Her Christmas Cowboy (The Wyoming Cowboy #5) - Jessica Clare Page 0,73
fiercely at that. “They took his side?”
“Oh yeah.” She huffed a laugh. “They thought I was being ridiculous and hysterical. That I was making a huge mistake and that he was in the right about everything. My parents were cut from the same cloth that Blake was, you know? Took me a while to realize that what they wanted for me wasn’t what I wanted.”
“Blake,” Caleb echoed. “That his name?”
“Yeah.”
“Sounds like a jackass.”
She chuckled. “He is.”
“Can I ask why you got divorced? You said it wasn’t cheating . . .” He trailed off, waiting to see if she’d answer.
She could push it off. Tell him she wasn’t ready to talk about that sort of thing yet. But . . . wasn’t she here tonight with condoms in her purse and wearing a backless cocktail dress and sitting on the edge of his bed? Because she was an adult and she could do what she wanted, and what she wanted was to hook up with this gorgeous man that made her feel so pretty and special. She supposed that if he wanted to know about her divorce, she could at least talk about it.
“Well . . .” She wet her lips, feeling incredibly nervous. It was like talking about Blake would somehow summon him to her side. “I met Blake when I was nineteen. He was the son of a golfing friend of my father’s and they suggested we go out. Next thing I knew, I was being encouraged to quit college and get married to Blake. When you’re pressured from all sides, it’s hard to say no. My mother never understood, though. She never went to college. Just married my dad right out of high school. He was the one who worked and handled all the money. I remember my mom never even had a car. She didn’t understand why she needed one. Dad would take care of everything for her.” She made a face at the thought. “We had money, so I guess she never worried about that sort of thing. I didn’t, either. And when I got older and Blake started to take over things for me, it just made sense that he would. He was older than I was, and very strong-willed and smart. Very willing to take risks on start-up companies, and they tended to pay off. He was good with people and knew how to work a room, and he was always dressed to the nines. I thought he was dazzling when I met him.” Her mouth twisted sourly. “Looking back, I was an idiot. But I thought I was in love, so I handed over more and more of my life because I just wanted to make him happy.”
“Handed over your life? How?”
Amy plucked at one of the sequins on the front of her dress. “Well, for example, I was going to college when we started dating, and then my classes started interfering with things. He wanted me with him on business trips and I couldn’t go. Or he’d want to do something in the middle of the day and I had class. He pressured me so, so many times to drop everything. What did I need a degree for, right? He was going to take care of me when we got married. So I ended up dropping out with a semester left and became Mrs. Blake Todd in a wedding that filled an entire church full of people, and none of them were my friends. Blake didn’t like my friends, you see. So they got slowly edged out of my life, too. I stayed at home—Blake’s house, mind you—and talked to the staff, but other than that, I had nothing to do. I was expected to just sit around and be a wife. Looking back, it’s very 1950s.” She chuckled, trying to see the humor in the situation. “I didn’t even have a checkbook. He would just give me an allowance if I needed cash. If I wanted to go somewhere, I had to make sure his driver was available. All the credit cards were in his name. Things like that. I wore the clothes that Blake liked. I had the chef make the food Blake liked. I read books that Blake approved of and listened to music that he thought was appropriate. I never cussed because Blake thought it was fucking unladylike.” She couldn’t resist tossing that in.