The Debutante's Second Chance - Liz Flaherty Mills & Boon Cherish

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stay in.”

      Landy watched Micah covertly while they ate, putting bits and pieces of what she saw into the safe place where she kept good memories.

      He was tall and broad-shouldered like her husband had been, but had maintained his muscled build in a way that Blake had not. Micah’s dark brown hair was well cut, but not particularly neat, looking as though he combed it with his fingers throughout the day. He squinted sometimes, and she pictured his lean face with reading glasses sliding down his nose. His eyes were the same gray as the pewter pitcher on the mantel, fringed by thick lashes. His smile was wide and lovely, and came seldom. His hand, when he’d held her arm, had been strong but not bruising. She didn’t think Micah Walker had a need to convey power; it was there in his quiet presence.

      Without in the least meaning to, Landy sighed.

      Across the fat candles that flickered between them, Micah caught and held her gaze. “What happened?” he asked, and she knew he wasn’t asking her about the sigh.

      She hesitated. He was a reporter, she reminded herself. He was like those people who had dogged her every step for days, had been at the hospital, the mortuary, in the courtroom and camped in the front and back yards of Grandmother’s house. They had held microphones in her face and shouted questions at her. They had created an obstacle course that a woman on crutches could scarcely navigate.

      But the one time she had fallen, when, blinded by tears, she had tripped over someone’s thick black cord, one of the reporters had stuffed her recorder into her pocket and come to Landy’s aid. She had helped her up the steps and into the house, speaking quietly in her ear. The voice had been low, but the words had included the term “predatory sons of bitches” and Landy had laughed in spite of everything. The young woman helped her to a seat and then left her alone, and when Landy got up and peered outside through a lifted corner of a curtain, there had been no one left in her yard.

      She’d always wanted to thank the reporter for rescuing her, but had never seen her again in the hordes who had followed her until someone else’s drama took news media precedence over hers.

      “You were the debutante,” said Micah. “Your life was supposed to be charmed.” His voice was soft, gentle, the kind of voice that could lull you into thinking you were safe. Could, if the time was right, talk you into bed naked before you knew your bra was unfastened.

      “I never knew what I did,” she said, “to make you think I was like that. I went to the same school, church, Kmart that everyone else did, but I couldn’t ever be just everyone else. To you, anyway.”

      “I know,” he said. “When I was eighteen, I divided the world into those who had and those who didn’t. You had, which made you worthy of my contempt. At the time, I imagine I thought your family even hired people to go to the bathroom for you.”

      The self-directed sarcasm startled a laugh from her. “Not quite,” she said, “but speaking of bathrooms, would you excuse me?”

      In the pretty little powder room under the stairs, she swallowed three extra-strength pain relievers and willed them to work. The ache in her leg had become a raging fire, with little arrows of flame shooting and swirling all the way from her hip to her ankle.

      They sat in comfortable chairs in front of the fireplace, their coffee on a cloth-covered round table between them. Landy stretched her jeans-clad legs out straight, propping her feet on the ottoman the chairs shared, and Micah saw a spasm of pain cross her face. The expression cleared immediately, however, to be replaced with a Mona Lisa smile he recognized as a mask.

      “It’s pretty much a classic story,” she said. “Blake started hitting me in high school, stopped while we were in college, and started up again before we’d been married three months. We’d go to counseling, it would get better, then he’d drink and it would happen again. It became such a cycle I was almost able to mark it on a calendar.”

      She spoke without expression, though the color in the cheek he could see was hectic and her hands had that look about them again. That tension that made her grip her coffee cup and raise it to her lips in a studied motion.

      “Why?” He had to force the word out.

      “Why what? Why did an intelligent woman stay with an abusive husband? I told you it was a classic story—my reasons are just as classic. He didn’t mean to, I deserved it, it won’t happen again, I can’t manage on my own because I don’t know how. You’ve probably heard them all before.”

      He nodded slightly, his jaw hurting from being clamped so tightly. This shouldn’t have happened to her. It shouldn’t happen to anyone, but especially her. She’s fragile, small, a debutante, for God’s sake.

      “Finally, five years ago, we got divorced. It was very civilized, as divorces go. I kept Grandmother’s house and Blake married his secretary and went to a law firm in Indianapolis. It was more prestigious than his father’s firm. Also less accepting of his lax professional standards. He was back with his father within a year.”

      She rose, straightening slowly, and limped to the coffeepot, bringing it back and refilling their cups. When she returned to her seat, she gave a small gasp and grasped her leg. “Charley horse,” she said, with a hitching little laugh.

      He nodded, knowing she lied. He wanted to offer to rub the pain from her leg, but sensed the gesture wouldn’t be welcome.

      “Blake’s new wife came to my house late one night two and a half years ago. It was storming to beat the band and she asked for shelter. I remember thinking how much smarter she was than I’d been, getting away earlier instead of waiting for him to change. Blake arrived within the hour.”

      Micah wanted to tell her to stop. The fact that his jaw hurt and her leg hurt and the fire needed another log were all good reasons for her to stop, weren’t they?

      She set down her cup, and he saw that the hand with the chewed fingernails and bumpy knuckles trembled the way it had that afternoon in the church basement. He took it in his and held it, not saying anything.

      “She and I were at the top of the stairs when he let himself in—I’d never changed the locks, since the divorce was so civilized. What an idiot I was.” She shuddered, and her fingers tightened around his. “But it was different this time, because Blake had a gun. I’d felt so powerful, so alive, after we were divorced that apparently I thought I could stop bullets, because I stepped in front of his wife. But he wasn’t interested in me and tried to push me out of the way. I grabbed his arm—can you believe that? The man had a gun and I grabbed his arm. I knocked him off balance and when he went down the stairs, he took me with him.”

      She swallowed hard, and her eyes were dark and sad, glimmering with unshed tears. “The gun went off, just like in the movies. God, what a horrendous noise that makes. I had blood all over me and I was hurt, so I thought I’d been shot, but when I turned my head, he was lying there and not moving. He died on the way to the hospital.”

      “Did his wife tell a different story?”

      “No, but Lucas didn’t believe either one of us.” She rubbed her leg with her free hand, not looking at him. “I kept remembering how much I’d loved Blake, how much fun he could be when he wanted to. I thought of how he insisted I learn to use a gun correctly to keep me safe. It’s easy to blame yourself when the other person is dead.”

      “What happened then?”

      “Lucas lost the case, I sold Grandmother’s house to the church and life went on. On the surface, at least. Underneath—” she hesitated and drew her hand from his “—underneath, I think my life ended when Blake’s did.”

      He gestured toward her leg. “Is that a leftover from the fall down the stairs?”

      She nodded. “It was broken in three places. The surgeon wants to operate again, but I keep putting it off.”

      Micah lifted his hand to her face, cupping her cheek and stroking a tear from her lashes with his thumb. “I think maybe your life’s broken, like your leg

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