Wyoming True - Diana Palmer Page 0,13

the few months of their brief marriage, he’d turned her from a happy, fun-loving woman into a frightened recluse who wanted nothing to do with men ever again. The trial had been quick, by judicial standards, and Bailey had sworn vengeance from the courtroom when he was convicted. Ida had been in the room, compelled to learn the outcome of the trial firsthand. She could never forget the look on her husband’s face. Well, ex-husband. She’d divorced him while he was in jail awaiting trial. Her attorneys had made him aware of what they could do if he refused to consent to it. So he’d consented, reluctantly. But he hadn’t known that she was cutting him out of her will at the same time. She wondered if he knew even now.

She’d refused to go to his bond hearing when he was arrested, afraid of what he might do to her. The attorneys in Denver had concurred. One of them knew the assistant DA who tried the case. He’d made the man aware of just what had been done to Ida by the defendant, a drastically different story from the one the defendant had told. Bailey had no money of his own, no property for a cash bond, so he was forced to stay in jail until the trial. After the trial he went straight to prison. It was the first time in months that Ida had felt safe. She subsequently changed her surname back to that of Charles Merridan, her first husband. She didn’t even want Bailey’s name to be a daily reminder that she’d been stupid enough to marry him.

She’d told only a handful of people about the threats. Her attorneys had hired a temporary bodyguard for her. He was masquerading as a cowboy who helped with her small horse ranch. He lived in the old bunkhouse that she’d renovated as a guest cottage. Nobody thought anything about it, because of her reputation.

She grimaced. She hadn’t told Jake. When he found out about the bodyguard, and he would, he’d assume that the bodyguard from Texas was just another lover, because he was young and good-looking. She was going to hate that. Jake was a good, kind man. She wished he thought better of her. But then, give a dog a bad name... And she’d given herself a very bad one, encouraging gossip that protected her from the attentions of local men.

She hated her own beauty that made her attractive to men. She downplayed it by not wearing makeup and going around in clothes that concealed her exquisite figure. But there was the occasional party and she dressed for those. They’d become an ordeal until Cort Grier had helped her out by pretending an interest in her.

At the party she’d been flirting with an older man deliberately, because she knew he was married and unlikely to want to start something with her. Sadly, her idea backfired. He became very aggressively interested, and his poor wife went to the restroom in tears. She backed off after that and ran into Cort Grier, who left with her when the party ended. She’d wanted so badly to apologize to the man’s wife, but she hadn’t known how to approach her. Very few people in Catelow knew the real woman behind the vivacious flirt with the sordid reputation. It wasn’t the facts of any case; it was what people believed about it. Ida was a call girl who tried to steal other women’s husbands. That was the latest gossip, after the notorious party.

Well, it was what she’d wanted, wasn’t it, to be scandalous? She’d thought it was the best way to keep men at bay. It had worked, so far. She had no interest at all in another marriage or getting involved with a man. She was convinced that she didn’t have the judgment God gave a billy goat, much less the ability to spot an abuser when she saw one.

She finished her meager breakfast and went into the living room, carrying a cup of latte from her European coffee machine along with her in a delicate blue-and-white bone china cup and saucer. She put it on the coffee table and just stared at it.

She drank too much coffee. It kept her awake at night. That would have been a problem if she hadn’t had the daily pain that ensured that she actively avoided sleep. She hated it when the lights went out, because that was when the bad dreams came. Horrible dreams, full