Page 7 of Wild Ever After
“Harry…”
“Turn around and look at me, Bella.”
“Please go.”
“No. Would you like to introduce me to your friends?”
“No.”
“Shame. I’ll let that slide for now. Look at me. I won’t say it again.”
Belinda knew better than to disobey him. When his voice took on that lazy Southern drawl. When it was no longer polished and cultivated. When the tone belied the serious undercurrent.
She dropped her phone in her pocket and turned to face her husband.
He looked good and her belly fluttered to life in a way it hadn’t in three hundred a sixty four days.
She’d avoided seeing him on television, in interviews since the scandal. She’d avoided seeing him in newspapers and in magazines. She’d avoided social media like the plague.
But seeing him like this? In person? After all these months?
She’d missed him.
Gray hinted at his temples. Worry lines bracketed his eyes. Frown lines touched at the edges of his lips.
He was handsome as ever, more so than when she first saw him more than twenty years ago.
The words ‘in love’ didn’t even come close to covering it. The feelings, the emotions, the thoughts he caused to riot through her body doing nothing more than standing in front of her should be criminal. Harry Walker stole her breath.
“You cut your hair.”
‘Yes.” He always preferred it longer, at least to her shoulders. Cutting it was both a refreshing act of rebellion and an easier way to maintain the signs of aging as it began to lose its thickness and body.
“I like it.” He said, lifting a hand as though he planned to touch it, but shoved that hand in his pocket, instead.
“What are you doing here?”
“I told you. It’s your birthday.”
“I had one last year, too.”
“Yes. You did. I sent you here to Baltimore, but you went completely off the grid. I had no idea how to find you. Not even our kids knew.”
Belinda fought the guilt that threatened. He was right, but she refused to feel bad about it. She’d needed that private time after their very public humiliation, after he’d sent her away.
“This isn’t the place, Harry.”
“No, it isn’t. Shall we?” He indicated the door back outside.
“Shall we what?”
“Don’t play that way, Bella. It never suited you. You’re much too smart.”
“It’s not a good idea.”
“I’m not interested in good or bad ideas. I’m interested in speaking with my wife.”
“Harry…”
