All Chapters of HER MOTHER’S HUSBAND: Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

The front door slammed open with such force that the walls shook.I looked up from my laptop, heart hammering, as my mother stumbled inside like something was chasing her. Her eyes were wild, her chest heaving, her designer handbag, when did she get a designer handbag?—hanging crooked from her shoulder."Mum?" I jumped up from the couch. "What's wrong? Are you okay?"She didn't answer. Just stood there in the doorway, staring at me with an expression I couldn't read. Fear? Excitement? Guilt?"Sit down," I said, rushing to the kitchen. "Let me get you some water."My hands trembled as I filled a glass. Ever since Dad died six months ago, Mum had these moments, these breakdowns where the grief would hit her like a truck and she'd come home looking haunted. I thought this was one of those times.But when I pressed the glass into her hands and sat beside her, she took one long sip, set it down on the coffee table, and turned to me with a smile that made my stomach drop."Bella, darling,"

BELLA’S POV For a second, neither of us moved. He just stood there, holding my underwear, his dark eyes locked on mine.I snatched it from his hand and shoved it behind my back. "I, I'm sorry. My bad.""I'm just going to take this and leave," he said, his voice tight. He grabbed whatever he'd been reaching for in the closet.But his eyes, his eyes weren't on the closet anymore.They were on my chest.I glanced down and realized with horror that my shirt had shifted during the fall. My nipples were clearly visible through the thin fabric, hard and pressing against the material.He didn't look away.He just stood there, staring, his jaw clenched, his breathing slightly heavier.I crossed my arms over my chest. "What?"He cleared his throat. "You have a mark on your chest.""What?" I turned toward the mirror.Sure enough, there was a small scratch just above my collarbone. It was bleeding slightly. I must have gotten it when the bag fell on us in the car."Sit down," Dominic said, his v

BELLA'S POVI should have walked away the moment I heard the sound.That was the smart thing to do. The right thing. The thing any normal person would have done, turned around, gone back to their room, closed the door, pretended they'd heard nothing.But I have never, apparently, been particularly good at doing the smart thing.So instead I stood there in the gap of the doorway, my hand still raised from where I'd been about to push it open further, and I watched the screen.I don't know what I expected when I followed the sound down the hall. A television playing the news, maybe. A documentary. Something ordinary and explainable that would dissolve the strange, restless energy that had been crawling under my skin since the bathroom. Since the first aid kit and his hands on my collarbone and the way he'd looked at me when he thought I wasn't paying attention.What was playing on the screen was not the news.The room was dim, just the blue-white light of the television casting everyt

BELLA'S POVHe was already at the table.Of course he was.Suit on, perfectly pressed, coffee in hand, a set of documents spread in front of him that he was reading with the calm focused attention of a man for whom the contents of his own mind had apparently raised no difficulties at all during the previous night.He looked up when I came in."Bella.""Morning," I said.I went to the coffee machine. Put a cup under it. Pressed the button. Watched it fill with the focused attention of someone who needed to look at something other than him.The maid, a quiet woman named Petra who moved through the kitchen with the efficiency of someone who had perfected the art of being invisible, slipped out of the room at the sound of my arrival, heading for the laundry or somewhere with enough tact to leave us to it.I picked up my coffee.Turned around.Dominic was already looking back at his documents.I sat down at the opposite end of the table and wrapped both hands around the cup and looked ou

BELLA'S POVHe continued as though he hadn't said it."Meals at the family table. Breakfast from seven to nine, lunch at one, dinner at seven. If you have a scheduling conflict, classes, an engagement, you let the kitchen know by ten the previous evening.""My mother mentioned that rule.""Your mother thought the maids would carry it up to you," he said. "The maids will not carry food to your room. That stands regardless of circumstances.""Even if I'm unwell?""If you're unwell, you tell me or the staff and a doctor is called." He said this without hesitation. "You don't manage it alone in your room."There was something in the way he said it that stopped me from making the easy, deflecting remark I'd been preparing. It wasn't a rule, that one. It was something else, a different texture under the same formal surface, the faintest shape of something that could, if I was being unguarded and a little reckless, be called concern.I filed that away also."Guests," he said."Jennifer,"