Unfinished Business. Inglath Cooper

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      The question hung in the air, ridiculous, considering. The woman scrambled up—as well as a woman in her condition can scramble—and yanked the covers around herself with a well-sculpted arm.

      She was so young. She had the kind of skin that made Addy want to run out in search of face creams guaranteed to halt the aging process in its tracks.

      What was Mark doing with someone who looked like she should still be in college?

      He jerked out of the bed. Addy stared at her naked husband while the woman made no effort to hide the possessiveness in her own assessment of him. Mark reached for a robe where it lay on top of the thick comforter. Addy recognized it as the one she had bought for him at Bloomingdale’s for Christmas last year.

      A robe. She’d given him a robe.

      Was that the cause of this? The fact that their marriage had deteriorated to the point that she couldn’t come up with anything more exciting than a robe for a gift?

      The room suddenly had no air in it. Her lungs screamed in protest. She was going to be sick. She turned and bolted down the hall.

      “Addy! Addy, wait!” Mark called out.

      She stumbled down the stairs. Don’t think. Not yet. Get out. Just go. Her throat had closed up, and her eyes burned with the need to cry. Not in front of him. She would not cry in front of him!

      “Addy, please!” He caught her in the foyer, his chest rising and falling with what looked more like agitation than exertion. Her gaze dropped to his ab muscles. A six-pack. Like those guys in the men’s fitness magazines. When had he started working out? And he’d lost weight, hadn’t he?

      She realized then how long it had been since she’d seen him without his clothes on. How long it had been since the two of them had made love. She felt a wash of mortification for what she now knew to be the reason.

      “We need to talk, Addy,” he said, a note of uncertainty in his normally confident attorney’s voice.

      She focused on the navy crest of his robe, the knot in her throat so thick she could barely speak. “Aren’t we a little beyond the talking stage?”

      “This isn’t how I wanted to tell you,” he said, compassion edging the admission.

      Fury exploded through her. She did not want his pity! Damn him. “How long has this been going on?”

      He looked away, then dropped his gaze, guilt etched in every angle of his posture. “I never wanted to hurt you, Addy.”

      “You knew I wanted children. You weren’t ready, you said. How could you? How could you do this?” The words throbbed with pain, and she hated her own inability to keep them neutral.

      He stepped toward her, reached out, then dropped his hands to his sides. “Please, Addy, I don’t know what to say. This wasn’t planned. It just—”

      “Don’t you dare say it just happened. I can’t believe you would do this to us. Who are you?”

      He blocked the door with one hand. “Wait. Addy! You don’t understand—”

      “I understand,” she said, the details of their marriage clicking into place like the numbers on a vault lock. All those late nights he’d been working, his lack of interest in her and the fact that they hadn’t made love in months.

      The anger collapsed inside her, and she felt as though her bones might not support her. She walked over to the dining-room table, picked up the file she’d left that morning.

      And, without another word between them, she left. Game over. Marriage finished.

      CHAPTER ONE

      ADDY TAYLOR STOOD at the corner of Fifth Avenue and 48th Street, hand raised for a taxi. Rain pelted her already-a-lost-cause hair, and her lightweight coat drooped beneath the downpour. She glanced at her watch, waved harder as another cab sped past her like a bullet, tossing a wave of muddy water across the toes of the Italian leather pumps she’d stalked for two months at Neiman’s until they finally went on sale.

      She stepped back from the curb, reached down and pulled off a shoe, emptied it of water, then did the same for the other.

      Her flight was due to leave LaGuardia in forty-five minutes. She had been in Manhattan since Monday, taking depositions from the board of directors of a company Owings, Blake was representing in a securities fraud suit. She’d known she was pushing it, allowing so little time to get to the airport, but she’d been close enough to finishing to not have to come back next week.

      Fifteen minutes later, a taxi whisked to a stop beside her. She opened the door, shoved her small suitcase and laptop bag across the blue vinyl seat, slid in and closed the door. “LaGuardia, please.”

      The driver had thick black frame glasses and a scruff of a beard that looked as if his razor had gone dull several days before. He pulled out into traffic, looking in the rearview mirror. “Which airline?”

      “U.S. Air.”

      “What time’s your flight?”

      “Five-fifteen.”

      He gave her a pointed look, muttered something about the taxi not having wings, then rammed the accelerator to the floor, tossing her against the back seat.

      She looked down at her lap. A drenched mess. She reached inside her purse and pulled out a couple of tissues, attempted to wipe the rain from her face, only to have them dissolve in a sodden lump in her hands. A complete waste of time.

      She dropped her head back, pressed a thumb to her throbbing right temple. What she would give for a hot bath and a long soak. The last thing she wanted to do was get on an airplane. So spend the night.

      The thought beamed up from nowhere, only to be squashed by a wake of practicality. Too expensive. She hadn’t planned to stay.

      But then why not? What did she have to hurry home for?

      Another weekend, and nothing but an empty house that stood as an all too recognizable symbol of her empty life.

      April third. First day as an officially no-longer-married woman. Addy hated the sound of it, hated everything about the new tag, its implications of failure and rejection. The realization that like her own mother, she had been left. Half a year had passed since Mark had moved out, and sometimes Addy felt as though she were still standing in the doorway of their bedroom, trying to make sense of the fact that there was another woman in her bed. Six months, and she had not moved beyond that single truth.

      Maybe it was finally time she got moving. At the very least, she could indulge herself for the night.

      She sat up in the seat. “Wait. I’ve changed my mind. The Plaza Hotel, please.”

      Another pointed look through the rearview mirror, this time with compressed lips to complete his disapproval.

      A few minutes later, the taxi jarred to a stop outside the 59th Street entrance to the Plaza. A bellman opened Addy’s door and took what luggage she СКАЧАТЬ