As Kimber sat back that night, knowing she needed to call Luke, but putting it off, she really thought for the first time of the offer she’d had to buy the bookstore. She loved the store, and it meant a lot to her having been able to keep it in the family. But even though she had cut her hours back, she still sometimes felt as if she wasn’t spending enough time with her children. She knew that they would need her even more now, and she hardly needed an excuse at this point to leave town. There were entirely too many memories here that she’d rather not relive.
She sighed as she pushed the button on her phone to dial Luke. She was glad that she was only calling to make sure he knew when she wouldn’t be home so that he could pick up anything he needed, and to work out a temporary custody agreement for the kids. Even with as much as she missed Luke, and knew that she would continue to miss him for a while at least, she dreaded talking to him. She didn’t bother to try to fool herself into thinking that she hated him or that she ever would, but she was most definitely sure that Luke would no longer be one of her favorite people to deal with.
Luke
When Luke heard Kimber’s ring tone on his phone, he almost didn’t answer. He had been nursing a headache off and on all day long, and all he had been trying to do was relax and not think about anything. He had smoked a lot of weed that day, and he wasn’t sure whether his decision to hire a private investigator to check on Sierra had been his stoned mind’s way of reminding him that Sierra’s husband was now the only thing standing between them being together, or whether it was just him being a chicken and figuring that it would be a better idea to spy on her before he got up the guts to go to her.
Luke knew that Kimber was angry with him and he knew that she certainly had good reason. He was going to let her handle the divorce, not only because he was the one who had made the stupid move that sent him packing, but because he knew that Kimber would be fair.
Luke lit a cigarette, and answered the call right before it went to voicemail.
“Hello.”
“Hi Luke. I just wanted to let you know that I explained things to the kids the best I could without going into a bunch of detail that they don’t need to hear and wouldn’t understand anyway. Your little princess cried her eyes out of course, which made Halden cry too. All in all it has not been an easy day, but the process is started. I think that it would be a good idea if we made arrangements for you to see the kids as soon as possible. Alexis isn’t going to leave either of us alone until she knows when she is going to see her Daddy again.”
Luke sighed. It wasn’t easy for him to be away from his children. It never had been, whether he was away from home on business, away from home the first time Kimber had kicked him out, or the time he had made the decision to leave when she was pregnant with Halden.
“I’m sorry Kimber. I can take them this weekend if you want. I guess I should look for a lawyer huh?”
That wasn’t something that he was really looking forward to either, but he knew that it had to be done, just another thing he had to add to the list of stuff he had to put up with that really sucked. He tried not to think about the fact that it seemed plain that he had caused most of the problems in his marriage. He had a feeling he was going to be smoking a lot of weed between now and the time when his divorce was final.
“Yeah. I’m not planning on arguing anything with you, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“No. I know you’ll be fair Kimber and I really am sorry.”
“Yeah. If you want to come and get anything out of the house in the next couple days go ahead. I’ll be at work most of the time during the day.”
“Okay. Thank you. I guess I’ll let you get back to whatever it was you were doing.”
“Sure. Goodnight Luke.”
Kimber hung up. It seemed to Luke as if she was in as big of a hurry to get off the phone as he had been. He hoped that things got easier between them as time went on, but he wouldn’t really blame her if she hated him. He lit a joint, and busied himself searching for a divorce lawyer online.
Paul
When Paul awoke alone in his bed, he knew that his marriage was over. A part of him had thought that Sierra would calm down and return home, but of course she hadn’t. It made him sad that something that seemed so good to him had sent his wife running in the opposite direction. But in the back of his mind, he realized that with the way they had been fighting lately he had known that something would eventually end his marriage.
Paul wasn’t the sort of man who would have married Sierra if he hadn’t planned on spending the rest of his life with her. So it was even harder for him to accept the fact that the beautiful woman he’d married was no longer going to be his wife. He was going to be just another divorced person like half of the rest of the country. That thought didn’t sit well with him either, but he knew Sierra well enough to know that there was no point in bothering to try to talk her into anything she didn’t want to do anymore. Sierra had made her decision, and like it or not, he was going to have to deal with it, as well as make some decisions of his own.
He was going to make the move. He had already made an offer on the house he had found in the city where his new job was located. He felt bad that he had known about the possibility of a move for a few weeks and hadn’t told her. But with the possibility of divorce looming in his future, he was glad that he had waited. He loved Sierra enough to cherish his time with her, good or bad. It was going to hurt very much to let her go, but at the same time he had to admit to himself that she had made a good point the night before when she’d remarked that they should stop trying to fool themselves into believing that they still fit together the way they once had seemed to.
Though if Paul wanted to be completely honest with himself, he supposed that Luke had always been a better fit for Sierra than he was. He knew that a time would come, probably all too soon, that Sierra would be in Luke’s arms again. And there was absolutely nothing he could do about it. There were things that he could control though, so he made a call to a divorce lawyer and looked into putting the house on the market. He was going to discuss selling the house with Sierra of course, but since she’d never been the biggest fan of the place anyway, he didn’t think she’d mind.
He made it through the day by trying not to think too much about any of what he was doing. He wasn’t sure who would make the final decision that split his family up, but he knew that he needed to call Sierra. The fact that it was one of the things that he looked forward to the least that day made him even sadder.
Sierra
Sierra was bored and lonely in the two bedroom weekly motel room that she’d rented. She’d realized pretty quickly after she left the house that she probably should have put more planning into her escape from the too big house and her husband. She had tossed things into the suitcase on autopilot, and when she unzipped it later she found that she had brought two pairs of jeans, no shirts besides pajama shirts, three bras and no panties or socks. So she made a trip to a discount store, wondering if she would be able to convince four year old Nathan that it was just as fun to go to bed in a full size motel bed as it was in his race car bed at home.
She didn’t think so, but getting her son to sleep was the least of her worries. He was still young enough that if she had to she could go for a drive and he would be asleep in his car-seat before she knew it. She was worried that Paul actually would leave without her and that she would let him. Still, the thought of making the move with him made her feel even worse, and she realized that her marriage was over even before Paul called her that evening.
Nathan was asleep in her bed when her phone chirped out the corny ringtone that Paul had assigned to himself when he had gotten them new phones. She sighed, wondering if he was going to try to convince her to make the move with him, or if he had accepted the fact that they were headed for divorce as well.
“Hello.”
“Hi Sierra. I guess we need to talk huh?”
Though it saddened her, she figured
that there was no longer any point in beating around the bush.
“Yeah. This isn’t going to be one of those things that we can come to an uneasy compromise on Paul. I’m not moving, and I’m assuming that you’ve made the choice to go ahead and take the job.”
Paul sighed. “I have to take this job Sierra. I know that it’s hard for you to understand, but this job means big things for me. I thought that it would mean big things for all of us, but I guess I was wrong. I feel like I’ve been wrong about a lot of things.”
“We always had a hard time trying to prove we were compatible Paul. We never seemed to want the same things at the same time. I wish that it didn’t have to end this way, but there’s not much point in pretending that we can stay together now.”
“I never would have married you unless I meant my vows Sierra.”
“I know. You’re not the kind of guy who takes a decision like that lightly.”
“Yeah. I guess you’ll be wanting to sell the house?”
“It’s too big for two people Paul. It was always too big for three people too. I sometimes felt as if I was living in the middle of the same type of lie that my mom and stepdad always tried to put on when I was growing up. Do you think the house will sell?”
“I think we should be able to at least get what we paid for it, if not a little more.”
“Yeah. I guess.”
Sierra didn’t really care if they made a profit from selling the house, and it seemed to illustrate the fact even more that they cared about different things. She realized that she didn’t even want to talk to Paul anymore, since both of their minds were obviously made up. It made her want to cry, but she also knew that there was nothing that was going to change either her mind or Paul’s even if it meant the end of their marriage.
“You can move back into the house if you want. I’ll sleep in one of the guest rooms. It might make things easier on Nathan.”
Sierra held back a sigh. She didn’t want to tell Paul that she didn’t think she could stand to see him every day from now until the time he left town, because she didn’t want to hurt him anymore than she was sure she already had.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea Paul. There’s a park near the place that I rented and it’s still relatively close to both the house and Nathan’s school. We’ll be fine.”
“If you think so. I’ll let you go now Sierra. Give Nathan a kiss for me please.”
“Bye Paul.”
Sierra was a little irritated as she hung up the phone. Sometimes Paul seemed to think that she wasn’t fit to make any real decisions. But she knew that her anger was probably more a combination of her usual quick temper and her defense mechanisms coming out than real anger at her husband. Or at least she hoped so. She didn’t want the divorce to be any harder than she knew it was already going to be.
She spent some time online finding a lawyer, and then since she wasn’t tired, she decided to check in on Luke by taking a peek at his website. She had found herself looking at the site quite often lately, and it was actually bookmarked on her computer since Paul had both a laptop of his own and a desktop in his office at the house. She navigated to the site, and saw that there wasn’t much new information. She sighed as she looked at his picture, feeling more than a little pathetic for pining over Luke, especially now.
But she found herself unable to look away from the picture. He was so damned handsome that she could hardly stand to look at him. He barely looked older than the twenty-two years old that he had been when she’d met him. He was smiling in the photo, but it looked like there was something missing. She pondered briefly the idea that Luke’s marriage might be in trouble too, and let herself fantasize for a while that Luke would come for her, and that they would finally be together again.
Feeling silly, she typed “Luke Stone divorce” into the search engine. She didn’t expect more than gossip to come up since Luke was in the public eye with the success of his songwriting in the past few years. She had seen rumors about his marriage being in trouble as soon as she had performed her initial internet search for him, but she had put them off as ridiculous. The media that noticed Luke seemed to be mostly female and were always raving about how good looking he was. Sierra was sure that she was far from the only woman that had secret hopes that his marriage might be in trouble.
The news stories seemed more numerous this time though, and several were recent. Her heart beat kicked up another notch as she clicked on a link with a headline that read “What woman wouldn’t want to be the next Mrs. Lucas Stone? Popular songwriter’s wife rumored to have filed for divorce.”
Sierra impatiently read through the short article, but it didn’t offer much useful information. The point of the article seemed to be to point out how talented and gorgeous Luke was and speculate on who the next lucky woman to snare him would be. It offered no more than a rumor that Kimber had filed for divorce.
Sierra was tempted to try to contact Luke and find out the truth for herself, but she figured that now would not be a good time to muddy the waters with Paul even further.
Kimber
Kimber was pissed when she saw that the news of she and Luke’s divorce was spreading around the internet like wildfire. She’d known he was a talented songwriter since shortly after she’d met him, but his recent success had been a surprise for all of them, and had brought unwanted attention. It pissed her off even more when she saw an article that was bold enough to speculate on who the next woman would be to catch Luke’s eyes.
Kimber knew exactly who the next woman to catch Luke’s eye would be. But she tried not to dwell on that fact as the days passed. The divorce process was running more smoothly than she’d thought it would. She’d thought that it would be a long drawn out process even with them agreeing on everything, since she had seen her parents go through the process multiple times and it had always seemed ridiculously complicated for them.
Looking back on it now though, she figured that it was just another excuse that her parents had chosen to make instead of taking responsibility for the mistakes that they had made. There were parts of Kimber that wished she had never met Luke, and parts of her that believed she would never be able to trust a man again. But she tried to stay cheerful for the kids, since Alexis and Halden were having a hard enough time with their father being gone anyway.
She spent some time trying to figure out where she wanted to live, since she had decided that she was going to sell the bookstore, but there weren’t any locations that really caught her eye. She tried to involve the children in her decision, but they were still too young to be really helpful. She almost wanted to ask Luke his opinion, especially since the decision would affect him as well, but she had a feeling that Luke would drive whatever distance he had to to see his children if he could ensure that he would be near his precious Sierra.
So she researched safety, schools, and cost of living in addition to the hours she spent researching what it would take to set up her own online bookstore. Kimber was so busy that it was almost easy not to think about how much she missed Luke as the days passed.
Luke
Luke didn’t let himself think about how much he missed Kimber, though he did. He knew that he didn’t deserve her, and that he probably never had. He tried to cherish the good memories, while trying to figure out what he was going to do with the rest of his life.
There were things he was sure of of course. He was going to continue to write songs, he was going to continue to be a father to his children even if it meant he had to spend countless hours on the road to see them. He didn’t regret his decision to pay an investigator to spy on Sierra for him, though he wasn’t given much hopeful news as the days passed. He knew that he was eventually going to move to be near her anyway, even if it meant he could offer her support as nothing more than a friend. He needed Sierra in his life, and he knew that there was no point in fighting it anymore.
He saw his kids every other day or so, though their time together was sometimes nothing more
than a quick service meal. It was hard on all of them, but he knew that he couldn’t put Kimber through the pain of being with him any longer, and he wouldn’t have agreed to a reconciliation even if she had asked for one.
He had always tried not to pay attention to the ridiculous gossip that was sometimes spread on the internet about him. Usually it wasn’t much of a struggle since he was far from being the most in demand song writer in the business. He had gotten used to seeing articles that gushed over how good looking and talented he was at least. He knew that they were exaggerated, like a lot of what could be found on the internet these days was. He didn’t appreciate the articles that seemed to forever allege that his marriage was in trouble though.
Ironically enough, Luke had known that his marriage was in trouble long before the first internet article appeared assuring anyone that would listen that he was headed for divorce court. He had known his marriage was in trouble long before his disastrous one night stand with Jess. He had known his marriage was in trouble as soon as he was honest with himself and admitted (to himself at least) that there had always been a part of him that had hoped Halden wasn’t his during Kimber’s pregnancy.
With as much as the gossip annoyed him, he had a secret hope that Sierra would see it. How would she feel if she found out that he was going through a divorce? Would she want to see him even a fraction of as much as he wanted to see her?
Paul
The days seemed to pass all too quickly for Paul. There was so much that had to be done before his move could be made that he hardly had time to think about the fact that his marriage really was coming to an end. The fact that he had happened to read by chance on the internet that Luke was divorcing Kimber didn’t help his overall mood, but he was so happy about the possibilities for the future that he didn’t even let the fact that he was now positive Sierra would end up back with Luke get to him.
Misty Reigenborn Romance Boxed Set Page 29
