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She thought about it. Had she ever been fun? Being a resident was not meant to be a joyride. It had been the most grueling five years of her life, meant to separate the weak from the strong. Why couldn’t her husband have accepted the early years were going to be like that? That it would change.
He joined her on the terrace then, as if she’d conjured him up to ask just that question. But of course she hadn’t. Not now when they were about to make their relationship history.
She eyed the bottle of champagne in his hands. “What are we celebrating?”
His sensuous mouth curved in a humorless smile. “How about our incredibly civilized divorce?”
Her mouth twisted. “Because the lawyers hashed out every clause for us.”
“Your decision.” His electric blue eyes lanced through her. “I was willing to sit down and act like two reasonable human beings for an hour. You for some reason were not. I’m very curious as to why that might be.”
She hadn’t let herself wonder that. Perhaps because she didn’t want to know the answer.
She watched the play of muscles in his forearms as he worked the cork out of the bottle. Exposed by his rolled-up sleeves, they were one of her favorite parts of him. Lean and muscular, he was all sinewy power without an excess centimeter of flesh on him. Potently strong enough to brace himself with as he flipped her from one sexual position to the next...
The cork flew into the air with a decisive pop. It jerked her back to reality. She couldn’t be thinking things like that. Thoughts like that had always gotten her into trouble when it came to Coburn. Because they inevitably led to sex and their erotic, spectacular love life that had become a crutch for their utterly dismal relationship skills.
Coburn filled two glasses and handed one to her, his gaze resting on her heated cheeks. “Disconcerting, isn’t it, probing at the real reasons why we do the things we do? Maybe you were scared that one hour in a boardroom would end up the way it always does with us... You would call me a selfish son of a bitch and I would make you eat your words, one orgasm at a time.”
The heat in her cheeks darkened into a full-out fire. “Perhaps my choice was the wiser one, then?”
“Or the coward’s way out.”
Her chin lifted. “There’s nothing wrong with a bit of self-realization. In not repeating the same mistakes we’ve made in the past...”
“If you call that part of our relationship a mistake, yes.” The glitter in his gaze made her shift her weight to the other foot. Damn but this had been a colossal mistake.
He lifted his glass, his gaze holding hers. “To self-realization, then. And the dissolution of our hasty, ill-thought-out vows.”
A throb dug itself deep into her flesh, somewhere in the region of her heart. To hear him sum up their union like that without acknowledging the intense highs only they had offered each other didn’t seem right. “To greater self-realization,” she echoed, lifting the glass to her lips.
“What?” he murmured after he’d taken a sip. “You don’t agree we were a hasty, ill-thought-out union ?”
She turned her head to look at the revelers. “I think we were much more than that.”
A silence fell between them. She felt his eyes on her, coolly assessing. When she thought he might say something, she cut him off at the pass. “I’m happy for Harrison. He’ll make a fine president if he wins.”
“The country couldn’t do any better.”
“And Frankie. She’s very beautiful.” A cynical note entered her voice as she referenced her husband’s PA, who was married to his older brother. “How did you let that one get away? She is so your type, Coburn. Young and impressionable.”
“And about to give up her career for her and Harrison’s new addition to the family.” His mouth curled with a sardonic twist. “What a lucky man he is... He married a woman who doesn’t need to prove herself to the world.”
The dagger cut through her as cleanly as her own surgeon’s scalpel. “You never seemed to want babies, Coburn. If that was high on your list, you should have mentioned it when you were cataloging my potential as your wife. You knew with my residency it would be years.”
A frown furrowed his brow. “There was no cataloging. We married before we had any idea who the other one was.”
Her stomach knotted. “And you found me sorely lacking in any capacity other than the bedroom.”
His gaze narrowed. “You liked to think that was the reason. Because then you didn’t have to work at it at all. You could just run off like the spoiled little rich girl you were and cry to Daddy. There were no repercussions.”
