Free Shrouded in Darkness (Shrouded Series) by H. D. Thomson Page B

shelf. “Johnny said you’d lost your job. I know he’d been real worried about you for a time. It takes guts to dive in and try your hand at something completely different.”
    He wasn’t just being polite, Margot realized. He did want to know. She took a large swallow of wine and sank down in a chair.
    Why not tell him? She didn’t like the memories, but if she talked enough about them, maybe, just maybe, they might fade in time.
    “I lost my job right after the divorce. I’d been the one that filed. I think—no, I know—it really hit Malcolm’s ego. He fought me all the way—until the end. Then he got real nasty. He even claimed battery. Tried to have me arrested. I guess you might say that I had problems coping with it all.”
    The truth was she’d had a complete breakdown. Margot glanced down at the glass in her hand. She’d tried not to sound bitter, but, damn, she was. She tipped the glass and emptied it down her throat. Briefly, she closed her eyes, savoring the taste, full-bodied with just a hint of smoke and spice. “I missed too much work. They considered me unreliable. They needed someone they could count on. I can’t blame them really. If I’d been them, I’d probably have fired myself long before they ever did.”
    Henry, her direct boss and a die-hard chauvinist, had actually called her flighty, too emotional for the image they needed to portray. That had stung. She’d never thought of herself as that.
    She rubbed the back of her neck to relieve muscles gone tense. The silence was thick and far too awkward. She sat in her chair, feeling like a fool. She’d talked way too much. The wine. God, the wine was dangerous and loosening her tongue. But at the same time she felt this strange sense of release by telling a near stranger things she’d never been able to tell her best friend Joyce.
    “Do you want to go back into law?”
    She glanced up, not realizing he’d sat down several yards away in a matching chair of deep green velvet. “No,” she answered truthfully. She made an arc with her wine glass. “I’ve got my books.”
    “Sounds lonely to me.”
    “I’m alone, not lonely. There’s a difference. I don’t need anyone. I’ve become self-sufficient. And I like it that way.” She raised a brow. “Why? Are you lonely? You’re not married, with two children, a loving wife and a picket fence, now are you?”
    She stiffened. He actually could be. She’d just assumed for some crazy reason that he wasn’t married. My God, and she’d been kissing him. No chaste peck, but open mouthed, hot and wet, and so deeply erotic that it still had the power to curl her stomach in remembrance.
    “No. I never had the opportunity.”
    The muscles in her body eased and she sank back into her chair. “Why?”
    “Work always came first.”
    “Do I detect a note of regret?”
    He’d been casually rubbing a gloved palm along the chair’s armrest, but his hand stilled and he lifted his head to look at her. “I had my priorities wrong,” he admitted. “Family, friends, the little things. I took them for granted. I should have learned from my parents. Hell, they were perfect examples of what not to do. Both workaholics. One a professor at a leading university and another a Dean to a prestigious college. They’re both so wrapped up in their positions and titles that I don’t think they have any real feeling or passion for anything or anyone beyond their careers.
    “One thing I have learned in spite of them and myself, and that is that life’s too short and far too precious to bury yourself in a job that can drain the life blood out of you.”
    Margot shifted and clasped her hands around the stem of her wine glass with rigid fingers. Such conviction, such deep passion beneath his words. She didn’t want to think they held any truth. To her, life was long, painful, and filled with disappointment after disappointment. “Is that why you quit?”
    He laughed, a harsh, deep sound of bitterness.