To Die For by Linda Howard Page B

I’d been happy, and I think he was, too. We did grow apart and I fell out of love with him, but that didn’t mean I had given up on our marriage. I was willing to work on it, to try to get close to him again. When I saw him kissing Jenni, it was like a punch in the stomach, and I realized he must have been cheating on me for some time. Not with Jenni; I pretty much thought that was the first time he’d touched her. But he wasn’t in love with her, so that meant he’d done it just because she was pretty and available, and
that
meant he’d very likely done it with other women, too.
    He hadn’t even tried to make our marriage work. He’d dumped me emotionally a long time before, and I hadn’t realized it. Once I did realize it, though, I cut my losses. I didn’t go crying on everyone’s shoulders; instead I built myself a very satisfying new life, but that doesn’t mean I’d escaped without some very deep emotional bruises.
    Bruises heal, and I wasn’t the type to mope around anyway. I learned from the experience, and set new guidelines and standards for myself. One of those guidelines was that if a man walked out without even trying to work things out, then he wasn’t worth my effort unless he proved he was serious about getting another chance.
    Wyatt hadn’t proved a thing yet. And he wasn’t the crawling type. So that meant the idea of us getting together again was pretty much a nonstarter.
    He pushed the Diet Coke toward me. “Drink it. Maybe it’ll cool you down.”
    What the hell. No way would I be able to sleep tonight anyway. I popped the top on the can and took a sip, then steered my thoughts to a more practical subject. “I assume there’s no way I can be open for business tomorrow.”
    “Good assumption.”
    “How long will it be before I
can
open? One day? Two?”
    “The time varies. I’ll try to move things as fast as possible, but I won’t cut corners. A couple of days, probably. I’m sorry for your financial loss, but—”
    “Oh, I won’t lose any money. The vast majority of the membership pays by the year because it’s cheaper than paying by the month. I don’t offer any memberships shorter than a month. It’s the inconvenience to the members that I don’t like, and I know that’s minor in comparison to a murder, but as the owner of a business it’s a hard fact that I have to take care of my customers or the business will suffer.”
    He eyed me consideringly, as if he hadn’t expected me to be that practical. That irritated me, because he’d spent three dates in my company and if he’d been paying any attention at all to anything other than my body, he’d have realized I’m no airhead.
    Maybe I should have been surprised he’d recognized
me,
because two years ago he evidently hadn’t looked any higher than my breasts.
    Bad thought, because he’d definitely looked at my breasts. And touched them. And sucked them. Now, I’m not much on breasts—they’re more of an irritant to me than a source of pleasure—but there was no getting away from the intimacy of the memory, and that was what had me blushing again.
    “My God,” he said, “what are you thinking this time?”
    “Why? What do you mean?” Like I was going to tell him what I was thinking.
    “You’re blushing again.”
    “I am? Oh. Sorry. I’m going through premature menopause, and I have hot flashes.” Anything to regain lost ground.
    He grinned, a quick flash of white teeth. “Hot flashes, huh?”
    “Premature menopause isn’t for sissies.”
    He laughed out loud, and leaned back in his big leather chair to watch me for a moment. The longer he watched, the more uneasy I became. Remember what I said about how his eyes looked? I felt like a mouse being stared down by a cat . . . a mean, hungry cat. In all this time I hadn’t given two thoughts about what I was wearing, but I was abruptly conscious of my pink halter top that bared my midriff, and the formfitting yoga pants. The way he was looking at me