Wanted: Wife by Stella Bagwell

Author:Stella Bagwell
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Six

Like a sudden blast of icy wind, the question froze Jenny, and for a moment all she could manage to do was look at him while her insides shivered.

“Why?”

Lucas shrugged. “Just curious. You asked me, so I’m asking you.”

Jenny had wanted to tell Lucas about Ruby and the kind of mother she’d been, but the last thing she wanted to do was to admit to him that she’d been married to an abusive man. He might understand about her mother, but he wouldn’t understand about Marcus. He might even blame her for being a bad wife. And Jenny couldn’t bear that. She’d lived through enough pain and humiliation, and did not want to endure more from this man.

Looking across the kitchen and away from Lucas, she said in a flat voice, “I—was married for five years.”

Her admission shouldn’t have surprised him. She was a beautiful, desirable woman. Men had probably pursued her since she’d been old enough to wear lipstick and bat her eyelashes. Still, a part of him was knocked sideways to know she’d once loved a man that much. And why had it ended after five years? She didn’t seem like the sort of woman who, once she was married, would take the partnership lightly.

“What happened?”

Jenny winced inwardly at the question, but she did her best to keep her features unmoving, her voice even. “After we’d already married, Marcus and I learned we wanted different things from life. My career as a policewoman certainly didn’t help our relationship, either.”

“You weren’t working as a cop when you first got married?” Lucas asked.

Jenny shook her head. “I was twenty-three and had just started training in the academy when I met Marcus. At that time he insisted he could deal with my being a police officer. He actually urged me to go after the career I wanted. A few months later, after we were married, all that changed. He couldn’t handle the idea of his wife working so closely with other men.”

Lucas snorted. “Looks to me like he would have been more concerned about you being shot or stabbed rather than worried that you might have an affair.”

Jenny grimaced as unwanted memories filled her head. In the first part of their marriage, Marcus’s unwarranted jealousy had been nothing more than verbal accusations and fits of sulking. But as the years passed things grew worse. Instead of flinging angry words at her, he began to throw and break things, then finally toward the end he tried to break her with threats backed up by the use of his fist.

Dear God, one man in her life had been almost more than she could mentally bear, she thought with an inward shudder. She certainly hadn’t wanted two! And she’d never given Marcus reason to think she had. So why would she ever want a man in her life again?

Why, indeed, she asked herself as she looked at Lucas’s black hair and warm brown eyes, the hard sensual curve of his lips and the broad width of his shoulders beneath his leather jacket.

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