For the Girls' Sake - By Janice Kay Johnson Page 0,44

not the kind of woman who’d lie to her husband. So why couldn’t he?"

You’re not the kind of woman who would lie. A barrier of wariness inside her sagged and finally collapsed. Was it possible that her newfound trust was a two-way street? That they really could be friends?

"He never completely trusted me." Her fingers curled into a fist and Adam let her go. She tucked her hand on her lap, under the table. It seemed to tingle, as if he were still touching her. "Brian would accuse me of not loving him." She made a face. "I’d feel so guilty. I couldn’t figure out what I was doing wrong. My mother and I love each other, but we’re not...not physically demonstrative. You know?"

Adam nodded.

"Maybe that was it, I’d think, and I’d force myself to hug and kiss even when it embarrassed me in public. But no matter how hard I tried, it was never enough. He’d come into the bookstore where I worked, and be mad because I was laughing with some customer. He’d decide we hadn’t really been talking about books, and accuse me of sneaking around behind his back. It was a nightmare."

"Was he abusive?" Adam asked quietly, but with a flat, dangerous note in his voice.

"No. Oh, no." She sneaked a look at his face, set in hard lines. Her nails bit into her palms. "Brian’s not that bad a guy. I just...lacked whatever it took to make him feel secure."

"You lacked?" Adam growled in the back of his throat. "Seems to me, he’s the one with the problem."

"I tried to tell myself that. Our marriage got harder and harder, the more I had to think constantly about what I was really feeling and how he’d interpret the way I was acting. Only, then one day I realized—" here was the hard part "—he was right. I didn’t really love him. Not heart and soul. The way he claimed to love me." Lynn shrugged with difficulty, the next words hurting her throat. "I shouldn’t have married him. I remember getting cold feet the night before the wedding, but how could I tell him I’d made a mistake then? And my friends all laughed and said everyone chickens out at the last minute, so I decided it was normal. But I think I’d been pretending from the very beginning. He’d say, ‘I can’t live without you,’ and I’d tell him the same, but because he expected me to, not because I had any understanding of what that meant. Until I had Shelly, I couldn’t imagine how it would feel to fear losing the one person in the world who was essential to me." Lynn met Adam’s gaze again in appeal. "I should have felt that way about him, too, shouldn’t I?"

"How old were you when you got married?"

Taken by surprise, she had to think. "Um...twenty-two. It was the summer after I graduated from college."

"That’s pretty young," Adam said conversationally. "Maybe too young to feel something so profound."

Unwilling to grasp such an easy excuse, Lynn challenged, "How old were you and Jennifer?"

"I was twenty-five, she was twenty-two, like you."

"Did you know, deep inside, that she was the one person for you?"

Adam moved in the obvious discomfiture of a man put on the spot. He rubbed his hands on his thighs, and the chair scraped on the floor. "I’m not sure men put things in such poetic terms," he finally said. "I wanted her to be my wife. To me, that was a commitment. Once you’re in it, you make it work."

Did that mean he disapproved of her because she was divorced? "I thought that, too. Brian was the one who moved out. I wasn’t giving him what he needed. I think," she said a little wryly, "he’d found someone who could. Although he hasn’t remarried. But it was my fault."

"Get real," he said bluntly. "If the jerk had really loved you, he’d have worked to earn your love, not tried to extract it by whining. He’d have been there with you through thick and thin, not hunting for what he ‘needed’ elsewhere. And he sure wouldn’t have abandoned you financially now, whatever came before. That’s not love, even past tense."

Lynn blinked, then smiled tentatively. "Thank you. I think."

"You’re welcome." The frown that had begun to seem perpetual had returned to his brow. He stood. "I’m going to call it a night."

Her gaze found the copper wall clock. Barely nine? What he really meant was, he’d had enough of