Tempted by the Rogue by Kate Shepherd

Author:Kate Shepherd [Shepherd, Kate]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2016-05-07T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 3

Six months into his marriage, Cole was still sleeping in a separate bed from his wife. He had tried to lay down with her once, but the experience was awkward and he vowed not to do it again unless they both wanted it. Marrying Claudia was like having no wife at all, but Cole couldn’t complain. He was one of the few men in Bloomingfield who even had a wife.

So he went about his normal life as a sheriff and then would come home to his wife knitting or stitching and they wouldn’t say a word to each other. Six months into their marriage and they were still like strangers. Cole barely knew anything about his wife and while this troubled him, he never bothered to fix the problem.

Claudia also never attempted to make the marriage into a marriage. Instead, she treated her husband as a roommate. She would give him space and he would leave her alone. In this way, they never had marital problems but they never had any marital pleasure either. Everyone in the town wondered how long they would last.

*****

One day, Claudia was walking through the town with her derby hat perched on her head. Everyone knew her by now to be the sheriff’s wife. She seemed to be a plague to other men and they stayed away from her. Even the other women tended to stay away from her, but she continued to walk through the town with her head held high and that dignified look in her eye.

As she was walking, she headed toward the post. She was expecting some mail from her family back in Massachusetts and wanted to pick it up before the post closed. As she entered the building the old man who ran the post gave her a toothless smile.

“Ah, Mrs. Pearse, or should I call you Ms. Finch?” The old man teased. Unlike all the other residents of Bloomingfield, he had no remorse about teasing the odd marriage. He had been a minister in his youth and he felt like their loveless marriage was an abomination to the sanctity of marriage itself.

Claudia, however, paid him no mind. She was not offended or hurt with these comments. She knew what the town thought of her and she was not concerned with their judgments.

“I am here for my mail,” she said curtly, looking at the man as she took off her gloves. The man gave her a dirty look before going to the back and rummaging through all the mail that he had. Finally, he emerged with an envelope in his hand.

“A letter from Boston,” he said.

She grabbed it and left without exchanging another word with the man. She walked back to her home in a brisk pace. She hated to be outside in the sweltering heat of New Mexico. When she finally made her way back home she could feel the drips of sweat falling down her back. If there was one thing she hated about her new home it was the heat.

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