Brides and Betrayal (Reconciled and Redeemed Book 1) (10 page)

“Stop making excuses for your actions!”

“Hunter, please!”

He had looked down on his wife, and for one moment, she thought me might give into her pleas. He might hold her in his arms, kiss away this nightmare and return to way things were before he had left for his business trip.

“Trust me, I would never want to hurt you.”

His hand had been reaching out to brush an errant strand of copper hair from her ivory cheeks, but at her words, his hand fell to his side, and his blue eyes iced over.

His words were calm - but they felt like a soft biting breeze in the dead of winter. Barely enough to stir her hair but enough of a chill to take her breath away. “That is the problem. I can’t trust you. You have broken that trust, and no matter how hard we try to piece it back together again, I will always see the broken cracks.”

“We can, we can go see a counselor...”

“We
could
have seen a counselor. You
could
have told me how you felt
before
this happened.” He looked down at her for a moment, the muscle in his jaw working, the physical evidence of his restraint. “Now, your infidelity is a wall between us. All hope of reconciliation is gone.”

“But what about...” Her hand fell to her stomach.

“Is it even mine?”

She sucked in her breath at the pain his words caused her. “Yes.”

“Should I trust anything you have to say?”

She wanted to argue, but she knew better. She shook her head no. “I’ll go pack my things.”

She started up the stairs, but he stopped her. “Holly, wait.”

She turned, praying for mercy. “It is too late to go out tonight. Stay until you can find a place.”

Holly looked one last time into his cold blue eyes, dispelling any of her worthless notions that Hunter and mercy would ever go hand in hand.

W
hen she woke in the morning, Hunter was already gone. She packed a bag with a week’s worth of things. She’d stay in a motel until she could find a place, but she couldn’t stay in the house with him any longer. She had seen his hatred last night - she had become his mother and there was no coming back from that.

Anya was already at the boutique when she walked in. “Good morning...” Anya looked up and saw the dark circles under Holly’s eyes and the bag in her hand “...or not. What happened?” Anya gasped. “You told him the truth?”

Holly could only nod her head. Anya wrapped her arms around Holly. “No mercy, huh?”

The tears she had been withholding burst through. “He doesn’t think the baby is his.”

She cried on her friend’s shoulder, spilling out the whole story. “Well, you can stay upstairs in the apartment over the store. It isn’t much, but the people moved out two days ago. Let me call someone to clean it today and you can bring your stuff in.”

When Holly shook her head, Anya shushed her. “You can be close to work and not have to worry about anything right now. All this strife,” Anya waved her hand in the air, “It isn’t good for the baby.” She whirled around in a flurry of colors and scents, coming back from the rear office moments later with a ring of keys. “Come on and we will go check it out.”

Numbly, Holly followed Anya out the rear exit of the boutique and climbed the wrought iron staircase in the back of the store. Her legs felt as heavy as the iron of the stairs, and she could barely lift them. There was a small porch and a flower box siting on the window ledge. The flowers were dried and wilted.

They walked into the apartment, leaving the door ajar. The place was, as Anya had said, small. To the right of the doorway was a small galley kitchen, and a round white Formica kitchen table sat beyond that in a small nook. The left side of the entry way opened up to a small living room with one well-worn sofa and an armchair - neither which matched. As she stepped through the living room, she could see a door that led to a bedroom and another which led to the bathroom. Sparse, like her life, but it would do.

A soft meow intruded into the silence as a small cat came through the door and proceeded to make its way through the living room to finally settle in the small bay window seat that overlooked the front of the store.

Anya growled, “That couple! I am so glad they are gone.” She went over to the window seat and looked down at the cat who paused in its grooming process to look at her and meow, as if to ask, “What?” It was a seal point Siamese, and her little brown face was so dark against the rest of her creamy coat, it looked as if it had been dipped into a can of varnish, the kind her father used to stain his furniture.

“They left behind their cat?” Holly sat next to the cat and began to pet it.

Anya growled again. “How could a person be mean to a poor cat?”

The cat worked its paws in a kneading motion against Holly’s legs. “I’ll take it.”

“The apartment or the cat?” Anya joked.

Holly shrugged. “Both!”

“Now you are the one joking, right?” Anya asked.

“No, the poor thing was just tossed aside. Why should it have to suffer? Besides, I could use the company.”

“Okay, I will call the cleaning people.”

“Do you want me to sign a lease agreement, or ...?”

Anya cut her off. “No, you can just pay the rent each month. No contract, because hopefully Hunter will come around.”

Holly let out a dour laugh. Though she hoped it would be true, she doubted that he would ever come around.

Her suspicions were confirmed when she and Anya went that weekend back to their house to grab the rest of her clothes. Hunter was there and barely acknowledged hers or Anya’s presence. Holly could have come and gone without so much as a word to each other, and a part of her wanted to do that. Standing before Hunter, his handsome blue eyes filled with nothing but anger and loathing, she would have preferred to have had Anya pick up all her stuff.

However, she had a baby to think about, and, despite his denial and her sneaking doubts, she knew that the baby had to be his. If he chose not to be in the kid’s life, that was his decision. Her job today was to make him understand that he was going to be a father, no matter how he felt about the mother.

“Hunter,” she began, but he was quick to cut her off.

“Holly, there isn’t anything you can say that will change my mind. So don’t start flinging your excuses out again - like they are going to erase what you have done.”

“I wasn’t going to make any excuses.” She looked away from his eyes, unable to handle the hate she saw there. It scraped at her soul, eradicating the spots where his love had one inhabited. “I can understand that you don’t want anything to do with me, but this child is yours.”

“Prove it.” Hunter fairly hissed the words. “Let’s get a paternity test.”

She placed a hand over her belly, thinking that this poor child was going to have an awful beginning. He must have taken her silence for hesitation.

“I can see you don’t want to do that. Is it because you aren’t certain?”

Holly lifted her chin in defiance, but it crumbled before his icy stare. “I will get the test. I will set it up on Monday.”

She grabbed the handle to her last suitcase, but stopped before she left. Her voice was soft, humble as she spoke. “I know you won’t believe me when I say there was no love...no feelings behind what I did with Seth. I wanted to hurt you like you hurt me.” Despite her best effort to not cry, tears hung on the tips of her lashes. Blinking them away, she added, “But I understand, regardless of why I did it, my actions were enough to destroy our marriage.”

For the first time since she had arrived, Hunter’s face registered something besides hate, but only briefly. As Holly replayed the scene in her mind over the next few weeks, she began to doubt whether she had ever really seen that brief flicker of tender emotion.

Hope was a dim candle burning in the corner of a dark room where she sat daily, waiting for the light to spread her way. When the paternity test came back, she was sure he would relent, or at least soften a little. After he read the results, he merely looked at her and said, “Well, it looks like we will have to add custody into the divorce proceedings.”

Like a cold breeze, his words snuffed out that lone flame that had been burning. Hope was gone, and fear had taken up residence. “You aren’t going to try and take the baby...?”

Again, she thought she saw a flicker of emotion. “No, Holly.” His voice had lost a small bit of its edge. “But I am not going to pretend everything is okay for the sake of our child. I will not take you back.”

The finality of his words slammed into her heart.

He didn’t look at her as he continued. “My lawyers said that if we don’t contest it, things can go relatively quickly.”

For a brief moment, Holly thought about fighting it. Would the judge delay if she said she wanted to work things out? Would he force them to go to counseling? Maybe Hunter would have a change of heart...

One look into his cold eyes, and she knew there was no point. Over the past week, her life had become this cold and empty waiting room where she lingered pointlessly for good news to be delivered. She might as well end it now.
Why drag it out? Just let the pain begin
.

“Okay,” she choked back a sob. With that, she left.

E
ight years destroyed with a stroke of my pen.
Holly looked at Hunter across the conference table, but his head was turned. A muscle worked in his jaw, but she thought she saw a glimmer of tears in his dark blue eyes.

She hesitated on the second H in Holly Ann Harrison.
When I complete the last hump on the n, it is over.

Holly’s eyes fell on the words “irretrievably broken” on the papers. That was how they labeled their marriage, despite her heart’s desire to say it was otherwise.

Fight!
Her heart screamed.
Tell him you love him. Tell him you are sorry. Tell him you can’t live without him.
With a deep breath, she signed her name and put her pen down, knowing that words or actions would do nothing to repair the rift she had torn in their marriage. Holly looked up at her husband...
ex-husband,
she corrected herself.

Hunter finally looked at her, and she pleaded silently with him from across the table. But there was no forgiveness in the firm set of his jaw or the cold darkness of his eyes.

Holly stood on legs that trembled, and she wasn’t sure she could even make it out of the office.

But somehow she did. She managed to walk past the receptionist happily chatting on the phone. With a trembling finger she pushed the button to summon the elevator, which arrived too quickly, spilling out a laughing couple. As Holly stepped in the elevator, she turned to see the man place his hand on the small of the woman’s back. Before she could squelch it, the image of Hunter’s gentle touches surface in her mind.

She hesitated, but somehow found the strength to press the L1 that would take her down to the garage, where she would have no choice but to get in her car and drive out of Hunter’s life forever.

Holly leaned against the walls of the elevator as the doors slid closed, fearful she would crumble under the weight of her guilt, her shame, and her stupidity.
You don’t know what you have until it is gone
was a harsh refrain that had played continually in her mind these past eight weeks. With sigh, she realized it was never going to go away.

A hand reached in just before the doors closed, and Hunter pushed his way in.

His eyes met hers briefly then rested on her stomach as the elevator lurched into motion.

She debated as the illuminated display showed they had gone from the twelfth to the eleventh floor. She had ten more floors and then it was over.

“Hunter,” she began, but he shot her an angry glare that made her question saying anything else. But the thought of his walking out of her life forever hurt too much to squelch her words.

“I know ‘I’m sorry’ isn’t enough to make it all go away, but I truly am sorry for what I did. If I could go back...”

“You can’t!” He bit the words out between clenched teeth. The muscle in his jaw was working again as he stared up at the display. They were on the fourth floor.

Hunter turned toward Holly, and the pain she saw in his eyes made her suck in her breath. “Holly, I know you are sorry.” His nostrils flared with suppressed tears. “But I can’t get the picture of you two out of my head.”

He turned back toward the elevator doors. She reached out to touch his arm, but he pulled it away before she could ever make contact. Her eyes closed with the finality of the elevator bouncing to a stop. The doors chimed their arrival, and they both stepped out of the elevator and into the parking garage.

Standing just outside the elevator, she watched as Hunter walked toward his car. He didn’t even look back at her as he walked away – out of her life forever. Holly hurried to her own car, trying hard to suppress her tears.

She had almost reached her car when a hand reached out and twirled her around. Hunter stood over her, his face a mess of tumultuous emotions. The tears that she had been holding back made their way down her cheeks, twin rivulets of regret and guilt at what she had done to this wonderful man standing before her.