Page 14 of Beach Cottage Kisses
“You neglected her,” she said then, as things started to make a little bit of sense. The other night, he’d said that he wasn’t good at being someone’s everything.
“I’m married to my work,” he told her. “I have no shutoff valve. As a matter of fact, trying to rein in would make me tense, irritable and not at all the healthy guy who stands before you.”
The last was clearly tongue-in-cheek. An attempt to lighten the moment.
Iris let it pass. Studied him without a hint of a smile. Hurting for him.
And oddly, for her, too. Which made no sense.
“It’s who I am, Iris. I have to give one hundred percent, which means I can only have one priority.”
Unless his wife was equally committed to her job. Like, say, a photographer who could only live a healthy life through her lens?
The thought came. Scared the liver out of her. Until she realized she’d just been playing devil’s advocate. For his sake.
Scott had too much to give to sign his entire future away. Unlike her, he still believed in love’s happily-ever-after.
“She was unhappy and the solution you two came up with was divorce?” she asked him then. Trying to find the other side. A way to show him he could be wrong.
“I called her one night to tell her that I wouldn’t be coming home again, that I was spending one more night on the couch in my office.”
“And she gave you an ultimatum?” She got it. Completely. Everyone had their breaking point. But not everyone shared the same one.
“She told me that she wasn’t there, either. She’d moved out the day before.”
He hadn’t sensed his wife’s withdrawal? Hadn’t noticed bank charges for a moving van? Packing? A down payment on a new place to live? Hadn’t seen the millions of tears that had to have fallen before it got to that point? Or heard the desperation in conversation?
“To show you the extent of my neglect, I was completely shocked. I was served divorce papers the next day, and I’d had no idea my marriage was even in trouble.”
Because he hadn’t been there. Physically, or mentally, either.
Iris finally got it. Needing time alone to digest the pit in her stomach. The pain she felt for him.
She nodded, shrugged and, keeping her tone light, asked, “So, now that we’ve established that there’s no risk of us suddenly falling madly in love, are we okay?”
Scott’s smile distracted her from the darkness. Lit her up. “We are,” he told her.
And she wanted to believe him.
Chapter Four
He wanted her.
Badly.
In his office on Tuesday, writing an argument that, depending on the judge’s ruling, could make or break his case, Scott caught himself staring at the computer screen. Hands still on the keyboard.
Thinking about Iris’s comments about the case when he’d shared it with her the night before. She’d been fully engaged. Hearing not only the facts, but the nuances, too.
Her motive was clearly murder for hire. Those are the only charges you have to prove.
Polly Ernst’s emotional distress had already been litigated. She’d lost. Scott typed. If she’d won the previous case, perhaps the evidence brought by her psychiatric team could be admitted for the current case, but trying to prove that a suspect was not guilty due to a mental state that had not been deemed duress in civil court was egregious. The accused was clearly distressed. Upset. Lividly angry. That didn’t give her a free pass to take another life.
That fact was a basis of the entire justice system.
You aren’t God, Scott… You have to trust the system to make the final choice.
Right, but the system relied on his ability to do his job.
