Sophie's Secret

Relief seemed to suffuse the room, as though blown from the heating duct. Relief and anticipation, judging by the buzz of conversations Duane was catching. They’d made a good choice. Or seemed to think they had.

Duane wasn’t so sure.

“You don’t look like a man who’s in the process of realizing his greatest lifetime goal.”

Turning, Duane grimaced at Will, who’d maneuvered them into a corner of the room where they could speak without being overheard.

“I can do this job.” Hands in his pockets, Duane looked his friend straight in the eye. “After twenty years of applying the laws in this state, I know where we need changes, and how to go about getting them. I know our weak points and our strengths—”

“Yeah.” Will might be a fifty-something university president, but he was also a very involved father—one child five and another one eight—and more and more his vocabulary was relaxing.

“I just…”

“You’re worried about Sophie.”

Duane’s eighteen-years-younger-than-him girlfriend was no secret between the two men. She was the reason for his frequent visits to Shelter Valley.

She’d been a student at Will’s school not all that many years ago.

“You know as well as I do that half the people in this room would change their minds about backing me if they knew about her,” Duane said.

His relationship with Sophie didn’t come to Phoenix.

“When’s the last time you asked her to marry you?”

“Before she left for Chicago.” Two weeks ago.

“And she turned you down?”

“Of course.”

Will, the only man in the room wearing a suit jacket, sipped from his glass of soda water. He rarely drank these days—one of the many changes that had accompanied Bethany’s advent into his and Becca’s lives when, after twenty-plus years of trying, they found out Becca was finally going to have a baby.

“Better be careful, man,” Will said. “She might surprise you one of these times and accept.”

Now there was a thought. One that brought more reservations than the party decision to back him.

Will’s eyes narrowed. “What would you do if she did?”

“I honestly don’t know.”

“Maybe you’d better figure that out before you pose the question again.”

It sounded so easy.

With a quick glance over his shoulder at the men and women milling behind them, Will asked, “Do you love her?”

“You know I do.”

“I know you’re attracted to her. That’s a far cry from loving her.”

“Give me a break, man. I’m forty-six, not fourteen. And it’s been two years. It’s more than just lust.”

“So could you picture yourself spending the rest of your life with her?”

Who knew answers to such questions?

“I can picture myself at sixty, when she’s forty-two. In my mind, Sophie is full of energy and beauty and bored with me.”

“You don’t trust her.”

“It’s more than that, Will. I love my time with her, crave more time with her. But when we’re together we’re alone. The rest of the world, and things like generations, don’t matter. Can you honestly picture her here tonight? Hell, these guys would think she’s my daughter. Or they’d look at her like she’s on the hunt for a sugar daddy.”

Will seemed to commiserate with his chuckle.

“You don’t hold too high an opinion of the moral composition of our peers.”

Duane took in the room, the casually dressed men and women, and saw them for what they were. Intelligent, confident, successful. Many of them would do whatever it took to get where they were going. Use who they could. Stab who they had to. Some were quick to judge each other, while justifying, at least to themselves, their own sometimes questionable actions—and would blame others if someone got hurt.

He didn’t want to join the crowd. He simply wanted to change the world.

“I don’t want to make Sophie look like a whore.” He and Will talked straight. Which was one of the reasons Duane valued the friendship so much.

“Marrying her won’t do that.”

Whereas visiting her warm and vibrant home, leaving his car parked outside all night, did.

“And that’s not really the problem, is it?” Will asked softly, moving them a little farther away from the others.

“You of all people know her past, Will.” In his official capacity, Will had been apprised of the troubles of one of Montford’s most promising scholarship students. The invitations she’d offered to too many guys—including one of her instructors. The eating disorder that had almost killed her.

“It bothers you.”

“How could it not?”

“So you don’t trust her.”

“I don’t know.” Downing his Scotch, Duane turned away from a love life he couldn’t control, and stepped back into the persona he’d grown comfortable with over the years. The intelligent, confident, successful attorney who’d worked his entire life for this chance to make a difference. And who really believed he could.

Make a difference, that was.

Chapter Two

“OKAY, SPILL IT.” The Chicago pub’s late-Saturday-night crowd was the perfect size to allow Annie and Sophie to have a real conversation in privacy. Unfortunately.

Sophie wasn’t into comfy and cozy conversation. She wasn’t a kid anymore.

They had just shared a juicy hamburger, three quarters of which Annie made Sophie eat. She’d refused to do anything but encourage and watch until she’d witnessed Sophie chew and swallow every bite.