Page 2 of The Wrong Heart

Widowed & Wilting

You don’t know me, but you have my husband’s heart.

I shouldn’t be doing this. I shouldn’t be contacting you. It’s wrong and foolish, and probably illegal, considering I received your e-mail address through confidential medical records.

You have every right to turn me in.

Hell, maybe there’s a part of me that wants you to. I don’t know how to live in this world without him, anyway. Prison could be a welcome distraction to the knee-buckling pain I’m faced with day after day.

But there’s also a part of me that hopes you won’t—a desperate, twisted part that is begging for you to find sympathy in that heart I’ve come to know so well.

A part that will wait for you to write me back.

No names. No personal details.

Just a conversation.

The only thing I have left of him is inside you.

—Magnolia

—ONE—

I’ve always had a weak stomach.

Skinned knees, roadkill, slasher films. Even a rare steak makes me woozy. So, when I slice my finger on the serrated knife and blood pools to the surface, I go ashen.

Charlie leans across the table, snatching up my hand and examining the wound. “Nice one, Mel.” He shoots me a sympathetic smile, then wraps my finger in the dinner napkin from his lap. “You okay?”

“I’m only panicking on the inside,” I croak, reining in my nausea.

The handsome face shining back at me settles my swelling anxiety as I blow out a breath. Amber-infused eyes dance across my features, assessing fondly, bathing me in a warm familiarity. Like peach pie.

I compared Charlie to peach pie on the night we met. I was deliriously drunk on Schnapps—peach-flavored, coincidentally—and thought he had the sweetest, warmest eyes I’d ever seen. Just like peach pie. Charlie was somehow swept off his feet by my intoxicated babbling, slurred words, and strange correlation to dessert, and even though I ended that night by puking on his Sketchers, he asked for my hand in marriage one year later.

That was seven years ago, and today we’re celebrating our five-year wedding anniversary.

With peach pie, of course.

I heave in a rattled sigh, unwrapping my finger and zoning in on the tiny cut as I pucker my lips. “It’s fatal,” I decide.

“Clearly. The infection is spreading already.”

“Only a kiss can save me from a slow, painful death.”

Charlie tsks me with his tongue. “You’ve been watching too many Disney movies,” he chides. “You can only be saved by a highly skilled sex machine, willing to ravish you with his ultra-healingweapon.”

My husband’s ensuing eyebrow waggle has me holding back an unladylike snort. I gasp at his audacity. “Where on Earth will I find such a noble savior in a place like this?” Glancing around the restaurant for effect, I eyeball our waiter. “Geoffrey. He was very efficient in providing us with sustenance. Hemustbe skilled in other areas.”

“False. I caught Geoffrey flirting with the bus boy—he’s not the one,” Charlie assesses, then sighs with an overly dramatic breath. “However…”

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