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“I didn’t know.” She turned to face front again and spoke the words quietly seconds later. Said gently, “I realize I should have known. It happened so gradually. And sometimes I was the woman he took away with him, which was great. And also made me think our marriage was fine, as my husband kept wanting me to go away with him. The other times he left...he’d said he was going to seminars. And that he was invited as a guest artist to teach other trainers. I know sometimes that was true because I went on a few of those with him, too.
“I didn’t see the corporate finances, either,” she continued after a short silence. “He handled all of that. I dealt with our personal finances, and it wasn’t until he was depositing so little of the business earnings in our personal account that I knew something was wrong. I asked him about it, and he said that he’d had to update the club, to buy new equipment to keep up with the technological times. What I hadn’t known was that he’d always been making a whole lot more than he shared with me. He did the business taxes separate from our personal ones we filed jointly. And he liked to keep our personal income to a minimum. Said the business could absorb the tax payment that way... I should have kept a better eye on our money.”
She was speaking as though to a lawyer, and it dawned on him that it was because she’d done exactly that—just a month before she’d been arrested for murder. Following which, she’d had two months to think about it all. Ad nauseam, he’d guess.
His gut jerked. What had happened to her...it so wasn’t right.
“Last year, when I was having trouble making the mortgage payment, I got the job at Howlin’ Eddie’s and ended up having to keep it to pay the bills. That’s when our marriage really started to unravel. Fritz was crazy jealous, hated me in the skimpy barmaid’s outfit, started accusing me of nasty things, saying that I liked the chance to flirt with the male customers while they were drinking... It was crazy. He knew I’m not like that. But I know now that he was judging me by his own behavior.”
Clarke needed the information she was giving him. But he could feel himself struggling not to hit something as he took it in. The woman had been a faithful, loving wife. Trust shouldn’t be abused that way. And, still, he had to ask the obvious question. Because he had to understand how the life she’d led could somehow be coming back to bite her in the ass.
“Why not get a job at the grocery store?”
“Waitressing pays a lot better, especially at a place like Howlin’ Eddie’s, or any place where there’s a good crowd and alcohol being served. And there are tips. I needed money fast. And I waited tables all through high school and during the two years I spent at community college, too, which is where I met Fritz, by the way. I was taking business classes, hoping to open my own hair salon someday, and Fritz was finishing up some advanced training class. I’d gone to the gym between classes and heading to the diner, to get a workout in, and he was there...”
A woman at the gym he’d charmed. Probably not his first. And definitely not his last. But...
“You must have been different from the rest of Fritz’s girlfriends,” he said, half to himself. But not quite. From her tone, he could tell she was questioning her choices, wondering how she couldn’t have seen... “It sounds like he made a career out of finding sexual playmates in the guise of training at the gym,” he expanded, “but when he met you...he wanted more than that.”
At least, he hoped that was what it had been. He’d known her only a few hours and could already tell she deserved far more than the creep had given her.
When no comment was forthcoming, he asked another question. One that wasn’t on his list... “Why didn’t you ever open your salon?”
“Fritz said that we couldn’t afford two businesses, and that we didn’t need the money, either. He was obviously wrong about that last bit, at least in recent years, with the health club. We’d both said we wanted someone at home, raising our kids, and somehow the years just kept passing by. I was doing a lot of volunteer work, mostly at the community center in the neighborhood where I grew up. We offered everything from meals, childcare, and haircuts on a volunteer basis as we could. And there were socials and sporting events, too. Fritz encouraged me to spend time there. Said we were blessed and had to give back. I’m guessing now that he liked me there because it kept me away from the west side of town and the circles that would know what he was up to. I ended up working there more hours than a full-time job. From writing grants to cooking... He’d go on and on about all the great work I did, with his parents mostly, and I only recently figured out he was using me to cushion his own reputation with them. Just like he claimed that I was cheating as a reason for our divorce, to protect his reputation with them. He didn’t want to get written out of their will.”
There was bitterness in her tone.
Not nearly as much bitterness as he was feeling on her behalf.
And as he pulled into the garage beneath the high-rise building that housed his two-story condo, he vowed that he was going to do everything in his power to take away the sting Fritz Emerson had administered to his wife.
He’d find out who was after her.
He’d protect her fr
om them.
And he’d see that every single cop in the state visited her salon to get their hair done if she decided she wanted to open one.
She already owned the building. Fritz’s health club was in a more affluent area downtown and would be a perfect spot for the type of business she’d talked about. Turning a health club into a salon wouldn’t be that much of a stretch...
Yeah, maybe he’d talk to her about the idea. Talk to his lawyer about giving her a cut rate on setting up a corporation. Maybe he’d...
Show her to the guest room and stick to the task he’d been assigned.
Chapter 4
The room he showed her to was quite lovely. A surprise, to be sure, with its rose-and-brown matching decor, in a bachelor pad. The rest of the place was nice, too, just without the rose highlights. Clearly a woman’s touch.
A girlfriend, perhaps? The man wasn’t married, had a reputation around town, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t in a serious committed monogamous relationship at the moment. Or, even more likely, more than one relationship, non-monogamous.
And that idea had no business being a disappointment to her. She wanted nothing to do with Clarke Colton’s personal life. Didn’t want to be associated with his life once she was safe to resume her own.
Whenever that was going to be. He’d asked her about her own life choices, her lack of a long-term career; his doing so had brought back all of the longings she’d put aside over the years. Her volunteer work was necessary and gave vital care to so many in need. She’d truly been blessed and fulfilled working at the center. And had told herself she was selfish wanting more. But she was done playing beta to Fritz’s manipulation of her thoughts.
But with Fritz gone, she was going to have to earn a living. While his life insurance was a nice sum, and she did have the health-club building, there was no way she was going to freeload from his demise. Just didn’t seem right.
Yet she’d been settling for so long...where did she even begin to carve out a whole new life for herself?
