down to forty-seven and a half hours until this honeymoon is over, Mrs. Nolan. How do you want to spend it? Sightseeing in my new truck, eating breakfast, or hitting the sack?” Andy shouted exuberantly.
The new bride, Bella Ames Nolan, tilted her head to the side. God, she loved this guy standing next to her with his arm around her shoulders in an I-am-never-going-to-let-you-go hold. He was better looking than any movie star she’d seen on the big screen. He was funny, witty, and charming, and did this thing with his tongue in her ear that drove her absolutely nuts. And most of all, he loved her. Her. He had told her how he loved her from the very first time they met, and her love for him had only grown stronger over the three years they had been seeing each other: FaceTiming while he was away and in person on the occasional leave.
“How about this? We climb into your new truck and drive someplace for a breakfast we do not want but pretend to eat; then we spend the rest of our forty-eight hours in bed. That’s a trifecta if I ever heard one. Will that work for you, Major Nolan?”
“It absolutely will, Mrs. Nolan, unless you’d like to help me christen the bed in the back of the truck. You know, every truck has what they call a bed.”
Her new husband’s expression was so hopeful, so earnest, Bella burst out laughing, and quipped, “I thought you would never ask.” Like she really wanted to spend even one second of their forty-eight-hour honeymoon in the bed of a pickup truck with no blanket. Anything for Andy even if her ass was black-and-blue for a month. She consoled herself with the thought that no one was going to see her ass unless she took some selfies to send to Andy once he landed wherever he was scheduled to be deployed. If she did do that, would it be considered porn? She decided that yes, it probably would be. Well then, no selfies.
“Hop in, Mrs. Nolan. We need to find a secluded place to christen this here fine vehicle. Tell me the truth, Bella, did you ever see a better-looking truck?”
In all the time she’d known Andy, she had never heard such excitement in regard to herself in his voice. Say the word truck and Andy was over the moon.
Bella forced herself to smile. She hated trucks. What she hated even more was the $65,000 in payments that went with “this here fine vehicle.” Payments she would be making once Andy deployed. She smiled again as she tried not to think about her soon-to-be-bruised rear end.
And christening the truck was exactly what they did after pulling into an abandoned strip mall whose parking lot was secluded and in back of the tight strip of nine stores. The christening lasted eleven and a half minutes, two of which were used up with Bella tangling up the strings of her bikini panty. In the end, Andy just ripped them apart, and that was the end of that.
To say the christening was even close to pleasant would be an outright lie. Bella didn’t even bother to pretend. Andy was so engrossed in the horsepower of his brand-new truck, a wedding present to himself, that he didn’t even notice Bella pouting in the passenger seat as she stared out the window at the traffic and whatever scenery she could home in on.
The remainder of the forty-eight hours passed in a blur for Bella. She sobbed and hiccupped against Andy’s bare chest when he said it was time for them to shower and dress because he had exactly thirty-seven minutes left on his leave. Bella cried even harder, and Andy literally had to pry her arms from around his shoulders. He beelined for the bathroom and took the shortest shower in history.
In what seemed like the blink of an eye, he was dressed and ready to go when the room phone rang. It was the desk clerk, telling Andy that his ride was waiting in the lobby.
Bella sat up in bed, stunned at what was going on. She hadn’t showered. There was no way she could get dressed because she reeked of sex. What that meant was that Major Andy Nolan was going to walk out the door, and she wouldn’t see him again until . . . whenever. No, no, this was all wrong. The goodbye at the end of her honeymoon was not supposed to be like this.
Bella could feel the anger start to build in her gut. She sat up, the sheet up to her chin. “Is this where you say, great honeymoon, all forty-eight hours of it, and hey, babe, I’ll see you when I see you?”
Andy laughed, his head bobbing up and down. “See! I told you you would get it. You really are a good little soldier. I’m proud of you. The answer is yeah, pretty much.” He ran over to the bed, his eyes on his watch. He kissed her on the nose before running out of the room. He had two minutes to make it to the lobby and his ride or they would leave without him. He decided on the stairs because he didn’t want anyone to see the tears in his eyes. He felt like a jerk, a real heel for the way he’d exited the hotel room and left his new bride crying her eyes out. He knew that was the only way to play it or he would have lost it and cried right along with her and missed his ride. Discipline.
Andy barreled through the revolving door right on the heels of Colonel Paul Montrose and hopped into the Jeep in front of the hotel. His honeymoon was over. Now he had a war to fight.
Back inside the hotel room, Mrs. Bella Nolan stared at the door until she felt like she was going cross-eyed.
Now what was she supposed to do?
Pitching a hissy fit sounded good, but that took a lot of energy, energy she was totally lacking.
Shower? Wash away all traces of Andy? I can’t do that, she thought, sobbing.
Roll over and go to sleep. The room is paid through tomorrow.
The Nolan honeymoon was officially over.
Chapter 1
It was three weeks since the horrendous rain. Andy’s truck was still sitting in the now-dry parking lot because she didn’t have the money to have it towed anywhere. He didn’t have towing or truck replacement on his insurance. In fact, he had skimped wherever he could to save money. As far as she was concerned, the finance company could come and take the damn thing. She wasn’t paying another red cent on that monster Andy loved and adored. She’d written him the day the rain stopped, but of course there was no response, something she found not only strange but even weird considering how Andy loved the Ram 2500.
He hadn’t even acknowledged the e-mail that said she was filing for divorce.
Bella parked her Honda Civic, which was several spaces away from her two-year-old Nissan Sentra, in the same parking space she’d been issued when she had rented the apartment. The Nissan had been brand-spanking-new when she bought it. By the time the claims adjuster had finished his work, she had enough to buy the Civic with only a $66-a-month car payment. The Civic was also better on gas. The seventy-eight–year-old woman who had sold it to her swore that the 20,000-mile reading on the odometer was true and accurate, and the reason she was selling it was because she was going to move into an assisted living village and didn’t need a car. Bella had bought it on the spot and never regretted it for a second.
Bella stepped out of the elevator and made her way down the hall to her apartment. She didn’t run these days the way she had before. Before as in, before hiring Mitchell Jones. She played with the three apartment keys in her hand before she inserted the dead-bolt key into the lock.
Bella tossed the mail on the little bistro table in the kitchen without looking at it. What was the point? Bills, bills, bills. She could look at them anytime. Her theory was that if she opened them, she had to pay them. If she ignored them, then they didn’t exist until she was ready to open and pay them.
Just the other day, she’d separated the mail into two piles. Her pile was on the left and Andy’s was on the right. When she
