Читать книгу The Bride Means Business - Anne Marie Winston - Страница 10

Three

Dax sat on the edge of the pool, staring down into the water without really seeing it. It was long past nightfall and his butt was getting tired of the concrete, and still he sat. Trying to make some sense of his life.

He was still shaken by Jillian’s reaction to his daughter earlier in the evening. And as the water rippled and beckoned around his calves, he wondered how everything could have gone so wrong. They’d been happy once.

From the first time he’d kissed her to the day he’d caught her in bed with his own brother, they’d been happy. At least, he thought they had been. And damn her eyes, he’d never met another woman who could take her place. Not in his heart, because he wasn’t stupid—one lesson had been enough. But even someone he could enjoy enough to share his life with. It wasn’t as if he’d had a choice with Libby. They’d married to give Christine legitimacy, but they’d hardly enjoyed their life together.

But in all honesty, he couldn’t blame his ex-wife. She’d never had a chance against his memories. He sighed, a bitter sound on the mild night air. It would be nice, really nice, if just once, when he was in bed with a woman, he didn’t wish it were Jillian beneath him, around him. He might have been able to block her out of his waking thoughts, but she’d haunted his dreams for years.

Memories of her laughing eyes, the flash of her teasing smile, taunted his aching mind. He’d thought of her as a little sister, albeit a rather annoying one, when he was a kid. Marina had been closer to his age and they’d hung out together a lot until high school, when they’d begun to date different people. He’d always marveled at the differences between the two girls. Physically, they could have been twins if they were the same size. Marina was several inches taller than Jillian, but they’d both had that face that stopped boys in their tracks and the long, slim body that knocked them to their knees.