Walk On The Wild Side (2 page)

The sound of alternative rock pouring out of the built in speakers greeted her—he must have left them on when he left for work this morning.

She shook her head and dropped her purse on the table in the entryway. She was always after Josh to turn off the lights, to turn off the faucet when he was brushing his teeth.

“Why do you care?” he always argued. “It’s not like you have to pay for it.”

“Once we’re married, I will,” she always countered. And she would have before they were married if she had anything to say about it, but to date Josh had resisted her not so subtle suggestions that they move in together.

The last time she’d brought up the subject, when Ellie and Anthony had moved in with Damon, he’d looked at her like she was crazy. “You work all those funny hours, babe. How do you expect me to get a decent night’s sleep when you’re leaving at six some mornings and coming in after eleven some nights?”

Molly had backed off, biting her tongue against the urge to remind him that they’d have to work it out eventually, as she expected that if they got married sometime in the not too distant future, he’d still have her restaurant hours to contend with.

Though they didn’t live together, Molly knew Josh’s house as well as she knew her own and made her way to the small but nicely appointed kitchen which opened up into an adjoining family room.

There was an empty bottle of red wine on the kitchen counter, which struck her as odd. Not because a discarded bottle was an unfamiliar sight in Josh’s kitchen—his less than tidy tendencies were going to be another thing they worked on once Molly was in residence—but because his empties tended to be of the Budweiser variety or a local microbrew if he was feeling fancy.

She went to put the bags of food on the counter, but froze at the gasp of alarm that came from behind her. Molly turned in the direction of the hallway that led to the rancher’s two bedrooms and let out a gasp of her own.

The woman was tall with long, wavy brown hair that spilled over her shoulders, partially covering the Montana Wildcats insignia over her right breast. Long, tanned legs were exposed by shorts. Boxer shorts, in fact, that looked eerily familiar.

A buzzing sound started up in Molly’s head, so loud it took a moment for her to realize the woman’s lips were moving.

“What are you doing here?”

Molly shook her head, tried to form words with lips that had gone oddly numb. “I’m here to make dinner,” she said, wincing inwardly at the stupidity of the reply.

“Oh,” the woman’s delicate brow furrowed in confusion. “Josh didn’t say anything about sending someone in to make dinner.”

“It was supposed to be a surprise,” Molly said, the desperate, whispered words ripping out of her chest as the reality of what she’d walked in on started to sink in.

“Oh, what a sweetheart! Help yourself to anything you need.” She waved a graceful hand. “I don’t know where anything is in here, but I’m sure you can find your way around.”

Heart pounding, sweat erupted on Molly’s skin. Then she went ice cold as the woman started to retreat down the hallway. “No,” she managed to push past her frozen lips. “No,” she said again.

The woman turned and paused, a wary look on her face.

With good reason, Molly thought, as she felt like she was capable of erupting any second. “I’m not here to make dinner for
you
and Josh,” she said, struggling to keep the quiver out of her voice. “I’m here to make dinner for
me
and Josh.” Like, if she explained the situation clearly enough, this woman would disappear into thin air, and Molly could move forward pretending this never happened.

The woman turned fully to face her. “Why would you do that? Who are you anyway?”

“I’m his fiancée.”

The woman’s head snapped back as she cocked a dark, perfectly shaped eyebrow. “Josh!” she called, her gaze pinned on Molly.

She heard his muffled reply coming from the direction of the bedroom.

“Can you please come to the kitchen?”

The summons was followed by heavy footsteps against hardwood floors, and before she was ready—could she ever be ready? Molly was met by the sight of her fiancé, wearing only a pair of ratty cargo shorts, his thick, light brown hair sticking up on end like he’d been rubbing it against a pillow all afternoon.

“What is it, babe?” He said with a yawn, turning towards the woman, only to freeze as he caught sight of Molly, standing there, canvas bags of groceries clutched in a death grip.

Any farfetched hope she might have had that there was some explanation, that this wasn’t exactly what it looked like, disappeared with the first flash of shock, followed immediately by guilt, that appeared in Josh’s brown eyes.

“Babe, I can explain—“

He was talking to the other woman, not her, Molly realized, as the sinking feeling in her stomach grew so strong she felt like it was going to turn her inside out.

“Really? You can explain to your new wife that you have a fiancée too?”

Molly’s cold fingers released their death grip on the grocery bags. They hit the floor with a thud, their contents spilling across the tile of Josh’s kitchen floor.

Her head screamed at her to run, but her feet remained rooted in place, as though her body didn’t want to compute, didn’t want to accept the message her brain was processing.

Wife.

He had a wife.

“Listen,” she heard Josh’s voice over the roaring of blood in her brain, over the sound of the other woman’s increasingly angry voice. “It will be fine, I promise,” Josh said, soothingly—soothing
her.
“Just let me take care of this.”

Take care of this.
The words echoed in Molly’s brain as Josh wrapped his hand around her arm and pulled her to the door.
Take care of this,
like she was an old couch that needed to be removed to make room for a new one, she thought as she let him guide her to entryway, where he gathered up her purse, and then onto the front steps.

“Wh-when, what, h-how—" Molly sputtered when Josh pulled the door closed behind them.

“I met Shayna at a conference last spring, and we hit it off.” Josh said in a voice so deadpan she knew he’d been rehearsing this speech for a while.

“How long have you been fucking her?” Molly spat out, her entire body shaking with rage and confusion.

Josh rubbed the back of his neck, his every cell radiating the fact that he’d rather be anywhere in the world other than answering to his girlfriend of over a decade and fiancée of five years. “Does it matter?” he said lamely.

Molly planted both hands against his bare chest and shoved him. Though Josh had several inches and at least fifty pounds on her, rage infused the push with enough force to knock him on his ass onto the brick stoop in front of his house.

“Take it easy!”

“Take it easy? Take it easy?!” Molly shouted and resisted the urge to follow her shove with a kick to the nuts with her booted foot. She didn’t think Josh would go after her for assault, but she never thought he’d marry someone else either. “You leave town for a week and come back married and I’m supposed to take it easy?’

“It’s not like we planned to get married,” he said as he pushed slowly to his feet.

“Oh, that makes it so much better!”

“It’s just, we were in Vegas, and we’ve got this great connection, and we thought, why not.”

“Why not!” Molly echoed, a hysterical sound, half laugh, half cry erupting into the cool fall evening. “I mean, it’s not like you have someone waiting back home for you, someone who’s been with you for over a decade, waiting five goddamn years for you to pick a wedding date!”

“Come on Molly, we’ve been growing apart for a long time. You have to admit it.”"No I don’t! I don’t have to admit anything. I haven’t been growing apart.” She shook her head as though she could erase the last ten minutes of her life from existence.

“Well it hasn’t been working for me for a long time,” he said quietly. “I thought you would figure it out. I guess I should have been more clear.”

“Marrying someone else makes it pretty clear.”

“I’m sorry, Molly,” he said and reached for her hand which she promptly snatched away. “I know I should have been more direct, told you what was going on with me, but I didn’t want to hurt your feelings with the truth.”

“And what is that? What’s the truth?”

He shook his head, his mouth opening, then closing a few times as he struggled for the right words.

“If you’re worried about hurting me, don’t,” she said. “Whatever you can say, it can’t possibly hurt me more than I’m feeling at this second.”

“I don’t love you anymore.”

Oof. It was a punch in the gut, but one she was subconsciously prepared for. After all, how could he love her and do want he did.

“I haven’t for a long time.”

That one she took to the ribs, as her heart slammed against them so hard she was surprised they didn’t crack from the inside.

“You’re a great girl, Molly, but when it comes to what I want in a wife, in a life together… I feel like I outgrew you a long time ago.”

And that was the kicker, the killing blow that sent her heart exploding out of her chest to land with a fleshy plop on the bricks. Not that he didn’t love her. Not that he didn’t want to be with her.

But that she had been clinging, so hard, for so long, not realizing that the man she clung to no longer wanted her.

Hadn’t for a long time.

“Okay,” she said and turned to step off of his porch, feeling like she was going to step into an abyss.

“We’ll both be happier, you’ll see,” he offered lamely. “Once you have a little time to think about it, you’ll see that it’s time to move on.”

Move on?
She thought as she made the less than one mile drive home on auto pilot.
Move on?
She thought as she unlocked to door to her emptier than usual feeling house.

Since she’d been a junior in high school, her life had revolved around Josh. Josh, and her dreams of her quiet, secure life in Big Timber. No drama, no heartaches, just marrying her high school sweetheart, having a couple of kids, then spending their golden years holding hands and teasing each other about what hot stuff they used to be. That was all she ever wanted. All she ever dreamed of. All she ever planned on.

Now all that had been upended like a table flipped by one of those crazy women on the
Real Housewives.

How the hell was she ever supposed to
move on?!

Chapter 1

Three weeks later

It was nearly eight PM when Brady McManus turned his truck down Big Timber’s main street. Most of the windows of the shops and small businesses lining the street were dark at this hour. One of the few exceptions was his destination, Adele’s Cafe.

As he pulled into the parking lot, he joined only a handful of cars, evidence of how much dinner business slowed down during the off months.

It was early October, but there was already the cold nip of frost in the mountain air. A stark contrast to the warm gust that greeted him when he pushed open the door to the restaurant.

“Brady!”

He felt his lips tug in a smile as several people said his name like he was Norm from Cheers or something. One of those people was his best friend and co-owner of Adele’s, Damon, who was busy washing glasses behind the bar while his fiancée, Ellie, served a glass of wine to an older woman he recognized as one of the people who worked at a financial planning office down the block.

The bar and all the tables, he noticed, were decorated with miniature pumpkins and little ears of dried corn. Ellie’s doing, no doubt. Since she’d returned to work at the restaurant, she was always switching up the centerpieces to reflect the seasons.

Damon came out behind the bar to give him a back thumping squeeze. “Good to see you man! Wasn’t sure you were going to make it before we closed.”

Ellie also came out from behind the bar to greet him. As usual, she looked gorgeous, but tonight she was especially so, her skin glowing, her thick dark hair spilling over her shoulders. Due, no doubt, to her pregnancy, which made her usually flat belly stick out just the slightest bit, but enough for him to feel its faint press as she gave him a welcoming hug.

“Let me get you a drink” she said. She ducked back behind the bar, grabbed a pint glass and reached for the tap.

“Actually tonight I’m in more of a Macallan mood,” he said, gesturing his chin to a bottle of twelve year on the shelf behind her.

Damon cocked a brow. “Rough drive?”

He stifled a scoffing laugh. The seven hour drive from Bonner’s Ferry, Idaho, was like a vacation after the last brutal month of his life. “Something like that.” Ellie handed him a glass holding two fingers of amber liquid and single ice cube. Brady raised it in a little toast before downing the contents in one gulp.

“How’s the situation back home?” Damon asked. “You get everything resolved?”

“As much as I could.” Brady could tell Damon wanted to ask more questions about the “family emergency” he’d left to take care of a month ago. But even though they’d been tight ever since they met in Ranger school, Brady had never been inclined to offer up any details about his completely fucked up family. He sure as shit wasn’t going to spill his guts about the latest mess some members had gotten themselves into.

He’d left home as soon as it had been humanly possible for a reason, and he made a point not to drag his past along with him.

Trouble was sometimes it dragged him the opposite direction.

“Oh, you’re here.”

All unpleasant thoughts of his family fled in a whoosh of awareness at the sound of the feminine voice. A familiar tightness formed in his chest, threatening to choke off his breath as he turned to face her, bracing himself for that punched in the gut feeling he would get at the first sight of her.

It never failed. From the first day he’d walked into Adele’s and seen her, struggling to keep her composure while simultaneously waiting on six tables while running back and forth to the kitchen to help with plating, every single time he laid eyes on Molly Tanner he felt like all the breath was being sucked out of his body.