Free Enchanted Heart by Felicia Mason

needed—joy, security, and professional challenges—she got from her work. Everything except someone to share it with. Then she’d met Cole and realized how much was truly missing in her life. But sometime after the honeymoon, they’d both retreated to their premarital roles and habits so much that she now found herself right back where she’d started.
    Alone.
    An old saying came to her: I can do bad by myself.
    She made up her mind that a change had to come—one way or the other.
    â€œWe can’t go on like this, Cole. Either we get some help, or I’m out of here.”
    â€œYou don’t mean that,” he said.
    â€œTry me,” she said, looking up at him. “What’s keeping me here?”
    That was his cue to say everything would be all right, that they’d work through this rough patch. That indifference and apathy hadn’t obliterated all vestiges of their relationship.
    But Cole didn’t say anything. And for a long, tense moment they stared at each other.
    Cole broke contact when he turned back the comforter and sheets.
    â€œWhy don’t you sleep in one of the guest rooms.”
    Cole glowered at her and snapped up the edge of the comforter without a word. He got into bed, whipping the sheet over his shoulder.
    Sonja pursed her lips and stared at his back. Then she sighed. The physical gap between them in the large bed was big enough to accommodate two other people, but was actually small when compared to the emotional divide that truly separated them.
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    Several hours later, Sonja sat up, the chill she felt having nothing to do with the seventy-degree temperature in the room. She’d been unable to sleep. She tugged at the top of the cotton sleep set. Far from being sexy, the tap pants and shirt were comfort clothes and the truth was she needed comforting.
    Sonja Pride was afraid. Not that she’d ever admit that weakness.
    She’d never failed at anything—nothing that was, until now. The most serious commitment she’d ever made, the one she’d committed her heart and mind and soul to lay in shredded ruin.
    She hadn’t been feeling loved or even wanted in so long. She told herself she needed the soothing feel of the soft fabric to keep her warm, at least on the outside. She often wondered if her inside would ever really be warm again, at least not as long as she and Cole remained distant, sometimes polite strangers.
    When she’d told him to sleep in a guest room she’d been half afraid he’d take her up on it, and equally as distressed that he’d stayed. Beside her, Cole slept peacefully in the big bed. They still had sex occasionally, but it wasn’t with the reckless abandon and enjoyment that had marked the early part of their relationship. Now, when they turned to each other in the night, it was habit, a physical release rather than a true and kindred connection.
    They’d had sex, but they hadn’t made love in three months. She glanced at Cole wondering if he’d know or even appreciate the difference.
    There was a time when they’d been emotionally inseparable. Now, instead of inseparable, irreconcilable seemed a better description of the direction in which they were headed. They had an equitable prenupt so finances didn’t concern her.
    Failing, however, did.
    Sonja took a moment to study her husband’s sleeping form. He was tall and had broad shoulders that tapered to a slim waist. His eyes, now shielded in slumber by long lashes, could pierce the psyche of an opponent or warm with a light Sonja rarely saw these days.
    He was a handsome man, in the classical sense. He’d been raised by a philandering father and a mother who found solace in shopping and manipulative games. Cole had somehow managed to emerge from that union unscathed physically, but scarred emotionally.
    And, Sonja realized, he still had the power to make her weak in the knees—even when she