The Marriage Profile Read Free

our relationship.” He and Angela had been colleagues, lovers, husband and wife, and at the end, they had been enemies. But he wasn’t sure they had ever been friends and doubted that they ever would be.
    â€œAll right, so you were more like acquaintances. But you do know her, right?”
    â€œI guess you could say that.”
    â€œWhat do you mean?” Bobby asked.
    â€œI mean I know Angela about as well as any man can claim to know his ex-wife.”
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    â€œLet me look at you,” Johnny Mercado told Angela, holding her hands in his following their greeting. “Why, I still remember when you were just a skinny teenager. Now look at you, all grown up.”
    Puzzled, Angela said, “But it hasn’t been that long since you’ve seen me, Mr. Johnny. Don’t you remember, until about five years ago I used to live here in Mission Creek?” She didn’t bother adding that it had been during her marriage to Justin.
    â€œThat’s right,” he said, a look of confusion in his faded eyes. “And you’re still as pretty as a picture.”
    â€œThank you,” Angela replied while he continued to clutch her fingers in his weathered palms. “And it’s really good to see you again. I was sorry to hear about your wife.”
    Something dark and dangerous flashed in the older man’s eyes, and his fingers tightened their grasp on hers for a moment. “My Isadora. She was a good woman. She didn’t deserve to die the way she did. I should have taken better care of her. If only I had protected her—”
    â€œPop,” Ricky said, and placed a hand on his father’sshoulder. “Mama had a heart attack. Remember? There’s nothing you could have done.”
    â€œI—” Johnny clamped his mouth shut, but not before Angela noted the murderous look he’d cast across the room. “Yes. Yes, you’re right, of course,” Johnny told his son. Releasing her fingers, Johnny took a step back so that Ricky’s hand fell away. But Angela couldn’t help but notice how the older man had averted his gaze. It didn’t take psychic abilities for her to recognize that something besides grief was troubling the usually easygoing Johnny Mercado.
    â€œI saw Del Brio talking to you when I came in. He giving you a hard time about something?” Ricky asked, an edge in his voice.
    â€œDel Brio is a yellow-bellied snake. He doesn’t scare me.”
    â€œI didn’t ask if he scared you, Pop. I asked if he was giving you a hard time.”
    â€œNo,” Johnny told his son.
    But Angela didn’t believe him. There was an aura of darkness about Frank Del Brio that she’d picked up on the moment she’d entered the room. And it was obvious that something Del Brio had said or done had set off the older man. Or was she imagining things? Angela wondered. Maybe the undercurrents and shadows she sensed were of her own making and had nothing to do with the Mercados or Frank Del Brio. After all, she hadn’t exactly been herself since she’d agreed to come back to Mission Creek.
    Because you knew coming to Mission Creek meant seeing Justin again.
    Angela let out a shaky breath at the admission. Even after all this time just the prospect of seeing him again still had the power to tie her up in knots. It had been that way from the first moment she’d set eyes on him at the policeacademy when she’d been a new recruit and he’d been the handsome deputy assisting in her training class. She’d looked up into those green eyes and the world had shifted beneath her feet. It didn’t seem to matter that they were all wrong for each other. That he was a member of the prominent Wainwright family, and she was the estranged daughter of a farmer who could barely make ends meet. She’d fallen for Justin like a ton of bricks, and when he’d asked her to marry him she had accepted.
    Overcome by a wave of