MARLISS MELTON'S CODE OF SILENCE (Featured in: SEALed With A Kiss: Heroes With A Heart Anthology)
I'm posting an excerpt from Bestselling Author Marliss Melton's novella Code Of Silence. The first story featured in the newly released anthology SEALed With A Kiss: Heroes With A Heart. You're going to love this!
“How long did you know?” Vinny demanded, diving right in. A
muscle jumped in his jaw as he awaited her answer.
The reminder that the precious little life she’d
been guarding was gone drove a shaft of pain straight through her heart. She
lowered the cup to her lap and stared down at it, devastated. She had tried
turning over a new leaf. She had wanted to put the baby first, and now it was
too late. “Almost two months,” she admitted, too ashamed to even look at
him.
Stunned silence followed her reply. “Two months,” he finally repeated, in a
voice that resonated with betrayal.
“I was going to tell you,” she rushed to assure
him, “but I was afraid you’d force me to quit my job and I wasn’t ready…” She
cut herself off, dismayed by how petty she sounded.
“You weren’t ready.” Out of the corner of her eye,
she could see his hands gripping the edge of the chair he sat in, as he fought
to rein in his incredulity. “Is that all you ever think of—yourself? What about
the baby?” he demanded with controlled rage. “What about me? I haven’t slept or eaten or breathed in thirty-six hours
because you didn’t tell me what you were up to. If I had known you were
interviewing Rawlings, I would have recognized his name and realized what you
were up against, and I would have protected
you. None of this would have happened!”
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. Remorse twisted
through her, wringing tears from her heart. “I was going to tell you.”
“Really?” he scoffed, his volume climbing. “After
all the secrets you’ve kept from me, how do I know you had any intention of
telling me at all?”
She gasped at the hurtful words, wrenching her
gaze up in a desperate bid to convince him. “I was,” she insisted. “On
Christmas day, I was going to put the pregnancy strip in your… stocking.” Her
voice broke at the realization that that would never happen now. The poor
little life inside of her had never stood a chance. She’d endangered it by
continuing with her risky plan, knowing all the while how villainous a man
Rawlings truly was. “Is he—did he get arrested yet for what he did to me?” she
asked in a desperate bid to shift some of the blame off her own narrow
shoulders.
“Not yet.” Vinny sprang to his feet and stalked to
the window, his agitation a clear sign that Rawlings’ continued freedom chafed
at him. “The cops and the district attorney want to make sure he won’t find
some kind of loophole to get around the charges.”
An aching silence fell between them. Vinny kept
his back to her. She watched his shoulders rise and fall as he fought to bring
his emotions under control.
“I swear, Vinny,” Ophelia said, in a last-ditch
effort to elicit his understanding, “if I’d known what Rawlings would do to me,
I would never have taken chances with our baby.”
He turned his head at her assertion. But the look
in his eyes wasn’t even one that she recognized. He looked at her as if he’d
never seen before—or like he was seeing for the first time who she really was.
The look encased her heart in ice.
He had finally realized what she’d known all
along—that she did not deserve him. That she wasn’t the woman he thought she
was.
All the authors featured in the anthology are: Marliss Melton, Stephanie Tyler,
Delilah Devlin, Gennita Low, Elle James, Teresa Reasor, JM Madden, Sharon
Hamilton.
Amazon http://amzn.to/1lpg3RK Barnes and Noble http://bit.ly/1iR5jKr Kobo http://bit.ly/1b0VxFU Smashwords https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/407716
Read on,
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