Playboy's Secret Wife novel · Chapter 6 of 24

Chapter 6: Sunday Dinner

I bought the dress myself.

It was a red one off a sale rack in a shop on Michigan Avenue, with a sharp neckline and a hem that stopped above my knee.

I paid for it with my own debit card.

Lucas looked at me when I came out of my room, and forgot what he was saying.

"Sharp," he said finally.

"That's what she asked for."

His mother's house sat on a bluff in Lake Forest, with a gravel drive and a front door twice my height.

A man in a tailored grey suit met us in the hall with his arms already open.

"The bride!" he said.

"Chad Hargrove."

"I've heard nothing but wonderful things, and every one of them from the tabloids."

He had a very white smile and a handshake that went on one second too long.

I took my hand back.

"Lucas tells me you're cousins."

"Lucas tells everyone we're friends," Chad said.

"We've shared a nanny, a grandfather, and a grudge."

"Come in, come in."

"We have guests."

Trent was sitting in the dining room with a glass of wine, in the good navy jacket I had picked out for his birthday.

Dee sat beside him, in a green dress, one hand on her stomach.

They both looked up at me.

Neither of them smiled.

Eleanor Hargrove sat at the head of the table and gave me a single nod.

"Mrs. Hargrove."

"Mrs. Hargrove," I said.

It was strange, saying that to her.

We both heard it.

The first course was a soup nobody could pronounce.

Chad talked the whole time.

He asked Trent about work, and Trent said it was a privilege.

He asked Dee about the baby, and she said it was a girl.

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