Shaken by Dee Tenorio

Chapter One
    God, she’s beautiful.
    He’d been thinking that for an hour. Hell, he’d been thinking it for eight years. From the moment he’d walked into his office and found her there with her mother, nervously awaiting the great cardiothoracic surgeon Dr. Grant Sullivan. He didn’t know how great he was, but that was how she’d made him feel. He’d been able to treat her mother, but Julia was the reason he looked forward to the older woman’s appointments.
    Ten years older than her, he should have known better than to give in to the temptation to ask her to dinner once his obligations with her mother were over, but something about Julia had captivated him from that first glimpse and had yet—even now—to let him go. Even after everything they’d been through. If only Julia felt the same.
    If she did, they wouldn’t be sitting in this lawyer’s office on a cloudy winter day, on opposite sides of the table, getting a divorce.
    He let his eyes course over her, wishing they were his hands. What he wouldn’t give to pull the pins from her glorious cornsilk hair. It should be free, flowing like sunshine over her bare shoulders, or better yet, over his pillow on their bed. Instead, it was pulled tight, twisted into a bun at the nape of her neck. The sedate style matched the slightly loose pinstriped black suit she wore. The skirt came to her knees, baring creamy calves and slim ankles he’d traced with his lips a thousand times. A satiny blouse peeked out from beneath the jacket, its high collar tied with a satin knot on the left side of her neck. Professional, cool, reserved.
    He didn’t like it.
    Julia was never reserved and she sure as hell had never dressed like it. With her long-limbed build, lean with tempting curves, she was born for summer dresses and wore them year round. His favorite memories almost all included the flick of her skirt and a saucy glance over her shoulder at him. She tended to be quiet with people she didn’t know, but her surprising wit and playfulness—her passion for life—had always glinted from her sky blue eyes no matter what she did. Now she looked tied up and locked away. He didn’t like how tired she seemed, either. Gaunt. Nearly colorless. Faint purple bruises shadowed the tender skin under her eyes. Weariness and pain pulled at the corners of her mouth and reddened the rims of her eyes.
    She was still crying herself to sleep.
    His heart clutched tight, pain of his own pounding in his pulse. If she’d just stayed with him, he could help. He had helped. Night after night, when the tears would come, he’d taken her in his arms, kissed them off her cheeks. Licked them from her sunset pink lips. He knew how much it hurt, that pain that filled them both from the tips of their fingers to the bottoms of their hearts, making them feel as if someone had ripped out their insides and left them empty. As if something horrible were sucking at the emptiness, taking more than they had to give.
    She wasn’t there anymore to comfort. She didn’t return his kisses, didn’t hold tight to his shoulders as he turned the pain into something worth feeling. Didn’t help him fill the emptiness with passion until both of them could finally sleep. He could still feel the satin of her breasts against his lips when he woke up at night, hear the sobs that came from pleasure instead of heartbreak. Her taste, her warmth, the solace of sliding deep into her body, into her arms…just memories now. Her scent had faded from their apartment in the two months since she’d left. He’d found himself sleeping in her closet some nights, because it was the only place the smell of her was still strong enough to soothe him. But even that was disappearing.
    He stared across the table, wondering if she could feel his longing for her. Did she still long for him? She hadn’t met his gaze once since coming in. Couldn’t she look at him? Or did guilt for leaving him keep her eyes on the tightly fisted hands in her