Wife by Design

He’d asked. He hadn’t been prepared for the truth. “How long did it go on?”

“She was married fourteen years. The abuse went on for about twelve of them. When Maddie caught her husband in bed with another woman, she called her parents and told them everything. They called the police, got her out of there and brought her here. He’s currently serving a ten-year sentence in the state penitentiary.”

“Darin would never hurt her.” It wasn’t nearly enough, but all he could come up with. “He’ll be a good friend to her.”

But Maddie had had one of those before.

“According to Sara, she needs to be able to trust herself to have a man for a friend if she’s ever going to have a hope of recovering from the damage her ex-husband did. Sara thinks Maddie’s reaching out to Darin like this is a small miracle.”

“So, it’s good for Maddie, it’s good for Darin. And now it’s up to all of us to make sure that their friendship remains just that. A friendship.”

He was looking her in the eye again. She looked back. And they weren’t just talking about Maddie and Darin.

“Agreed,” she said, her voice heavy with conviction.

“Good.”

And to seal their bargain, to give evidence to the fact that friendship was all they could ever have, to make certain they both understood the insurmountable walls between them, he said, “I didn’t know you had a daughter.”

* * *

“THAT DAY I told you that Darin was at the park, I said he was with Maddie and Kara.” She stood. Returned the chair she’d been using to the opposite wall where it belonged.

She straightened her top. Checked that there were no smudges on the tips of her tan-colored soft-soled hospital shoes.

Grant was so…there…where she’d been so lonely for so long.

“I thought she was Maddie’s daughter. Every time I saw Kara she was with Maddie, and it seemed clear that Maddie was her caregiver.”

The thought that someone might mistake Maddie for Kara’s mother had never occurred to her. Everyone at the Stand knew that Kara was hers. Maybe Darin wasn’t the only one whose life had become too insular.

“I’m sorry,” she said, hating that she felt defensive, like her having a daughter made her less appealing.

It made her less available.

It was really quite frustrating that not being available didn’t seem to shut down her really strong urge to have sex with him.

She wasn’t like that.

Didn’t have casual sex.

Or sex at work, either.

She’d never had sex with anyone but Brandon.

He grinned, her stomach flip-flopped and she knew she had to get him out of there.

“Kara adds a depth to my life I didn’t know was possible,” she told him, holding on to reality for all she was worth. Fantasy might be fine for middle-of-the-night baths. But then you drained the tub and went on. “She’s the first thing I think about when I wake up in the morning. The last thing I think about before I go to sleep.” He might as well know.

And stop looking at her like he wanted to be there when she went to sleep.

“I hear her little voice and something in me settles. Every single time. You ever think about having children?” she asked, feeling incredibly tired all of a sudden.

Grant stood. “Nope. Didn’t see how I could ask Darin to accept a woman he didn’t know into his nightmare, to be that vulnerable. And I couldn’t ask a woman to take him on for the rest of her life, either. Hell, what am I saying?” His gaze was direct. Purposeful. “I’m not going to leave Darin alone the amount of time it would take to have a steady woman in my life. Or to raise a kid. In a sense, I’m Darin’s dad.”

She understood. In some ways it would have been easier for him if Darin’s injury had been severe enough to render him completely senseless. Instead, he was damaged enough to not be whole, but not so damaged as to not know he wasn’t whole.

That awareness was the hardest part.

And the best, too, because it meant Grant hadn’t completely lost the brother he’d known.

“What about before Darin’s accident? Did you have a woman in your life? Or think about having kids someday?” Why was she pushing this?