"That? It's ketchup. Come on, honey. What else could it be?" he said as he looked at the stain she pointed out.
"On the side of your collar? Do you eat through your ear now?"
"Honey, you're being ridiculous. I don't know what you're thinking, but that is not...lipstick." He put his hands on her shoulders and said, "You know that you and your...sorry, our son are all that matter to me. Why in the world would I spend all those months trying to win you over dating you and...ask you to marry me to turn around and do something so obvious and this foolish?"
He lifted up her chin and said, "You can't seriously believe I'm having an affair just three months after our wedding." She finally looked at him and he said, "Can you?"
Her first thought was, "Yes, I can," but she didn't say it. She'd never actually seen him and their neighbor, Cheryl Radcliffe, doing anything overtly wrong unless one considered a lot of laughter and too much touching 'doing something.' Brooke wasn't the jealous type and Evan had otherwise never been a flirt, but Cheryl began showing up far too often and in too many unexpected places to be pure coincidence. And she wore red lipstick. Brooke chided herself when she realized so did several million other women. Still, she knew something was wrong. She could feel it. She didn't know what it was, but her intuition told her something was going on.
She'd been so careful after her husband passed away. She waited for three years to even think about dating again. Three long, lonely years during which she cried and grieved and often felt like she'd die, too. And then when she finally felt ready to date again, she took it slow—very slow. Of the few men she did date, she never brought any of them around her son—until Evan Walters. He was so charming and friendly and...handsome, and he took such an immediate interest in her son who really needed a father figure in his life. So she had to admit he had a point. Why would he go to all that effort to turn around and just throw it away? Cheryl was attractive, but so was Brooke. She didn't mean to be smug, but she knew Cheryl was a step down from her at least in terms of looks. But looks weren't everything, and Cheryl was a good ten years younger than Brooke, who couldn't shake the thought that maybe, just maybe....
"I guess that does sound a little crazy," she told him as she took back the shirt. "Here, let me finish up. I'll just wash out the rest of the...ketchup...and it'll be good as new."
"That's my girl," he told her as he kissed her on the forehead. "Oh, don't forget, I'm going out of town tomorrow on business. Two days and I'll be back." He walked out of the laundry room and said, "I'm missing you already, honey."
Brooke Matthews was a 32-year old recovering lawyer turned stay-at-home mom since her husband, Aaron, passed away nearly five years ago after a long battle with brain cancer. His life insurance policy had given her the ability to pay off the mortgage, car loans, become debt free, and still have enough to left to allow her to quit working and take care of her then 3-year old son, Tyler.
She'd met her new husband, Evan Walters, just under two years ago. She'd been on several fix-up dates with guys her friends told her were 'really nice' or 'steady' or even one who had 'a really great personality.' They had all been nice, just not nice enough. The only exception was a young police officer she'd reluctantly agreed to see. Brooke had been pleasantly surprised to learn he was a college graduate able to intelligently talk with her about almost any topic. He was also funny and probably the best looking of the handful of men she dated before meeting Evan. But he was a whopping twelve years younger than her and no matter how she looked at it, it just didn't make any sense to see him again let alone let things get serious. At least not intellectually. Her heart told her to say 'yes' to a second date but her head won out. She felt sure he was a man she could trust, but he was just SO young.
Brooke was looking for several things in a future husband, and at the top of the list was a man who would be willing to love and raise Tyler as his own son. He had no real memories of his biological father, and Brooke knew whomever she married would be the man he would think of as his dad. Her needs were secondary although at least one of them was non-negotiable. Trust. Sure, he had to at least be attractive to her. Who'd marry someone who wasn't for any reason other than maybe the late Anna Nicole Smith? But if the guy was at least reasonably good looking, had a decent, steady job, and was someone she felt she could trust, that was all she needed. But Tyler absolutely had to have a loving, caring dad no matter what. Lower on her short list was a sense of humor and if the guy was romantic, how could that be a bad thing?
The young police officer with whom she'd had dinner was all those things. Evan had also been all those things, but he was two years older than her and that somehow felt right. He was very attractive, always sounded optimistic, had a gorgeous, ever-present smile, and he was constantly doing the kinds of little things most women dreamed about. Oh, and Evan was good in bed. In fact, he was very good. Brooke had always enjoyed sex with Aaron, but she had no idea it could be this enjoyable. He was unbelievably attentive to her needs and spent all kinds of time pleasuring her. He called that special part of her 'his muffin' and Evan took a very long time slowly and deliciously 'eating' every crumb of it to the point that it left Brooke breathless before they even got to the sex part. And that huge, gorgeous cock of his not only filled her up in all the right ways, he knew just how to use it to drive her to the brink of ecstasy every time he fucked her. And unlike Aaron, where twice a week had been plenty, Brooke often found herself the one begging for it a fourth or even a fifth time. She was well aware that any woman who got a taste of Evan, would do almost anything to keep it coming and the thought caused her to briefly wonder again about her next-door neighbor.
At that point, overall, she felt like she could trust Evan and yet the sensible part of her still needed to make sure. "Trust but verify." She'd heard that somewhere before but couldn't remember who said it or what it was about. All she knew was she needed to do some verification before she could commit.
She started out with social media. Evan had a Facebook page, was also on Twitter, and she even found his profile on Linkedin which seemed a bit unusual for a guy who drove a truck. Okay, so that was a good start. She'd also Google'd his name and verified his basic information, but she couldn't find out anything else about him. Her best friend, Gayle, assured her that wasn't all that unusual. "Unless someone is famous or has a criminal record, it's hard to find anything about them on the internet." To prove her point, she searched both of their names and they couldn't find a thing on either or them without spending money for a background report. "But if you're still worried, I know a private investigator. Just let me know."
The only real downside to this otherwise idyllic relationship was that he drove a truck for a living and he could be gone for several days at a time. Even so, after six months of dating, she finally introduced him to Tyler and the two of them bonded almost instantly. He and Evan did pretty much everything together from playing video games on the couch to team sports. And Brooke loved that he always took the time to read to him at night and tuck him into bed before well....doing her in bed.
Brooke couldn't put a finger on it, but something still didn't seem quite right. Maybe it was the way he tended to avoid talking about his past or his family. He told her he was an only child and that his parents had been killed in a car accident when he was 22. She even found the newspaper article with the correct names of Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Walters who had been killed in a car accident when he would have been that age and it had taken place in the city he told her it had.
She was otherwise so swept up in his charm, she finally let her nagging suspicions go and said 'yes' when he'd proposed six months ago. They were married three months later and things had been going along quite nicely, her unfounded suspicions of Cheryl aside, until she found the lipstick on his collar; what Evan had assured her was ketchup. He—or someone—had obviously tried rubbing it out so why wouldn't he have just thrown the shirt away if it really was lipstick? While she didn't have an answer for that yet, it was this very sort of thing that set the warning bells off again in her head while also wondering if she might be turning into some kind of jealous, paranoid wife.
Even if that was happening, Brooke knew that even paranoid people had enemies, so because of the stain, she'd also removed his wallet from his pants, and although she didn't want to look through it, her concerns drove her to take a peek. The first thing she noticed was the picture he always carried of her and Tyler had been cleanly torn in half leaving only her son in it. She then looked inside the tiny pockets on each side and found something that also disturbed her, but it wasn't proof of anything. It was just an address written on it a piece of paper. No city, just a street name and address number. But the thing that really disturbed her was finding a phone number written in pencil on another scrap of paper on the other side of his wallet. She memorized the digits, then but everything back exactly where she'd found them, and decided not to bring it up with Evan. At least not yet.
Brooke nearly laughed when she told herself she'd watched one too many episodes of Murder She Wrote before realizing there was nothing funny about it. She tried to tell herself to relax, and yet her hackles were up again. They went way up when she waited for him to go upstairs and read to Tyler before calling the number from Evan's phone.
"Evan?" she heard a familiar voice say. "Evan? Are you there? Are we still on for tomorrow? Hello? Evan? Baby, is that you?"
