Page 1 of Second Chance Husband

Chapter One

Paisley

“I now pronounce you husband and wife. You may kiss the bride.”

It felt as if those words were an echo cascading within my own memories—as if there was no way those words had been spoken to me not once, but twice.

And both times, just a reverberation, a faded version of what I wanted. Or perhaps what I’d thought I’d been set on a path toward, with no ending in sight. No beginning, begging me for my attention and passions.

“With the power granted to me by the great state of Colorado, I now pronounce you…”

“Just sign here on the dotted line,” another voice said, though they all blended into a similar vibrato. The real, the memory, the imaginary—all part of a whole.

Only I knew what voice should be the real one in this instant.

After all...it was my ending.

As an owner and financer of multiple businesses and someone with the power to change the destinies of others, at least in the business sense, I had signed my name on the dotted line countless times.

I knew every flourish, every flick of the pen, and every movement of my wrist as I signed. I was quick, efficient, and not verbose.

And yet, with this final signature, it would be an ending.

An ending before I was even ready for a beginning.

“Ms. Renee.”

Renee. Oh yes, that was my name. At least part of it.

I looked up at the sound of the lawyer’s voice as he frowned at me. “Is everything not to your liking?”

To my liking? That didn’t make much sense, did it? Because that would mean I would have to like being here. But there was no way I wanted to be here in this moment, with these people, signing my name to a piece of paper that would once again prove I was a failure.

But, then again, my signature did more than that. I was powerful, I was competent, and I made my own way. That’s what my signature evoked. It provided hope for others, it provided safety for me.

It proved I could handle anything.

So I would handle this. Just like I had the first time.

I gave my head a minimal shake. “No, we went over this a few times, the details have been ironed out.”

Without looking at my lawyers or the two people across the large desk, I signed a promise. Or perhaps it should have been called a broken promise.

I wasn’t signing my life over, wasn’t giving it away; I was finding a way to make it my own again. And then I handed my lawyer the pen and scooted the divorce papers toward him. “Thank you, will there be anything else?”

There was a slight cough across the table, and I did what I hadn’t wanted to do this entire time. I turned to see Jacob sitting there, a slight smirk on his face, even while anger burned in that gaze of his.

Jacob Barton, my newly ex-husband.

After nearly two years of marriage, we had proved to be a failure. Of course in his eyes, I was the only failure, and he was the one who had to deal with the inadequate wife.

For the Bartons of Denver, Colorado, were royalty—in the strictest of society sense. His grandfather had been a governor, his father a senator, and Jacob Barton would one day rise out of the ranks of lowly local politicians and become governor of Colorado himself. That was always in his dreams.

I had thought I had been the one in his dreams.

Instead I had kept my name, kept my business, and kept my path.

I hadn’t become the wife he had wanted.

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