AllFreeNovel
Share Us
She relished it. She needed it.
Sadness weighed her shoulders down and soon she felt tears fill her oval-shaped eyes and race down her cheeks. Jaime brought her shaking hands up to hug herself close. “God, I can’t take much more of my life,” she whispered into the steam as her head dropped so low that her chin nearly touched her chest.
She heard a sudden noise in her bathroom. Her head jerked up as she immediately swallowed back any more of her tears and frantically wiped any traces of them from her face. The last thing she wanted was for him to see or hear her crying.
“Eric,” Jaime called out to her husband of the last seven years.
No answer. Nothing to acknowledge her. Seconds later the bathroom door opened and then closed. Disappointment nudged the door to her heart shut as well. The body’s automatic defense mechanisms were amazing.
Jaime rose from the bench, turned off the shower, and walked out of the stall. The vapors swirled around her nude curvaceous frame like fog as she stepped down onto the plush white carpeting that felt like mink against her pedicured feet. As she wiped a clear spot in the grand oval mirror over the pedestal sink, she came face-to-face with her unhappiness. She forced a smile and put on her usual mask, but even she could see it didn’t reach her eyes.
She grabbed a towel and wrapped it around her frame. She raced out of her bathroom suite through their spacious cathedral ceiling master bedroom and out to the hall. As she raced down the curved staircase, her towel slipped and fell behind her on the stairs, but she didn’t break stride.
Thank God she was home alone, because she wouldn’t want anyone to see her stark naked and racing through the house like she was crazy.
“Eric!” she called out, striding through the circular foyer to the kitchen.
The house was quiet. She covered her exposed breasts with her arms as she looked out the kitchen windows over the driveway. The sun was just starting to rise. She just made out his tall and slender figure headed down the street toward their friends’ home with his tackle box and fishing rods in hand.
He left to go deep-sea fishing and didn’t even bother to tell her good-bye.How much more can I take?She turned and let her body slide down to the polished hardwood floor as tears racked her body and she could do nothing but wrap her arms around her knees and rock to make herself feel a little better.
* * *
“Shit!” Renee Clinton swore as the gray acrid smoke rose from the frying pan with fury. She hurried to turn off the lit eye of the Viking stove before shifting the pan to one of the remaining five burners.
“Damn, damn, damn it all to hell.”
Renee could only shake her head in shame at the blackness of the bacon she’d been frying. It wasbeyondcrispy.
“Is something on fire, Ma?”
Renee looked over her shoulder as her fifteen-year-old daughter, Kieran, walked into the kitchen on dragging feet in her oversized fuzzy pajamas. “Just breakfast.”
“Youwere cooking?” she asked in disbelief as she sat leaned her hip against the island in the center of the kitchen.
“I wanted to fix your father breakfast before he left to go fishing.” Renee slid the halfway-decent-looking slices of bacon onto a clear glass plate.
“You never cook.” Kieran moved across the kitchen to the pantry.
“I know how to cook,” Renee protested as she ran a hand through her deeply wavy natural. “It’s remembering that I have food on the stove that I have a problem with.”
Kieran stepped out of the pantry digging into a box of cereal before throwing a handful of some sugary-sweet cereal she loved into her mouth. She moved over to stand beside her mother and looked down at the bacon with a frown. “Good thing Daddy loves you,” she joked before turning to walk out of the kitchen.
“Yeah, good thing,” Renee said hesitantly as she cracked eggs into a large red Le Creuset ceramic bowl and whisked them with a little extra ferocity.
She poured the eggs into a stainless steel pan and left them so that they would set before she scrambled them. She moved back to the end of the island where her briefcase was opened and instantly became absorbed into the facts and figures of the report she’d brought home to review.
At forty-three, Renee was the vice president of marketing for the CancerCure Foundation, one of the largest nonprofits serving cancer research and awareness in the country. It was her job and her passion to develop partnerships with major corporations for invaluable donations and increasing the national visibility of the foundation. She took her work very seriously—not just for the six-figure income she received, but because it intrigued and challenged her every day. It was very easy for her to get deeply absorbed in her work.
Renee picked up an oversized cup of gourmet coffee with one hand and the open report with the other. Her lips moved as she read. Her face showed her shifting feelings: interest, surprise, discontent. She leaned her hip against the island as she took a deep and satisfying sip of her drink.
“What the hell is burning?”
The words on the report disappeared as Renee closed her eyes and frowned as she thought, “Damn,” at the sound of her husband, Jackson’s, voice from behind her.
She dropped the report and snatched the burning pan from the stove in one continuous motion. “This just isn’t my morning, Jackson,” she told him, looking over her shoulder at her tall, solid husband of the last eighteen years.
His handsome square face shaped into a frown as he took in the papers and files on the island. There was no mistaking the immediate look of disapproval.
