Sophie's Secret

“Welcome home, babe.”

With knees gone uncharacteristically weak, Sophie managed to take the two steps to reach Duane and leaned forward to kiss him.

Long.

And again.

Her mouth opened, her tongue meeting his, and she didn’t want to let go, to break away from this perfect moment.

Time, society, ages, past mistakes and bulimia all faded away, leaving only what mattered most, what would go with her into the next life – her heart. And the heart to which hers was irrevocably attached.

“I missed you,” she said, finally pulling back far enough to reconnect with those deep chocolate eyes that could look at her with such warmth.

“Here.” Duane held out her glass, the smile on his lips completely genuine. “Here’s to you coming home to me.”

Sophie’s Secret

By

Tara Taylor Quinn

www.millsandboon.co.uk

About the Author

With more than forty-five original novels, published in more than twenty languages, TARA TAYLOR QUINN is a USA TODAY bestselling author with over six million copies sold. She is known for delivering deeply emotional and psychologically astute novels. Ms Quinn is a three-time finalist for the RWA RITA® Award, a multiple finalist for the National Reader’s Choice Award, the Reviewer’s Choice Award, the Bookseller’s Best Award and the Holt Medallion. Ms Quinn recently married her college sweetheart and the couple currently lives in Ohio with two very demanding and spoiled bosses: four-pound Taylor Marie and fifteen-pound rescue mutt/cockapoo Jerry. When she’s not writing or fulfilling speaking engagements, Ms Quinn loves to travel with her husband, stopping wherever the spirit takes them. They’ve been spotted in casinos and quaint little small-town antiques shops all across the country.

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Available in August 2010from Mills & Boon®Special Moments™

Daddy on Demand by Helen R Myers & Déjà You by Lynda Sandoval

A Father for Danny by Janice Carter & Baby Be Mine by Eve Gaddy

The Mummy Makeover by Kristi Gold & Mummy for Hire by Cathy Gillen Thacker

The Pregnant Bride Wore White by Susan Crosby

Sophie’s Secret by Tara Taylor Quinn

Her So-Called Fiancé by Abby Gaines

Diagnosis: Daddy by Gina Wilkins

For the three penguins:

we know who we are and we know what we do.

In this life and beyond.

Chapter One

“GO, 344. GO 345.” Sophie Curtis spoke sotto voce into the microphone protruding from the headpiece she wore. She stood in the pitch-black area left of stage, reading the sheet on the podium by a penlight. Just three more cues and…

“Fade lights. Go curtain.” The heavy, velveteen drape slid quickly down.

Dancers, singers and actors scrambled, bumping into each other, cursing, mumbling, then, three seconds later, fell into place, a perfect shape of bodies and colors, all smiles and glitter and…

“Go lights. Go curtain.”

Applause thundered through the large, Midwestern university theater, the crowd at this January fund-raiser growing louder with each carefully choreographed bow. The sound rumbled inside her. Like bilious waves on a rocky sea.

The applause reached excruciating heights when Damon Adrian, off Broadway’s newest heartthrob—a sure star for the silver screen—stepped forward.

One minute. Two. And then…

“Go curtain. Go house lights.”

Sophie pulled off her headset, dropped it on the podium, then desperately pushed her way through the throng of moving bodies high on adrenaline. Pushed all the way through the dancers’ dressing room, to the restroom then to the farthest stall.

Where she promptly threw up.

FUNNY HOW BATHROOM TILE all looked the same. Did the world have an agreement—everyone use the same tile so people would immediately recognize the place for what it was? Feel at home there? Or was it simply the cheapest flooring material that could withstand public use?

This stuff needed to be re-grouted. But then—

“Soph?”

Recognizing her friend’s voice, Sophie grabbed some toilet paper, wiped her mouth again—then pulled another wad for her eyes—and stood. Prayed she was done.

“Yeah?”

“Hey.” There was a tap on the stall door. Annie’s bluetipped tennis shoes, her strong dancer’s ankles, were planted on the other side. “You okay?”

“Yeah.” Sophie swallowed. “I’m fine.”

But she wasn’t. She was scared to death. And as soon as Annie saw her face, she’d know it.

“Soph? Open the door.”

Déjà vu. Like old times. Sophie had thought she was done with all that. Had confidently told Annie so just the night before.

“Sophie…”

How concern and authority could blend so painfully in one word, Sophie didn’t know. Had never known.

But she recognized the tone as though she was still that twenty-year-old undergrad at Montford University in Shelter Valley, Arizona, rather than the twenty-eight-year-old successful theatrical producer she’d become.

Like that twenty-year-old she’d once been, she opened the door. And couldn’t meet her friend’s eyes.

How many times, during those years of doing shows together—Annie as a dance major and Sophie majoring in theater production—had she had to face her friend on the other side of a stall door?

“Oh, Soph. You said you were done with all that. That it had been years—”

She glanced up. “It has been.”

“Show me your finger.”

Sophie’s long nails were legendary, though they were shorter now than they had been in college, and the bold colors they used to be adorned with had toned down to pale pinks. She held out her right palm—middle finger extended straight up.

“It’s not broken off.” For years the nail of that finger had been a short stub necessitated by Sophie’s addiction to sticking it down her throat. Tonight, it was even with the rest—an eighth of an inch beyond her fingertip.

“I know.”

“So…”

“I didn’t consciously do it,” Sophie said, fighting panic—and myriad other emotions that were what got her into trouble in the first place. And every place after that, as well.

If she could keep the different parts of herself neatly packed away in their respective compartments, she’d be fine. It was only when the emotions took over, spilled over, that she had problems.

They hadn’t spilled over in years.

“I…really…I didn’t know what was happening.” At least not that she’d been able to acknowledge to herself.

She wanted to go home.

To lock herself inside her two-bedroom stucco abode on her acre of desert and sleep until she was better.

Frowning, Annie grabbed Sophie’s still-extended finger, holding on. “So you didn’t do it to yourself? You have the flu?”

One shouldn’t sound quite so happy at the possibility that one’s friend was sick.

Sophie couldn’t answer.

“Soph?”

“It didn’t feel like the flu,” she finally admitted.

“You were able to control it,” Annie said, knowing the signs, having gone through all the symptoms with Sophie the first time. “Your thoughts made it happen.”

When she’d been distracted with the show, the nausea had gone away. Did that count?

Sophie could have said the words aloud, but she knew the answer. Yes, it counted.

“I brought it on myself.”

Which was ridiculous. Most particularly here—at a show. Here she was a successful, confident woman. Period.

With Phyllis, her Shelter Valley friend and onetime counselor, Sophie could let the little girl inside come to the surface. Maybe. If she had to.

“Ah, Soph, I thought things were great. These past two weeks, working on the show, you’ve seemed so happy. Why didn’t you say something? We could have taken time away, really talked.”

Why hadn’t she said something? Why hadn’t she told her friend the whole truth? Why hadn’t she told Annie—someone who’d known her before, who would understand—that she was struggling? Why hadn’t she admitted, even silently, that she’d allowed herself to return to a place she’d vowed never to revisit?

Bulimia-ville.

“I didn’t know.” Sophie answered her own last question first. “I swear, Annie, this is the first time. And it really wasn’t a conscious choice. I just…I guess old habits really do die hard. Or don’t ever die. They just lie there, waiting to attack you when you’re at a weak point.”

“You know the signs, Soph. The symptoms.”

Nodding, Sophie thought over the past few months. The past two years. When her sexual being had come back to life.

She thought of Duane. And quickly shut that mental door.

“I didn’t see it coming,” she said. “I’m older. Successful. I have many reasons to feel good about myself. I really thought I wasn’t susceptible anymore.”

Another dancer, a guest performer in the evening’s closing performance, pushed through the door from the dressing room, said, “Sorry, I gotta pee,” then, with a smile in their direction, dashed into a stall.

“Let’s go find a place to get something to eat,” Annie said, pulling Sophie in the direction of the door.

“You’ve got a cast party to get to.” She’d been here two weeks and had managed to avoid any one-on-one personal conversation with the woman who’d once been such a close confidant. “And I really should hang around while they tear things down.”

“The local techies are going to get all of that.” Annie pointed out what they both knew. “And you’ve got time to finish up paperwork in the morning before your flight back to Phoenix.”

Sophie allowed herself to be pulled into the bustle of a quickly emptying dressing room. “But your party—”

“Is nothing compared to you,” Annie said softly. She approached her seat at the long, lighted dressing table, throwing things in her bag with an unusual disregard to orderliness. “It’s not like I haven’t performed with these people before, or like I won’t again.”

Sophie went to collect her things.

LIFTING HIS GLASS, Duane peered at the small, select group of men and women gathered in the living room of his Phoenix high-rise condo. The party was unofficial. A Saturday-night get-together of friends.

The friends just happened to be the most powerful political movers and shakers in the state of Arizona.

“You’re the one, buddy,” Robert Anvil said, touching his glass to Duane’s as the rest of the small group nodded.

Looking to Will Parsons, the one man in the room he truly trusted, one of the few people in the world he considered a friend, Duane waited. And only drank when he received Will’s quiet nod.

Any other evening he and Will got together it was at Will’s home in Shelter Valley, a small town an hour’s drive from Phoenix. Shelter Valley had been home to Will Parsons all his life, and a regular stopping place for Duane the past two years.

The two men had met in college—at Montford University, the Harvard of the West. Will was now president of the renowned educational institution. His wife, Becca, standing next to him tonight, was mayor of Shelter Valley.

Neither of those facts was the reason Duane considered them friends.

Toast completed, talk broke out among the twenty people who’d come together to informally offer Duane their party’s nomination for the senate seat in Arizona’s state election the following fall.

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.

“I haven’t had a hamburger in ages.”

“And it was good, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah.” But the weight she instantly felt on her hips wasn’t. Duane might not be so attracted to a hippopotamus.

“So if it’s been ages since you’ve had a burger, does that mean there’s been no bingeing?”

Scared at the recurrence of an illness she’d struggled so hard to beat, yet still falling prey to its symptoms, to feeling guilty for having consumed so much fat, Sophie shook her head. “None. I told you, I didn’t see any obvious signs.”

“So you haven’t been restricting your diet?”

Translation: not eating.

“I’ve been busy.”

“So you have been missing meals.”

“Some.” Theater work, making everything perfect in the two-day or two-week span allotted to them per show, wrought more tasks than hours in a day. And she could get twice as much accomplished during meal breaks, when the stage was empty.

Annie’s disappointed look didn’t weigh as heavily as the beef Sophie had consumed, confirming her fears that she’d fallen back to a day she’d promised herself she’d never see again.

She was feeling bad about herself for eating. And eating was necessary to sustain life.

“How many?” Annie’s question wasn’t a surprise.

Sophie glanced up, once again facing the truth of her weakness. “Too many,” she admitted as she thought back over the past weeks. She’d been careful not to eat. Hadn’t had a real meal since she’d arrived in Chicago. “I feel good, emotionally, when I don’t eat. Like I’m doing myself a great favor, you know? I’m strong enough to beat base appetites. I’m in control—”

She sounded like the pamphlets and books she’d read.

But she wasn’t speaking from them. Not eating truly gave her a sense of strength. Of control. Of power.

“There’s been no weight fluctuation outside of a fivepound range,” she offered softly. She’d been watching—weighing herself in the hotel workout facility. She cared.

And was determined to remain in control.

Of course, weighing yourself all the time was a symptom, too.

“What’s got you so down this time, Soph? You have a home you love, in a town you love and are incredibly successful in a career you love—” Annie broke off, eyeing her steadily. “It’s a man, isn’t it?”

Duane’s face came clearly into view, transposed upon Annie’s sweet, concerned features. “Maybe.”

“So is there someone serious? You haven’t mentioned anyone in years, other than that Duane guy who helped you with your LLC articles of incorporation. You said you two were just friends.”

Sophie had forgotten she’d told Annie anything about Duane.

And Annie had it right. She and Duane were just friends. All they ever could be. Friends who happened to sleep together. Several nights a week. But that was their business.

“No, there’s no one serious.” Serious meant a future. It meant a life together. And that definitely was not what she had with Duane.

Annie’s face, naked as it always was when not caked with stage makeup, struck a familiar chord—reminding Sophie of a day when she’d poured out her heart.

She’d been such a pathetically weak little thing back then. It hurt to even think of that girl. Hurt more to think of the things she’d done.

“What’s wrong then?” Annie asked. “Surely you aren’t feeling bad about yourself for being unattached. My gosh, you’re only twenty-eight, Soph. You have your whole life ahead of you. And you and I both know you could have had any number of guys if you wanted to settle down to a family right away.”

Sophie shook her head. She’d changed a lot since Annie had known her. Gained confidence over the years, making choices she could be proud of.

So why did she feel like that lost twenty-year-old kid again?

“I’m in love with Duane.” She couldn’t believe she’d said that. Her feelings for him were her business. And his.

“Oh!” If Annie was hurt by the fact that Sophie hadn’t confessed about her love life, she didn’t let it show. “And he just wants to be friends? Did you tell him how you feel? I’d find it hard to believe that he doesn’t love you back.” As though everyone would have to love Sophie.

“He says he loves me.”

“So what’s the problem?”

“Problems,” Sophie said. “Plural.” She hesitated. Speaking about Duane felt wrong. Maybe even disloyal. Duane and Annie occupied two completely separate parts of her life.

“Soph?”

“I don’t know what to say.”

“You’re in danger of falling back into a huge psychological health risk.” Annie’s voice was brisk. Firm. “Talk or you could die.”

Sophie couldn’t help the smile that spread across her face. And grew larger as Annie grinned, as well.

“I never claimed to be undramatic,” she said.

“And exaggerative.”

“That, too. But the point is—”

“I got the point. I already had it. And you’re right. I’m apparently not handling things as successfully as I thought I was.”

Or maybe they’d escalated to the stage that something had to be done. Which might be what was scaring her. If she and Duane couldn’t continue as they had, where did that leave them?

Annie’s smile faded and she leaned across the cleared table. “Tell me what’s going on.”

Taking a deep breath, Sophie glanced up. “Duane’s forty-six.”

“Oh,” Annie said again. A little less enthusiastically this time.

“That’s almost twenty years older than us.”

“I might have a degree in dance, but I do know how to add.”

“He’s old enough to be my father.”

“I get that. How’s that working out for you?”

Sophie hadn’t given a hoot about his age, hadn’t ever felt the difference in their ages. Until recently. “It hasn’t been a problem.”

“I’m not surprised about that,” Annie said. “You aren’t one to get caught up in the status quo. You’ve lived your whole life outside the stereotypical box. So, do you two ever struggle to find things to talk about? Or to find common ground in how you feel about issues?”

“Never.” If anything, the opposite was true. They seemed to view the world as one. They often talked long into the night, leaving them both struggling to get through work the next day. They talked about life and the world. About society and family. And faith. About anything except their other relationships.

Duane had never even heard of Annie.

“How do you feel when you’re with him?”

Sophie pictured Duane sitting on the edge of her bed, putting on his shoes. “Comfortable,” she said. Then, seeing him at her front door, smiling as he said hello, she added, “And energized at the same time. It’s weird, really. It’s like excited peace. If that makes any sense.”

“It sounds like love to me.” Annie pushed her glass aside. “Sophie, you know more than most that sometimes life creates its own definitions,” she said, her voice intense. “Not too many girls celebrate each birthday with a different father.”

Stepfather, Sophie clarified silently. And it hadn’t been every year—sometimes the divorces took longer than expected. Still, it had been often enough.

Duane didn’t know about that, either.

“Nor do they have to be savvy enough to ward off advances from the father in residence by the time they’re thirteen.”

Though she shuddered, Sophie couldn’t let herself dwell on the past. She’d forgiven her mother for her weaknesses a long time ago. And moved on.

Now her father—the real one, the man who’d left before she’d even been old enough to remember him—was another story. Forgiving him was harder. Only a jerk would abandon an innocent child to a whore.

Or maybe it was easier for her to blame a nameless, faceless entity.

“In some ways, you were raising a child—yourself—when you were a child,” Annie continued more softly. “Which puts your maturity on more of an equal level with Duane than your ages would imply.”

She was right. In some ways.

“But you knew all this, didn’t you? Or you wouldn’t have gotten involved with him to begin with.”

Sophie nodded. “Our age difference is only one of many things that are wrong.”

Eyes narrowed, Annie sat back. “He’s not married, is he?”

“No.” Though Sophie couldn’t blame Annie for asking. “He was divorced years ago. Long before I met him.”

“Any kids who hate you because you’re closer to their age than his?”

“Nope. No kids.”

“He’s not an alcoholic, is he? Or abusive?”

“Of course not. Duane’s the most upstanding citizen I’ve ever met. And that’s a big part of the problem.”

“Because he’s a great guy?”

“He’s too good for me.”

“Bullsh—crap.” Red blotches stood out on Annie’s scrubbed cheeks.

“Or, rather, I’m not good enough for him.”

“Stop it. Right now. What’s gotten into you, girl? This isn’t the Sophie I know. The one who had the courage to look life straight in the eye, take it on and win. There isn’t a man alive who’s too good for you.”

Two years ago, while she’d still been celibate, Sophie would have agreed. Eight years ago, she’d have known the words for the lie they’d have been.

“Maybe not, if he were just a man. Trouble is, Duane’s so much more than that.” And before Annie could interject with another diatribe assuring Sophie that no man was more than any other—a reassurance she would love to hear, but that would net nothing—she continued, “He’s running for public office, Annie. For the state senate. He’s got so much energy. So many ideas. He’s smart and savvy, openminded without being easily led. And most important, he’s honest. Arizona—this country—needs him. And he’s a shoo-in to win.”

She’d never met any of his friends. Didn’t know many of their names. She’d never been to the condominium he owned. Or to his law office.

But she knew about his politics.

“And you think you’re somehow going to hurt his chances?”

“I know I would.”

“How so? Because of the age difference?”

“That’s part of it. How responsible is he going to look, at forty-six, squiring around a twentysomething blonde? One who’s involved in the theater, no less? It’s the typical midlife crisis. If nothing else, he’d lose the votes of all the middleaged women who’ve lost their husbands to younger wives.”

“But then, if you’re going on that theory, he might gain votes from all of the men who understand, right?”

“Only those whose vote he’d have had anyway,” Sophie said, having stayed up far too many nights in the past weeks researching twenty years of Arizona voting demographics in an attempt to calm fears she’d only exacerbated. “Men aren’t as likely to cast their vote based on emotions, or personal circumstances.”

“There are plenty of older politicians whose younger wives haven’t kept them from office. There have even been some from Arizona.”

“My age isn’t everything,” Sophie said, sinking into the helplessness that had been sapping so much of her mental energy these days. “My reputation leaves a lot to be desired, as well.” There were other things, but this one Annie knew about. She’d been there.

“You were a college kid, Soph. Lots of coeds get a little wild for a year or two.”

“Not as wild as I did. And most of them stick to guys their own age. Who aren’t married.”

“You were looking for security. To be cared for. Protected.”

“I was acting like my mother’s child.”

“But at the same time, you won a scholarship to one of the nation’s most prestigious universities, from which you graduated with honors. And in a few short years, you’ve made a name for yourself in an industry that is almost predominantly male. Your net worth has got to be more than most middle-class couples when they retire.”

Sophie didn’t discuss her income with anyone—including Duane. But Annie was in the business. She knew what kind of money was involved in production. And she knew how many shows Sophie did.

What she didn’t know was that a good portion of Sophie’s income went to organizations that provided older, sibling-type companions to troubled or lonely kids. And provided after-school facilities to them, as well.

“Have you and Duane talked about any of this?” Annie asked, after too long a silence.

“Some.” The age difference. Her past reputation, which he’d have learned from his friend Will Parsons. And the politics.

“And?”

“He asked me to marry him.”