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  ONCE AROUND

  Barbara Bretton

  Praise for the novels of Barbara Bretton...

  "An author of immense talent."

  --

  "No one tells a story like Barbara Bretton."

  --Meryl Sawyer, author of Unforgettable

  "Elegant, yet down-to-earth."

  —Chicago Sun-Times

  "Dialogue flows easily and characters spring quickly to life."

  —Rocky Mountain News

  "Delightful characters... thoroughly enjoyable!"

  —Heartland Critiques

  "Glamour, intrigue, and action."

  —Nora Roberts

  "A classic adult fairy tale.

  —Affaire de Coeur

  "Compelling, uplifting."

  —Meryl Sawyer

  "[An] intricate plot, a sensuous read,

  with well-defined characters."

  —Rendezvous

  "Highly entertaining sparks with rapid-fire

  repartee... unforgettable."

  —Romantic Times

  Publishing History

  Print edition published by Berkley Books, 1998

  Copyright 1998, 2013 by Barbara Bretton

  All rights reserved. No part of this book, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews, may be reproduced in any form by any means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without prior written permission from the author.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, business establishments, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  The scanning, uploading, and distributing of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the copyright owner is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author's rights is appreciated.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Epilogue

  Copyright

  More eBooks by Barbara Bretton

  About Barbara Bretton

  Chapter One

  Princeton, New Jersey

  When Molly Chamberlain's husband Robert called to say he wanted to come home, she thought her prayers had been answered. Robert had been living in Manhattan for two months now, ever since the day he'd told her it was over between them. But Molly knew better. All he'd needed was some time to come to his senses, and apparently that moment had finally arrived.

  Molly sat down on the edge of their brand-new sofa in their brand-new living room and held the phone as close to her ear as she could. She didn't want to miss a single word when he told her how much he loved her, how much he wanted to make things right again. It didn't matter that she couldn't remember the last time he'd told her he loved her. All that mattered was that he was coining home to stay.

  "I want to get the rest of my things," Robert said, and for a second she thought she was upstairs in their bed, having one of those nightmares where he told her he'd never loved her at all.

  "I'm sorry," she said, cupping her hand over her ear and closing her eyes. "There's a lot of noise in here. What did you say?" Okay, so there really wasn't all that much noise inside the house, but somebody in the neighborhood was mowing his lawn and those riding mowers could drown out a jumbo jet. "Robert? Would you repeat what you said?"

  "I found a place, Molly. I want to come by and get the rest of my stuff." He'd nailed a great apartment within walking distance of the office and he was ready to set up housekeeping with the woman of his dreams.

  Robert said he would come over the next afternoon, and Molly said that was fine because she'd be at the obstetrician's office, making sure the baby in her belly—his baby—was healthy and developing on schedule.

  "Great," he said. He didn't sound embarrassed. He didn't even sound as if he cared. "I'll be out of there before you come home." Then he said something about not wanting to disturb her, which they both knew was a lot of baloney, because if he really hadn't wanted to disturb her he wouldn't have left in the first place. He would have stayed in their house, where he belonged. She wouldn't even have asked him to stay forever. Just until the baby was twenty-one or married or ready for retirement.

  But, of course, she didn't say that to him. Why bother? She'd said everything there was to say the night he told her he was leaving her for a judge's daughter with a law degree of her own and a nice fat trust fund that would keep them in Saabs and Land Rovers in perpetuity,

  Sometimes in the middle of the night when she sat alone in the family room watching Mary Richards muster up the courage to ask Mr. Grant for a raise, she could hear her own voice coming at her from out of nowhere. Don't go ... I'll do anything... don't leave me... tell me what you want, Robert, and I'll never ask you for anything else. That was the biggest humiliation of all, the way she'd turned into someone she didn't recognize the second he told her he was leaving.

  She'd begged him to stay, begged him like some pathetic fool who couldn't live on her own without a man to protect her. It scared her to realize that she would do it all over again if she thought there was even half a chance that, he would come back to her and they could pretend they were happy.

  Molly had no problem with pretending to be happy. Pretending was a good thing. It was better than chain-smoking marriages the way her parents had been doing for the last twenty years.

  But Robert didn't want to pretend he was happy. He said he'd found the real thing with Diandra, that what he and Molly had shared was nothing compared to it. Nothing, he said. Those years they dated in high school. The first time they made love in the park behind the lake. The night she told him she was pregnant with their first baby.

  "So what are you saying?" she'd asked him, hearing the edge of hysteria in her own voice. "That nothing before Diane mattered?"

  "Diandra," he'd corrected her and said no more.

  When you came down to it, what more was there to say? Their ten years of marriage had been nothing to Robert but filler, something he did to pass time while he waited for his real life to begin.

  That was two months ago. Her only communication with him since then had been through his lawyers, and their conversation a few hours ago when he asked about coming over to pick up the rest of his stuff. She'd thought it was strange he'd bypassed his attorneys, but she chalked it up to Robert's natural arrogance—one of the many things she'd been foolish enough to love about him.

  She couldn't sleep that night. She knew not sleeping was the worst possible thing for the baby, but every time she closed her eyes she saw visions of happier days, and they came close to breaking her heart. Finally she got up, slipped a robe over her T-shirt, then wandered downstairs to the kitchen. When she and Robert first moved into the house, they'd joked about needing a map to find each other. Ten rooms, two stories, full basement. They'd fill it with children, she'd said. Why hadn't she realized that Robert said nothing at all?

  She wandered from room to room, sipping a glass of milk and trying to outdistance her thoughts. She tried to
place Robert in the kitchen, the dining room, the huge family room with the stone fireplace and wall of windows, but couldn't. if he hadn't left his books and records and clothes behind, she'd have wondered if he'd ever lived there at all.

  The house had been his choice. The neighborhood came highly recommended by one of his colleagues, and it carried with it a certain cachet. Cachet was important in Robert's world. More important than she'd ever realized. You wanted the right firm, the right house, the right car, the right wife.

  She'd never had any doubt she was the right wife, not even when their sex life started sliding downhill around the second year of their marriage and neither one of them seemed to notice or care. It hadn't occurred to her that the right wife was rarely the one who worked his way through law school. Sex had never been the defining force in their relationship. Robert wasn't at all like her friends' husbands who demanded sex morning, noon, and night. They made love weekly—sometimes not even that often. And it was all right with Molly. Her parents had had one of those fiery, sexually passionate marriages and see where it had gotten them. To divorce court, that's where.

  So she'd never worried about their lack of passion. Their friendship had turned into love, and love had somehow developed into a partnership. That's what a good marriage was, wasn't it? A partnership of the best possible kind, where two people worked toward a common good, a common goal. Maybe they didn't light up the skies in bed, but what they had together was better than momentary passion.

  Too bad she was the only one who'd actually believed that.

  "Your blood pressure's elevated," Dr. Rosenberg said as he took the cuff off her arm in the examination room the next afternoon. "I'm not crazy about your rapid pulse."

  She forced a smile. "And I'm not so crazy about your tie."

  "I can change my tie," the doctor said. "It's going to take a little work to bring down that pressure."

  "Give me time, Doc," she said, noticing the goosebumps running up and down her arms. "All I need is a good night's sleep and I'll be fine."

  "I was sorry to hear about you and your husband," he said, scribbling a few notes on her chart.

  "So was I." For once she didn't reach for the easy joke. "He's at the house right now, picking up his golf clubs and law books."

  "You're not serious about that, are you?"

  "He called yesterday and asked if he could drop by. He said he'd be long gone by the time I got home."

  "Did you speak to your attorney about this?"

  A sense of unease danced across the back of her neck. "Robert called me out of the blue and—" She stopped and regrouped. "It was after business hours. I meant to call a lawyer this morning, but..."

  The doctor capped his pen and slipped it back into the pocket of his white lab coat. "Robert's not on your side anymore, Molly, and the sooner you realize that, the better off you'll be."

  "You sound like my neighbor Gail," she said, trying to lighten the atmosphere.

  "If your neighbor Gail is telling you to protect your interests, then I'm in agreement."

  "I promise," she said. "As soon as I get home, I'll call my attorney." What she didn't say was that she had to find one first.

  "Get dressed," he said. "We'll talk in my office."

  But I don't want to talk in your office, she thought as she ducked behind the screen. She was so tired of hearing all the divorce horror stories. Being pregnant and alone was bad enough. If she had to worry about Robert doing something terrible behind her back, she'd go crazy. Besides, he'd already left her for a younger woman. What more could he possibly do to her after that?

  She pulled on her perfectly tailored black maternity pants, the cream-colored silk blouse, the beautiful sapphire blue jacket. They felt more like a suit of armor than clothing, which was exactly the effect she'd been looking for. "Put your best foot forward;" her mother used to say, back when Molly was a little girl with a mouthful of braces and bad skin, "no matter how bad you're feeling about yourself."

  She wondered what she was going to do when her belly outgrew her current wardrobe. Her part-time income as a first reader for a New York publishing company was barely enough to pay the utility bills on her house. Unless Robert paid his fair share of the mortgage and upkeep and obstetrician bills, she and the baby would end up living in her Jeep Cherokee.

  She used to believe she knew exactly where her future would take her: the two-story suburban home, the family car, the baby, the golden retriever, the husband who came home the same time every night and left the same time the next morning; stability, security, someone to grow old beside.

  She had the house and the car and pretty soon she'd have the baby. Beyond that it was anybody's guess.

  Dr. Rosenberg didn't spend much time instructing Molly in the fine art of divorce negotiation. He had other more important issues to discuss with her.

  "I'm concerned about your pressure, Molly. We have to bring this down to a more acceptable level."

  "It's stress," she said, placing her hands over her belly, as if to shield the baby from bad news.

  "I think it's more than stress, but we won't know for sure until we run some more tests."

  "Tests?" She met his eyes across the desk. "I can't afford tests."

  "That's not something I like to hear."

  "Then we're even, because it's not exactly something I like to say. I don't have insurance." Check and mate. Now she'd see how concerned he really was about her pressure.

  "I've known you a long time, Molly. I'm not going to let this stand in the way of your health."

  Tears filled her eyes. "Damn," she murmured, blinking quickly.. "I wish you wouldn't be nice to me. Yelling at me I can handle, but this"—she waved her hand in the air—"does me in every time."

  He let her cry for a few moments, until she managed to pull herself back together.

  "I won't tell anybody about this if you won't," she said, forcing her usual cheerful grin. The one Robert used to love so much. Unless he'd lied about that, too.

  "Maybe you should be telling somebody about this," the doctor countered. "Your parents. Your divorce attorney."

  "My parents don't know Robert is gone," she said. "Let's keep it that way."

  Dr. Rosenberg sighed loudly and leaned back in his plush leather chair. "Pregnancy isn't the time to decide to go it alone, Molly."

  "I didn't decide to go it alone. Robert decided it for me."

  "Point well taken, but you don't have to be alone. You have a family. Let them help you. This isn't just about you, Molly. There's the baby to consider."

  She sat there and nodded, pretending that every word he said made sense. He meant well. She had no doubt about that. Dr. Rosenberg was a good man, and he wanted the best for her. It was something they had in common.

  #

  Molly stopped at the supermarket for milk, eggs, and bread. Three items, she told herself as she pushed the cart up the cereal aisle. She wasn't going to be swayed by the seductive displays of ruby red raspberries or the leafy green Boston lettuce or the plump containers of creamy chocolate ice cream that cost more than a phone call to Tokyo.

  Robert used to look at her as if she were crazy when she came home from Super-Fresh with radicchio and ice-cold plums and without the milk she'd meant to buy in the first place. Other women didn't make those mistakes. They drew up lists, organized their coupons, and set forth to do battle. No random radicchio for her stalwart neighbors. They bought what they needed and turned a blind eye to the rest. Maybe that was the problem in her marriage, she thought as she pushed the cart up one aisle and down the other. She was too scatterbrained, too disorganized.

  Too impulsive.

  What was it her Grandma Jean used to say to her? "You've got to quit listening with your heart, Molly, and start listening to your head." Her heart was always getting her into trouble, rescuing stray cats, nursing injured birds, hanging onto a husband who no longer loved her. Her neighbor Gail wouldn't have made that mistake. Gail had a sharp eye for reality. Gail would
have recognized the signs right from ,the start and set out to save her marriage.

  Molly hadn't a clue until it was too late.

  She paused in front of a display featuring imported Belgian chocolates. The packages were beautifully wrapped in navy blue foil with silver stars. Two of them leaped into her shopping cart.

  Milk, eggs, and bread, she told herself again, staring down at the chocolates. That was what she needed and that was all she'd buy. Except for the chocolates.

  Robert used to tell her they couldn't afford Belgian chocolates, not until he got himself settled in with a good law firm. Well, he was all settled in at Dannenberg and Silverstein now, wasn't he? She should be able to buy any damn thing she wanted. By the time she reached the checkout counter, she had added two containers of Hagen-Dazs and a super-sized jar of Nutella. She didn't have enough cash to pay for her purchases, so she fished her wallet out of her enormous tote bag and pulled out the handy-dandy plastic rectangle that made all things possible.

  "Swipe it again," the checkout clerk said. "It didn't go through."

  Molly dragged the magnetic strip through the reader once again. "I probably had it upside down," she said by way of apology to the five people on line behind her. "I'm always doing that." She was always apologizing. Once she'd apologized to a step stool for bumping into it. She got as much of a response from the step stool as she had gotten from Robert near the end.

  The woman closest to her, the one with the full shopping cart and two small children tumbling together on the sticky tile floor, sighed loudly. Molly turned away.

  It could have been worse. She could have been on the eight-item-only express line with her two dozen items. That would really have given the woman something to sigh about.

  The clerk motioned for Molly to swipe the card a third time, which she did. She hoped the sighing woman didn't notice that her hand had started to shake. She wouldn't want anyone to get the wrong idea.