Inglath Cooper - Unfinished Business

“To two old friends running into one another.”

Addy raised the glass to her lips and took a long sip. “Your mom told you about the divorce?”

“I’m sorry.” He reached across and covered her hand with his.

Addy couldn’t say anything for a moment. He turned her palm over, squeezed her hand tight, and she held on as if it were a lifeline. Finally she said, “I know what all the marriage manuals say. That when something like this happens, the affair isn’t the problem. It’s a symptom.”

“It still hurts.”

“That from personal experience?”

“Yep.”

Culley glanced away, a cloud of something that looked like sadness in his eyes. Not what she would have expected of the Culley Rutherford she had known in high school.

Dear Reader,

Every now and then I hear people say reading can’t be what it once was. There are too many other forms of media to choose from. While it’s true we have many choices these days when it comes to entertainment, I noticed something on a recent trip to a hair salon in Dallas, Texas, that reassured me books are doing just fine.

This was one of those great places where they offer you hot tea and massage your hands while you’re getting your hair washed with flaxseed shampoo. It was a Saturday, and the place was busier than a hive of bees. While I waited for my appointment, I noticed how many people were reading. An older lady with a Larry McMurtry, a twentysomething young woman with a Nora Roberts. A mother with a baby in tow snatching paragraphs of something that looked light and fun. A gray-haired man waiting for his wife, deep into James Patterson. And really, it seemed as if they were all enjoying the opportunity to read every bit as much as they were enjoying the salon’s exceptionally nice treatment.

I think those people all knew what I know about reading. That even with all the entertainment we have to choose from today, there’s something special about a book. Maybe it’s the one-on-one connection we have with the characters, or the fact that we can keep turning the pages without commercial interruption. And what a pleasure it is to read the first page and think, “Ah, this is going to be a good story.”

That’s what I wish for you. Many, many good stories!

All best,

Inglath Cooper

P.S. Please visit my Web site at inglathcooper.com. Write to me at P.O. Box 973, Rocky Mount, VA 24151.

www.millsandboon.co.uk

To Mac for showing me what real love is.

And to Grandpa Holland for the Sunday morning rides.

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

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

ADDY PIERCE HAD always believed in the power of intuition.

That little voice had a purpose.

Hard to explain, then, why she ignored it this particular day.

She’d worked on the Lawson case until after midnight, setting the alarm for four and leaving Mark asleep when she headed out the door for the office at five.

She had just sat down at her desk with a cup of much needed coffee when she missed the file, remembered she’d left it on the dining-room table. She was to be in court at ten o’clock, but she had enough time to run home and pick it up on the way.

It was then that the little voice had sounded inside her.

Send someone else.

Looking back, this was the detail that continued to play like a CD track stuck on what-if. What if she had sent someone else to get the file? Would they have told her Mark was at home? Or taken pity on her and left her unaware of the fracture in her marriage?

But none of those things had happened.

Addy had been the one to drive to her house. The one to open the front door and notice his suit jacket draped across the back of the living-room couch. The one to hear his voice coming from upstairs. The words not clear from where she stood in the foyer, but distinctly his voice. Followed by a woman’s laugh.

The voice inside Addy screamed. Leave. Turn around and leave.

But eight years of practicing law had shown her that knowledge, once gained, can rarely be ignored.

Standing there in the foyer of a house that already felt as if it didn’t belong to her, a feeling of dread swept through her, weakened her knees, so she put a hand on the wall and stood for a moment, waiting for the room to stop its listing.

Her feet moved of their own volition, the runner on the staircase deadening her footsteps. She followed the hall to the master bedroom, the voices drawing closer.

They’d left the bedroom door open. This amazed her. That in their own house, their own bed, he hadn’t bothered to close the door.

How could he have been so comfortable that he left the door open?

Through that rectangle she watched the husband who was supposed to have been hers rest his cheek on the woman’s belly, rounded with child.

Addy swallowed. Went absolutely numb as if someone had flipped a switch and obliterated all feeling inside her.

Mark turned, as if he’d felt her gaze. Shock skidded across his too good-looking face, then froze there.

“Addy. What are you doing here?”

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?”