Seduced by Stratton (The English Brothers Book 4) (28 page)

When Molly had decided to take the two-year teaching job with Teach for America, they’d both known it would test their relationship, right? She convinced herself there was nothing to worry about. Once Dusty arrived in Philadelphia, they’d jump right back into their relationship and everything between them would go back to normal.

No, it hadn’t escaped her notice that their weekly phone conversations had become much shorter, stilted and mechanical—more an information swap than the communion of two people deeply in love. And sure, for the past few weeks, Dusty had sort of glided over the “I love you” at the end of the call, answering “Yup, you too” and hanging up quickly instead of returning the actual words. But heck, all couples had ups and downs, didn’t they? Dusty was still her fiancé, and this weekend would be their much-needed chance to reconnect.

Yeah, right.

“What a fool you are, Molly McKenna,” she whispered to herself as she squirted bath gel into her hand. A sharp pang of grief and panic suddenly overwhelmed her. She let the gel drip forgotten through her fingers and took a gasping breath of steam as she recalled their conversation.

“Hey, Valentine!” she’d answered cheerfully. “You past Harrisburg yet?”

“Uh, no Mol. We need--”

“Pedal to the metal, baby,” she said. “I’m waiting for you! Got a big box of candy with your favorite centers and--”

“Molly! Stop for a minute. We need to talk.”

“Is everything okay?” Her heart had kicked into a gallop, suddenly on high alert from the dark tone of his voice.

“No. Everything’s not okay.”

“Dusty, you’re scaring me. Are you sick? Hurt?”

She reached for the TV remote and turned off the program she was watching so she could give him her undivided attention.

“Jesus, Molly, I don’t know how to say this, so I’m just gonna rip away the band-aid real quick, okay? I’ve been dating Shana Evans since Thanksgiving. We’re together now. She’s, uh, she’s having a baby.”

The first thing Molly realized was that she wasn’t breathing. It was like someone had thrown a rubber ball down her throat and closed up her windpipe.

The second? Her hands were trembling so hard, her phone was shaking against her ear, the distorted sounds making her dizzy.

The third? The entire contents of her stomach were about to dislodge that little rubber ball.

She barely made it to the nearby kitchen sink in time, dropping her phone to the counter with a clunk and retching over and over again. Gagging over the smell wafting up from the basin and the sour taste in her mouth, she threw up again before reaching for the faucet. Dispensing with a glass, she stuck her mouth under the tap to suck up some water and rinse out the sink.

It was several minutes before she picked up her phone again.

“Dusty?”

“Molly…”

“Dusty,” she said quietly, looking at the oven clock. Seven-o-six. Her eyes flooded with tears and the numbers blurred into distorted, white zig-zags as she walked slowly from the kitchen and fell heavy onto her couch. “What did you do?”

“Christ, Mol, you okay?”

“No. No, Dusty,” she sobbed. “I’m a long way from okay. What—What are you t-talking about?”

“Listen, baby--”

“No!” she exclaimed, her nostrils flaring in defiance as hot tears trickled down her cheeks. “You don’t call me that anymore.”

“Molly,” he said, and her free hand fisted as she heard the hint of indignance in his voice, as though perhaps Molly was partially to blame for what had happened. “You been gone for eight months.
Eight months
.”

“So what?”
she exploded. “So that means you can bake cookies with the art teacher? That means you can cheat on the woman you’re marrying?” Molly gasped as the truth hit her square between the eyes. “Oh, my God, she pregnant! She’s
pregnant
, Dusty!”

Molly couldn’t say why it had taken this long for her to absorb the fact that Dusty was having a baby with Shana Evans, but fresh tears deluged her eyes and she took the phone away from her ear for a second, trying to catch her breath.

When she held the phone back up to her ear, Dusty was mid-sentence. “…not close for a long time now. We barely slept together but once over Christmas.”

“Wait,” she gasped. “W-Wait,” she said again, her brain trying hard to piece together two parts of the conversation. “
When
did you get together with Shana?”

“Wh-what?”

“
WHEN DID YOU SLEEP WITH HER
?”

“Aw, Molly.”

“Christ on a cracker! You said it before…Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving, Dusty. You started getting
with her
around Thanksgiving and you were
with me
at Christmastime.”

“Those are awful ugly accusations, Molly-girl. I think you’re in shock.”

“Accusations? Facts, Dusty! From your own mouth!”

For the first time since they’d started talking, she looked down at the simple engagement ring on her finger. When Dusty had proposed, after their graduation from teaching school in June, the little diamond, glistening in the sunshine, had easily been the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen. Now it seemed like  a symbol of cheating, of pain, of stupidity. She wrestled it off her finger and flung it across the room, watching as Charming jumped off the couch in pursuit.

“Well, Mol, I don’t know what else to say. You took that job in Philly, even though there was a perfectly good position open at Hopeview High, and--”

“You knew how important Teach for America was to me, Dusty! You knew it was my dream!” she sobbed.

“Well, it wasn’t
my
dream! My dream was to stay here, raise a family near where we grew up, go to the same church where we--”

“You go near that church and lightning will split your head open before you can step through the door!”

Dusty was silent for a long time. “We’re not getting anywhere, Mol. Just throwing around ugly words. I’d prefer to remember you as the golden-haired girl who captured my heart in the eighth grade, not this angry, screaming--”

“Dusty, I couldn’t give a…a…” She tried to think of the most vulgar curse words she overheard every day in the hallways at school—words she’d never, in a million years, considered uttering until now. “…flying f-fucking cock’s shit c-cunt how you want to remember me. I hope you are monumentally unhappy with Shana Evans. I hope she cheats on you. I hope you get to learn how it feels. I hope—I hope--”

She stopped abruptly. The line was suspiciously silent.

“Dusty?
Dusty
?”

The line was dead. Somewhere during her tirade, he’d hung up on her. He’d…hung up…on her. Molly had thrown the phone across the room, but this time Charming ran for cover as she let out a long, keening sob, and fell to the floor on her knees.

Happy
fucking
Valentine’s Day.

Molly rested her forehead against the mustard-yellow tiles in the shower as the hot water continued to scorch her back. She reached for the cold water tap, twisting it just a touch. The water mellowed a little and she reached for the gel again.

He’d cheated on her. Her boyfriend of ten years—a wasted decade of her life—had cheated on her. And how. Aside from the pain of his betrayal and rejection, her embarrassment was epic. Everyone in Hopeview would know that Dusty and Shana were together, and they’d quickly learn the reason why.

“Oh, God,” she moaned, rubbing the gel over her body distractedly.

What would her parents say? What about her older sister and two older brothers who still lived in or around Hopeview and still attended the same Methodist church as Dusty every week? Had Dusty even had the decency to tell her first? She mulled over this question and decided that yes, he had. She’d checked her phone this morning after finally charging it, and there were no calls of texts, so it was safe to assume Dusty told her first. Her phone would be ringing off the hook once her friends and family found out. And sure, they’d all feel bad for poor Molly, but good Lord, she’d look like a fool. Not to mention, there would be some who’d say she had it coming, up and leaving a handsome man like Dusty Hicks behind.

She shampooed her ginger-colored hair and thought back to Christmas break. When she first got home, he’d come over to see her, but every time Molly had tried to talk about her life in Philly or his in Hopeview, he’d silence her by kissing her, which had finally led to them having sex in the back of his car. As she thought back on it, yes, Dusty had been distant with her, canceling two dates, and rushing through gifts with her family on Christmas Eve. When she asked where he needed to be, he said he needed to help set-up the church for the nine o’clock service, though it was strange to Molly at the time, because although she looked for him, she didn’t recall seeing him at the actual service.

Now it occurred to her…he was probably leaving her to go see Shana, which begged the question: Who was this man who used church as an excuse to get it on with his piece-on-the-side? She thought she knew Dusty Hicks as well as one human being could know another, but she was wrong. She didn’t know this cheating, lying piece of scum at all, and more hurt, angry tears ran down her cheeks to mix with the hot water still pouring from the shower head.

“You’ll need to get tested,” she whispered miserably, wringing her hair and watching the water run clear. Because Dusty was her fiancée and Molly was on the pill, they’d never used any protection. And if Shana was pregnant, he certainly hadn’t been using condoms with her. She shook her head in disgust and fury.

Christ on a cracker, what a disgusting excuse for a man.

Thankfully, the realization of Dusty’s epic selfishness had the counter-effect of staunching her tears for the first time since waking up, and her jaw was set in an angry line when she turned off the water and stepped out of the shower.

Wrapping a towel around her small frame, she rubbed a circle in the steam on the mirror and finally looked at herself. Her cheeks were bright red due to the hot water, but so were her eyes. Whipping open the medicine cabinet, she took out a small plastic container of Visine, and tilted her head back, letting three or four drops fall into each eye. Screwing the top back on, she opened her eyes wide and watched as they cleared a little, one stray tear making its way down her nose to rest on her top lip. She snaked out her tongue and licked it.

“That’s the last tear I cry for you, Dusty Hicks. That’s a promise.”

Then, still heavy-hearted despite her bravado, Molly marched into her bedroom to throw on some clean underwear, grateful that she still had several hours to psyche herself up for the very last place on earth she wanted to be: Daisy Edwards’—ugh, Valentine’s Day—wedding.

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Seduced by Stratton

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KATY REGNERY, Amazon bestselling author, has always loved telling a good story and credits her mother with making funny, heartwarming tales come alive throughout her childhood. A lifelong devotee of all romance writing, from Edwardian to present-day, it was just a matter of time before Katy tried her hand at writing a love story of her own.

As it turned out, one love story turned into a series of six
Heart of Montana
romances, following the love lives of the Yellowstone-based Lindstrom siblings. When Katy’s fans asked her to turn up the heat, she wrote the New Adult/Adult Contemporary hybrid romance,
Playing for Love at Deep Haven
, which offered steamier romance to her readers. Katy is also proud to offer
The Vixen and the Vet
, a standalone romance that benefitted Operation Mend, an organization that helps heal the returning wounded of our armed services.
The English Brothers
is Katy’s second series and first indie series.