“I also ran into Uncle Kenneth’s daughter, Elyse.”

“The mother of the twins, right?”

“Yes.”

“And how did that go?” Jason asked.

“Better than I expected. Unlike Uncle Kenneth, she’s not holding me responsible for what happened to her sons. She says they were getting out of hand anyway and is hoping the two years will teach them discipline,” Bella said.

“We can all hope for that” was Jason’s response.

“Yes, but in a way I feel sorry for her. I can only imagine how things were for her having Kenneth for a father. My dad wouldn’t get a ‘Father of the Year’ trophy, either, but at least I had friends I met at all those schools they shipped me off to. It never bothered me when I didn’t go home for the holidays. It helped when I went home with friends and saw how parents were supposed to act. Not as business partners but as human beings.”

Bella realized after she’d said it that in a way Jason was her business partner, but she’d never thought of him that way. From the time he’d slipped a ring on her finger she had thought of him as her husband—for better or worse.

The kitchen got silent as they sipped tea.

“So what do you want to talk about, Jason?”

Good question, Jason thought. “I want to talk about us.”

He saw her swallow. “Us?”

“Yes, us. Lately, I haven’t been feeling an ‘us’ and I want to ask you a question.”

She glanced over at him. “What?”

“Do you not want to be married to me anymore?”

She broke eye contact with him to study the pattern design on her teacup. “What gave you that idea?”

“Want a list?”

She shot her gaze back to him. “I didn’t think you’d notice.”

“Is that what this is about, Bella, me not noticing you, giving you attention?”

She quickly shook her head. Heaven help her or him if he were to notice her any more or give her more attention than she was already getting. To say Jason Westmoreland was all into her was an understatement. Unfortunately he was all into her, literally. And all for the wrong reasons. Sex was great but it couldn’t hold a marriage together. It couldn’t replace love no matter how many orgasms you had a night.

“Bella?”

“No, that’s not it,” she said, nervously biting her bottom lip.

“Then what is it, sweetheart? What do you need that I’m not giving you? What can I do to make you happy? I need to know because your leaving me is not an option. I love you too much to let you go.”

The teacup froze midway to her lips. She stared over at him in shock. “What did you just say?”

“A number of things. Do I need to repeat it all?”