Page 1 of His Secret Virgin
Chapter 1
Christopher
Not long ago, the laughter of my children always managed to stir my heart in a way nothing else ever had. Even as adults, the sound of their laughter riding the wind made me smile. When they were young, I lived my life for my girls. But time passed, life happened, and somehow that all changed.
My role as the doting father seemed like eons ago; now I had nothing, no one. And I couldn’t be happier about it.
“Dad?” I heard my oldest, Lauren, call out. “We know you’re home. Don’t bother hiding from us. Ashley and I want to know all about how your forty-sixth birthday went yesterday.”
My forty-sixth birthday. Fuck, I’m old!
Sitting on the back deck watching the sun as it dropped out of the sky, I didn’t particularly want to hear anything my darling daughters had to say. They’d just come back from a weekend shopping spree with their bitch of a mother. I didn’t want to hear a thing about my ex-wife.
Five blissful years of being happily divorced had gone by, and I looked forward to many more years of paradise without that banshee in my life.
“Dad?” Ashley called out in her sing-song voice. “Where are you? Come out, come out, wherever you are.”
“On the deck, my loves.” I figured I might as well let them say their piece and get it over with. The glass of Scotch I held in my hand would help steady me for their jabs, I hoped.
High heels clicked over the wooden floor as my always fashionable daughters made their way out to me. Lauren at twenty-five, had done little with her life thus far. It seemed she planned on majoring in purchasing all the clothing possible at the college of Daddy’s Credit Card.
“There you are.” Shuffling through her enormous purse, she fished out a yellow envelope. “From me, Daddy. Happy forty-sixth birthday.” She punctuated her sentence with a kiss on my cheek.
“Thank you, my dear.” Opening the envelope, I found a blue card inside. Fireworks covered the front of the card and exclaimed that I should have a happy one. Inside there was a signature, Lauren Taylor, and nothing more than that. “Well, it’s only a day late.”And a dollar and sentiment short.“Thank you, darling.”
Ashley took a seat across from me then smoothed her hand over new denim jeans that fit her like a glove. “I didn’t have a chance to get you a card.” Her narrow shoulders moved with a shrug. “But you already have everything money can buy, so that makes it pretty hard to buy gifts for you.”
“Sorry about that.” I found it odd that my youngest daughter would try to make me feel guilty for not needing anything.
Ashley, at twenty-three, wasn’t exactly a scholar either. Unfortunately, Lisa, their mother, never taught them much in terms of ambition. My ex’s master plan was for our girls to do what she did: find a man, train him right, help him become a success, and then ride his coattails.
Lisa had done that for twenty-one years before I found out she’d been cheating on me throughout most of our marriage. I had been unhappy with our marriage for at least five years before I found her in our bed with another man.
Whether it was wrong of me or not, I was happy to have a legitimate reason to divorce the woman who’d made my life hell for what felt like an eternity.
Lauren took a seat at the table, grinning like the Cheshire Cat. “Mom said we should get you a cane for your birthday, old man.”
I didn’t find that so funny.
“I suppose it must be all the surgeries that made her forget she’s a week older than me. But when you have to go in once a year to get your face lifted and every couple of years to get your fake boobs pulled up, I guess you forget how old you really are.” I knew it was a shitty thing to say, but I didn’t care.
“Put your claws away, Dad!” Ashley said with a smirk as she raked her hand in the air. “She told us to tell you happy birthday from her and that she would like nothing more than to join us some weekend, here at the lake.”
It would be a cold day in Hell before I invited that woman to my home.
“Um, no.” I took a sip of the Scotch to stop me from saying anything else.
I prided myself on keeping most of my unkind remarks to myself, trying not to vent to our daughters about their shitty mother. Today felt extra challenging.
When I left Lisa, I left her with the home we’d raised our children in. She could have that place. As far as I knew, she’d screwed men on every surface of that mansion. I wanted nothing to do with it.
Rushing to find a place of my own, I’d bought myself a small four-bedroom, five-bath home in Manchester. I had to stay in New Hampshire; my company demanded too much of my attention not to.
After the divorce was finalized and I was no longer afraid that Lisa would get half of everything I owned, I bought a large, stately mansion on the shores of Massabesic Lake, just outside of Manchester. Settling down in my own house, I was finally able to feel like myself again. It was my very own mansion, which I could furnish and decorate as I saw fit for once, and not how my wife dictated.
I wasn’t in the new lake house long before Lauren came to me, asking if she could move in. Watching the unending parade of men through her mother’s bedroom was getting old, even for her.
Not long after she moved in, Ashley showed up with her driver struggling to unload all of her things. “I’m moving in, Dad.”
