Of all the mistakes she'd made, setting Jake aside for the bastard she'd married was probably the hardest to bear. One way or another, she'd get her mother's money back—even when she'd realized how terribly wrong things had gone, Jolie had never doubted that—but Jake … Jake, she knew, was lost forever.
Still, though she'd been at fault, she couldn't accept all the blame. Wouldn't, dammit. Though Jake had been there for her practically her entire life—hell, they'd been grade-school sweethearts, been voted Best Couple, Prom King and Queen, had always been together—the one time she'd truly, desperately needed him—when her father had died—Jake had done the one thing she'd never, ever anticipated.
He'd let her down.
Instead of being her worry stone, her best friend, confidante and lover, he'd cooled things off between them and focused on his career. He'd been more interested in being a detective than being hers and had basically put their relationship on the back burner. He'd abandoned her at a time when she'd needed him most.
They'd ultimately fought about it, which was why she'd taken that ill-fated vacation alone … and the rest had been history. She'd been ready to start a family. Jake hadn't been. Then Chris had come along, showered her with attention, expressed the same interests as her, and in her emotionally overwrought state… Jolie sighed. A small town girl in the big bad world. In short, easy pickings. Furthermore, she'd never been able to do things half-way, had always been single-mindedly stubborn. And, for better or for worse, once she'd charted a course she never looked back, always saw it through. An admirable trait when she was right, but a bad one when she was wrong.
And choosing Chris had been wrong.
She'd later learned that he'd worked for the insurance company who'd insured her father. He'd apparently researched recent beneficiaries and decided to set his sights on her, and though she couldn't prove it yet, she firmly believed that he'd done this before to other unsuspecting women. Her lips twisted bitterly. He'd screwed her physically and financially and she'd made it easy for him.
Jolie would admit to many faults—she was impatient, hated to wait for anything and invariably squirmed through the three minutes she wasted at a traffic light. She had a horrible temper, one that had gotten her into trouble more times than she could conceivably count. But being stupid generally wasn't one of them, and it galled her to no end that she'd let that viper into their midst. That she'd brought him home into her insulated little world and created this mess.
The harried hostess finally arrived to show Jake and Nicolette to their table and it was with sinking horror that Jolie realized they were headed in her direction. A quick glance confirmed that the table directly in front of her was vacant. She suppressed a whimper, resisted the urge to squirm.
Oh, shit. Shit, shit, shit.
Jolie looked from the table to Jake and she swallowed tightly as her gaze connected with his. A hum of static raced up her spine and a flock of swallows took flight in her belly. The urge to flee nearly made her bolt from her seat, but she forced herself to stay still and determinedly lifted her chin. Showing fear of any sort wasn't in her nature and she had too much pride to let him know how much he still affected her.
"Will this table be all right?" the hostess asked.
Jake's probing gaze held hers and for a nanosecond she thought she read something other than mockery and indifference. She'd seen a glimpse of anger, of pity. But it must have been her imagination, because in the next moment, a sardonic mask replaced the sentiment and he smiled a lazy sort of grin rife with something akin to triumph. "It's perfect," he drawled, his lips curled into a smirk. "Absolutely perfect."
His gaze slid away, purposely discarding her, and he focused his attention back on his date.
Oh, no, Jolie thought as she drew in a shuddering breath. She took a much-needed sip of water. This was not going to work. There was no way in hell she would be able to sit here and enjoy her meal with Jake crooning to Nicolette at the next table. Purposely crooning, too. He planned to torture her. Not that she could blame him, really. Like any thwarted female, when she'd first come home with Chris, she'd enjoyed the fact that Jake had been sorry, that he'd realized he'd made a mistake and she'd stupidly flaunted her new relationship. Were the circumstances reversed, she knew she'd undoubtedly want to inflict a little revenge as well.
But she just wasn't up to it tonight. Wouldn't ever be up to it, not where he was concerned. It was just too damned hard.
Aiming for covert, but probably looking frantic, she snagged Charlie's attention as he walked by. Lowered her voice to a near whisper. "I've changed my mind. I'm, uh, not hungry after all." The truth, as she'd just lost her appetite.
Charlie frowned. "You want me to cancel your order?"
Jolie inwardly winced. Was it just her or was he speaking especially loud? "Not the whole order," she muttered quietly. "I still want the wine." In fact, now more than ever. Getting drunk sounded particularly appealing at the moment.
"The whole bottle?"
She nodded. "Yes, please. Now," she added meaningfully. She withdrew her credit card from her wallet and handed it to him.
Looking completely bewildered, Charlie vanished once more. Thankfully, he made the return trip in record time. She added a generous tip and then signed for the bottle, anxious to get the hell out of there. Though she didn't remember Nicolette having an exaggerated sense of humor in high school, Jake was laughing silkily at every word she uttered. Jolie refused to look at them—at him, specifically. She was used to being manipulated—she'd been married to a master for the past two years—and she wasn't about to let Jake do it as well.
She gathered her purse and the bottle and was just about to stand when a trio of older ladies stopped by her table. She recognized only one of them, Sophia Morgan. She was a rather petite lady, a little round, with pale blond hair cut in a trendy layered style and kind green eyes. She and her mother were friends and, like most women in Moon Valley, both belonged to the Garden Club.
Jolie caught a whiff of lilies and steak sauce as Sophia bent low and smiled down at her. "I'm going to give you a card," she murmured through a fixed grin. "And I want you to read it, then hand it back. Okay?"
Thoroughly bewildered, Jolie nodded. "Er … okay."
The other two women huddled closer—one tall and willowy wearing lots of high-end jewelry, the other short and plump with spiky gray curls—seemingly to block her from the view of other patrons. Sophia slid a small card across the table. Intrigued, Jolie shot her a curious look, then picked it up. The card was heavy stock, pale pink and embossed with formal silver lettering.
The Future Widows' Club … where a woman prepares for widowhood before her bastard dies. You are cordially invited to join the FWC to prepare and fellowship with other widow-wannabes.
Jolie felt her eyes widen with shocked delight, a disbelieving laugh tickle the back of her throat and a smile slowly rolled around her lips. The Future Widows' Club? What on earth…
Before she could ponder it any further, Sophia deftly withdrew the card from her hand and replaced it with another. This one simply had an address, date and time. "Come join us, honey," Sophia told her. "Trust me," she said direly, her voice a lilting old south southern drawl. "You need our help."
Looking equally concerned, the other two women shot her commiserating glances. "You definitely do," the short one said.
And with those words ringing in Jolie's ears, the three shuffled off.
Though she hadn't meant to, her gaze once again found Jake's. He wore a curious expression, and those gunmetal gray eyes dropped to the card in her hand, then jumped backup and tangled with hers. He quirked a questioning brow.
Smiling, Jolie neatly pocketed it out of sight. Let him wonder, she thought. Served him right for torturing her.
Though her stomach was still in knots, Jolie calmly stood, grabbed her bottle of wine and just as calmly made her way outside. She didn't spare Jake or Nicolette so much as the smallest glance. The impulse was there, of co
urse—it always was when Jake was around—but thankfully pride prevailed.
Pride kept her head high and her back straight as she strolled to her car, and pride kept her from looking back to see if Jake had watched her leave. The moment she slid behind the wheel, though, pride abandoned her, and it was all Jolie could do not to cry. She wilted into the seat. Her belly quivered, her eyes stung, and she instinctively bit her bottom lip to prevent the sob that beckoned in the back of her tight throat. She gripped the steering wheel and lowered her head.
She would not cry, dammit.
If she could cry prettily, without anyone being the wiser, then yes, she might have given in to the impulse and sat in her car and squalled. It's what she wanted to do, what she needed to do. But unfortunately, she couldn't cry prettily. Her nose streamed, her mascara ran, ugly red blotches formed on her cheeks and beneath her eyes, and her upper lip swelled to twice its normal size. She invariably looked like she'd had some sort of allergic reaction, and Chris, she knew, would instantly recognize the implications and wrongfully assume that her tears had been for him.
Which would be intolerable.
She'd cried her last tear over Chris Marshall—over the mistakes she'd made—and she'd be damned before she'd give him any more satisfaction at her expense. The thought bolstered her resolve, then triggered another. The card.
She pulled in a shaky breath, let it go, then pilfered through her purse until she found it. She reread the date—just the day after tomorrow, she discovered, oddly relieved—and the time and address. For reasons which escaped her, the innocuous little piece of paper felt like a life preserver, offered a ray of hope in her dim existence.
The Future Widows' Club, indeed, Jolie thought, with a soft chuckle. The idea was intriguing to say the least. She harrumphed. God knows she'd entertained the widow fantasy many times over the past two years. She'd never been much of joiner, tended to make few friends and keep her circle tight, but now this…
This sounded like the perfect club for her.
CHAPTER TWO
Jake felt every muscle go rigid with tension as Jolie grew nearer, then slowly leak out of him like air from a punctured tire as she walked past. He inwardly swore, resisting the urge to put his fist through the wall.
More than two years and it was always the same when he saw her.
Like a sucker punch to the gut immediately followed by the unhappy sensation of falling face-first off a cliff. Regret would ultimately follow, then before his heart could explode right out of his chest—or he could puke, a gallingly too-frequent occurrence after she and Marshall had first gotten together—good old righteous anger would bubble up from the almost-dry well of self-preservation, and he'd push his lips into a smirk and think about how he'd felt the day she'd married Marshall.
Eviscerated. Just two little words—I do—to someone else, and she'd gutted him.
He forced a thin smile at his date, pretended to peruse the menu. Rationally Jake knew that he couldn't place all the blame for their break-up at Jolie's feet. In fact, were he able to be completely honest with himself—and he couldn't yet because it still hurt too much—he couldn't place any of the blame with her. She'd acted completely within character. He'd been the one who'd stepped out of it.
After her dad had died, Jolie had looked to him to make good on all the promises and plans they'd made—marriage and a family—and, though he'd never doubted that they'd marry, for reasons he'd never been able to understand, he'd hesitated. Why? Hell, who knew? Some ignorant bachelor throwback mentality, he supposed.
He'd looked into those clear green eyes, seen his future—the one he'd always wanted with her looking back at him—and he'd unaccountably freaked. He'd thrown himself into making detective, told himself that he didn't want to commit himself any further to their relationship than what he already had. Not the real reason, of course, but in the end, though, when all was said and done, it hadn't mattered.
He'd hesitated—and in that one moment of groundless uncertainty, he'd lost her.
Initially the knowledge that her marriage wasn't a happy one had been a petty balm to his battered ego and even still, at times—like now—when he felt like the scab had been ripped off a wound that hadn't quite healed, he couldn't always rise above his wounded pride. If he was miserable, then it was only fitting that she be unhappy as well.
If she could have just waited, dammit. Given him just a little more time to get his head on straight.
Jake drew up short and inwardly swore. He'd traveled the road named Pointless many times—backtracking was futile. But as time wore on and the ache numbed, the idea of her being unhappy ate at him even more than the fact that she wasn't—could never be—his. His jaw hardened.
Because her husband was a bastard of the first order.
In the past couple of years Chris Marshall had been arrested for DUI, charged with possession—the usual stuff, marijuana, ecstasy—and had been the cause of more than one domestic disturbance in town. He didn't exercise the least bit of discretion when it came to dipping his wick. Married or unmarried, it was all the same to him.
He'd been jerked up a couple of times by angry husbands, but rather than having the good sense to be chastened, the bastard seemed to get off on the thrill of bagging another guy's wife, seemed to delight in provoking them. Jake grimaced. Hell, it was a miracle he hadn't ended up in the morgue sporting a toe tag to go with that trendy suit and pretty boy smirk he usually wore.
Furthermore, it was a miracle—not to mention a mystery—that Jolie hadn't left him yet. Jake had heard the rumors, of course. Despite the fact that Jake had cited his long-term friendship with Sadie's husband and the fact that he particularly liked the way she cut his hair—that he'd hate to have to find another stylist—Sadie nevertheless tended to let things purposely slip. Would she bring up Jolie to him? No. She knew better. But that didn't stop her from talking about Jolie to other people while she had him captive in the chair.
As a result, he had a vague understanding of the life-insurance money Marshall had conned out of her mother—scheming ass, Jake thought, disgusted—and an even vaguer understanding as to what Jolie was doing about it. The best he'd been able to discern, leaving Chris was a foregone conclusion, but apparently there was no way to recoup the investment in a divorce settlement, and getting the money back had to come first.
"I guess my sense of humor left when she walked out, didn't it?"
Jake blinked, and looked across the table. "I'm sorry?"
Nicolette sighed, pushing a hand through her short pale blond hair. "You were laughing at every word I said for the first five minutes we were here, which is flattering, by the way, considering that a sense of humor has never really been my strong suit." Her lips tilted into a knowing smile. "But the minute Jolie left, you zoned out on me and haven't so much as responded to anything I've said, much less laughed."
Jake passed a hand over his face to hide a wince. Shit. "Look, I—"
"Here's the thing," she said levelly as she bent to retrieve her purse. "I'm not interested in sex for the sake of sex, and I'm sure not interested in being a substitute."
"You're not a substitute," Jake told her, swallowing the futile bark of laughter that hit the back of this throat. Substitute? There was no substitute for Jolie. Hell, he'd looked, had tried to invest himself in other relationships. It hadn't worked. Instinctively he knew it would never work. There wasn't another soul on the planet who could make him forget to breathe simply by smiling, who could set his veins on fire with a mere touch of her hand. Jolie had been it … and he'd screwed up and let her go.
Nicolette paused and gave him a look that bordered closely enough on pity to make him want to howl. "You're still in love with her."
Jake summoned a laugh and shook his head, felt a sickening jolt of alarm hit his belly. "No, I'm not." He took a healthy pull on his beer. Liar, a little-heeded voice whispered.
Again, that sad provoking smile. "Fine," she said, clearly not believing him. "But wheth
er you love her or not, there's still too much feeling there for my liking. Definitely too much for me to ante up more than what I already have." She stood. "Goodnight, Jake."
Jake smiled grimly as she walked away, trying to muster the irritation he knew he should feel, but in the end, he couldn't. Hell, she was right and he couldn't blame her. If she wanted anything more than a few hours of recreational sex, then she was barking up the wrong tree because he didn't have anything else to offer.
Just superficial feelings, superficial sex, superficial time.
The corner of his mouth hitched in another grim smile. It was all part and parcel of the new Jake, courtesy of his own stupidity.
Jolie awoke from a sound sleep—one brought about by several glasses of wine and enough Krispy Kreme carbohydrates to drop an elephant—to the two words she hadn't been the least bit interested in hearing.
At least, not from Chris.
"Happy Anniversary, baby."
Despite the fact that she'd locked her door, Chris—even drunk and obviously high—had managed to let himself into her room, and had turned on her bedside light. His face was slick with perspiration, his eyes bloodshot and glassy. His pants were partially zipped, his shirt unbuttoned, and the beginnings of one helluva hickey was forming on his neck. He brought the stale scent of sex with him, making nausea curdle in her belly. A quick look at the bedside clock told her it was just after three. She grunted with disgust, then rolled over and attempted to ignore him.
It didn't work.
She felt the mattress shift as he dropped unsteadily onto the side of the bed. Then the sickening feeling of his hand sliding up over her hip, causing her flesh to creep. Repulsed, she instinctively jerked away from him. Jolie didn't know what the hell he was doing. She'd stopped sleeping with him the minute she'd learned the truth, absolutely refused to share anything beyond the house with him and looked forward to ending that arrangement as soon as possible.
THE FUTURE WIDOW'S CLUB Page 2