From Here to There Read Free

the time, they'd been seeing each other he'd been gone on business trips. She barely knew him and knew she shouldn't have said she would marry him, shouldn't have gone through with the ceremony. She didn’t love him. How could she when she had no idea who he truly was.
     She stared at his sharp profile. It was impossible to imagine being married to him, sleeping with him.  "I've made a terrible mistake."
     He smiled patiently at her. "Did you forget something, darling?" he asked, his voice a deep, pleasing masculine one, his eyes a clear blue as he looked down at her.
     "I shouldn't have married you."
     "Pardon me?" he asked, the voice still cultured and calm, but the finely shaped lips tightening a little.
     "I've made a terrible mistake. I don't love you. I can't be your wife."
     A muscle began to twitch in his jaw. "Excuse me for being dense, but I thought that was what you just did."
     "I know what I did, but I can't go through with it."
     His eyes narrowed. "You're not making sense, Helene."
     "I know. It's completely crazy. I can't believe I... I never thought I'd be the flighty type to do something like this but--" She would not allow her fate to be controlled by others. If she'd made a mistake, well, she'd just have to be the one to rectify it.
     She glanced forward and saw that the limousine driver was looking into the rear view mirror, his eyes met hers with interest. Phillip must have noted the same thing and with a curse, slammed the window shut between the front and back of the vehicle.
     "You can't be serious," he said, his voice losing its cultured polish as he glared at her, the handsome face still nearly unbelievable in its perfection, but the lips tightly drawn and jaw clenched as the words came out in an angry hiss.
     "I've been a fool, but it wouldn't be any better to admit all this a month or two down the road," she tried again to calm him. She'd never seen Phillip angry, but she was seeing it now.
     "It wouldn't?" He raised patrician brows in the air. "It wouldn't! And just exactly what do you think this is going to look like?"
     "Is what it 'looks like' all you care about?" she asked, feeling a surge of anger. Her whole life had been dominated by ignoring what she wasn't supposed to see and pretending what she was--all for what it looked like.
     He snorted at her. "At this point, am I supposed to be concerned about your feelings? You just told me marrying me is a mistake, that you don't love me, that you'd like to... What is it you'd like, Helene? Shall I ask the driver to stop let you out along the road somewhere?"
     She glared back at him. "Don't be ridiculous!"
     The curses that followed were words she'd had no idea Phillip even knew, let alone would use. "Ridiculous," he finally managed, throwing himself back against the seat, his broad shoulders, stretching the fabric of the tuxedo as he reached up one finger and loosened the collar. "Unbelievable," he repeated. "I can't imagine anything more ridiculous than this conversation," he muttered. "What's gotten into you?"
     "Truly I am sorry, but I should never have married you."
     "You could not have figured this out say a week ago, two weeks ago, maybe when I asked you?" He glared at her, his startlingly blue eyes glacial in their anger. He shook his head as though struggling to get control of his temper. "Damnation," he growled and stared out the window as the limousine wound its way down narrow streets, past tall trees and stately houses, heading for the Aquarian Club. "I can't believe this. I really can't believe this is happening."
     "But..." She realized she had no words to explain it to him, except she knew marriage and a life the way Phillip would want it lived was totally impossible for her. She couldn't accept a marriage like her parents had endured, where her mother constantly took trips to exotic locales by herself, where her father never quit working except to see his friends , where a husband and wife existed side by