Her Perfect Man by Jillian Hart Page B

“He was using drugs. I didn’t know, not until that night he exploded at my apartment.”
    “He threatened you?”
    All the color faded from her face and she nodded. It was easy to see she had gotten a serious scare. That what she had seen that night of the man she had once loved had shaken her.
    “He had been keeping his secret from me, and when he admitted it, suddenly everything made sense. All of his puzzling behavior. His up-and-down moods. His old nice self for one day, a tense, angry stranger another. It was a terrible betrayal. He kept that from me while I hung in there and tried to make everything right. When it was impossible, and he knew as much. He knew that I could not be with someone who was doing something that was destructive and wrong on so many levels.”
    “He knew that he would lose you if you learned the truth?”
    She nodded. “He wanted money that night. He apparently was broke and needed cash.”
    He could see what might have happened. “You had to have been devastated.”
    “I loved him. I trusted him. I thought we wanted the same things.” She looked down at the table, her soft curls falling forward to hide her eyes. Her voice sounded so thin and small and vulnerable. “I don’t want to be with someone who deceived me like that. Who would treat himself that way. Who especially would treat me that way. And how do I tell my family now? Chris and I are over. It’s in the past and I want to keep it there. Am I wrong?”
    “That’s hard to say.” He couldn’t look at her. He felt the hit of her words like individual blows to his conscience. Maybe now was the right time to tell her. She wouldn’t want to see him again, but it was better to be honest and straightforward. “I’ve made my share of mistakes. Some really big whoppers—”
    The glass door into her condo slid open and a blond-haired, blue-eyed woman peered out at them with a smile wide enough to take over her entire face. “Oops! My bad. Ignore me. I’ll just go back the way I came—”
    “Ava.” Rebecca popped out of her chair, arms out, and wrapped the woman, clearly one of her sisters, in a warm hug.
    His chance to tell her the truth had slipped away. He knew he should feel bad at the relief that spilled through him like cool water, but he didn’t. He prayed that this interruption was God’s way of giving Rebecca more time to get to know him first, so she would understand. At least, that’s what he hoped.

Chapter Seven
    “I ’m not staying,” Ava said as she gave Rebecca one last squeeze and stepped back. “I’m not being nosy, really. I just came by to drop off a box from the bakery. Some pick-me-up chocolate. Never mind me. I let myself in and I can let myself out.”
    With Ava, nothing was that simple. Rebecca was leery as she smiled at her sister. “Where’s the bakery box? If I have to be interrogated by you, then I need to know the chocolate is real.”
    “Interrogate? I just said I wasn’t being nosy, right?” There was no missing the gleam of trouble in Ava’s big blue eyes.
    Rebecca tossed Chad an apologetic look. “You can see why I didn’t want to introduce you to everyone last night. Some of my sisters are the kind you don’t want to be seen with in public.”
    Chad bit his lip, as if to hold back his grin. “Yes, I can see,” he said very gravely with a hint of a wry grin. “I would be cautious, too, if I were you. You don’t want people getting the wrong opinion of the two of us eating alone like this. It might look as if we are having a date.”
    “Exactly.” Rebecca braced herself for the inevitable fallout. Ava was going to tell everyone about this. “Ava, this is Chad. Chad, Ava. There, now don’t you have Brice waiting for you?”
    “My husband is working late renovating Gran’s mall today, and he’s absorbed.”
    She saw Chad’s eyebrow go up. Mall? He was probably wondering if he had heard that correctly. Yes, her grandmother owned the shopping complex where the family