She shivered, remembering. It had been a long fall. Very long. The pain had been something out of her experience. By the time the ambulance arrived, of course, he was long gone. It would have been her word against his, how it happened. It wasn’t until months later that he assaulted her in view of a witness and got himself sent to prison for the second vicious attack in six months.

She’d hoped he’d never get out. That was unrealistic. He could always talk people into things. He had a pipeline into drug trafficking and somehow he’d managed early release, probably by helping someone get access to controlled substances. The nightmare had begun all over again the day he was released from prison.

He was adamant about his confinement and her part in it. He was furious that she’d given up his name after the divorce and gone back to the surname of her first husband, Merridan. He was furious that he couldn’t make her send him money for the pain and suffering she’d caused him. She owed him and he planned to collect. She had all that nice money and he was destitute. She could pay up or unpleasant things might happen, he suggested just before she hung up in his face and blocked his number. She remembered some of the unpleasant things that had already happened and she felt sick inside.

Cody Banks, the local sheriff, had been a sympathetic listener. He was one of the few people in Catelow who knew the woman behind the mask. He’d been kind to her. He promised that Bailey Trent wouldn’t get near her. He encouraged her to take out a restraining order. She had, although the clerk had told her that they were very rarely worth the paper they were printed on. She phoned her attorneys in Denver and had them send an investigator out to keep an eye on Bailey. She could afford the expense, which might save her life. Bailey used drugs. He was dangerous even when he didn’t.

She couldn’t believe how naïve she’d been about him. Coming from a marriage with a man who had loved other men, she’d had no faith at all in her ability to attract a man. It wasn’t until her husband committed suicide and left her the note that she’d even known about his sexual orientation. She’d thought that she simply wasn’t appeal to him.

He’d been a kind, sweet man, always taking care of her, doing anything he could to make her life happy and easy. His loss was painful.

Then, there was Bailey Trent. He was rugged, authoritative, a real he-man, at least to Ida’s naïve eyes. They’d dated and he’d been passionate with her, but he hadn’t insisted on intimacy until they were married. That, too, she thought miserably, had been calculated. She’d been desperate to have him, in thrall to her senses for the first time in her life. He’d taken advantage of feelings she couldn’t help to rush her to the altar.