“Got it,” Mike replied shortly.

Then he got dead air.

He stared at the phone. Then he tossed it to the nightstand instead of hurling it across the room.

Since Audrey, he’d played the field and, taking care around his kids, he’d done this pretty extensively. This was partly due to the fact that Mike was a man. And it was partly due to the fact that the last seven months of his marriage their sex life was non-existent. This was because Mike found he couldn’t stomach f**king a woman who lied to him daily, handed him shit frequently and still had no problem spending his money, as well as money he hadn’t yet earned, freely. It was the last of many times when Audrey turned to him and he felt the nausea roil that he knew he was done. And it was when he set her off him that he told her that, straight out. She had then flown into a rage, screaming and swearing and he knew their kids could hear but, as always with Audrey, he had no choice. No matter how often he told her to shut the f**k up or keep her voice down, she ignored him or got louder and her language got fouler.

At the time, watching her red-faced and infuriated at learning she was bearing the consequences of her own behavior, it became crystal clear Mike’s decision to divorce her ass was the right one.

He’d spent years doing everything he could to sort their shit. At first, young, stupid and in love with her, he’d knocked himself out to get her everything she wanted. But even when he laid it at her feet, she just wanted more. Then he’d done everything he could think to do to find out what drove her to these needs so he could guide her to understanding them and she could work through them. This didn’t work either. No matter how many talks they had, or, in the end, fights, her behavior didn’t change. Often, she promised it would, swore she’d “do better” and she might, for a week, a month. But then she’d lapse right back into it. At the start, she didn’t hide her spending. In the end, she did. How the f**k she thought he wouldn’t figure it out since he paid their bills, they had a joint account and she didn’t work, he had no clue. She just didn’t.

The pressure built. For his part, it built along with his frustration at being in debt and having a wife who lied to him consistently. For Audrey’s part, even though she never admitted it, it had to do with feelings of guilt that mingled with anger at herself that she couldn’t control her addiction.

And since she couldn’t, he got free of her. And, free of her, he enjoyed himself.

Of all the women he enjoyed himself with, Dusty was the one he’d enjoyed the most. Not only in bed, and she was by far the best he’d had since Audrey, before Audrey and including Audrey, but also out of it. Funny, engaging and open, Dusty let it all hang out. She didn’t hide shit. Not her pain. Not her humor. Not her anger at her sister. Not her thoughts about the world.

And he liked that. Too much. And with her being Dusty, their history, the special bond that they had when they were younger that seemed to snap right into place and tighten exponentially nearly the instant they were back together, he let himself be reeled in. Just like Vi who had done the same, straight off the bat giving him that open sharing, having the opposite for years with Audrey, he let himself get caught up in it.

But apparently, unlike Vi, who was going through some serious shit too when he met her, Dusty’s openness was bullshit. She had a night in a hotel room with her family close but her anger at her sister wouldn’t allow her to be with them. He walked right up to her room and gave her an opportunity not to spend that time alone. So she took it and, doing it, used him.

And Jesus, he hadn’t even been with her an entire f**king day and that shit stung too.

“Fuck,” he whispered as he heard the lock click on the door.

He turned and watched her walk in. Her masses of hair was down and tumbling around her shoulders and over her chest. Her face was free of makeup and the pallor he noticed yesterday was gone, her cheeks pink from the cold. She was wearing the black turtleneck from yesterday and the black boots but she’d added the faded jeans. She wasn’t wearing the denim blazer but instead a gray suede jacket that hung long on her h*ps and had fringe along the arms. Any other woman, f**k, anyone, female or male, wore a suede jacket with fringe, Mike, a small town Indiana man through and through and not a cowboy by a long shot, would find that amusing.

It looked f**king great on Dusty.

She had her black also fringed purse dangling from her shoulder, a big, white baker’s box in her hands and balanced visibly precariously on top were two large, white paper cups he knew by their plastic lids and cardboard sleeves were coffee.

Her eyes hit his, she smiled and said, “Awesome, you’re up.” Then he lost her attention as she moved through the room toward him, eyes on the box she was balancing and she muttered, “Grab the coffees, babe. We do not need tragedy in the form of the genius of Hilligoss consumed without coffee to wash it down.”

She stopped in front of him, he took the cups and tried to calm his temper. The minute he took them, she moved to the bed, put the box on it and then shrugged her bag off her shoulder, turning and tossing the clearly expensive purse carelessly across the bed to the chair.

She did this talking.

“I learned this morning you never lose the sixth sense only those born and raised in The ‘Burg have.” Her gaze came to him and she was grinning, her dark brown eyes dancing as she announced with mock gravity, “The Hilligoss Sense.” She turned away and was shrugging off her coat and ditto with tossing it across the bed to the chair as she continued, “Got there upon opening on a Sunday. Meant I was fifth in line.” She turned back to him, still smiling. “Got my choice of the whole plethora of Hilligoss delights. I bought two dozen. A Hilligoss smorgasbord. Babe, at home, I dream of a white baker’s box filled with Hilligoss goodness. Outside of my family, it’s the best part of coming home.”

“Beau called.”

She blinked at his words. Then her eyes moved over his face.

“Three times,” Mike finished.

Dusty held his eyes.

Then, to his surprise, she shifted so her back was to the bed and she flopped right down on it.

Lifting both her hands to her face, she muttered from behind them, “Fuck. Beau. Clueless. Clue…less! Fuck!”

“Gave me a message,” Mike carried on, walking the coffees to the nightstand and shoving shit aside to put them there. He straightened and concluded, “Says he wants his woman to call him. Immediately.”