Free After It's Over by Michelle Alstead Page B

concern.
    “No, I want a horse!”
    “You want a horse?”
    “Yes! I have to have one!” Bianca whined.
    “Sweetie, can this conversation wait until I get home?” Ben tried to sound parental, which was difficult given the fact that his gut reaction was to hang up on his whining child.
    At this rate, she’ll demand a Porsche for her sixteenth birthday. This kid needs a mom, and I need a break.
    “Um, no! If you love me, you’ll get me a horse.”
    He nearly dropped the phone.
    Okay, that was blatant manipulation. Where is she picking up that behavior? Be cool. Hot chick watching you. Man, I bet Paige would be fun once I got her to relax. Focus, Ben! Get Bianca off the phone.
    “I can’t afford a horse. There’s boarding fees, the cost of hay is ridiculous and the vet bills for large animals are insane,” Ben smiled. “You understand, don’t you, honey?”
    Bianca responded by crying so loudly he had to hold the phone away from his ear. No matter how calmly he tried to reason with her, she insisted she had to have a horse.
    “Fine, I’ll be the only girl in my entire class that doesn’t have a horse. I hate you!” his daughter yelled.
    The line went silent. Ben turned bright pink and suddenly felt very warm; he yanked on his tie.
    My daughter hung up on me. I thought she’d be at least twenty before she’d cut me off. I really need to get that kid under control.
    “Good night, sweetie. I love you too. I’ll call you tomorrow.”
    The hot chick does not need to know my kid just hung up on me.
    “You were so patient with your daughter,” Paige commented with a smile.
    “Well, I try. My children are the most important thing in the world to me.”
    ***
    Ben felt a twinge of guilt. He’d deceived Paige from the start, but he couldn’t help it. As soon as he’d laid eyes on her, he had to have her. So when she said she wouldn’t sleep with him unless they were married, he’d proposed to a woman he’d known for all of two weeks. Two weeks after that, she’d quit her law practice, put her house up for sale and moved to Utah to marry him. Ben knew Paige was running from something or someone, but he didn’t think her secrets were anything more intense than a random one-night stand or cheating on a law exam. He’d been shocked when he had learned how her parents died. Paige had tried to keep the truth from him, but her chronic nightmares made that impossible. If he had known how they’d died from the start, he would not have married her. Hot or not, he didn’t do trauma. He just wasn’t deep enough to be the shoulder she could cry on, or be the person who calmed her when she woke up screaming in the middle of the night.
    Ben had never experienced a loss of any kind. The only funeral he’d ever been to was for a great uncle he’d never even met. While he respected his wife for surviving such a traumatic event, he wasn’t strong like her. His response was to move into the basement bedroom. The change in location worked out well and afforded him the chance to text whomever he wanted, whenever he wanted.
    When they first got married, Ben had tried to break things off with Beth, but she’d played to his ego and bent over backwards to make him feel like he was the only thing that mattered in this world. She never asked him to help with the kids or got mad when he showed up late for dinner. No, Beth was the type of woman who was constantly at his beck and call. She didn’t even care that he was married, and he didn’t care that she was married either.
    ***
    “I need you to watch your sisters today,” Ben said when Bianca finally dragged herself out of bed around noon.
    His daughter looked at him bleary-eyed. “I have plans with Madison.”
    “Cancel them.”
    “Um, no. Why can’t Paige watch them? Where is she?”
    “She went to pick her brother up from the airport. I don’t know when she’ll be back, so you’re in charge. I think your sisters are hungry, so make them something to eat.” Ben