Starter Wife (The Jilted Wives Club Book 1), Bethany Lopez [great novels to read .TXT] 📗

and our twenty-five years together away like I was trash … and he never looked back. He tainted our marriage, he left his kids, and with that he took my naivete. My willingness to trust. I’ve been carrying this anger and hurt ever since it happened and even though I’ve talked it out in therapy, that anxiety still exists.”

They each reached for one of my hands and I accepted them gratefully.

“I know Luca is not Marcus, but these are the reasons I was so wary of starting anything up with him. I knew these doubts would resurface and I worried that I’m not whole enough to have a real relationship with anyone again.”

“Have you talked with Luca about this at all?” Summer asked.

“A little, but not all of it. I don’t want to scare him away, but on the other hand, I don’t want to get his hopes up either. What if he wants more than I’m able to give?”

“I think you put way too much pressure on yourself, and if you let yourself, you’ll put too much pressure on this relationship,” Margo said softly. “You and Luca are still in the ‘getting to know each other’ stage of this thing. He’s not asking you to get married and have kids, but I think you still need to have these conversations. Be honest with him about what you’ve been through and how you feel and let him make his own decisions. He’s a big boy. He can handle it.”

“I know,” I admitted. “I think I’ve just been freaking out ever since he brought up Sunday dinner and it’s been making me overthink everything. I’m going to go there with an open mind, enjoy what I’m sure is going to be one of the best meals of my life, and have fun seeing Luca in his element.”

“Atta girl,” Summer said, lifting her drink and saying, “To Whit and Luca and the Russo family. May you give yourself a break and have a lovely meal.”

We all raised our glasses, and I gave them each a small smile before saying, “In better news, Luca and I had sex.”

“What?” Summer screeched. “Why didn’t you lead with that?”

I chuckled as Margo added, “We want details. No detail is too small, spill everything.”

I leaned back in my chair, feeling much better than I had a few seconds ago, and gave my friends the goods.

Thirty

Luca

“You need help with anything, Ma?” I asked from the doorway of the kitchen.

She’d banished me earlier after catching me with my hand literally in the cookie jar. Like it was my fault she always kept homemade cookies in there. What was I supposed to do, not want one?

“You can help me by going back into the den with your father and getting out of my kitchen.”

My ma tended to get stressed out and short-tempered when she was cooking big holiday meals. Even though this wasn’t a holiday, she was treating it as if it were the event of the century.

I turned to go back to my dad when my ma said, “Luca, it’s almost one o’clock. Don’t you need to go pick up Whitney?”

“No, she’s driving herself. I told her to be here by one-thirty.”

“Doesn’t seem very gentlemanly,” she muttered under her breath.

I decided it was in my best interest to remain quiet and let that go, so I quietly walked away from the kitchen and the ticking time bomb that was my mother.

“How’d that go?” my dad asked when I sat back on the couch I’d vacated moments ago.

“About as well as you’d expect.”

He chuckled and said, “Your brother and Sara just pulled in, so they’ll help take some of the pressure off. She just wants to make a good impression on Whitney.”

“I know, but I wish she wouldn’t make such a big deal out of it,” I was saying as my brother and his family came ambling inside.

My dad snorted in response and Vanni shook his head.

“You haven’t brought a girl home since two thousand and three, what’d you expect?” my brother asked.

“Yeah, she’s called us like five times in the last hour,” Sara said, her eyes twinkling as she leaned in to give me a kiss on the cheek. “I hope your woman knows what she’s walking into.”

“I can’t believe you’ve managed to keep the fact that you’re seriously seeing someone a secret. And she works with you? What the heck, Dad? You didn’t even know?”

“I knew he was interested,” our dad replied. “But had no idea they’d started dating and things had progressed to family dinner status. It’s a good thing I was in the dark, too. Your ma was ready to kill me when she thought I may have been keeping it from her.”

“I bet,” Vanni said with a laugh.

“Vanni, Sara, is that you?” Ma called out from the kitchen.

“Duty calls,” Vanni said good-naturedly as he and Sara headed out of the den. “Boys, be good for Grandpa.”

Peter and Paul both shouted, “We will,” before they took off running down the hall, presumably to the spare room where the video games were kept.

“Walk,” my dad called after them.

“Sorry!” one of them shouted back.

My phone dinged, signaling a text, so I pulled out my phone and looked at it.

I’m two minutes away.

“It’s Whitney, she’s almost here,” I told my dad as I stood. “I’m gonna wait for her outside.”

He nodded absently, his eyes on the TV.

I stopped at the door to slip on my shoes, then went out front to watch for Whitney’s car. I knew she’d be nervous, and even though she hadn’t wanted me to go to the trouble of picking her up and taking her back home, I figured she’d want me to at least be there to walk inside with her.

As soon as her car turned onto the street, I couldn’t stop smiling.

This is really happening. Whitney is going to meet my family … of her own free will … and I want her to.

It felt like a miracle.

Before she’d parked the