Her Second Husband

HER SECOND HUSBAND An unputdownable psychological thriller with a breathtaking twist JANE E. JAMES Joffe Books, London www.joffebooks.com First published in Great Britain in 2023 © Jane E. James This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organisations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental. The spelling used is British English except where fidelity to the author’s rendering of accent or dialect supersedes this. The right of Jane E. James to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. We love to hear from our readers! Please email any feedback you have to: [email protected] Cover art by Nick Castle ISBN: 978-1-80405-893-0 CONTENTS Love Free Bestselling Fiction? Author’s Note Then Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 20 Chapter 21 Chapter 22 Chapter 23 Chapter 24 Chapter 25 Chapter 26 Chapter 27 Chapter 28 Chapter 29 Chapter 30 Chapter 31 Chapter 32 Chapter 33 Chapter 34 Chapter 35 Chapter 36 Chapter 37 Chapter 38 Chapter 39 Chapter 40 Chapter 41 Chapter 42 Chapter 43 Chapter 44 Chapter 45 Chapter 46 Chapter 47 Chapter 48 Chapter 49 Chapter 50 Chapter 51 Chapter 52 Chapter 53 Chapter 54 Chapter 55 Chapter 56 Chapter 57 Acknowledgements Love Free Bestselling Fiction? The Joffe Books Story A Selection of Books You May Enjoy Glossary of English Usage for US Readers Love Free Bestselling Fiction? Join our mailing list and get a FREE Kindle book from a bestselling author every week! Click here to join our mailing list and also get a free box set of short stories! Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram @joffebooks Author’s Note I wrote Her Second Husband for women my age (i.e. those over fifty) and for those who don’t know they’re beautiful. You are! Here’s to staying young at heart, forever . . . Then Thank you for choosing this book. Join our mailing list and get FREE Kindle books from our bestselling authors every week! CLICK HERE TO GET MORE LOVELY BOOK DEALS Eyes as blue and warm as the water. Hair white as the froth on the incoming tide. A setting sun creates a soft golden halo around his handsome, movie-star face. Except this man is no angel. Not with that devilish, teasing smile and those sharklike teeth. He’s dressed in his trademark middle-aged, middle-class, creased ivory linen shirt and trousers, and his bare feet, pedicured to perfection, pause on the wet sand when he recognises my shadow approaching. Do I imagine it, or does his still-muscular, tanned chest, covered in a fine layer of silver hair, puff up like a silverback gorilla when he sees me? He has every right to look annoyed, but his surprise gives me an advantage I intend to use. A calming hum of insects is in the air around us and further away in the distance towards the promenade the laughter of loved-up holidaymakers can be heard, clinking glasses of iced ouzo, and rolling pitted olives around in their mouths, red faces recovering from a day in the sun while being charmed by dark-haired, olive-skinned waiters who look like gods. The smell of tobacco and something else . . . marijuana, I think, wafts over, curling itself around us. The smoke sticks to our clothes like sweat. But he acts all cool. Pulling a crumpled packet of cigars out of a back pocket he puts one to his mouth and lights it. Closing his lazily suggestive eyes, he inhales, absorbing its substance as if it were a woman’s scent. This makes me hate him all over again. Marcus the lover. Marcus the womaniser. Marcus the liar. His eyes are cloudy with drink, and he’s unsteady on his feet — swaying as if to a slow dance, only this time there’s no woman in his arms. His fingers tremble slightly as he inhales a second time, and I watch him gaze distractedly across at the Albanian coastline, sprinkled with darkened ruins in the distance. Tossing the lit cigar into the tremulous waters of the Ionian Sea, he swipes a hand across his stubbled face that’s as scratchy as the sand beneath our feet. Like a battling gladiator with bloodshot, weary eyes, he waits. We don’t speak. Our eyes do the talking. He mocks me still, I can tell. Dares to goad me in that superior way of his. He doesn’t take me seriously. Not yet. Doesn’t believe I’m brave enough. He thinks I won’t fight back. But I’m not the coward he takes me for. Well, well, it’s come to this, has it? he seems to say, grinning like the narcissist he is. Your fault. All your fault, my eyes blaze. When he unexpectantly loses his footing and puts out a hand to stop himself from falling into the water that swirls around his feet as it closes in on the shoreline, I watch his panicked eyes shoot sideways. Something inside me changes. Now I have him, I think. And to his credit, we both realise at that moment how vulnerable alcohol has made him, because for the first time I see a delicious hint of doubt in his eyes. Neither of us wastes a second. As he lunges forward, intent on saving himself from the surging tidal wave that has appeared out of nowhere to wrap around his lower half, I push him in the chest and feel the palm of my hand connect with his still-strong-for-an-old-man ribcage. Once again, he stumbles, and the water rises higher above his chest as the seafloor disappears from under him. Arms flailing, he fights back at me and the clear dark blue water that until tonight has