Page 8 of The Bad Husband

Dark pants hug his muscular thighs and ass.

No sartorial ingenuity can conceal those hard sculpted muscles. He has the body of a man trained to settle by force what he can’t buy with money.

Maybe he’s into sports.

The tattoos covering one side of his neck and his knuckles loudly disagree.

Maybe he’s into artistic endeavors, too.

The way he flicks his eyes to the second floor as he casually brings his phone to his ear, waiting for the line to ring, makes me stumble backward, paw at the plant, and kick the pot to the side. It slides away it a screech.

I’m probably wrong.

He’s not into arts.

He has the instincts of a tiger, his eyes harboring feral fierceness.

He knew that I looked.

His steps ring up the stairs as his raspy voice floats toward me like a cloud of madness.

Oh, fuck.

I spin around as quickly as I can, unsettling the potted plant, almost making it fall over, and dash to my room.

Once inside, I lock the door, press my ear to it, and listen.

No sound wafts this way, his voice and steps moving steadily toward the other end of the corridor.

A sigh peels off my lips.

I lower my shoulders and relax against the door, my face tilted down, my hand pressed to my brow, the other fanned over my stomach as I shake my head slowly, quietly laughing to myself.

Boom, boom, boom.

The pounding on the door makes me scream.

I jerk upright and pull back, tripping over myself and catching myself at the last moment.

“Open the door,” a voice thunders.

I freeze in the middle of the room, not knowing what to do.

My first thought takes me to my now deceased father.

I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for his genius idea to make me live with that woman.

What was he thinking putting me into her house? What made him think she wouldn’t move on in a breath if something happened to him?

What a lack of foresight on his part.

A key shifts in the lock and the door slides open under my horrified eyes.

A tall, handsome man––he looks nothing like my father––pierces me with his smoldering dark green eyes.

He looks like he’s slept by the pool and woke up with the most beautiful tan. Whichever the reason for his olive skin, it makes his eyes and raven hair pop.

It also makes me lose my breath.