Page 3 of Mr. Blackwood

“About what?”

“Our annulment. It was never finalized.”

I dropped my favorite mug and broke it.

***

“So, what appears to be the problem?” I asked Nick as we finished our steak dinner at his hotel. I hadn’t wanted him to know where I lived, because he would casually pop up when I least expected it. Nick liked really good food, and the places he dined at were extremely difficult to get last-minute reservations to. Therefore, he opted to have dinner at his hotel with room service from the fine-dining restaurant in the hotel.

He had insisted on being cordial and making small talk over dinner.

“Apparently, the paperwork wasn’t completed accurately, and it was filed late.”

“So, what does that mean?”

“We have to actually divorce now, because we’re technically still married and past the annulment period. I’ll just need your signature on these papers.” He shoved an envelope my way, and I opened it and rifled through the papers. He was silent while I read through the documents. It was all routine stuff that I didn’t believe I needed an attorney for.

“Whose screw up?” I asked not looking up at him as I quickly scrawled my signature on a few pages.

“My attorney and mine. He reached out to me to let me know, but apparently, I was out of the country for that period of time.”

Nick was a doctor in the Doctors without Borders program. He signed up before we were married and had never disclosed that bit of information to me. He said it was his calling and his life’s work. That was part of the reason that we broke up, because I hadn’t wanted to travel to and live in remote parts of the world. Neither had I wanted to have a long-distance marriage where he was in and out of my life. The other part was that he was a big flirt, which I learned after marriage. He believed every beautiful woman needed to be acknowledged and made to feel gorgeous.

To be fair, our affair was brief, three months. We had married on a whim believing we were deeply in love.

“This isn’t fair. How long have you known about this, Nick?”

He sighed and ran his hands through his thick, curly tousled hair. “About a year and a half.”

“A year and a half?” I stood. “Why am I just now finding out?”

He shrugged casually as he stood. “I’m sorry. It wasn’t anything personal, Cami. I was off saving lives. I had every intention of reaching out but things happen, you know?”

“No, I don’t know! You arrogant—arghhh! It’s always about your life, your career, you and everything concerning you. You truly believe the world circulates around you. You’re trying to sabotage my future.” I circled the table to face him.

“How? You’ve gone on with your life just fine.”

“You’re a selfish bastard.”

“If I were selfish, I never would have walked away when you told me to get out.” He reached out and gripped my shoulder in a calming manner, but I shrugged it off.

“You only did it because you didn’t want to answer for your selfish decisions and reckless behavior.”

“How was I being reckless because I pursued my dreams?”

“You knew that I didn’t want you to give up my dreams to go to some remote war-torn country. You knew that you were in that program when you asked me to marry you, and you refused to not sign up again when it was time. What kind of life is that? What if we had kids and something happened to you? You’d be in essence leaving me as a widow to raise our kids?”

“What if nothing happened? What if you just overreacted for nothing? What if we could still be together? I can tell you still love me.”

“I hate you, Nick!”

“Do you, Cami?” He gripped the back of my head and covered my lips with his. I recalled how sweet his kisses were, and how much I craved them in the short while that we had together.

My body hungered for his touch. It had been more than a year since I’d last had a man touch me that way. He tugged at the hem of my blouse, and I reached for the button on his jeans. Within minutes we were naked, and my legs were wrapped around him.

He carried me to his room and tossed me on the bed. I inhaled, anxiously awaiting what he would bring to my body as he covered his length with a condom.

My honeypot stirred with longing and ached to be filled with his length. When he joined me again, we were a convoluted mess of limbs, tongues, and appendages.