7 Days and 7 Nights

by Wendy Wax

  Or that he looked as good in lingerie as she did.

  Drawing in one shaky breath and letting out another, she dragged her gaze from the photos to stare out the study window. Porch lights twinkled from the house across the cul-de-sac, and snow glistened in the arc of a streetlamp. It clung to the rain-slicked branches of the oak out front and coated the shiny layer of ice in the next-door neighbor’s birdbath, though it was hard to fully appreciate the winter landscape with her brain occupied by the vision of Tom decked out in Ballantyne’s biggest sellers.

  Her thoughts moved slowly, and she felt strangely detached, as if someone had swabbed her with novocaine. There was no sharp, stinging pain, no specific point of impact, only a spreading ache of hurt and disbelief. And the sixty-four-million-dollar question: How could she not have known?

  In this town, where her family’s business had been the largest employer for more than a hundred years, someone should have known . . . and blabbed. And yet until a moment ago, she would have sworn her husband’s interest in ladies’ underwear was limited to manufacuring it.

  The images ricocheted through her brain, bouncing off each other, raising more questions she couldn’t answer.

  Who had taken the pictures? Who did the female hand belong to? And how could a man who’d spent much of his waking life in a jockstrap and cleats look so good in a pale pink corset with tiny rosebuds down the front?

  Miranda laid the pictures out on the desk. This was her husband. The man she’d met her first miraculous year at Emory University. The man her family had deemed perfect for her . . . and whom she’d married twelve years ago in the biggest wedding Truro had ever seen. The man with whom she’d been trying to have children for eight of those twelve years. The man who’d turned out to be somewhat . . . less . . . than she’d expected, but with whom she’d fully intended to grow old.

  Icy tendrils of fear and dread wrapped themselves around her as she realized that no matter what happened next, her life would never be the same. If her husband wasn’t who she thought he was, then who did that make her?

  She fanned the photos out the way a card player might, forcing herself to look at them one more time. Lifting the last one to the light, she studied the disembodied woman’s hand—with its flawless French manicure— resting so possessively on her husband’s bare buttock, and a hot flash of anger melted some of the ice.

  Another woman had fondled her husband’s naked buns while he was dressed in women’s lingerie.

  Her stomach clenched, and she asked herself again how this could have happened. It was normal for married people to fall into their individual routines, normal for the excitement to dissipate after so many years together. It was not normal to miss something as big as this.

  Had there been a “Gee, honey, I hope you don’t mind but I really get off on dressing up in women’s underclothes—which is really convenient, since I run your family’s brassiere and lingerie business—and I especially like to do this with other women’s hands on my butt”?

  Had she smiled over the morning paper and her to-do list for the Ladies Guild and said, “That’s nice, Tom. Can you pass the preserves?”

  She sat, still numb, staring out the window, trying to see . . . something. Trying to imagine what in the world she was supposed to do now.

  When she finally looked at the clock, it was eight P.M. and she and Tom were late for dinner. For a few long moments she tried to imagine where Tom might be—out being fitted for a new bra? Busy baring his butt to the woman with the long nails? Winking and telling people he was in ladies’ underwear?

  She dropped her head into her hands. There was no way she could face him right now—whatever he might be wearing—nor could she imagine what she would say to him when she did.

  For a wild, wonderful moment she contemplated pretending she’d never found the pictures. Even with the grapevine in working order, the wife was usually the last to know. What if she just pretended she didn’t?

  She peered at the photos more closely but couldn’t find a date. Maybe Tom didn’t even dress up like this anymore. Maybe it had grown old for him, like the whitewater rafting and the iron-man triathlons. Who knew how long those pictures had been stuck in that drawer?

  Experimentally, she picked up the photos and dropped them into the trash can. Then she turned her back on the trash can and leaned against the desk with studied nonchalance. Okay, so her husband liked to dress up in women’s underwear. And he’d never mentioned this to her. And he did it with other women. Okay. Things could be worse. Things could always be worse.

  Right.

  Miranda bent over to retrieve the packet of photos, which now had strips of shredded paper clinging to it. She knew without thinking what her mother would say. “Make him give up Miss Manicure, Miranda. And do your best to forgive and forget.”

  Sure. Then they could get matching underwear made—they owned the company, after all—and . . . and . . . well, she wasn’t sure exactly what you did once you were dressed up that way with your husband, but maybe it would be fun. Just because she didn’t dress up didn’t mean she didn’t have an adventurous spirit.

  Maybe her mother had a point. Maybe she could just show Tom the pictures and ask him to explain why he liked to do that. And why he’d never mentioned it. And who the hell the woman with the manicure was.

  Right.

  Miranda set the packet of photos in front of her. Idly, as she tried to follow that scenario through to its logical conclusion, she peeled the strips of shredded paper off the packet and began to shuffle them around the desktop. Words began to leap out at her. Words that pushed the images she’d just confronted right out of her mind. Words like “Ballantyne,” and “receivables,” and the truly alarming, “auditors to investigate.”

  No, no way. Desperately needing to see her glass as half full, Miranda stole a quick peek over her shoulder to check for a hidden camera, but there was no Allen Funt. And no one jumping out to shout, “Smile, you’re on Candid Camera!”

  With trembling fingers, Miranda retrieved more shredded pieces from the trash can and began to fit them together like pieces of a puzzle. They all appeared to be part of a letter from Ballantyne’s primary lender, and though there were some gaps, the end result was every bit as life-smashing as the photos.

  Not only did her husband like to dress up in women’s underwear with other women helping, he had put Ballantyne—the company that had been passed down by the women in her family for generations—in a precarious position with its bank.

  She couldn’t seem to get any air into her lungs, and despite the snow outside, little beads of sweat popped out on her forehead.

  The phone on the desk in front of her rang and she jumped. Heart racing, she brought the receiver up to her ear.

  “Miranda, the pot roast is starting to resemble shoe leather. Your father and I were expecting you at seven-fifteen.” Her mother, who rarely bothered with a greeting, sounded like her usual imperious self.

  Miranda let out the breath she’d finally gotten ahold of. She tried to think lofty, composed, queenlike thoughts, as she’d been taught when she first started competing in pageants. She pictured the crown on her head and imagined Bert Parks asking her the inevitable question about world peace.

  “I know, Mother. Is, uh, Tom there?”

  “No, dear. I thought you were driving over together.”

  “Well, actually, I’m not feeling all that well.” Not exactly a lie. “I think Tom may have misunderstood our plans.” And me. And our life. “Will you ask him to call me if he shows up there?”

  “Of course, Miranda. But I want you to call me in the morning and let me know how you’re feeling. You don’t think you’re . . .”

  “No, Mother.” Miranda winced at the raw hope in her mother’s voice.

  She doubted she was pregnant. She never was. And this was the first time she was glad of it.

  As she hung up the phone, Miranda’s gaze flitted around the study she so rarely entered. For the first time
she noticed how bare the desktop was, except for her carefully laid out cache of evidence; how empty the drawer had been, except for the obviously overlooked pictures.

  Miranda’s mouth went dry. Not at all regally, she shoved back from the desk and stood, her knees wobbling.

  Slowly, with the bad feeling in the pit of her stomach spreading bodywide, she forced herself up the stairs to the master bedroom. Stopping at the dresser, she drew a steadying breath and pulled Tom’s top drawer open. Though she wouldn’t have been surprised by satin or lace, she found neither. Nor did she find anything in white cotton. The drawer was empty.

  Miranda opened each drawer in turn, but all of Tom’s clothes were gone. Trying not to hyperventilate, she moved to the walk-in closet and found more of the same. Or was that none of the same?

  Like a zombie, she turned and walked back into the bedroom stopping at the king-size bed she’d shared with Tom Smith for the last twelve years. A man she’d evidently never known nor understood.

  There, propped on her pillow, sat a small square envelope. Miranda sank onto the edge of the bed and reached for the envelope. Maybe it was an invitation to some event somehow gone astray. Or instructions to smile because she was, in fact, on Candid Camera, not watching her life swirl steadily down the toilet.

  Murmuring a small prayer, she picked up the envelope and pried it open with clumsy fingers.

  The message was brief and to the point. Once again some part of Miranda’s mind cried “foul,” because after this many years a woman deserved some warning. And she definitely deserved an explanation.

  In a firm hand, with well-formed curves and crisply dotted i’s, Tom had written: “Dear Miranda, By the time you find this I plan to be out of the country. Sorry things turned out this way. Have a nice life. Tom.”

  Miranda balled up the note and threw it at the dresser mirror while the pressure built behind her eyelids. Soon tears were streaming down her cheeks, puffing up her eyes, wreaking all kinds of havoc on her face.

  She and Tom had loved each other once, she was sure of it. Maybe not with the searing intensity you read about in romance novels, but enough—she had thought—to weather the ups and downs of a lifetime. And when the initial excitement had worn off, she’d told herself that it had been replaced by something mellower and longer lasting.

  She’d thought they had mutual respect and a certain amount of caring. But in fact they had cheating, and cross-dressing, followed by a very definite running away.

  The tears were freefalling now, and Miranda didn’t bother to wipe them away. She pictured the horrified look on her mother’s face, but for once she was too miserable to care how puffy her eyes got or whether every last stitch of makeup was washed away. With a sniff, she wondered if it was like the tree falling in the empty forest. If no one was here to see her cry, did that mean that she wasn’t?

  As if loosened by the thought, the tears fell faster. Miranda let the hot salty drops make tracks through her makeup, licking them away only when they reached the corners of her mouth.

  She felt like a wounded animal, battered and bruised, with spears sticking out of its hide. But even in her misery she recognized that her heart, though it hurt, wasn’t completely shattered. This realization made her cry even harder.

  She lost track of how long she cried, but when she finally looked into the mirror a pitiful woman stared back. Miranda sat up straighter and squared her shoulders, but the woman still had tears streaming down her face.

  Plucking a tissue from the nightstand, she blew her nose, loud, since there still wasn’t anyone in her forest and might not ever be again.

  At last she sniffled and hiccupped her way to a stop. Reaching for something to cling to, she grabbed on to the pageant instruction her mother had been drilling into her since her fifth birthday.

  Okay, then. Sometimes you didn’t win the crown. Sometimes, though she didn’t have prior personal experience with this, you didn’t even make the final five. You could still put on the smile, and you could still walk the walk. If there was anything she knew how to do, it was that.

  Tom didn’t want her? Fine. But he was going to have to tell her so in person. Right after he fixed whatever damage he’d done to Ballantyne. Then he could go off and dress up in some other company’s lingerie to his heart’s content.

  All she had to do was find the lying, cheating, cross-dressing S.O.B. Yes, that would be her first step. She’d get started just as soon as the woman in the mirror stopped crying.

  About the Author

  Wendy clearly remembers her first encounter with Dick and Jane. She’s still unsure why this otherwise hip twosome were so preoccupied with their dog, Spot, but two seconds after reading “See Spot Run” she was hooked on words—and books—for life.

  Despite efforts to control this addiction, Wendy—who has been unable to find an appropriate 12-step program—remains incapable of putting down a book once she’s begun reading it, and has faced many mornings bleary-eyed as a result.

  It wasn’t long after leaving broadcast production for motherhood that Wendy realized reading just wasn’t enough anymore. Soon she was writing every bit as compulsively as she’d always read. Once again, her mornings were anything but bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.

  7 Days and 7 Nights is the author’s first romantic comedy, and she sincerely hopes you sit up all night reading it—just like she did writing it.

  Wendy lives in Atlanta with her husband and their two sons. You can write to her at 1401 Johnson Ferry Road, Suite 328/C-70, Marietta, GA 30062, or contact her on her website at www.authorwendywax.com.

  7 DAYS AND 7 NIGHTS

  A Bantam Book / July 2003

  Published by Bantam Dell

  A Division of Random House, Inc.

  New York, New York

  All rights reserved

  Copyright © 2003 by Wendy Wax

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the Publisher, except where permitted by law. For information address: Bantam Books, New York, New York.

  If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”

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  eISBN: 978-0-307-41783-1

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