BRAVE, Episode Three - the Color of Danger Read Free Page A

wasn’t a chance for our marriage to grow. There wasn’t a chance for me to grow.”
    Logan’s left hand was still entwined with hers. He slipped his right arm around her shoulders. “Seems t’me the best thing anybody could hope for from their union is a partnership. This guy didn’t know what he was missin’ out on. Anything else from old macho superboy Halterman?”
    Her fingers tightened through his. She confessed in a low voice, “We never really made love, Logan. He took me without ever a care as to what I was feeling, or what I preferred, or whether he even satisfied me. I simply submitted, because that was the easiest. And the safest.”
    In the two years since her midday flight from the Chicago shores, there’d been no other man in her life. Or her bed. There was once the remote possibility of that. Jonathan Maynard had sure worked hard enough for it, but after that horrendous scene at the club, he’d been interrupted and completely extinguished by Camille. Now, that was a good friend if ever there was one.
    Jonathan’s touch revolted her.
    Did she really want to let on to Logan how inexperienced she was?
    Chloe worked her way through the maze of her matrimony, instead. Her past was a mine field littered with explosives and she was warrior armed only with wit – maybe not so much of that either. “I never understood why he’d even married me. There were plenty of other women available—beautiful, clever, charming women, with more money and political pull. When I asked him, he gave me the only reason he had: his mother had decided it was time he settled down, and I was at least presentable.”
    Logan muttered something under his breath. Something pungent and unflattering.
    “After a year of David’s drunkenness, and his rages, and his beatings,” she continued, lost in distant memory, “I asked him for a divorce. I begged him for a divorce.”
    “Men like that will never let a woman go.” He shifted position, glanced out at the pouring rain. “Especially if it’s your decision. Makes him look weak, less powerful, less in control. Shows a chink in his armor, y’know. Probably made him madder.”
    “You’re right. That was one of the worst attacks.” A shudder at remembered pain and fear, at remembered helplessness. “He didn’t want to cause any damage to himself that time, because he had a business luncheon to attend, so he didn’t use his fists. He used a tennis racquet. The broken arm and concussion sent me to the hospital.”
    Every muscle in Logan’s body went rigid at her dispassionate re-telling of old traumas.
    “He worked a lot,” Chloe went on, after a minute. “In fact, that was his saving grace—he worked hard. His father’s business had earned a good living, but David built it up even more and got to be very, rich. I think that’s been his only real goal.”
    Logan’s semi-smile twisted with irony. “Piss in the eye for his old man,” he suggested.
    “Oh, no doubt.” She sighed and leaned back. She loved the weight of his sturdy shoulder tight against hers, and the caress of his hand enclosing her fingers. “And there you have it, Logan. All the sordid details of my former life.”
    She was emptied out, from top to bottom, and ready to leave the loathsome past behind for a new beginning. She raised her shadowed eyes to his. Any sign of disgust or aversion? No. She should’ve known better. Logan Farrow was fresh ad uncomplicated, and she was drawn to him like refined metal to a lodestone.
    “Are you divorced now?” he asked quietly. Why did he want to know? She pressed hope down within – don’t be ridiculous!
    “Yes. My friend—remember Barbara?—she helped me with the paperwork, and all the details.”
    “Good. I wouldn’t want to be takin’ up with a married woman.”
    “Logan.” Her spirit soared on the wings of joy. There was an air of hope, castles in the air, unicorns and fairies, rosy pipe dreams. She let it show on her face. Subtlety, thy name