Bare Devotion. Geri Krotow

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СКАЧАТЬ walked out on their wedding, his life blasted to hell, all within only three weeks?

      “Henry.” Her hand was on his forearm, and he thought his skin would blister from the heat. “I should have talked to you sooner.” Her voice was raspy, the way it got after she cried. Or when she was wet and ready. His cock swelled, and he damned his erection, damned whatever it was that kept him attuned to this woman even after she’d made an absolute fool of him.

      “Don’t, Sonja.” He wouldn’t take her hand away, sucker that he was. He turned and looked into her eyes and saw sorrow, confusion, and a shadow of—regret?

      She pulled her hand back and hugged herself. It was Sonja’s go-to defensive posture. She never did it in the courtroom or law office, not while she was working. But with him, with either of their families, she’d assumed this posture countless times. When she doubted her gut instincts.

      “I didn’t expect to see you here.” Her chin jutted the tiniest bit. Nothing he’d have noticed if they weren’t standing so goddamned close. He turned away from her and took a few steps into the kitchen, unable to trust himself.

      “I never expected you to bolt from our vows the way you did.”

      She had the decency to turn away then. “I don’t expect you to understand.”

      “Try me.” The words came out of a primal place, as involuntary as his sexual need for her. She’d dragged his heart over shattered glass, and it still beat loud in his ears with his want.

      Her eyes widened, and she reached out for the island counter, her long elegant fingers splaying over the slab of granite they’d handpicked to match the tiled floor.

      “Henry...”

      “You know what really gets me, Sonja?” His anger simmered, but still it wasn’t enough to dampen his desire. He took a step closer, and she swayed backward but didn’t move her feet.

      She shook her head. “No.” A whisper. She still felt it, too.

      He advanced another step, closing the distance he’d put between them. Of its own volition his index finger traced the line of her cheekbone, her soft skin dewy from the high humidity that blew in through the open French doors. “What keeps me up at night is how you were able to continue to live with me, sleep in the same bed as me, and never once mention that you had second thoughts about the wedding. About marrying me.” His finger traced down to her mouth, and some part of his rational mind thundered at him to stop, drop, and roll. Get the hell out of the house, away from this woman who’d destroyed his belief in forever.

      Sonja’s lips parted, and he knew she was trying to keep her breathing steady. The same way he was trying to keep his hard-on from running the show.

      “Theeeere you are, Henry!” A high-pitched Southern drawl pierced through the sensory curtain that always seemed to drape over them when they were together and made their sexual chemistry more than sex. A heavier curtain dropped down in Sonja’s gaze, smothering the heat in her eyes and revealing only her hardened distrust of him. For what she thought she knew about him, and the woman who’d crashed their wedding. Deidre Jones walked into their shared home as if she owned the place. Could his life get any shittier?

      He stepped back and looked at the woman who had hoped to strike the death knell to his marriage to Sonja. As much as he wanted to blame her, if he and Sonja had been better connected, communicating more, not even a narcissistic witch like Deidre would have made a blip on the screen of their future. “What the hell are you doing here, Deidre?”

      The petite blonde gave him her full-wattage smile, the one he’d been stupid enough to fall for back in college. “I was in the neighborhood checking out my parents’ villa and saw your car in the driveway.” She pointedly looked between the two of them. “This isn’t a bad time, is it?”

      “It’s a perfect time.” Sonja picked up her bag and headed for the stairs. “I’ll be upstairs putting together a few things.”

      Henry shoved his fingers through his hair. It was a sad replacement for what he wanted to do—shove his fist through the drywall that was going to have to be stripped back when the renovation started. How sad was he that he only felt it was okay to punch a hole in an already damaged wall? Sonja was right. He not only had a stick up his ass—it was up his whole damn life.

      “Henry. Talk to me.” Hell. He’d paused too long. The icy cold hand on his forearm wasn’t Sonja’s, and wasn’t welcome. He shook free of her grasp.

      “Again. What the hell are you doing here?”

      Deidre blinked, her ridiculously long eyelashes reminding him of tarantula legs. “I told you, I was—”

      “No, not what you said, Deidre. Why are you breaking the restraining order?”

      Chapter 2

      Henry glared at the woman who’d destroyed so much of his life during college and right after, and had returned to lay waste to his wedding to the one woman for him. The woman he needed to be upstairs with. “Why, Deidre?”

      “That’s years old, Henry. Isn’t it expired by now? And you know yourself, your parents invited me to your wedding. I’m so glad I was there to help you through the rough patch.” Her brow rose in an over-the-top, practiced way. If he hadn’t caught her rehearsing her expressions in the mirror that one morning over a decade ago, he’d have never believed how deeply self-centered a person could be.

      “You know I had it renewed last week. You need to leave. Now. And I’m reminding you to stay away from me. Come near me again and I’ll report your restraint violation. We do not have a relationship.”

      “But your parents disagree. They were happy to see me.” Deidre picked at some imaginary thread on her sundress, and he tried to have a flash of compassion for her. He wondered if it’d be easier if she were mentally ill and not the hard-boiled narcissist she was. Would he have been able to overlook her destructive manner?

      “You tricked them into inviting you. For your sake I never told them what a lying, manipulative person you are. I regret that now.”

      Her head jerked up, and she stared at him.

      “I didn’t need them to invite me. I would have come to the ceremony no matter what. I knew that once you saw me again you’d realize that we—” She halted, readjusting her hunt. Classic Deidre. If she channeled her intelligence into something more fruitful than making every man’s life who’d ever dumped her into a living hell, she’d be unstoppable.

      “There are more natural ways to handle things, you know. Like what’s between us, still.” She said “things” as if she were talking about the weather and not her severely messed up moral compass. Fuck.

      “There is nothing between us, Deidre, except a restraining order.” He pulled out his phone, intent on calling the police. “Please leave, Deidre.”

      She picked up the designer bag she’d dropped on the kitchen counter, and he briefly wondered how she afforded it, when it had to be difficult for her to hold a job down. Not his problem anymore, and he’d proved once that all he did was enable her, prevent her from hitting the bottom of whatever the hell was wrong with her. Which his parents had unwittingly done by inviting her behind his, and Sonja’s, back. Not that their motives were anything but selfish and destructive.

      “I’ll СКАЧАТЬ