A Widow's Guilty Secret. Marie Ferrarella

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СКАЧАТЬ couldn’t allow herself to go to pieces. There was no one around to help her put those pieces back together again. No one to really rely on, except herself.

      Just like the old days.

      “Thank you,” she said to Juarez, offering him the near-empty glass. Her words elicited a shy smile from the young detective as he took the glass from her.

      “My pleasure, ma’am.”

      Ma’am. She was way too young to be a ma’am. Or maybe she wasn’t. After all, she was someone’s mother now.

      “You up to some questions?” the other detective asked her. She nodded, wanting to get this over with. “When did you last see your husband?”

      “Yesterday morning at breakfast.” That seemed like a hundred years ago now, she thought. Had it only been a mere twenty-four hours?

      “Did he seem particularly preoccupied or troubled to you?” the detective asked.

      She looked at this stranger for a long moment, wondering how to answer his question. Did she tell him that she and Peter had grown apart? That they hardly spoke to one another these last few days, except to talk about the baby? Or did she keep her secret and pretend that everything had been just fine?

      Pressing her lips together, Suzy paused for a moment as she searched for some plausible middle ground. “If you’re asking me if he seemed different than usual yesterday, the answer is no, he didn’t.”

      Her words, Nick noted, were carefully orchestrated. He read between the lines.

      “How long have you and your husband been having marital problems?” he asked gently.

      The question surprised not only Suzy, but the other detective as well. Juarez stared at him, openmouthed. “You didn’t tell me you knew the sheriff and his wife, Nick,” Juarez said, sounding slightly irritated at being shut out this way.

      “I don’t, do I, Mrs. Burris?” Nick asked, looking at the woman.

      She didn’t bother addressing his last question as she focused on the one that not only caught her off guard, but upset her, as well. She didn’t want any dirty laundry to mar Peter’s memory. As far as the people in the county were concerned, he was an exemplary sheriff.

      “What makes you think we were having problems?” she asked.

      The question told him all he asked. He was right. Had there been no problems, she might have issued an indignant denial, or at the very least, stared at him as if he was being boorish. But she didn’t. She was defensive. Because there was something to be defensive about.

      “Let’s just say I’ve been there,” he answered evasively.

      This wasn’t about him, and Nick had no intentions of revisiting his own failed attempt at marital bliss. He’d married far too young and it had all fallen apart on them not that long after the vows. In keeping with his marriage, he’d been divorced young as well. He’d learned a lesson along the way: He was no good at marriage.

      “Were you two talking?” he asked, trying to sound as kind as he could under the circumstances.

      “Yes,” she snapped back, then shrugged helplessly as she amended, “But just barely.” She paused again, searching for a way to phrase what she wanted to say. “We’ve just had a baby—”

      “Congratulations,” Juarez said with enthusiasm. “Me, too. I mean, my wife, too—except not yet. I mean—”

      “He means his wife’s due anytime now,” Nick interjected. He’d heard about nothing else this entire last week. “Go on,” he coaxed Suzy, “you were saying …?” He trailed off, waiting for her to fill in the blanks.

      “Despite that, Peter’s been rather distant lately,” she admitted.

      The next moment, she regretted the words. Why was she baring her soul to these men? What did any of this have to do with whoever had killed Peter?

      “Some men feel threatened by a baby,” Nick told her, recalling what he’d once heard. “They think that they’re being replaced in their wives’ affections.”

      Suzy shook her head. She wanted to stop any further conjecture before it got too out of hand.

      “Having the baby was Peter’s idea,” she told him, then added, “he thought that the baby would bring us closer together.”

      He noticed she didn’t say “again,” which meant that they probably hadn’t been all that close to begin with. Nick decided to press a little further. “How bad did it get?”

      Enough was enough. Suzy’s own protective instincts, the same one that had her protecting her sister from their parents’ inebriated wrath, kicked in.

      She glared at this intruding detective. “What does any of this have to do with my husband’s murder?” she demanded.

      “Just trying to establish the sheriff’s frame of mind the last few days before he was killed,” he replied matter-of-factly.

      She really didn’t like exposing her private life like this to strangers, but then, what did it matter, anyway? Peter was dead and that meant her world would have to go through some pretty drastic changes—even faster than she’d initially anticipated. After all, she had been planning to divorce Peter. All in all, a divorce was rather a drastic life change in itself.

      She blew out a breath and plunged in. “I was going to ask Peter for a divorce when he got home last night.” She addressed her words to her shoes, not feeling up to making eye contact with the detective who was doing all the questioning right about now.

      But then, he’d probably take that as some sort of a silent admission of guilt, she realized. Blowing out another breath, she forced herself to look up at the man.

      “Except that he didn’t,” she said quietly once she’d reestablished eye contact.

      Something sharp pricked at his insides the moment their eyes met. Nick tried to shrug it off. It didn’t budge.

      “I see,” he said without a shred of emotion evident in his voice, successfully masking his feelings.

      It was at that moment that Detective Nick Jeffries made a stunning and rather uncomfortable discovery. He realized that he was attracted to this woman, deeply attracted. Moreover, it wasn’t just her delicate looks that had hooked and reeled him in, it was her underlying vulnerability, which he could see she tried to cover up at all costs.

      But the very existence of that vulnerability had awakened his dormant protective streak, a streak he had thought he’d successfully laid to rest more than a few years ago.

      Apparently, he’d thought wrong.

       Chapter 3

      As Nick tried to bury this unsettling and somewhat annoying realization, Juarez’s cellphone rang.

      Juarez snapped to attention and seemed to go on high alert even before he pulled his phone out of his pocket. He blinked, clearing his vision, and then looked at СКАЧАТЬ