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“Medical software sounds dull as dirt.”
“That’s true. With him I never outran the police in a stolen vehicle during an ice storm. Nothing near that exciting.”
“That excited you?”
“Very much.”
He hooked his hand behind her knee and propped it on his hip. As boldly as before, he opened her with stroking fingers. “Anything else excited you lately?”
She rocked against his caressing hand. “The way you looked at me.”
“When?”
“When you came into the room and slammed the door.”
“How’d I look at you?”
“Exactly the way you’re looking at me now.”
“Thomas?”
He hovered on the threshold of the bedroom. Having heard the door opening, Greta had sat up in bed, her pale nightgown making her look like a wraith in the dim room.
“Did I wake you? I’m sorry. I was just checking on you before turning in myself.”
In a voice as unsubstantial as her body, she said, “I wasn’t asleep yet.”
A bottle of vodka was on the bedside table in addition to an array of prescription medications for depression and insomnia. Greta moved from doctor to doctor, cleverly juggling refills so she would never be without an anesthetic.
When Thomas had become aware of her abuse, he had started monitoring the prescriptions and alerted the doctors to her machinations. But despite his precautions, she seemed never to be in need of her next pill, and the supply seemed limitless. Eventually he had stopped interfering.
He was twelve years older than she. At age forty, he’d decided it was time to marry. Dallas was a hothouse of cultivated beauties. He had his pick of many, but he chose Greta because she’d best filled his list of requirements. She was pretty, scandal-free, the reigning princess of Dallas society, and the only child and heir of parents with old wealth and prestige from both families.
He won Greta over with his ardent pursuit. “I won’t take no for an answer.” She had thought his insistence terribly romantic. Never would she have guessed how literally he had meant it.
His father-in-law admired and respected his business acumen, and was perhaps a bit intimidated by it, which Thomas used to his advantage. His mother-in-law considered him to be a “divine catch.” All Greta’s friends said it was a match made in heaven.
They were wrong.
Divine intervention had nothing to do with it. Thomas had made it happen, and he was the antithesis of godly.
Although he’d married Greta for practical reasons, he actually formed a strong affection for her. She could be enchanting and entertaining. By nature, he wasn’t given to frequent laughter, but she could coax it out of him. She was a generous and attentive bedmate.
To compensate for the weeks he worked nonstop, he treated her to lavish vacations. He bought her the mansion she’d long admired. The house and grounds took three years to renovate, and that kept Greta occupied and happy. He discovered that he enjoyed indulging her.
Two things he refused her. He wouldn’t attend every charity event and fund-raising ball and black-tie gala to which they were invited. He insisted on living a private life, out of the mainstream and certainly out of the limelight.
The second refusal regarded her infertility. He refused to participate in any humiliating testing or biological engineering.
Not to be denied her heart’s desire for a child, Greta scheduled monthly sexual marathons until one resulted in pregnancy. Her joy was complete. To Thomas’s staggering surprise, he’d shared it. From the day of her conception, Tiffany had been the golden fabric that had enwrapped them.
Now here they were tonight, as estranged as two people could possibly be.
“You didn’t eat much dinner,” he said. “Can’t I get you anything?”
“No, thank you.”
