Free Now You See Her by Linda Howard Page B

very expensive trips and bought new clothes. Somehow she hadn’t thought Richard was serious about the divorce, and she’d spent all that money as a means of punishing him for scaring her so. But he wasdeadly serious about the divorce and had no intention of covering her new debts, even though he could probably pay them out of petty cash and never know the difference, if he just would.
    Candra squashed a tinge of regret. There was no point in rehashing the past, and Richard was irretrievably in the past. All her attempts to smooth things over with him had been rebuffed. She imagined a tiny part of her would always miss him. It wasn’t just the sex, though God knows that had been hot, at least for the first five years. None of her other lovers had ever matched Richard in bed.
    What she missed most, though, was the security. Richard was a very secure man, a rock on which she could always depend. His attributes sounded like an ad in a singles column: reliable, intelligent, good sense of humor, great lover, honorable. By all means, don’t forget “honorable.” His damn standards were so high you’d think he’d been born in Buckingham Palace instead of on some little dirt farm in western Virginia.
    It was her fault, though. She’d always known how he would react if he found out about the abortion. She had been so careful, paying for it in cash so there was no chance of him finding a canceled check or a credit card slip. She hadn’t
liked
having an abortion, but she hadn’t seen another option. She didn’t want a child; she had never wanted children, not even when she was young and just married and wildly in love with him. Nor was having the child and giving it up for adoption a possibility, because Richard would have died before he let that happen.And it wasn’t so much raising a child that she found so distasteful as actually being pregnant, having it wriggling around inside her like some larva, distorting her body and wrecking her life.
    No, abortion had been the only answer. The bloom had long since been off their marriage, had been ever since Richard discovered that little fling with . . . what was his name? He hadn’t been important, just a moment’s entertainment. It had taken all her persuasiveness to keep their marriage together then, and she had been extremely cautious about her affairs after that; they weren’t serious to
her,
but she had known Richard wouldn’t see it that way. Still, she had no doubt they would have made the best of things and continued to rock along if she hadn’t had too much to drink, if they hadn’t been arguing, if she hadn’t gotten so angry she had thrown the words at him like rocks, just for the satisfaction of hurting him. If, if, if. The mistake had been final. Their marriage, in all but the legal sense of the word, had ended on the spot.
    She accepted the blame. That didn’t mean she would meekly accept whatever Richard deigned to give her. She had hoped he would become involved with Sweeney, because Sweeney, for all her quirkiness, had a soft heart. Moreover, Candra genuinely liked Sweeney and thought the regard was returned. Richard would do a lot to please a woman he wanted, as she had reason to know. If he wanted Sweeney, and she thought he did, and Sweeney urged him to generosity, there was a good chance he would do as she asked.
    After speaking with Sweeney, though, Candra thought that scenario was shot. Her thoughts jumped to the other plan she had formulated. She didn’t like it, it wasn’t without risk, but at this point it looked as if her best bet was Carson McMillan.
    When you danced with the devil, or slept with him, it was a good idea to find out all you could about him and take steps to protect yourself. She knew a lot about Carson, things he wouldn’t want known, though maybe she wouldn’t have to use them. Perhaps she could get him to believe the child had been his; the timing