Page 4 of Love Me Again

Josie laughed bitterly. “So you didn’t lie to them about not divorcing me. Great.”

“Oh, you misunderstand,” the man said gravely.

The brother. This older brother Josie had never even met. Because Boone had some rift with his family. All healed up now it seemed. Funny how that worked.

“Boone never told us about any kind of divorce, because he never told us he was married in the first place,” the brother said very seriously.

So seriously Josie had to absorb these words and… She turned to Boone. Never. Never? “You never…”

Boone wasn’t looking at her. Blood dripped from his puffy lip and he wasn’t looking at her. The man who’d swept her off her feet, told her he loved her and promised to be with her forever. The man who’d said I do, only to walk away six months later like she didn’t matter at all.

And he’d never even told his family about her.

CHAPTER 2

Everything ached. Boone knew he deserved it, all in all, but the punishment his body had been suffering for the past almost two years was getting old, even if he did deserve it all.

God, he did.

He’d been gearing up to dealing with this…mess he’d run away from. After almost two years, he hadn’t exactly expected Josie to track him down. He figured if she was going to do that, she would have done it a long time ago.

Of course, it sounded like perhaps she’d just discovered that he hadn’t exactly followed through on the necessary paperwork to dissolve their union.

He’d meant to. Really.

Sort of.

Maybe.

It was just…her lawyer had stopped poking at his, so he figured he might as well let the whole thing go. If she wasn’t pushing for the final paperwork, maybe there was a chance and…

Yeah, he hadn’t really thought it through. Hadn’t allowed himself to. Because the truth was…

“Can you guys…” He didn’t know. He didn’t want to be alone with Josie. He definitely didn’t want anyone witnessing this.

Of course, he was going to have to explain it to everyone now, thanks to Josie showing up here unannounced. Shane wouldn’t let it go, that was for sure.

But for all the ways Shane still irritated the hell out of him with his do-gooder, big brother bullshit, he also was learning when to back off. He gave Boone a nod and started drawing Cora away.

Cora pouted but let herself be led back toward the house.

Leaving Boone standing outside on a cold, snowy winter day. Big flakes falling from the sky in slow, dancing patterns.

With his wife.

Which was part of the ache—not just the outward physical he’d been dealing with for quite a while now that she’d managed to make a little worse by attacking him.

But the emotional one.

She had a habit of putting that there. No one else got to him the way Josie did. Not even a very pregnant Cora.

She wasn’t breathing evenly as she stood there. She also wasn’t looking at him. She had her arms wrapped around herself, likely because she wasn’t wearing a coat despite the fact it was the end of November in Colorado.

“You never told your family,” she said in a small, hurt voice once Shane and Cora were out of earshot.

He hunched. She had that effect on him. “Believe me, if I had, they would have beat our door down back then.”

“And what a horrible thing that would have been. They seem really evil.” Sarcasm dripped from every word.