Free The Perfect Husband by Lisa Gardner

something I said?” J.T. stood in the doorway.
    Her eyes squeezed shut. She remained hunched over the sink, her arms trembling, her legs shaky. She tasted bile. She tasted despair, by far a more savage flavor.
    “Please go away,” she whispered.
    “Sorry, but there isn't a Virginia man alive who can walk away from a puking woman. Consider it our southern charm.”
    She heard the patter of his bare feet against the bathroom floor tiles and caught the faint odor of chlorine as he approached. His torso pressed against her. She stiffened and his chest rumbled with a growl of disapproval.
    He said, “Just turning on the water. Tastes like the rusty pipe it uses to visit us all the way from Colorado, but last I checked, it was better than vomit.”
    He stepped away. With a sigh she scooped the water over her face and neck, letting it pour through her mouth. It did taste metallic and rusty.
    “Better?” he said after a moment.
    She turned off the faucet and faced him. He wore nothing but a pair of swimming trunks, which rode too low on his hips, revealing a faint white line of untouched skin. Water trickled across his shoulders, down into the fine black hair on his flat belly.
    He raised a half-filled beer bottle and looking straight into her eyes, polished it off.
    “Take it.”
    “What?”
    “The towel,
chiquita
. You look like hell.”
    Belatedly she saw the hand towel he was holding. She took it gingerly from him. He hadn't done anything, but she was scared anyway. In her experience, men — and particularly muscled men — were a clear threat to women. She couldn't picture her father without seeing his fleshy face turn beet red as he raised his thick fist. She couldn't picture her ex-husband without seeing his cold blue eyes dispassionately returning her stare as he fed her wedding gown to the flames.
    But J.T. came highly recommended. Surely mercenaries didn't kill their clients. That had to be bad for business. What about a policeman murdering tax-payers? That was bad for business too.
    But she'd been in J.T.'s house for forty-eight hours without incident. He fed her breakfast. He shielded her from the police. Surely if he had violent tendencies, she would've seen some indication.
    Of course, it had taken her two years to recognize the violence in Jim.
    Her hands came up and rubbed her forehead. She wanted to own herself, she wanted to trust herself. Two and a half years after putting Jim in prison, she still wasn't sure that had happened. She was stuck somewhere between the old Theresa Beckett and the new Tess Williams.
    “Rough night for the
Better Homes & Garden
lady?”
    “It's that knit one purl two,” she murmured. “I keep having nightmares of dropping the stitch.”
    “Yeah? And here I keep dreaming of blowing up churches. Come outside, the cool air does a body good.”
    He turned and she realized that he expected her to follow. She looked down at her legs uncovered by her purple Williams College T-shirt. Generally she didn't follow half-naked men around while wearing only a T-shirt. Her mother had had strong feelings about women showing too much flesh. Only bad women did that, and they went straight to hell, where little devils did horrible things to them every night to punish them for being so wanton.
    The image of herself as a wanton was so absurd, she had to smile. She'd never been a femme fatale, never sparked hidden flames. She'd been the dutiful, confused wife. Now she was the scared, emaciated mother. All signs indicated that J.T. found her about as attractive as an animated skeleton. She was fine with that. She just wanted him for his semiautomatics.
    She followed him out to the deck, shivering as the night air hit her. J.T. didn't seem to notice. He plopped down on one of the chairs and picked up a gold cigarette case. A six-pack sat on the glass table.
    Her arms wrapped around her middle as she stared up at a rich blue sky dotted with stars. The nights in Williamstown would be cool and clear