Read an Extended Excerpt from ONE NIGHT WITH HIS WIFE by @SSaraDaniel #1NightStand @DecadentPub
Enjoy an Extended Excerpt from Sara Daniel’s ONE NIGHT WITH HIS WIFE…Rosalind settled onto the empty chair across from him. “So, uh—” She unwrapped a straw and swirled it in her lemonade. “What things need to be finalized? I thought I’d signed everything the lawyers needed.”
Luke clenched his jaw. Her rushing to finish the last of the business tying them together shouldn’t have ticked him off, but it did. “I thought so, too. The judge was supposed to rubberstamp it this morning. Unfortunately, the identity theft app that I’d been working on that just seemed to eat our money—”
“And Alex’s money,” she added.
“Yeah.” Of course, she knew. He didn’t have to explain the past to her. She’d been by his side the whole time, supporting him every second until he’d turned his back on her. “Well, it suddenly took off. We stopped bleeding money, and it started pouring in instead. The company’s worth more than I ever dreamed, way more than when you signed all those papers that gave me the company and its debt without giving you anything in return.”
She shook her head, her braid whipping with the ferocity of the movement. “I don’t want your money, Luke. I never wanted your money.”
Never having doubted the assertion, he lifted his whiskey.
“Your baby, yes, but not your money,” she said, her solemn gaze boring into him.
He tossed back the liquor. If only the path burning down his throat would make him forget his dreams of having a baby with her. “Without a lawyer representing your interests, the judge believed you were getting ripped off with the settlement we’d agreed on. The truth is, you would have gotten ripped off by that agreement, so I’m glad we have a chance to make it fair.”
Once again, her braid whipped back and forth with her emphatic denial. “The company is yours and Alex’s. I didn’t do anything except cook dinner and give you space to work. I came into our marriage with nothing, and I left with nothing, so I came out even.”
The whiskey burned in his gut without taking the edge off his nerves. He slapped the empty glass on the table. “You wasted ten years of your life with me. I don’t call that even.”
“I don’t call it a waste,” she shot back. “If we’d had a kid, then yes, I’d take your money and put it in an account for his or her future, but that never happened. I don’t need or want anything for myself.”
He closed his eyes. “You should be thankful we don’t have a kid.”
“We had a deal, Luke. When you retired from the Marines, we’d start a family.”
“I got my leg blown off,” he shouted, opening his eyes to glare at her, hating the sorrow in her voice and himself for not being able to deliver on her dream. “We never took that scenario into account.”
She shoved her drink away. “Your leg is not the same piece of anatomy as your dick. Maybe you hadn’t noticed because you’ve been too busy being a dick.”
Yes, yell at me. Take your anger out on me. He wanted her hate and resentment, not her sorrow and disappointment. Luke reached for the extra lemonade and slammed back half of it before saying, “You’re right. I was a dick. I don’t deserve you. I never did. I want you to have the chance to find someone better than me, to get something better from him than what you got from our relationship.”
“Well, money won’t make that happen.” She slumped her shoulders, her voice little more than a whisper. “You don’t have to pay me to go away, Luke. I’ll just go.”
The lemonade turned sour in his stomach, and he pushed aside the half-empty glass. Every divorce he’d witnessed from the sidelines or heard tales of later, the couple had fought over money, with each party claiming as much of the pie as he or she could get away with. But Rosalind offered him everything. He hated the possibility that someone down the road might take advantage of her generosity. She needed to look out for herself first, not him.
Perhaps, he could make her do so by convincing her to hate him and then take his money in revenge. “Look, I didn’t come here with the intention of tracking you down.”
Her soulful brown eyes widened, and she lifted her glass again. “You just happened to be wandering around Montana, and here I was?”
“I signed up for a blind-date one-night stand at this resort, and I ran into you by accident while I was waiting for my date to arrive. But I’m sitting with you now because I really don’t want to be married to you when I sleep with someone else tonight.”
*
The drink slipped through Rosalind’s fingers. Pale-yellow liquid and ice cubes spilled down her shirt before the heavy glass shattered on the floor.
Ever a man of action, Luke shoved away from the table and called to Mac. But she remained frozen, unable to care about the drama of the spill. She’d been keeping her shit together over Luke seeking her out to finalize their divorce. But the admission that he wanted to have sex with someone else paralyzed her. It destroyed her.
He’d moved beyond their relationship, beyond fixating on ending it. He was ready to start a new chapter of his life. But she couldn’t move on. Body, heart and soul, she’d loved him and still did. A divorce wouldn’t change her feelings, and neither would seeing him with another woman. But it sure as hell would hurt.
From the direction of the bar, a towel flew toward them. Stretching upward, Luke snagged it from the air with quick reflexes and a gorgeous display of biceps and washboard abs. “Here. Use this to dry your shirt.” He held it toward her.
After fumbling for it, she pressed it to her chest. His hand still tangled in the cloth ended up covering her breast, his palm rubbing her beaded nipple.
He hissed and squeezed his eyes closed. But instead of yanking his hand away, he became immobile, warming her through the wet fabric until the reaction of her breast to the cold morphed to one of desire. Desire that he no longer returned.
Learn more about
One Night With His Wife,
Sara’s new release
After a grenade took Marine Luke Cox’s leg and ends his career, he cuts ties with his wife to free her from the burden he’d become. On the day his divorce is to be finalized, he travels to meet a woman for a 1Night Stand date—a woman who doesn’t care about his missing leg or his sudden wealth from a business venture. However, things don’t go as planned, and when he arrives for his date, he’s still legally married.
Rosalind Cox tends to the horses on her cousin’s ranch resort, her love for the animals the only thing keeping her going since her husband turned his back on her. When he appears at her stables, all the longing and rising hope is crushed by the realization he’s only sought her out to gain his freedom.
She’ll give him what he wants, but she can’t resist taking one last kiss for herself. The kiss reopens emotions and attraction that neither can deny. To give in will only complicate the tangle as they try to unwind their lives. But even though Rosalind doesn’t care about Luke’s missing leg or his money, as long as he refuses to accept himself as whole, one night with his wife will be his last.
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Sara Daniel writes what she loves to read—irresistible romance, from sweet to erotic and everything in between. She battles a serious NASCAR addiction, was once a landlord of two uninvited squirrels, and loses her car keys several times a day.
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