Husband by Choice

I don’t believe Steve is angry that I married Max. Or had Caleb. Though he’s incensed that I slept with another man. He’s glad about my Bennet boys because it gives him more power over me. There wasn’t a lot he could do anymore that would faze me. I just didn’t care enough about anything.

Until Max. By marrying Max I gave Steve more than he’d probably hoped for. He’s got me now. Well and completely.

Because just as I am getting inside of him, he’s been inside of me for almost half my life.

He knows that I’ll do anything he says as long as he leaves Max and Caleb alone.

My fate was sealed the day I said “I do.”

I am so, so sorry, Caleb. I didn’t know then. I hadn’t figured it out yet.

I will make this right.

Goodnight, Little Man.

The last words smeared as her tears fell to the page.

* * *

MAX COULDN’T REMEMBER much about the food he ate. And he would forever remember that Laughlin casino as one of the darkest places he’d ever been in. Flashing lights could do nothing to dispel the feeling of dread that came over him as he paid the dinner bill and followed the two policewomen out of the restaurant and down to the river walk.

Diane Kolhase had suggested that he should at least see it before she drove them back across the Colorado River to the Arizona airport where they’d catch their flight back to California.

In truth, she’d probably realized that he couldn’t just sit in one place and listen to the things she was telling him.

Or maybe she hadn’t wanted to continue the conversation in one place—where someone might inadvertently overhear them.

“You’ve been hinting all evening that you know something in particular,” Max said, walking in between the two women on the wooden sidewalk that ran behind the strip of casino hotels along the Colorado River. There were a few couples out strolling, but that Wednesday was a quiet night in the casino town.

“I do.” Diane had done a fine job painting a picture of a larger-than-life cop that everyone would want to know. She’d spoken of awards and commendations. About Steve Smith risking his life to rescue a little girl from the hands of a pedophile before any irreparable damage had been done. About the man saving the commissioner’s recalcitrant daughter from a drug dealer she’d fancied herself in love with. About his fearlessness where the underground powers in Vegas were concerned.

If he hadn’t been concerned with saving his wife’s life, Max would have been intimidated.

“Tell me what you know,” he insisted.

The Vegas detective, a few inches shorter than he was, glanced up at him. “Chantel told me your first wife was killed saving a fellow officer.” The words that came out of her mouth were unexpected.

“That’s right.” Jill had come around the corner to see a man pointing a gun at a junior officer and had taken the perp by surprise from behind, knocking his gun from his hand. He’d knocked her to the ground and managed to get his gun and get one shot off before the other officer killed the man.

The one shot had been all it took to end Jill’s life. She’d bled out on the street.

“Chantel

said the other officer was on a routine domestic violence call and the perp ran. Your wife was backup.”

“We all heard the call come through on the radio,” Chantel said, from Max’s other side. The sound of her voice in the cool darkness was calming. Familiar. The voice he’d first heard as he’d stood over that puddle of blood in the street, telling him to walk away.

To come with her.

Chantel had seen him through those first horrible hours. She’d been at the funeral home with him, helped him make decisions he’d never expected he’d have to make. Jill’s family hadn’t arrived yet.

“Jill was the first on the scene.”

And in the space of a second, her life was over. And his had been irrevocably changed.

It wasn’t going to happen again. “Tell me what you know,” he said to the detective.

“Steve Smith was having an affair with a woman he’d saved during a robbery attempt. She was young. A dancer. Making it on her own. These two hoodlums looking for drug money grabbed her from behind....”