Once Around
Authors: Barbara Bretton
Barbara Bretton
Praise for the novels of Barbara Bretton...
"
An author of immense talent."
--
"
No one tells a story like Barbara Bretton."
--Meryl Sawyer
, author of
Unforgettable
"Elegant, yet down-to-earth."
—
Chicago Sun-Times
"Dialogue flows easily and characters spring quickly to life."
—Rocky Mountain News
"
Delightful characters... thoroughly enjoyable!"
—Heartland Critiques
"
Glamour, intrigue, and action."
—Nora Roberts
"
A classic adult fairy tale.
—Affaire
de Coeur
"Compelling, uplifting."
—Meryl Sawyer
"
[An] intricate plot, a sensuous read,
with well-defined characters.
"
—Rendezvous
"
Highly entertaining sparks with rapid-fire
repartee... unforgettable.
"
—Romantic Times
Publishing History
Print
edition published by Berkley Books, 1998
Copyright 1998
, 2013 by Barbara Bretton
All rights reserved. No part of this book
, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews, may be reproduced in any form by any means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without prior written permission from the author.
This book is a work of fiction. Names
, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, business establishments, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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, uploading, and distributing of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the copyright owner is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author's rights is appreciated.
Table of Contents
More eBooks by Barbar
a Bretton
Princeton
, New Jersey
When Molly Chamberlain's husband Robert called to say he wanted to come home, she thought her prayers had been answered. Robert had been living in Manhattan for two months now, ever since the day he'd told her it was over between them. But Molly knew better. All he'd needed was some time to come to his senses, and apparently that moment had finally arrived.
Molly sat down on the edge of their brand-new sofa in their brand-new living room and held the phone as close to her ear as she could. She didn
't want to miss a single word when he told her how much he loved her, how much he wanted to make things right again. It didn't matter that she couldn't remember the last time he'd told her he loved her. All that mattered was that he was coining home to stay.
"
I want to get the rest of my things," Robert said, and for a second she thought she was upstairs in their bed, having one of those nightmares where he told her he'd never loved her at all.
"
I'm sorry," she said, cupping her hand over her ear and closing her eyes. "There's a lot of noise in here. What did you say?" Okay, so there really wasn't all that much noise inside the house, but somebody in the neighborhood was mowing his lawn and those riding mowers could drown out a jumbo jet. "Robert? Would you repeat what you said?"
"
I found a place, Molly. I want to come by and get the rest of my stuff." He'd nailed a great apartment within walking distance of the office and he was ready to set up housekeeping with the woman of his dreams.
Robert said he would come over the next afternoon
, and Molly said that was fine because she'd be at the obstetrician's office, making sure the baby in her belly—
his
baby—was healthy and developing on schedule.
"
Great," he said. He didn't sound embarrassed. He didn't even sound as if he cared. "I'll be out of there before you come home." Then he said something about not wanting to disturb her, which they both knew was a lot of baloney, because if he really hadn't wanted to disturb her he wouldn't have left in the first place. He would have stayed in their house, where he belonged. She wouldn't even have asked him to stay forever. Just until the baby was twenty-one or married or ready for retirement.
But
, of course, she didn't say that to him. Why bother? She'd said everything there was to say the night he told her he was leaving her for a judge's daughter with a law degree of her own and a nice fat trust fund that would keep them in Saabs and Land Rovers in perpetuity,
Sometimes in the middle of the night when she sat alone in the family room watching Mary Richards muster up the courage to ask Mr. Grant for a raise
, she could hear her own voice coming at her from out of nowhere.
Don't go ... I'll do anything... don't leave me... tell me what you want, Robert, and I'll never ask you for anything else.
That was the biggest humiliation of all, the way she'd turned into someone she didn't recognize the second he told her he was leaving.
She
'd begged him to stay, begged him like some pathetic fool who couldn't live on her own without a man to protect her. It scared her to realize that she would do it all over again if she thought there was even half a chance that, he would come back to her and they could pretend they were happy.
Molly had no problem with pretending to be happy. Pretending was a good thing. It was better than chain-smoking marriages the way her parents had been doing for the last twenty years.
But Robert didn't want to pretend he was happy. He said he'd found the real thing with Diandra, that what he and Molly had shared was nothing compared to it. Nothing, he said. Those years they dated in high school. The first time they made love in the park behind the lake. The night she told him she was pregnant with their first baby.
"
So what are you saying?" she'd asked him, hearing the edge of hysteria in her own voice. "That nothing before Diane mattered?"
"
Diandra," he'd corrected her and said no more.
When you came down to it
, what more was there to say? Their ten years of marriage had been nothing to Robert but filler, something he did to pass time while he waited for his real life to begin.
That was two months ago. Her only communication with him since then had been through his lawyers
, and their conversation a few hours ago when he asked about coming over to pick up the rest of his stuff. She'd thought it was strange he'd bypassed his attorneys, but she chalked it up to Robert's natural arrogance—one of the many things she'd been foolish enough to love about him.
She couldn
't sleep that night. She knew not sleeping was the worst possible thing for the baby, but every time she closed her eyes she saw visions of happier days, and they came close to breaking her heart. Finally she got up, slipped a robe over her T-shirt, then wandered downstairs to the kitchen. When she and Robert first moved into the house, they'd joked about needing a map to find each other. Ten rooms, two stories, full basement. They'd fill it with children, she'd said. Why hadn't she realized that Robert said nothing at all?
She wandered from room to room
, sipping a glass of milk and trying to outdistance her thoughts. She tried to place Robert in the kitchen, the dining room, the huge family room with the stone fireplace and wall of windows, but couldn't. if he hadn't left his books and records and clothes behind, she'd have wondered if he'd ever lived there at all.
The house had been his choice. The neighborhood came highly recommended by one of his colleagues
, and it carried with it a certain cachet. Cachet was important in Robert's world. More important than she'd ever realized. You wanted the right firm, the right house, the right car, the right wife.
She
'd never had any doubt she was the right wife, not even when their sex life started sliding downhill around the second year of their marriage and neither one of them seemed to notice or care. It hadn't occurred to her that the right wife was rarely the one who worked his way through law school. Sex had never been the defining force in their relationship. Robert wasn't at all like her friends' husbands who demanded sex morning, noon, and night. They made love weekly—sometimes not even that often. And it was all right with Molly. Her parents had had one of those fiery, sexually passionate marriages and see where it had gotten them. To divorce court, that's where.
So she
'd never worried about their lack of passion. Their friendship had turned into love, and love had somehow developed into a partnership. That's what a good marriage was, wasn't it? A partnership of the best possible kind, where two people worked toward a common good, a common goal. Maybe they didn't light up the skies in bed, but what they had together was better than momentary passion.
Too bad she was the only one who
'd actually believed that.
"
Your blood pressure's elevated," Dr. Rosenberg said as he took the cuff off her arm in the examination room the next afternoon. "I'm not crazy about your rapid pulse."
She forced a smile.
"And I'm not so crazy about your tie."
"
I can change my tie," the doctor said. "It's going to take a little work to bring down that pressure."
"
Give me time, Doc," she said, noticing the goosebumps running up and down her arms. "All I need is a good night's sleep and I'll be fine."
"
I was sorry to hear about you and your husband," he said, scribbling a few notes on her chart.
"
So was I." For once she didn't reach for the easy joke. "He's at the house right now, picking up his golf clubs and law books."
"
You're not serious about that, are you?"
"
He called yesterday and asked if he could drop by. He said he'd be long gone by the time I got home."
