Trophy Wife Read online

  Trophy Wife

  The Jilted Wives Club, Book 2

  Bethany Lopez

  Trophy Wife

  Copyright 2021 Bethany Lopez

  Published August 2021

  Ebook ISBN - 978-1-954655-04-1

  Cover Design by Allison Martin

  Editing by Red Road Editing / Kristina Circelli

  Ebook Formatting by Bethany Lopez

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  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this ebook with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this ebook and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite book retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author. All rights reserved.

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  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please don’t participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

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  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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  This ebook is also available in print at most online retailers.

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  Created with Vellum

  For my children… always strive to be better, stay strong, and love with all your heart!

  Contents

  1. Summer

  2. Noah

  3. Summer

  4. Noah

  5. Summer

  6. Noah

  7. Summer

  8. Noah

  9. Summer

  10. Noah

  11. Summer

  12. Noah

  13. Summer

  14. Noah

  15. Summer

  16. Noah

  17. Summer

  18. Noah

  19. Summer

  20. Noah

  21. Summer

  22. Noah

  23. Summer

  24. Noah

  25. Summer

  26. Noah

  27. Summer

  28. Noah

  29. Summer

  30. Noah

  31. Summer

  32. Noah

  33. Summer

  34. Noah

  35. Summer

  36. Noah

  37. Summer

  What’s Next?

  Work Wife

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also by Bethany Lopez

  1

  Summer

  I made my way down the city street, practically skipping as I hurried to meet my favorite people in the world for dinner … The Jilted Wives Club.

  The club only consisted of me and my friends, Whitney and Margo, but still, it was the best club ever.

  We’d met a year ago when we’d all tried, and failed, to attend a support group for women who’d recently divorced from their cheating bastard exes. Well, at least in all three of our cases, that was accurate. I wasn’t sure about the other women, since I’d only made it through one tearful exchange before I’d bolted from the room.

  Since then, Whitney had met and fallen in love with Luca, this completely wonderful and sweet younger man who truly was the yin to her yang.

  I wanted to find a yin, but so far, I’d been unlucky.

  You know how they say you have to kiss a lot of frogs to find your prince? Well, let’s just say I’m covered in metaphorical warts from head to toe and so far … no prince.

  I’d gone on blind dates, set up by Whitney, tried meeting guys in bars with Margo, and had been sporadically using a dating app for more than six months, but kept coming up empty.

  I mean, not all the guys were bad…

  A few of them had been really nice, but there’d been no spark.

  A couple had sparks for days but were jerks.

  Then there were the weirdos. The one who asked if he could rub my feet … on our first date … at the table … in a restaurant. Then the guy whose profile picture was of a looped belt and some lube.

  Suffice it to say, finding Mr. Right wasn’t easy, but I wasn’t giving up.

  Sure, my first husband had been married when he started dating me, without my knowledge of course. By the time I’d found out, I’d been completely in love, and he’d vowed to leave his wife. I’d only been in my early twenties when we’d gotten married, and he’d been much older, officially making me his trophy wife. Although I naively thought we’d be together forever, he’d done the same thing to me that he’d done to his first wife.

  Cheated. But this time with a woman older than me who oddly resembled his first wife. He eventually left me for her.

  I don’t know why I thought Jared would be different with me. Once a cheater, always a cheater, right?

  Margo would say it’s because I trust too easily. And she’d be right.

  A deep voice catcalled as I neared the restaurant and I turned to see a group of men working at a construction site across the street.

  I lifted my hand to wave and yelled back, “Thanks,” before opening the door and walking inside.

  As my eyes adjusted to the change in light, Whit caught my attention by raising her hand to let me know where they were seated.

  “I see my friends,” I told the hostess before she could ask me how many were in my party and moved through the dining room to the back, where my friends were waiting. “Hi!”

  “Hey, girl,” Whit said as she got out of her chair to give me a hug. “Margo’s on with a client.”

  I looked over at Margo, who winked at me but continued her conversation, and took one of the empty seats.

  “I’m so happy it’s Thursday,” I said as I picked up the menu.

  We met every Thursday for dinner, unless something important came up, but so far at least two of us had been able to make it every week. We took turns choosing the restaurant and were yet to go back to any place twice.

  It was fun and exciting, kind of a dining adventure, and I looked forward to the next Thursday as soon as I woke up on Friday.

  Today we were trying a new Peruvian place.

  “How’s your week been?” I asked Whitney, lowering my voice so as not to disrupt Margo’s call.

  “Good,” she said, taking a sip of wine. “Silas’s lacrosse team had a tournament last weekend, so we pretty much spent all of our time there, but it was fun. You should have heard Luca screaming his head off like a soccer mom. It was great.”

  “Sorry,” Margo said as she disconnected her call. “What’d I miss?”

  “Nothing yet,” I said, barely able to contain my excitement. “I almost couldn’t wait to show you guys … This guy popped up on my ‘for you’ page of the app and I’ve been dying to talk to you about him.”

  “Someone you’re interested in?” Whit asked.

  “Yeah,” I said, pulling out my phone and bringing up the app. “I haven’t touched the app since he popped up. I didn’t want to click yes on his profile until I showed him to you and got your opinion. Plus, I guess I’m a little nervous. I mean, what if I like his profile and then he doesn’t like mine back?”

  “Let’s see,” Margo said, holding out her hand.

  “Okay, but don’t press an
ything,” I warned as I handed her the phone with the profile opened.

  “Noah,” Margo read aloud. “He’s cute, in a bookish, professorish kind of way.”

  “He is,” I nearly squealed. “He’s a professor and it says he loves books.”

  “It does … and he loves dogs, sitting in the rain, and playing Words with Friends.”

  “This guy is your type?” Whitney asked, looking a little baffled.

  I knew people looked at me, a petite blonde with big boobs and a small waist, and figured I’d be a gold digger who went after older men with sports cars and AmEx black cards, but Whitney wasn’t trying to put me in a box like that. She’d asked me a few months ago to tell her my type so she could set me up, and Noah was the opposite of what I’d told her.

  But that’s only because guys like Noah never went for me and I’d been afraid to ask for something I couldn’t have. But now he was right there on my phone, and I wanted more than anything to press yes.

  “Oh, yes, he is … just look at him. With that floppy brown hair and those adorable glasses. Don’t you just want to eat him up?”

  “I wouldn’t kick him out of bed,” Margo said, passing me the phone back right as I reached for it.

  When I grabbed it, my thumb accidentally pressed the no button, and his picture disappeared.

  “Nooooo,” I cried, trying unsuccessfully to swipe him back into existence.

  “What happened?” Whitney asked.

  “He’s gone.”

  “Can’t you get him back? Search up his name or something?” Margo asked.

  “No, there are no last names shown, and you can’t search by name. I pressed no, so I don’t know if he’ll ever pop up in my algorithm again,” I explained, looking at my phone sadly. “He’s gone.”

  2

  Noah

  A knock on my office door had me letting out a frustrated sigh before calling, “Come in.”

  I looked absently at my watch, noting I still had five minutes of office hours left, and glanced up from the papers I’d been grading to see one of my students from my Literary Dimensions on Film course. It was one of the easier classes I taught and one I usually found entertaining.

  Unfortunately, most students took it thinking it would give them an easy A, and it was usually about now, mid-semester, when they started popping in during my office hours, either hoping to drop the class or find some way to bring their grade up.

  “It’s Ms. Sinclair, correct?” I asked, not bothering to get up since she’d walked in and flopped down into the chair across from me.

  She nodded rapidly, causing her long dark hair to cover her face briefly before she pushed it back and bit her lower lip.

  “What can I do for you?” I asked, when rather than reply she just stared at me with wide eyes and her lower lip still grasped between her teeth.

  I wondered if it hurt, gnawing on her lip that way, but rather than ask, I simply waited for her to respond to one or both of my questions.

  After a few more seconds of not blinking or letting her poor lip free, she rolled her eyes and sat up in the chair. As she perched herself on the edge and arched her back, Ms. Sinclair seemed to watch me for a reaction.

  Which was concerning since I was the one waiting to see why she’d come to see me.

  Maybe she had a speech impediment…

  “Ms. Sinclair?” I prodded, as I watched the big hand on my wall clock move, indicating my office hours were over. “Is there something you wanted to see me about?”

  Her whole body seemed to deflate, and she muttered something under her breath that sounded oddly like, “Clueless,” and I couldn’t help but wonder if she was talking about me, or herself.

  “My paper on Little Women,” she began.

  Thrilled she was finally getting to the point, I leaned forward on my desk and laced my fingers together.

  “Comparing the book to the twenty-nineteen film,” I filled in, hoping to help her get to the point.

  “Yes. You gave me a C.”

  I nodded because it was true. “And?”

  “Why?” she asked, letting out a sharp breath. “It was a good paper.”

  “I could tell from reading that you watched the film,” I told her. “But did you actually read the book?”

  She gave a half shrug and said, “Most of it.”

  “And that’s why you received a C,” I informed her. “If you had read the book and then watched the most recent adaptation, you would have written about the many changes the screenwriter made and given your opinion on said changes. Instead, you gave me a movie review, which, although entertaining, missed the mark of the assignment.”

  “Is there anything I can do to bring up the grade?” she asked, her voice sounding oddly nasally all of a sudden.

  “You can read the book in its entirety and this time write a paper actually comparing the book to the recent film. The highest grade you’d be able to get would be a B, since it would be turned in late, but that’s better than a C.”

  Ms. Sinclair scowled and stood up. She glanced at me briefly, before turning and dropping her things to the floor. She bent over at the waist to pick them up, and when she glanced at me over her shoulder, I asked, “Do you need help?” But all she did was scowl more darkly, grab her things, and flee the room.

  I shook my head as I wondered why my students seemed to get stranger with each passing year, then I shoved my laptop and the papers I still needed to grade into my briefcase, before exiting my office, locking it behind me.

  “Noah.”

  I stopped and turned to see Trent, one of my colleagues and good friends, coming down the hall toward me.

  “Hey,” I said as he reached me. “How was your day?”

  “Another great day in the lab,” he replied. Trent was a biology professor. “Was that another nubile young student in need of help I saw exiting your office?”

  I gave him a dry look and shook my head. “Just a student looking to improve her grade.”

  “I bet,” Trent joked. He liked to mess with me when it came to my female, and some male, students. I figured it was because he was married and knew I was perpetually single. “Must be nice, being the sexy professor they all daydream about.”

  “Give me a break,” I countered. “I’m practically old enough to be their father, or at least older uncle. There’s no way these twenty-something kids are attracted to me.”

  “Right,” he said dryly. “Because young girls with daddy issues would never fantasize about their smart, slightly dorky professor, who is completely oblivious when it comes to his effect on the opposite sex.”

  “Are you done?” I asked, tired of reliving this conversation on what felt like a daily basis. “Are you headed straight home, or do you have time for a drink?”

  “Cam and Tucker are having dinner with her mom, so I’m free to join you at the bar. Maybe we can hook you up with a woman your own age,” he added with a grin.

  “A beer and some wings will suit me just fine,” I told him as we walked out of the building.

  “If you say so,” Trent said, still grinning. “But I can’t wait until you finally meet a woman who drives you so crazy you forget all these stuffy rules you have for yourself.”

  I just shook my head and moved toward my car.

  It hadn’t happened yet, and I was beginning to think it never would.

  3

  Summer

  “Hey, Mom, I only have a few minutes left on my break, but wanted to check up on you,” I said, holding my phone in place with my shoulder as I opened my glass water bottle. “How are you feeling?”

  “Better,” she said, although her voice still sounded weak to my ears.

  My mother had been sick off and on for the last few months. I kept begging her to go to the doctor and get checked out, but she was stubborn and had a deep-rooted fear of hospitals.

  “Have you been getting enough rest?”

  “I’m fine, Summer,” my mother insisted. She’d raised me on her own since
I was four, although half the time it felt like I was the one raising her. “I even took a walk to the park this morning.”

  “Oh, well, I’m sure the fresh air was good for you, but don’t push it, okay?” I asked, worried she was doing just that.

  I made a mental note to go by her house after work with some soup, then pulled my phone away from my ear to check the time.

  “I’ve got to get back to work,” I told her once I saw my break was almost over. “Helen has to leave early today.”

  Helen was my mom’s best friend and had been like a second mother to me. She owned a boutique clothing store, and I was her manager and occasional buyer.

  “Tell her she owes me ten bucks. Oh, I almost forgot to tell you what Cassandra told me at the park … Jared’s having a baby.”

  My heart started pounding as my stomach sank and tears pricked the corner of my eyes.

  “What?” I whispered, hoping I’d heard wrong.

  “Yup,” she said, sounding almost gleeful. “Told you he was a liar and a sleezeball. If you would have listened to me, you could have avoided all his shenanigans.”