Wyoming True - Diana Palmer Page 0,5

divorce and gone back to the surname of her first husband, Merridan. He was furious that he couldn’t make her send him money for the pain and suffering she’d caused him. She owed him and he planned to collect. She had all that nice money and he was destitute. She could pay up or unpleasant things might happen, he suggested just before she hung up in his face and blocked his number. She remembered some of the unpleasant things that had already happened and she felt sick inside.

Cody Banks, the local sheriff, had been a sympathetic listener. He was one of the few people in Catelow who knew the woman behind the mask. He’d been kind to her. He promised that Bailey Trent wouldn’t get near her. He encouraged her to take out a restraining order. She had, although the clerk had told her that they were very rarely worth the paper they were printed on. She phoned her attorneys in Denver and had them send an investigator out to keep an eye on Bailey. She could afford the expense, which might save her life. Bailey used drugs. He was dangerous even when he didn’t.

She couldn’t believe how naive she’d been about him. Coming from a marriage with a man who was a closet homosexual, she’d had no faith at all in her ability to attract a man. It wasn’t until her husband took his own life and left her the note that she’d even known about his sexual orientation. She’d thought that she simply wasn’t woman enough to appeal to him.

He’d been a kind, sweet man, always taking care of her, doing anything he could to make her life happy and easy. His loss was painful.

Then there was Bailey Trent. He was rugged, authoritative, a real he-man, at least to Ida’s naive eyes. They’d dated and he’d been passionate with her, but he hadn’t insisted on intimacy until they were married. That, too, she thought miserably, had been calculated. She’d been desperate to have him, in thrall to her senses for the first time in her life. He’d taken advantage of feelings she couldn’t help to rush her to the altar.

And then had come her wedding night. Nothing in her young life had prepared her for the depravity some men reveled in. She had nightmares about what he’d done to her, that night and others, when she was too bruised and frightened to fight back anymore. That first week they’d been married was when he’d lost his temper and thrown her over the side of the parking garage. After her wedding night, it hadn’t been much of a surprise, although the pain had been something far beyond what she’d already endured.

She’d tried to run away once, after she got out of the hospital. But he’d found her and convinced her protectors that she’d overreacted to what was basically just a sad accident. He loved her desperately. He couldn’t live without her. He told everybody.

Ida knew better. He couldn’t live without her money. But she was encouraged to forgive him and make her marriage work. Her sweet friends who’d taken her in had been happily married for twenty-five years. They had no idea what her life was like. And she was too ashamed to tell them.

“Mrs. Merridan?”

She lifted her head and came out of the reverie quickly. She smiled at the nurse as she got painstakingly to her feet and followed the younger woman back to the treatment room.

* * *

DR. MENZER EXAMINED her and grimaced.

“What did you do?” he asked.

She flushed. “It’s autumn,” she began.

“You can hire big strong hefty men to lift those heavy flowerpots from the patio into your sunroom,” he said shortly and watched her flush. She did the same thing every year, just before frost warnings went out, getting her precious herbs and flowering plants inside. “You’ve no business trying to do it yourself.”

She made a face. “I can’t let my flowers die. And I love fresh herbs.”

“Buy some at the store.”

“It’s not the same,” she pointed out.

He drew in a breath. “Ida, there are things you just can’t do anymore. Heavy labor tops the list. You have to be sensible.”

“Sensible.” She sighed. “He’s out of prison, you know,” she added, her blue eyes poignant. “He wants money. He says if I don’t give it to him, I can expect even worse than I had before he was convicted.”

“Talk to Cody Banks.”

“I have,” she replied. “I took out a restraining order, as well. But if