Page 1 of Naughty Secrets

Chapter One

NATALIE

“Got a present for you.” Sam tosses a bunch of freshly picked carrots in the kitchen sink.

I force a smile, while inside I scream.

I hate carrots.

I also hate beets, cucumbers, radishes, broccoli, potatoes, corn, and all the other fruits and vegetables that have to be picked, washed, prepared, and canned during harvest. I hate the early mornings and the late nights, the loaves of bread I have to bake, the roasts I have to cook, and the pails of sandwiches I have to make and take out to the fields for Sam and his hired men. I hate that Sam sleeps in a different room from August until October, and then again during seeding from April until June because he gets up before dawn and goes to bed after midnight, and he doesn’t want to disturb me.

But most of all, I hate that it doesn’t matter. After ten years as a farm wife, I’ve gotten used to sleeping alone.

Today is a hating day, and the damn carrots are going to suffer.

“I’ll make a carrot cake.” I imagine the satisfaction of grating the wretched carrots into a pulp. “You like carrot cake.”

Sam has to be reminded of what he likes. He eats, not because he enjoys the food I prepare, but because he needs fuel, and if something appeals to his palate, I only know if he asks for more.

He grunts his assent and washes his hands in the kitchen sink. Sam’s hands were the first things I noticed about him when he moved to town. He was sixteen, the only son of a banker who had given up a lucrative city career to move to our very own Revival, Montana after he inherited a farm from a distant uncle.

When Sam showed up in our tenth-grade English class wearing a black leather jacket covered in studs, his long, dark hair cut short at the back, and so long in the front that it partially covered his face—much to our teacher’s irritation—and carrying a guitar over one shoulder, he became an instant hero among the predominately rural conservative student population. A rebel after my own heart.

Even now, I still remember how his Evanescence T-shirt fitted tight around his lean, muscular frame. He was tall and just starting to fill out, although his broad shoulders and rippled muscles hinted at what was to come. His gray eyes seemed to flash and glitter like a summer storm, and when he first turned his electric gaze on me, I melted inside.

“I’m looking for the chemistry lab,” he said to me after the bell rang. I don’t know why he picked me out of the twenty girls and fifteen boys who were all curious about the newest member of our school, but his voice, deep and smooth, curled around me, holding me in place.

“I’m going that way. I’ll take you, if you want.”

He smiled slightly, and that quirk of his lips made me smile too, although I’d never been a big one for smiling. I wasn’t shy, but I wasn’t the most outgoing girl in class. I preferred the library, where I could read to my heart’s content, to the sports field, where I was solid “B” team material. My family wasn’t poor, but I had two older brothers and an older sister, and why buy new books for me when I could read the books we had, even if I wasn’t interested in princesses and ponies, dinosaurs and dragsters. Why waste money on clothes or toys, or anything at all?

“Thanks.” He offered me his schedule, and that’s when I noticed his hands. Big hands. Strong hands. Steady, solid, work hands. They didn’t fit his clothes, or the smooth way he walked, or the musician persona he wore like a shield.

I’d never been with a boy in any way—not even a kiss—but I had a part-time job in the local library, and I’d read about the things a boy could do with his hands when they slipped beneath your clothes. For some reason the idea of Sam’s hands on my body made me hot inside.

“What’s for lunch?” Sam now pushes away the memories of Sam then, and he takes his seat at the dining room table we received as a wedding gift from my sisters when we moved back to Revival to start our family. A life as a farmer’s wife wasn’t how I ever imagined my future, but once he got those beautiful hands on me, I would have followed him anywhere.

“Meatloaf and potatoes.” I put the plate in front of him. “Green beans. Do you want gravy?”

He looks around the kitchen, as if the gravy would be anywhere other than on the stove. “Do you have some?”

“Yes, of course.”

A sunbeam breaks through the clouds, lighting Sam’s face, and I catch a glimpse of the boy I fell in love with beneath the weathered, sun-kissed skin. He is stronger now, heavier and thickly muscled. But unlike many of the local farmers who enjoy their biscuits and gravy, he is still lean, his belly flat and rippled from years of hard labor.

I stare at him, remembering the early days when my heart would have jumped at the thought of touching those rippling muscles, or feeling those strong hands on my body. After high school, we left Revival behind and moved to Billings together, he to pursue his dream of playing in a band, and me to study at college to be an elementary school teacher. An unexpected and late addition to the family—my father was fifty-five when I was born and my mother was forty-eight—I had grown up hyperaware of kids who were unwanted, whether they were in foster care, or neglected, abandoned or alone. Inspired by an English teacher who had taken me under her wing, I had decided to pursue a profession where I could make a difference to kids who needed a little extra love.

If I’d known those would be the best ten years of my life, I would have tried to capture them—from the smell of fresh bread that drifted into our tiny apartment from the bakery below, to the soft strum of Sam’s guitar when he was composing, and from the crazy, wild sex that had consumed our nights to the long, lazy mornings we spent twined around each other in bed. Although we didn’t have a lot of money, we had each other, and that was all I needed.

“I’ll have gravy,” Sam says, pulling me out of the past.

I pour a splash of gravy over his meat and potatoes, but not on his vegetables. Sam likes his vegetables plain.

“I took the day off and I’ve some errands to run, so I’d better get going.” I put the gravy boat on the table. “I made an apple pie. It’s on the counter. Vanilla ice cream is in the freezer on the left-hand side.”

I never eat the apple pies I bake. We planted the apple tree after our son, Ethan, was born, six months to the day after we married in a shotgun wedding that my parents refused to attend. Why would I get married when Sam didn’t have a steady job? And why would I have a baby when I wasn’t even finished with college? They were already busy looking after their six grandchildren from my siblings, and they weren’t keen on any more.

But I didn’t expect them to understand that all my life I’d just wanted something that was mine. Something new and perfect and made for me. My baby might have been unplanned and unexpected, but he would never be unwanted, a burden that slowed the family down.

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