To Trust a Stranger Read Free Page B

locked. All right, so driving a shiny silver Jaguar deep into Charles ton's bustling red-light district in the middle of a Friday night was probably not the smartest thing she had ever done. But then, when she'd left the house, she hadn't known where she was headed, so she really couldn't be convicted of total stupidity. Lying in bed listening to the distant hum of the garage door closing, she'd made up her mind, and lit out after Sid.
    She'd followed him blindly, desperate to know where he went when he snuck out of their house after he thought she was asleep, and she'd ended up here. Not exactly a positive reflection on their marriage, was it? All up and down the street, neon signs blinked GIRLS! LIVE! ONSTAGE! and ADULT MOVIES and xxx. Acknowledging their import, Julie felt the knot that seemed to have lodged permanently in the pit of her stomach twist itself several degrees tighter. Sid was forty years old and healthy as a horse as far as she knew. She was twenty-nine, with a slim curvaceous figure she worked hard to keep, great legs if she did say so herself, long black hair that waved naturally in the sauna-like heat, and a face that had taken her far from her wrong-side-of-the-track roots.
    She was clean, sweet-smelling, bought her lingerie at
Victoria
's Secret. In other words, there was absolutely nothing about her that might turn a husband off. She and Sid hadn't had sex in more than eight months. And it certainly wasn't from lack of interest or effort on her part. But trying to entice her own husband into bed without success was ego-busting, to say the least. Especially for someone who had once been called the prettiest girl in
South Carolina
. Sid's excuse, when she confronted him about their dead sex life, was that he was under a lot of stress at work, so he'd appreciate it if she would just let him the hell alone. He was a contractor who, in partnership with his now-retired father, owned a very successful business, AlI-American Builders, which made tons of money developing subdivisions and building luxury homes across the state. She had no doubt that he was under a significant amount of stress. But enough stress to keep him from having sex? Uh-uh. No way. It had taken a while for the other shoe to drop, but finally it did when she'd found diamond-shaped blue Viagra pills mixed in with some vitamins in his medicine cabinet.
    At first hope had flared, and she waited with anticipation, sure he'd decided to see a doctor to fix their little problem. But nothing had happened. There'd been eight pills when she'd discovered the cache on Monday. By this evening Friday-when she'd checked again, only six were left. So she'd dressed for the night in her sexy best, even going downstairs to make sure he saw her in it, then lay in bed waiting for the jackass to come to her. The rest, as they say, was history. What was going on became suddenly clear. Sid was having sex, all right-just not with her. At least he'd apparently been telling the truth about stress impairing his sexual functioning. Ever since she'd awakened to the sound of the garage door going up, she'd been sick to her stomach. It was hard to admit that her Cinderella, rags-to-riches, fairy-tale marriage had about as much life left in it as yesterday's road kill. To make matters worse, her whole family was now dependent on Sid: her mother and stepfather lived in a house he owned; her sister's husband worked as a vice-president at his company, a job that paid Kenny perhaps three times what he was worth, enough for Becky to stay home with their two girls. Divorce was such an ugly word. But Julie had a sinking feeling that she was looking it right in the face. Until just a little while ago, when she'd finally had enough sense to add two and two and get four, she hadn't allowed herself to seriously consider ending her marriage. Maybe, she kept telling herself, things would get better. Maybe work stress really was the reason Sid wasn't interested in her sexually anymore.