no good bastard!”
Her voice trembled. She despised herself for it, for the weakness that had sent her into his arms…and for the knowledge that he was right. For all those reasons and a thousand more, Natalie Baron lifted her chin, met her husband’s angry glare and spoke the words she’d once never imagined herself saying, the words she’d bitten back over the last endless months.
“Gage,” she said, “I want a divorce.”
CHAPTER TWO
THE sound of a lawnmower woke Natalie from a fitful sleep.
She blinked her eyes open, then shut them against the bright sunlight that poured into the room. That was a surprise. Hadn’t Gage remembered to close the blinds before he’d come to bed? It was something he always did, for her. The light didn’t bother him but she…
“Oh, God.”
Natalie’s whisper rose into the still morning air. Of course Gage hadn’t closed the blinds. This wasn’t their bedroom, this was the guest room. She and Gage hadn’t shared a bed last night.
Her throat constricted.
For the first time since the night they’d eloped, she and her husband had slept apart.
Well, no. Not exactly. Slowly, she sat up and swung her feet to the carpeted floor. Actually, they’d slept apart lots of times. More and more times, in fact, over the past year and a half. Gage was always off on business trips, exploring new sites for Baron Resorts, talking high finance with bankers from Bangkok to Baltimore, checking out the competition…
Or so he said.
Natalie pushed a fall of dark hair back from her face. She rose and made her way into the attached bathroom, trying to avoid seeing her reflection, but it wasn’t easy. The interior designer who’d “done” the bath had covered the walls with mirrors. Since the room was the size of the first apartment she and Gage had lived in, that meant lots of mirrors. Acres, or so it sometimes seemed. It wasn’t what she would have done—what woman in her right mind really wanted her reflection beaming back at her from every angle, first thing in the morning? But Gage had given the designer carte blanche.
“Everything subject to my wife’s approval, of course,” he’d said, standing there with his arm around Natalie’s shoulder.
“Of course, Mr. Baron,” the designer had replied, casting a fawning smile in her direction.
“Just don’t bother her with details,” Gage had added, with a just-between-us-guys grin. “My wife has enough to do without worrying about chips of paint.” He’d beamed down at her. “The country club tennis tournament, her charities…isn’t that right, darling?”
“Absolutely,” Natalie had answered. What else could she have said, with her husband and a complete stranger beaming at her as if she were some clever new wind-up doll?
Natalie brushed her teeth, rinsed her mouth, and winced when she looked up and saw a universe of Natalies watching her.
“Ugh,” she said to the straggly hair, the pale face, the smudge of mascara beneath one eye that was all that remained of the makeup she’d never taken off last night. She could have: the guest suite was well-equipped. The designer had seen to that. Cotton sheets so soft they felt like silk, Unisex pajamas, fluffy white bathrobes, disposable slippers, sample sizes of cosmetics enough to stock a department store. Hairbrush, comb, toothbrushes, toothpaste, mouthwash, tissues…The man with the flutey voice had thought of everything. And when they had guests, part of Luz’s housekeeping duties was to restock whatever had been used.
The only thing the decorator hadn’t thought of was how a woman was supposed to feel when she awoke in the guest room because she’d told her husband of ten years that she wanted a divorce.
Natalie turned off the water and patted her face briskly with a towel. She hadn’t planned to say the words, not consciously. Not last night, certainly. But, really, she was glad she had. It was better this way. Why prolong things? She’d known, for a long time, that the marriage was over. That she and Gage were living a charade, known since she’d lost the baby—a baby, she’d realized, he’d never really wanted—that he didn’t love her anymore, that she didn’t love him. That—that—
“Oh, Gage,” Natalie whispered, and sank down in the middle of the tiled floor. “Gage,” she said again, her voice breaking, and she buried her face in her hands and wept until she was sure she could never weep again.
And, after that, she wept some more.
Gage awakened, as always, promptly at 6:00 a.m.
It was the habit of a lifetime, one he’d developed in those long-ago years when he’d first headed east from Texas. He’d figured out really early that a twenty-one-year-old kid with half a college degree, no discernible skills in much of anything that didn’t involve a horse, and a brand-new wife to support had to work hard at being an early bird if he was going to catch even the smallest of worms.
It wasn’t necessary now, of course. His offices didn’t open until nine but still, every morning, rain or shine, he was out of bed at six on the button.
Usually, he crept around quietly in the shadowy darkness with the bedroom blinds shut, doing his damnedest not to disturb Natalie. She always said she didn’t mind, that what she called her internal clock was still set at dawn.
But he’d vowed, a long time ago, that his wife would never have to creep out of a warm bed at dawn again. No way would he ever have to watch Natalie stumble into her clothes, then go off to a day spent waiting tables.
He could remember the time he’d told her that.
“I’ll take you up on the no-waiting-tables deal,” Natalie had said, laughing. Then she’d thrown her arms around his neck and flashed a sexy smile. “Come to think of it, staying in bed is a pretty fine idea, too…As long as you stay there to keep me occupied.”
“Occupied?” he’d said, with a puzzled look that was hard to maintain because just the light brush of Natalie’s body against his had always been enough to make him go crazy.
“Occupied,” she’d said, and then she’d threaded her hands into his hair, drawn his head down to hers, kissed him with her mouth open so that he could taste her honeyed warmth…
Gage’s face hardened.
Kissed him, exactly as she had last night, just before she’d said, “Gage, I want a divorce.”
He muttered an oath, kicked the afghan blanket from his legs, and sat up.
“Ouch.”
So much for spending the night on the leather couch in the den. Gage groaned, pressed his hands to the small of his back, and rose to his feet.
Leather couches were not made for sleeping. Neither was this room. It was too big, too impersonal, too filled with stuff. What man would want to share his sleeping quarters with a pool table?
Not him, that was for sure. But Natalie had stalked off to the guest suite, leaving the bedroom to him.
“You can have it,” she’d said with dramatic flair.
