Rock Wedding(7)

No, the woman who lived here had value.

Today Sarah smiled tightly at the memory of her defiant thoughts the day she’d moved into this house less than two years earlier, a month after her divorce from Abe became final. She hadn’t had value. Not then. Not in the way she wanted. She’d bought this house with Abe’s money, furnished it with Abe’s money. Her Rottweiler of a lawyer had more than earned his fee, but in the end, Sarah had been left feeling sick inside. Because she’d never wanted the divorce. She’d wanted Abe to fight for her.

He’d fought her demands, but never had he fought for her.

Now she had this house and this garden and this broken heart that had never quite healed right. And once again, she was alone. Her fingers brushed her cheek, still able to feel the bruise that had blackened it two weeks earlier. “I never thought Jeremy would treat me that way,” she said to Flossie. “He was so kind, so supportive once. He never ignited my heart, but he was a good man at the start.”

Sarah’s mutt of a dog, chocolate colored and with those incongruously silky ears Sarah loved to stroke, looked at her with mournful eyes darker than her furry coat.

“No,” she said in disagreement. “I wasn’t so careful about keeping my assets out of his reach because I didn’t trust him. That lesson came courtesy of the divorce.” After the Rottweiler, she’d hired another lawyer who’d tied up her divorce settlement in ways no one else could touch. No one had had to tell her to do that—she might not have a high school diploma, but she’d grown up in a home where what little her mother made, her mother’s boyfriend claimed as his own.

And though Jeremy had been wealthy from the start, she’d still never considered accepting his help to manage her finances. He’d offered after the divorce, but had taken her demur with good humor. No pressure, no snide remarks. “He was a good man,” she reiterated. “But he changed as I changed.” Sorrow made her blood heavy. “I think if I’d stayed the same, we might’ve made it.”

Jeremy Vance had rescued a broken bird, expecting her to stay broken.

But of course Sarah hadn’t been willing to be frozen in time.

Sarah had grown stronger day by day, become independent, a business owner. At first, Jeremy had celebrated her successes. Only later had she realized that Jeremy didn’t want an independent lover. He wanted Sarah as she’d once been: the lost girl searching for help.

She should’ve walked away the instant she realized that.

Part of the reason she’d stayed had been the baby.

Her hands clenched hard on the coffee mug.

Memories cascaded through her mind of going out to get groceries the week after she first filed for divorce and seeing Abe’s face splashed on the front pages of a major tabloid. He’d been out partying the previous night, half-naked groupies hanging all over him, their hands possessive on his chest and their eyes smug.

Sarah’s splintered heart had broken all over again. Because even then, while they were in the first bitter stages of their divorce—at a time when Abe was refusing to even sign the papers—she’d hoped. She had loved him so much, but the photographs made it clear he’d thrown her away like yesterday’s trash, that he’d already moved on. The only reason he was refusing to sign the papers was because he was pissed off at the settlement her lawyer was demanding.

Jeremy had been there to catch her broken self as it fell.

He’d come to see her that night, brought her flowers to cheer her up. A chance visit he’d said. Then, it hadn’t occurred to her to question him, to wonder why he’d turned up the very day the photographs of Abe partying hard hit the tabloids. But again, he’d been nothing but kind to her at that point—he could’ve honestly believed he was coming over to help her deal with the ugly situation.

She’d been so out of it, so emotionally numb that, for the first time, she hadn’t resisted when he tried for a kiss as he so often did. When he began to push for more, she knew she should stop him, but she’d felt so distant that it was easier to just let it happen, get it over with so she could curl up and rock away her pain.

She’d been a fractured ragdoll whose heart no longer beat.

Only Jeremy hadn’t disappeared afterward. No, he’d stuck around and openly said he wanted a relationship; everything he’d done had made her feel important and wanted and even a little loved. When he’d asked her if she’d have a child with him within a relatively short period of time, she’d been shocked. Then he’d told her that he adored her and explained he was getting on in years, didn’t want to be too old to play with his child… and Sarah had thought of how much she’d loved the baby she’d miscarried.