Margaret Way - Runaway Wife

All at once Laura’s heart was beating fast. All wrong, in the circumstances.

“You’re a woman on your own, aren’t you?” Evan said reasonably. “I’m the kind of man who likes to lend a hand.”

“Then I’m very grateful.”

“Besides, I’ve had a good time.” He looked at her and that white melting smile. “Laura Graham, you scare me.” Before he could prevent himself he had touched her cheek lightly with his finger. It had the velvety texture of a magnolia.

For a moment they stared into one another’s eyes. Laura felt oddly as if the air might explode. She felt so drawn to him, but she had no doubts that before he’d come to Koomera Crossing he’d been someone very different. She realized that Evan saw her as a vulnerable little rich girl on the run from some demanding boyfriend. She wondered what he would think if she told him the truth.

Dear Reader,

Runaway Wife is the story of a sensitive, gifted young woman who marries for love, only to find that her husband, in public a well-respected surgeon, behind closed doors is an abusive bully who uses any means at his disposal to control her and strip her of all confidence and self-respect. Violence against women is a terrible disease. It knows no boundaries of race, culture or social position.

Our heroine, Laura, finds the courage to make her escape from an intolerable situation. She flees to the Outback where, with the help of an ally, Dr. Sarah Dempsey of the Koomera Crossing Bush Hospital, she sets about taking the first steps toward rehabilitation.

In this remote Outback town her destiny becomes powerfully entwined with that of mystery man Evan Thompson. Evan, too, bears terrible scars. He has come to the Outback to heal. Together Laura and Evan forge the most vital emotional connection of all. They fall in love. But first Laura has to overcome her great battle with past fears and humiliations to lay her trust at Evan’s door. Only in doing so can she begin the process of facing up to her husband and reconstructing her life.

The first book in my KOOMERA CROSSING miniseries was the Harlequin Superromance novel Sarah’s Baby. Look for Outback Bridegroom and Outback Surrender, coming November and December 2003 in Harlequin Romance.

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PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

EPILOGUE

SHE never felt safe any more. Not living with Colin. Though she struggled to live normally, the truth was she was frightened all the time. Laura knew all the signs. Emotional and physical exhaustion, trembling limbs, fluttery pulse, sick panic inside her.

After another of Colin’s irrational and unprovoked attacks on her the previous night, she knew she had to go somewhere he would never find her. She had to make a decision and stick with it. She had to reclaim herself, her body, her mind, her drastically fractured self-esteem. Reared gently by loving parents, she found Colin’s behaviour entirely incomprehensible.

Since their big society marriage almost a year before, reality had become a far cry from their public image of glamorous, affluent couple. The thrill of being married had died before it had ever begun. Their marriage was a nightmare. Her dream of a happy partnership, of security, children, shattered.

Her brilliant young husband, a rising star in open-heart surgery, had turned out to be dangerously unstable—though such was his public persona no one who knew him would ever have guessed. His mother, maybe? Laura had always thought Sonia Morcombe recognised her son had a dark side, but instinctively chose to ignore it. It was easier that way. After all Colin was brilliant in every other way. Respected in his profession.

But the much-admired Colin had taught his bride not to love but to fear him. Because of his unpredictable moods, his sexual demands, his never-ending put-downs and profound jealousies, he had lost her love. Most certainly he had lost her most of her friends, subtly isolating her from anyone who was smart and confident and might help her. She saw far less of everyone.

Her music was out. He had forbidden her to continue with her studies. It was his role to “take care” of her, to make all her decisions for her. Clever, manipulative, psychotic Colin. He acted as though it had been ordained from On High he would occupy the central position in her life. She would rely on him for her every want, her every need. He lived to possess her.

After every terrifying outburst of rage, while the tears rolled down her cheeks, he insisted he loved her dearly. The fault lay in her. For a while he’d had her believing she wasn’t a real woman at all. He blamed her pampered upbringing for what she was now. Pathetic. He was sick to death of hearing about her father, the special closeness they shared. It had obviously been an unhealthy fixation.

“Daddy’s little girl!”

The way he said it, so contemptuous and scathing, hurt her terribly but it could not dim her loving memories of her father. Her father, unlike Colin, had been a man who inspired love. Not Colin. He reminded her constantly he was the brilliant one, the man who saved lives. The best she could do was play the piano. What sort of a job was that?

She couldn’t hold a decent conversation. Compared to him she was relatively uneducated. An “unsophisticated nothing” before he married her. A pretty object he’d bought and paid for. If she’d acquired any polish it was through him.

“You’ll never leave me, Laura,” he assured her, his voice deadly quiet. “You wouldn’t know how to function on your own. You need me to survive.”

She knew perfectly well it was a warning. She wished she was stronger, but she wasn’t. She hadn’t had enough life experience. She felt more as if she was fragmenting into little pieces.

There were a good many ways of expressing love. Flinging her up against walls with one violent sweep of the arm wasn’t one of them. Neither was insatiable lovemaking so rough she cried out in pain.

Up until last night Colin had taken good care not to damage her face. The face he “adored”. He’d actually said that. She had a sickening image of him standing over her, expression enraged, as she huddled on the floor, her arms wrapped protectively around her body.

Colin was a slim man but very fit, an inch under six feet. She was a light-boned five-three, her body weight constantly dropping as she lost appetite. She had learned from her beautiful, gracious mother how to be a good cook, a good hostess, a good homemaker, but Colin had never been satisfied with her. There was no way she could please him. Not even in bed, which was crazy, because he couldn’t get enough of her. Sex, too, was a way of controlling her.