Page 100 of Secret Husband
Enjoying my conjugal rights before I kick him to the curb.
“This divorce is still going ahead, then?”
“Of course it is. It started as a joke, and I find it hard to see it as anything but that.”
Gunnar did that Wild West gunslinger squint thing for which he was famous.
“Don’t keep it to yourself, G.”
“What happened back in college?”
“I had a big crush on him and we, uh, got together. Then at graduation, he told me not to expect anything.”
“Around the time your dad died.”
“Just before.”
“Tough time for you.”
It was. A week after graduation and being dumped, and the day before my father’s sentencing, the one I had vowed not to attend, Jonah Yates had keeled over on the golf course from a massive coronary. We had fallen out because of his inability to change his path, but part of me had assumed we would eventually reconcile. That there would always be more time.
Maybe his heart broke, knowing I wouldn’t speak up for him in court. But he had broken mine first.
“It was a long time ago, and Alexei and I haven’t kept in touch.” Though he had come to my games. Should I have sensed that he was in the crowd, cheering me on? If he meant so much to me, shouldn’t I have known that?
Having him back in my life had completely upended me, and not in a good way.
“Maybe I made a mistake breaking it off with Thad. Maybe I’m letting this business with Alexei influence things.” For all his dullness, I had chosen Thad for a reason. I couldn’t trust big personalities like my father, like Alexei. Too much excitement was never a good thing.
“Do you really think that?”
I slapped some paint on the wall and caught Gunnar’s disapproving look.
“I just know that everything was fine before he came along.”
“That’s what we like to think, don’t we?”
I halted my slapdash paint job and turned to him. “You can’t not follow up there.”
“You know how I met your sister. I thought everything was fine until she answered that text.”
Sadie had received Gunnar’s late wife’s phone number after it was recycled. He was still texting the woman he loved when my sister chimed in with “hello, wrong number.” That text led to conversations and a journey that both hurt and healed.
“But everything wasn’t fine. Your family was gone and you needed someone to pull you out of the quicksand. That’s not what’s happening with me.”
“No.”
“This marriage happened before I met Thad.” When I was neck-deep in a man rut.
“Okay. How did you feel when you heard you weren’t married?”
Disappointed. “Puck dodged.”
“And when he showed up telling you the good news?”
Excited. “Annoyed as fuck.”
“Is it possible that as soon as Nazarov showed his face, it made you think ‘what if’ and wonder why you took this out-of-character step?”
