Читать книгу Unfinished Business - Inglath Cooper, Inglath Cooper - Страница 7

ADDY PIERCE HAD always believed in the power of intuition.

That little voice had a purpose.

Hard to explain, then, why she ignored it this particular day.

She’d worked on the Lawson case until after midnight, setting the alarm for four and leaving Mark asleep when she headed out the door for the office at five.

She had just sat down at her desk with a cup of much needed coffee when she missed the file, remembered she’d left it on the dining-room table. She was to be in court at ten o’clock, but she had enough time to run home and pick it up on the way.

It was then that the little voice had sounded inside her.

Send someone else.

Looking back, this was the detail that continued to play like a CD track stuck on what-if. What if she had sent someone else to get the file? Would they have told her Mark was at home? Or taken pity on her and left her unaware of the fracture in her marriage?

But none of those things had happened.

Addy had been the one to drive to her house. The one to open the front door and notice his suit jacket draped across the back of the living-room couch. The one to hear his voice coming from upstairs. The words not clear from where she stood in the foyer, but distinctly his voice. Followed by a woman’s laugh.

The voice inside Addy screamed. Leave. Turn around and leave.

But eight years of practicing law had shown her that knowledge, once gained, can rarely be ignored.

Standing there in the foyer of a house that already felt as if it didn’t belong to her, a feeling of dread swept through her, weakened her knees, so she put a hand on the wall and stood for a moment, waiting for the room to stop its listing.

Her feet moved of their own volition, the runner on the staircase deadening her footsteps. She followed the hall to the master bedroom, the voices drawing closer.

They’d left the bedroom door open. This amazed her. That in their own house, their own bed, he hadn’t bothered to close the door.

How could he have been so comfortable that he left the door open?

Through that rectangle she watched the husband who was supposed to have been hers rest his cheek on the woman’s belly, rounded with child.

Addy swallowed. Went absolutely numb as if someone had flipped a switch and obliterated all feeling inside her.

Mark turned, as if he’d felt her gaze. Shock skidded across his too good-looking face, then froze there.

“Addy. What are you doing here?”

The question hung in the air, ridiculous, considering. The woman scrambled up—as well as a woman in her condition can scramble—and yanked the covers around herself with a well-sculpted arm.

She was so young. She had the kind of skin that made Addy want to run out in search of face creams guaranteed to halt the aging process in its tracks.

What was Mark doing with someone who looked like she should still be in college?

He jerked out of the bed. Addy stared at her naked husband while the woman made no effort to hide the possessiveness in her own assessment of him. Mark reached for a robe where it lay on top of the thick comforter. Addy recognized it as the one she had bought for him at Bloomingdale’s for Christmas last year.

A robe. She’d given him a robe.

Was that the cause of this? The fact that their marriage had deteriorated to the point that she couldn’t come up with anything more exciting than a robe for a gift?

The room suddenly had no air in it. Her lungs screamed in protest. She was going to be sick. She turned and bolted down the hall.

“Addy! Addy, wait!” Mark called out.

She stumbled down the stairs. Don’t think. Not yet. Get out. Just go. Her throat had closed up, and her eyes burned with the need to cry. Not in front of him. She would not cry in front of him!

“Addy, please!” He caught her in the foyer, his chest rising and falling with what looked more like agitation than exertion. Her gaze dropped to his ab muscles. A six-pack. Like those guys in the men’s fitness magazines. When had he started working out? And he’d lost weight, hadn’t he?

She realized then how long it had been since she’d seen him without his clothes on. How long it had been since the two of them had made love. She felt a wash of mortification for what she now knew to be the reason.

“We need to talk, Addy,” he said, a note of uncertainty in his normally confident attorney’s voice.

She focused on the navy crest of his robe, the knot in her throat so thick she could barely speak. “Aren’t we a little beyond the talking stage?”

“This isn’t how I wanted to tell you,” he said, compassion edging the admission.

Fury exploded through her. She did not want his pity! Damn him. “How long has this been going on?”

He looked away, then dropped his gaze, guilt etched in every angle of his posture. “I never wanted to hurt you, Addy.”

“You knew I wanted children. You weren’t ready, you said. How could you? How could you do this?” The words throbbed with pain, and she hated her own inability to keep them neutral.

He stepped toward her, reached out, then dropped his hands to his sides. “Please, Addy, I don’t know what to say. This wasn’t planned. It just—”

“Don’t you dare say it just happened. I can’t believe you would do this to us. Who are you?”

He blocked the door with one hand. “Wait. Addy! You don’t understand—”

“I understand,” she said, the details of their marriage clicking into place like the numbers on a vault lock. All those late nights he’d been working, his lack of interest in her and the fact that they hadn’t made love in months.

The anger collapsed inside her, and she felt as though her bones might not support her. She walked over to the dining-room table, picked up the file she’d left that morning.

And, without another word between them, she left. Game over. Marriage finished.