Love Struck , livre ebook

love struck
CHANTEL GUERTIN
ecw press


chapter one
I t happened on a Thursday, an ordinary Thursday like any other. Except on this Thursday my life was changed forever. And, just like so many things in life, it came when I least expected it. When I had no idea that it could ever happen. At least, not to me.
It was just past eight in the evening and I was sitting at Pretty Nail getting a pedicure. I’d bailed on Parker—he’d called in the late afternoon asking me to accompany him to a prospective client dinner but I’d told him I couldn’t cancel my dinner and manicure date with Elin. It was a ritual I’d initiated a few months earlier to give my best friend a reason to come in to Toronto—she’d moved to Jackson’s Point a little over a year ago when she and Terrence had found out she was pregnant with triplets—and, more importantly, it got her out of the house and out of her hospital scrubs, which she wore even though she had no plans to return to her nursing position.
Twenty minutes earlier, moments after arriving at the no-frills nail bar after having sushi and a bottle of Riesling, Elin had gotten a panicked call from Terrence saying she had to come home immediately. One of the kids had a fever and he had no idea what to do. So Elin left, and since I’d already paid for her manicure, I opted for a pedicure, too. I’d just settled into the leather massage chair when my BlackBerry buzzed and I looked down to see a frantic email from one of my newer clients, Lonette, asking what to wear on a first date with a guy she’d just met at the gym.
I mentally drew an image of Lonette, a dark-haired, skittish accountant in her forties who’d won a set of sessions with me in a charity auction. Since my job as an image consultant was, admittedly, a little superficial—helping rich people buy more clothes—I didn’t mind occasionally offering advice for free. Besides, the question of what to wear on a first date was always my favourite. Lonette had just gone through a nasty divorce (was there any other kind?), and as a result had lost more than twenty pounds (being incredibly unhappy made most people either incredibly overweight or incredibly thin, and Lonette was the latter) so she was a fairly easy client.
I texted her back to get more info on the date: when, where, who was the guy (age, occupation, likes, dislikes), then mentally went through her wardrobe, finally deciding on a pair of wide-legged, high-waisted dark denim trousers, a slinky, grey-pink sleeveless top, black kitten heels, black leather bucket bag, hair left to air-dry to maximize her natural waves and creamy-taupe and pink makeup. I was just scrolling through the rest of my emails when the girl two seats over from me asked the girl beside me if her sister was still dating that guy on the Blue Jays.
I never understood the appeal of pro sports players. Weren’t they all cheaters?
“No. Apparently she wasn’t the only girl getting to third base with him,” the Sister, who had an enviable British accent, replied, then laughed at her own joke. See? I thought. “Now she’s fixated on some married guy she works with. She actually just texted me to say she’s hooking up with him tonight. Honestly, she has no shame. The only thing that girl cares about is money.”
“So what does he do?”
“Investment banker at Feldman Davis.”
Oh my God. Parker worked at Feldman Davis. I shifted in my chair so I could catch the names of this scandalous couple and report back to Parker in case he knew them. Gossip was always more thrilling when you knew the guilty parties.
“Feldman Davis? Since when does Sienna work in finance?”
The Sister laughed cynically. “Since she realized those firms were filled with hot, rich guys, and that her commerce degree could actually get her a position as a research assistant. Which has just got to be a glorified secretary—if not, she’ll probably be fired before her three-month probation is up—but it gives her an excuse to flit around and eye her prey.”
Something in the back of my brain triggered when I heard the name Sienna. It sounded somewhat familiar, but I couldn’t put a face to it. I pictured last year’s holiday party, the summer golf tournament, the partners’ annual barbeque . . .
Had Parker mentioned a new research assistant in the office? I couldn’t recall. His executive assistant was Barb, a grey-haired grandmother of three who sent homemade shortbread home with him at Christmas.
Sienna . . .
Oh, Sienna Somers! I vaguely remembered Parker mentioning a woman named Sienna Somers. Had he told me she was new? I couldn’t recall the context of the conversation, but I did remember thinking at the time, Who has a name like Sienna Somers at an investment banking firm? Isn’t it more of a porn-star name than an analyst’s name? Maybe her parents had other aspirations for her. But now it sounded like she wasn’t an analyst at all. Not that it mattered—
“But what’s the point of hooking up with a married guy?” the friend was now saying, interrupting my thoughts.
“Challenge, maybe? And it’s no-strings-attached sex. Besides, I wouldn’t put it past Sienna to believe she could make the guy leave his wife. Anyway, supposedly this Parker guy is super hot.”
Parker? Did she just say Parker? My husband’s name? My good-looking husband’s name? No, I must have heard her wrong. She most certainly did not say Parker. She couldn’t have. Or maybe the guy, whose name is not Parker, works as a valet, parking cars, in the garage under the Bay Street tower in which Feldman Davis is located. That must be it. So he’s the parker . Because he parks cars. I used all my mental energy to will the Sister to say the guy’s name again. Just to be sure that she most certainly, definitely did not say my husband’s name.
Say his name, I wanted to scream, but didn’t. Because even though we weren’t in a high-end spa, it just wasn’t something I would do.
My heart was beating in my throat, making it difficult to breathe. And so, without thinking, I did the unthinkable.
“Excuse me.” I tapped the girl beside me on the shoulder and she turned to look at me, raising her perfectly plucked eyebrows. I wanted her to be in her mid-fifties, which would reasonably make her sister Sienna somewhere in the same decade, and effectively rule her out of being a mistress to my Parker. Because surely my thirty-two-year-old husband would not cheat on me with a woman nearly twice my age, right? Right?
Of course, what I should’ve been thinking was that surely my husband wouldn’t cheat on me at all.
The girl beside me—the Sister—was not fifty, not even close. She looked to be about my age, or maybe a little younger, and was wearing an adorable floral halter dress and had long blond hair held back with a crocheted headband. She could’ve been my friend. Except, of course, I would never be friends with someone whose sister would have sex with my husband. Obviously.
“I couldn’t help but eavesdrop on your conversation.” I paused, hoping she would suddenly smile, shrug and say not to worry, that her sister lived in Atlanta or London or Dubai. Except, Feldman Davis didn’t have branches in Atlanta or London or Dubai.
Or maybe she’d tell me I’d misheard the names, that what she’d said was her sister Sandra was having sex with Peter . Or that they knew I was Parker’s wife and Parker had put them up to it—a belated April Fool’s Day joke in May and ha ha ha, wasn’t that funny?
But Parker wasn’t the type for silly pranks.
Instead, the girl beside me stared, a mixture of confusion and annoyance on her face. She raised her eyebrows.
“That guy you were talking about . . .” I fumbled. “What did you say his name was?”
The girl continued to look at me as though I was crazy. And maybe I was. I was sure she was going to tell me to mind my own business (in not-so-polite terms) but she suddenly seemed to have a change of heart. She looked around her and then leaned closer.
“Why? Do you know him? Do you work for Hello! or TMZ? Are you an undercover investigator? Are we going to be on some hidden camera show?”
What could I possibly say to that? Actually, those were all really good excuses when you wanted to interrupt a conversation in which you weren’t included. Why hadn’t I thought of those lines?
She laughed and waved a manicured claw. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll tell you anyway. It’s Parker. Parker . . . Rose. Or Boss. Or—”
Ross. Parker Ross.
My husband.
My husband was having an affair.
And so, I did what I assumed any woman who had just learned her husband was having an affair would do. I stood up mid-pedicure, handed Ming a handful of bills, and shuffled, in my yellow sponge flip-flops, out the door onto Yonge Street, only to find that the sky was dark with miserable clouds and it was starting to rain. I turned right and made my way, umbrella-less, the five blocks home to figure out what the hell I was going to do.
Whenever I’d heard about women whose husbands were cheaters—on Tyra or in Cosmo —I always thought in exasperation: How did you not know? Late nights at the office, early-morning meetings, hang-ups on the home phone, unexplained charges on the joint credit card statement . . .
But I’d experienced none of that. Sure, Parker had early-morning meetings, but what Bay Street banker didn’t? And he often had to entertain clients at night, but he always came home to me. Of course, he didn’t really ever get any calls on our home phone, since he made most of his calls on his BlackBerry. And while we both had our own separate bank accounts—which I’d agreed to so I’d never have to justify a second pedicure in one month or another silk tunic from French Connection—it had always been that way.
Nothing out of the ordinary had ever happened to make me suspect that Parker could possibly be having an affair.
Nothing.
Except . . . now that I thought about it, there was the condom in