the reasons were about him, which did, in fact, make him a self-centered bastard like his father.
* * *
“What do you mean you’re married? More important—why do I not know this about you? And don’t even get me started on why I wasn’t invited to the wedding.”
Rose stared at her BFF, Vicki Jeffers. After Linc left she couldn’t stop shaking. He was a ghost from the past and she’d barely held it together when he showed up out of the blue. She’d really needed to talk to someone and begged her friend to come over. Apparently her shocked and shaky tone had convinced the other woman to break a date. So Rose told her story and the other woman was now staring at her as if she had two heads.
“I’m not married so much as not quite divorced.” She took another sip of the wine Vicki had brought. It was a nice vintage, more than Rose could afford. The business she’d launched eighteen months ago wasn’t exactly setting the world on fire. Paying her bills was a challenge and left no room in the budget for an expensive bottle of cabernet.
“So you’ve been married for ten years.”
“Not technically,” Rose objected.
“Yeah, technically,” Vicki countered. “Because if you’re not divorced, you’re still married. And you just said that happened almost ten years ago.”
“It ended after a nanosecond, so not really married that long.”
“Might not feel that way but legally you’ve been his wife all these years.” Vicki sighed and held up a hand. She was sitting at the other end of the couch and tucked her legs up beside her, settling in for a marathon heart-to-heart. “Why don’t you start at the beginning?”
Rose blew out a long breath as the highs and lows of that emotional time tumbled through her mind. “It was the summer before I started college. I got a clerical job at Hart Industries. Lincoln Hart had just finished his master’s degree in business and was taking his place in the company his father started.” Although now she knew Hastings Hart wasn’t his biological father.
“So... What? He hit on you? Used his position of power to sexually harass you?”
“Why would you think such a thing?”
“Because I’m a lawyer,” Vicki said.
“A very cynical one.” Rose shook her head. “He was a perfect gentleman. The truth is we fell madly in love and got married.”
“And you never saw fit to say a word about it when we met at school? I thought we shared all of our secrets.” There was just a tinge of hurt in her friend’s brown eyes. Vicki wrapped a long strand of silky blond hair around her finger and stared accusingly. “But you kept the secret that you were Rose Hart.”
The name had a nice ring to it, but she’d never even had a chance to change the last name on her driver’s license. “Linc abruptly ended things and said he would handle the divorce details and a lawyer would contact me if he needed anything from me. No one did, so I thought it was done.”
“And you didn’t wonder why you never heard anything about signing the settlement papers?”
“What did I know about a divorce?” And if she was being honest, there’d been a lot of denial going on. And she’d been so hurt. The pain of not being with him was almost more than she could bear. So many awful feelings. The shock of being dumped without an explanation. Overwhelming bewilderment. Now she knew what happened but still didn’t understand why he had to leave her. She would have done anything for Lincoln Hart—or whatever his name was. “I was practically a baby.”
“You weren’t too young to get married.”
“He swept me off my feet. I couldn’t say no to him. And he—”
“What?” Vicki’s eyes narrowed. “Did he do something?”
“Not what you’re probably thinking. He was incredibly sweet and understanding.” Not to mention sexy and handsome and completely irresistible. Unfortunately the “sexy and handsome” part hadn’t changed. But he was totally resistible to her now. “I was a virgin.”
Vicki nearly choked on her wine. “How is that possible?”
“You make me sound like a weirdo. I was only eighteen.”
“And crazy in love,” Vicki reminded her. “You just told me that you couldn’t say no.”
“To marriage,” she amended. “My mom drilled into me that a man has no need to buy the cow when he gets the milk for free. And if you give it away, he’ll just mosey on down the road to another cow. That’s what happened to her. Unfortunately when my father moseyed, she was stuck with a baby.” Rose pointed to herself. “Yours truly.”
“Ah.”
“She was determined that the same thing wouldn’t happen to me and never let up with the warning not to sleep with a man until I had a ring on my finger. I thought I got really lucky that the man of my dreams was determined to marry me. Of course I couldn’t say no.”
“So he married you to...” Vicki tapped her lips. “Pop your cherry?”
“That’s what I believed for ten years.” Rose recalled every word of what he’d said before walking out of her life. She remembered him telling her that he couldn’t be with her because he wasn’t in her league. She’d thought that was about him having more money than God and her not fitting into his world. Now she knew he’d been talking about himself because his father wasn’t who he’d thought. “He had a crisis of identity.”
Vicki rolled her eyes. “Yeah, I can see how that could happen. Must be tough figuring out which billions belong to you or your brothers when you’re a Hart.”
That’s just it. At the time he’d recently learned he wasn’t biologically a part of the family. But she didn’t feel comfortable revealing that.
“Things aren’t always what they seem.” Rose knew that statement was cryptic, but it wasn’t her secret to share, not even with the friend who was like a sister to her.
“A case could be made,” Vicki said pointedly, “that he proposed because he was after one thing. Correct me if I’m wrong, but he got what he wanted, then said adios.”
“You’re not wrong.” But there was more to it.
“And you’re not divorced? Seems to me someone from the legal department at Hart Industries should be canned over this.”
“You’d think.” Rose shrugged. “It’s probably not a stretch to say that my vow of chastity could have impacted the haste of his proposal. But, I am my mother’s daughter.” Although she’d made up her mind to be different from Janie Tucker and not play the victim card for the rest of her life.
“So, how was it?” Vicki sipped the last of the wine in her glass. “Seeing him again, I mean?”
“It was surreal. He hasn’t changed, other than being ten years older. But it looks good on him.” And she hated that. If he was fat, bald and irritating the trauma of having her heart ripped out and handed back would have been worth it. But her luck wasn’t
