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Chapter One
Close your eyes. Maybe he won’t realize you’re awake?
The morning air was supposed to be brisk according to last nights’ weather report but the sun’s beams of light sent warmth through my bedroom window just to the right of the bed. Narrowing my eyes against the pain in my head I pretended to be asleep. It was supposed to rain today but I won’t complain about the weatherman missing this forecast. Outside was sunny as could be right now. Maybe the rain would be coming later? A severe sinus headache pounding like a jackhammer in my forehead had kept me from sleeping most of the night. A good indication rain was somewhere on the horizon.
I opened my eyes squinting in time to see my husband’s bare ass as James walked towards his bathroom. His bareness once a delicious sight to behold held no appeal to me anymore even though his ass was firm and hard. Maybe I was dead from the waist down now? A nice ass belonging to a shit of a man. I hated the man that ass belonged to. Hate was really a strong word. Dislike was more like it. Distaste. Grown weary of. Desperate to get away from. Wanted to leave. Scared of? Why? Enough! I screamed to my inner voice. Just stop!
He caught me. He knew that I was awake. Might as well get out of bed. When he observed the pained expression as I slipped from beneath the thick, down blankets covering me he scowled.
“Do you think you can still manage to pick up my shirts today,” he snapped. No sympathy there. Fuck you too asshole my inner voice said to him. Something I couldn’t say out loud. Fearing his wrath.
What a way to start the morning? James slipped into his heavy, velour robe covering his thickly muscled and naked body. Thank you God. I didn’t want to see it anyway. Been there. Done that.
“Make the bed,” he barked before slamming the solid oak door behind him.
As if I would break James’ rule number one…all beds in the Ellerton household are made before your feet have a chance to get chilled from the shiny-not a scratch-oak-perfectly-polished-hardwood floors. The sound of water flowing from the faucet into the claw-foot porcelain tub followed by a hiss as he turned on the shower let me know I had exactly twenty minutes before he would be out once again bothering me with his presence. James was precise in his morning routines. He never wavered from them. A twenty minute shower every morning not one second more or less prior to shaving. OCD ass.
James insisted there was something the doctors could do for my chronic sinus condition. A doctor had performed outpatient surgery on my pesky nasal passages which had helped but had not completely gotten rid of the condition. Nasal sprays with topical steroids and saline sprays. All alleviated the symptoms but the inflammation never completely went away.
Bending over the bed I pulled the silky, pale baby blue, Egyptian cotton sheets up and smoothed them with my shaky hands fighting back the urge to vomit from the throbbing pain in my head. The hospital corners make the sheets and blankets stay in place throughout the night. Oh God. My inner voice kept hearing James telling me over and over how to make the bed.
“Makes my life easier,” I said to no one else, the room empty. But he didn’t need to know that particular fact. Oh hell no, he did not.
James had taught me how to make the bed the way his mother had taught him; the way that he wanted it made now that he actually had a wife. I swear if he could screw his mother he would not need me.
Before James, it was rare that I had made a bed. Who actually makes their bed unless you have a maid or housekeeper to do it for you? I wondered. There was always something more important than what the sheets and comforter looked like after climbing out of bed in a rush to start the day. Who really cared? I was just going to climb between the crisp, clean sheets tonight. Making the bed tidy is much easier than listening to James nag the hell out of me so I made the damned bed. I did it to avoid confrontation the way I avoided all the many other things in life that required a confrontation with James.
Across the hall, in my own bathroom I took two sinus tablets from the hand-made, medicine cabinet hanging over the white porcelain sink. Separate bathrooms you ask? James couldn’t tolerate the curling iron, blow dryer, shampoos and other womanly things I required cluttering his bathroom. OCD, remember?
Then, I started my usual routine. Face washed, moisturizer applied and my hair definitely needed brushing. Dark curls were flying everywhere about my face with a mind of their own, before I took a comb to them.
In my mirror I could see James’ face, nose wrinkled in disgust, eyes more squinty than usual hiding the piercing icy blueness of his irises, “Can’t they thin your hair?” He had actually asked this once when I had returned from the salon.
“At least I have all of my hair,” I replied meanly to the image of my husband that I saw in the mirror not that I would actually say that if he really were standing there. I didn’t have the balls. I had lost my cojones. I needed to grow a pair as my teenage daughter would say.
James’s hair was thinning at the crown of his head. There was a perfect circle of missing hair the only imperfection on a nearly perfect specimen of man. Charm? The man had it in spades when he wanted to use it. It was like living with Sybil and her multiple personalities. You never knew which James you were going to get when you climbed out of bed and I was damned tired of his mood swings.
I threw on some old jeans, the seat nearly white from wearing them so much and a plain lime green, long-sleeved, snug-fitting, tee shirt. The color looked good against my skin and dark hair. In the kitchen, the only room in the house that had been mine to decorate I began by making breakfast for Keegan. My daughter left for school long before James left for work.
The kitchen, my room was painted Navajo White above a chair rail that encompassed the massive kitchen. The bottom half was painted Fired Brick Red. There was warmth in this room that was opposite of the starkness of the remainder of the house, which was painted screaming, ready-for-the-asylum bland, no color, white. I found towels of matching red color and a contrasting burnt orange plus some with a fading sun behind trees in an apple orchard hung from the handle of the stainless steel, expensive stove James had purchased. This was the only room in my dream home that was completely mine. Reluctantly he had given up control of the kitchen to me.
Everything that I had ever wanted had been at my fingertips waiting for me to grab hold. James had bought the large, old farmhouse with five bedrooms for us to fill with children. The children would keep me busy while he was working. Keegan and I had horses, beautiful Arabian mares that were cared for lovingly sheltered in the two-story perfectly painted red barn not more than 100 yards from the house. As a child, my parents had provided riding lessons and I had always dreamed of having horses of my own. I had it all but I had nothing at the same time but Keegan and the horses.
The hope of keeping me barefoot and pregnant became another disappointment on the James and Gabrielle laundry list of failures. James’s low sperm count left us unable to conceive. We had discussed in-vitro which might have increased our chances but I had balked. After one year of marriage to James I found myself wondering what the hell I had done. Why hadn’t I seen his controll
