She’d preferred to be left alone, working from the privacy of home. She’d been lucky to pay cash outright with the settlement money Kent had given her.
Been ordered to give her.
Frankly, she would have taken less but her lawyer insisted she get as much as possible.
Penny had simply wanted out.
The house, the home they’d purchased together twelve years ago, was tainted now.
He slept with that girl there.
In Penny’s own bedroom.
In her own bed.
She’d ignored fleeting suspicions but the shock of finding the man she trusted, the man she’d built her life around, on top of some nubile nineteen-year-old, her ass propped on Penny’s pillow…
Walking in on such an encounter confirmed what she’d refused to consider.
Her husband was not the same man she thought she’d married.
He was a liar.
A cheater.
A bastard.
Penny purposely shoved these thoughts out of her mind. They were too depressing.
Almost without thinking, she slipped out of her chair, crossed the room, and peeked around the curtain. He’d hung a dartboard on the wall and was throwing little metal arrows at it.
He must normally be right-handed, she surmised, when the third arrow in a row bounced off the wall. Your mother’s gonna kill you.
She hadn’t leftthe house for six days, and her empty freezer taunted her. Unless she wanted to survive on coffee, a bag of pinto beans, and some ranch dressing, she was gonna have to venture outside, and yes, interact with other human beings today.
She had no choice but to make a trip to the grocery store.
She closed the freezer door, trudged upstairs, and examined her reflection in the bathroom mirror.
She’d showered yesterday but not bothered with her hair. When she didn’t tame it with gel or styling cream, it curled into crazy yellow spirals and twisted wildly around her head.
Makeup hadn’t been a priority as of late either. The only color around her eyes came from the circles beneath them. She peered closer. Ah, yes. Wonderful. And the crow’s feet.
At thirty-six!
Her T-shirt was so worn out as to be transparent.
Another feminine item she’d eschewed since moving to Pine Springs was a bra. She never went anywhere so…why bother? It wasn’t as though her B cups were sagging.
Yet.
Her stomach, though, was soft. As were her thighs and butt.
Exercise? What was exercise?
After discovering her husband sleeping with another woman– strike that– girl– she’d not eaten for nearly a month. Well, she’d eaten but barely. And that was tribute to just exactly how devastated she’d been.
Seven months later, she’d yet to have gained the weight back.
