she’d made. “You’re not the same person,” he would tell her. “I don’t recognize you.” He preferred the happy, domestic Kelly over the glamour girl she’d become.
Her father felt the same way. “You’re selling out, Kelly. Don’t let fame become an addiction.”
Kelly would only laugh at their concerns. Of course Cal and her father preferred the old her. Back when she had been a homebody, playing with the kids and having dinner on the table when Cal came home. Even if she didn’t cook it. That Kelly lived for the moment when he walked through the door. The changes had turned her into an in-demand actress, one associated with a different leading man every few months.
Another year passed before a story ran in
The article also questioned whether Cal Whittaker III—America’s premier faith-and-family filmmaker—could be happy about his wife’s choices. Maybe to silence the critics or to keep an eye on her, Cal had asked her to be in one of his bigger films. Kelly turned down the offer. Another decision questioned by the media.
She remembered the night she tried to explain her decision to him. “I don’t need your audience scrutinizing me. Church people will hang me up and throw darts at me.” She kissed him. “Try to understand, okay?”
What he did next would forever stand as the first blow, the first battle in a war they’d eventually lose.
To pay her back—at least it seemed that way at the time—Cal hired an actress who had publicly hit on him. The woman made a spectacle of herself by talking with reporters about the crush she had on Cal Whittaker. “Star Actress Hot for Kelly Morgan’s Guy,” the headlines read in that week’s tabloids. Kelly was asked about her husband’s decision in a dozen interviews over the next few months, especially when she landed her biggest role of all—the lead in a movie about a singer trying to hold on to her fame.
That year the paparazzi were ruthless. “Is Cal having an affair?” they would shout at her as she left the studio. “Has he walked away from his faith?”
Kelly ignored them, but she and Cal fought about the situation constantly. He swore that the executive producers had made the decision to hire the actress, but she believed he had a hand in the matter. “You wanted to get back at me,” she would insist.
Around and around the argument went. Kai and Kinley spent more time with their nanny, and Kelly took parts in three films back to back, each of which took her away from L.A. for months at a time.
It was while she was on the set of the third movie that she first saw pictures of Cal and the European model. The girl was stunning, just twenty-four years old. In the photo Cal had his arm around her as they ran from a Hollywood restaurant to a cab in the pouring rain.
More fighting and unhappiness followed. More insistence from Cal that nothing was happening, that there was an explanation for the photo. He was a producer. Of course he spent time with possible leading ladies, looking for the right fit for his next film. Kelly quickly grew tired of the fighting. She had always resisted the sort of roles that put her in bed with her costar. But in light of Cal’s public antics and the way he had humiliated her in front of the world, she took a guest role on a racy hit vampire show. Her role recurred for three weeks and over that time she had several steamy sex scenes.
The show filmed in North Carolina, and a couple times local photographers caught her with her costar at a cafe or coffee shop. She had barely flown home when Michael Manning direct-messaged her on Twitter. She remembered the tweet word for word.
The possibility of being single.
Six rocky months passed, and one day over backyard coffee with Cal she brought up the idea of divorce. He panicked at first and swore he and the model had met only to discuss her interest in family-friendly films. “Not all things are in my control,” he told her. “We need counseling, Kelly. We made a promise before God.” Tears filled his eyes. “I didn’t cheat on you. I never would.”
“Come on, Cal. You don’t talk to me or text me. You’re sharing your life with someone else. Whoever she is.” She clenched her fists, equally frustrated. “It’s like we’re strangers.”
“You’re never home.” Cal waved his hand in her direction. “How can I share my life with you when every few months you’re on to the next big thing? Where do I rate on your list of priorities?”
“You have plenty of women in your life. You don’t need me.”
Cal studied her, his face a mask of pain and suspicion. “Is there someone else? Because if there is, I want to hear it from you. Not the tabloids.”
“There’s no one, Cal.” The words came easily and felt like truth. At that point she hadn’t responded to Michael’s tweet. She kept her tone controlled. They didn’t need to give her housekeeper a reason to think they were fighting. “This isn’t about other people. It’s about us.”
He reached for her hands, but the gesture somehow lacked the passion they once shared. “Kelly, please. Don’t do this.”
“It’s the only way.”
His voice fell to a whisper. “How did we get here?”
Kelly had no answers. That night she finally responded to Michael Manning’s private tweet.
Hey Michael . . . I finally found time to get back to you. I’d love to get coffee some time.
At the end of the message she included her cell phone number. She said nothing about her marriage. That week two things happened that prompted Kelly to call her lawyer and have the papers drawn up. First, the tabloids had new pictures of Cal and the model, along with a whole slew of photographs of Kelly and her vampire costar.
Second, Michael Manning called her.
From that first conversation Kelly knew there would be no turning back. She fell for him in a way she’d never fallen before. Cal had been the only guy she’d ever loved, but her feelings for Michael made her wonder if she and Cal had simply been too young, the influence of her pastor father and church friends too overbearing.
One night with the kids and their nanny upstairs, Kelly and Cal had it out in a heated fight. “It isn’t working,” she yelled at him. “I want out.”
“Of course it’s not working. You’re taking roles that make you a joke. I mean really, Kelly? That vampire show? So the whole world has to see my wife—the pastor’s daughter—in bed with some other guy? Body parts fully visible?”
“It’s art. The show won six awards last year, okay?” Rage heated her face. “And don’t tell me nothing happened with you and that . . . that girl. We both want out. Quit lying to yourself. You have to see it.” She paused for a long minute. Then she blinked and in a tone more controlled than she’d felt in weeks delivered the final blow. “Cal.” She sighed. “There’s someone else.”
And like that something snapped. The fight left his body and his expression went flat. He hesitated for a long minute and then exhaled. “Who?”
“Michael Manning.” She felt a thrill just saying his name.
“The singer?” Cal’s shock was immediate. “He’s got a different girl every other week. He’s a decade younger than you.”
She shrugged one shoulder. “He’s crazy about me.” She went on to assure Cal that she and Michael were only friends. “But it could get serious.”
Cal’s eyes—the eyes that once were so like Zack’s—grew dark and distant. “Fine.” He stood and headed for the bedroom door, looking back just once. “Have your lawyer send me the paperwork.”
She had stayed with Michael at the Ritz-Carlton in Laguna Beach that weekend, leaving the kids with their nanny. When her father called three times that week, Kelly refused his call. Michael had that sort of power over her. The offer from
Which was why she needed to make this call.
KELLY TURNED HER back on the city of Atlanta and leaned against the railing. She stared at her phone again, at Cal’s profile and the picture from another lifetime.
