Loving the Wild Card (Kingdom Book 5)

Josh braced himself as Saunders lunged towards him, at the same time, Lux jumped up from her seat. Apart from dropping his arms in readiness to defend himself against an attack, Josh didn’t move. Saunders only had time to give him one shove before Bonetti grabbed him around the middle and pulled him away.

“That’s right, you better hold back your bitch,” Josh taunted, unable to help himself from further riling an infuriated Saunders.

“That’s enough,” Bonetti hissed; holding back his partner.

Shaking off the restraining arms, Saunders adjusted his rumpled suit and sneered at Josh. “You can only hide behind your family for so long, pretty boy. But know this, if it’s the last thing I do, I’m going to get this Counterfeit and you and your pretty wife along with him! Her reaction told me she knows something and believe me, I will find out what that is.”

Josh knew he was being goaded, and if Saunders hadn’t mentioned Lux, he would have ignored him. “Threaten my wife again and I will kill you, do you hear me?!” Josh snarled, wanting nothing more than to grab Saunders by the throat and choke him.

“Did you hear that?” Saunders looked around the room. “You all heard that, right? He just threatened me. I should arrest your–”

“Detective Saunders,” Lux interrupted his rant. “Right now you sound like a fool. You have no right to be in our home, so I suggest you and your partner leave before this all blows up in your faces. At this very moment, my husband is on the phone to our lawyer, and the way I see it, you don’t need the kind of trouble we can bring crashing down at your door.”

As Saunders geared up to respond, Bonetti gave him a telling look and he swallowed whatever he was about to say. Attempting to straighten his rumpled suit yet again, Saunders pulled himself up to his full height, sniffed loudly and for a moment Josh thought he was going to spit. When he began walking towards the door, Bonetti followed with Josh a looming presence tracking their every step.

When the detectives were finally out of the house, Josh was reluctant to rejoin Lux and answer the questions he knew were coming. As things stood, he didn’t know what to say that would satisfy her. Taking a deep breath, he reentered the sitting room even as his mind searched for the best way to present his argument to his pissed off wife.

“I can explain,” Josh said from the doorway.

“I told you I didn’t want anything to do with him. You promised me, Sam was completely out of our lives.”

“I know I did but he needed my help.”

“What kind of help did he need, Joshua? Let me guess, did you have to help him hide a body? How about you needed to help him commit the crime that brought the police into our home? He obviously needed the type of help that caused my husband to break the one promise I asked of him when I accepted his proposal.”

“For God’s sake, Lux, you need to trust that I know what I’m doing!” Her blank look should have been his clue to keep quiet. But for some reason he couldn’t. “You’re acting ridiculous and you know it! If you’d allow me to set up a meeting with your brother, you’d know how stupid you sound right now.”

“If I'm so ridiculous and stupid, I’ll just keep my thoughts to myself.”

“That came out wrong. You know I didn’t mean it that way.”

“Words spoken in the heat of the moment are often the truth. My grandmother taught me that and I’ve never forgotten it.”

Josh didn’t know what to say. So far he’d been careless with his words, so there was no way he was going to contradict her grandmother. Yes, he was guilty of breaking his promise to her, but his reason, for doing so, was sound.

His father and brother meant the world to him; so he couldn’t imagine anyone going through their life knowing they had a brother, and not wanting them as a part of their life.

In the days that followed, Josh tried to break through the barriers she erected against him. But nothing in his male-dominated world had prepared him for his wife’s stubbornness.

As the days progressed and she still shut him out, it hurt more than he could ever have imagined. Nothing he said or did was enough to regain the footing he’d lost after the detectives’ visit. Not the baths he ran for her; nor the inconsequential little presents he gave to her that she used to love. Her lack of interest in the gifts was the single most significant fact that showed him, his marriage was in trouble, and he didn’t know how to fix it.

The final death knell was their weekly dinner with his family. Her silence throughout the meal told its own story. No matter how his father and Jake tried to pull her into conversation, she remained impassive and detached. He wanted to shake her into responsiveness but knew that wasn’t an option.

That night she again rebuffed his advances, and Josh knew he had to come up with a plan to win her back. That she’d stopped trusting him was clear, but he was confident he could turn things around.

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