Ilearned long ago not to wait up for Gray. So, it was a fool-me-ten-thousand-times situation when I did so on a Friday night, our twentieth wedding anniversary.

I'd hoped all day for a bouquet, a dinner invitation, hell, a text message saying:Happy Anniversary, babe. Followed by some flavor of:I'll make it up to you.

There had beennothing.

I didn’t make a big fuss over anniversaries or birthdays because I’d learned early on that it would only lead to disappointment. Gray had forgotten a few of my birthdays, and there were times when he’d grabbed flowers from a gas station for me.

It hadn't felt quite so bad when the kids were home—but the twins had left when they turned eighteen two years ago. Jude was earning a degree in architecture like his daddy at Duke, and Willow was pursuing pre-med at NYU.

So here I was, rattling around in a big house in Historic Brookhaven, one of the poshest areas in Buckhead, Atlanta, surrounded by every luxury I could’ve ever dreamed of growing up dirt poor in a trailer park in West End.

Gray had never been anything but wealthy. He grew up comfortable with an enormous amount of old family money; and a decade ago, he had inherited Rutherford Architects from his daddy. Oh, he'd grown it to the size it was through hard work and sheer will—but he didn't know what it meant to be hungry or worry about where to sleep.

I poured another glass of champagne, the last of the nice Perrier-Jouët I'd chilled for our anniversary.

So, what if he forgot?I told myself.It didn't matter.I remembered, and we'd toast, and maybe even if he were late, we'd make love—go back to a time when I wasn't quite so lonely in my marriage.

The clock struck midnight, and I knew it was time for Cinderella to turn into a pumpkin.

The door opened right then, and I heard him enter the house, laughing at something. I didn't need to look to see if he was on his phone.

He was.

"Of course, darlin'. I'll see you at work tomorrow. I know, we have that meeting at seven."

That darlin' would be his executive assistant. She'd come intoourlives three years ago. Beautiful and smart (she had a business degree from the University of Texas, Austin), Aimee Graham had moved to Atlanta from Dallas. She wasAimee, with one I and two Es and no Y. She was in her mid-twenties to Gray's forty-two.

I wondered sometimes if he was having an affair. But it didn't sit right with me. Not Gray. Maybe every wife whose husband cheated on her thought the same thing:no, not my husband.

The doubts came because we weren't having a lot of sex. Aimee, without a Y, was blonde, beautiful, andyoung. She didn't have gray hair to hide or dark spots to blend with a concealer. She hadn't spent a lifetime sitting at home raising children andkeepinghouse—she had a career.

When friends of ours, the Jamesons, got divorced because Kevin had been nailing his physical therapist (what a cliché), Gray had said,"Kevin outgrew Leah. While he was climbing the ladder, she was at home, not growing as a person, so he found someone young and thin to bang."

He didn't realize he was talking about me as well as Leah.

Like my friend, Ihadput on weight—you try having children, lose your metabolism as you grow old, and not do that.

Unlike me, Leah used to practice law, which she gave up to keep home because Kevin of the Jameson & Jameson law firm could not be bothered to raise his own children. After their marriage ended, she went back to work—a hard slog for a woman who'd been out of the workforce for over fifteen years.

Now Leah had a career that she'd built up in the past five years since the divorce. She lost her daughter to Kevin in the divorce (she blamed Leah) and her son to her daughter-in-law-to-be (she didn't like Leah).

Kevin and Leah had had a tight prenuptial agreement—but I knew Leah was happy to takenothingfrom Kevin.

"It's dirty money, Rose," she told me. "It's covered with my broken heart's blood."

Gray and I had a prenuptial agreement. He was the one with family wealth, and I was the trailer-trash girl who'd gotten knocked up. Mama Rutherford had hated me with a passion until she took her last breath a year ago. After years of marriage, she still called me a gold digger and started many a conversation with Gray saying,"You made a mistake with her, son."

"Why don't you say something?" I'd asked when I was younger, and Gray had shrugged it away.

"Just don't pay any attention to her. I married you, didn't I? So, what's the problem?"

When I was eighteen years old, pregnant with twins—and married way beyond my station, it hadn't been easy.

For all her flaws, Gray's mother had done everything she could to polish me up and make me presentable. I learned how to keep house, how to dress, how to buy the right flowers and gifts, how to throw a party—how to be a good Atlanta-society wife. I worked out to lose weight after the babies—and kept myself busy with the kids, charity work, throwing parties, and taking care of the house. I worked damn hard to be the wife Gray deserved. I hadn't wanted to letmy darling Graydown.

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