Read Online Heartstopper by Joy Fielding - Free Book Online

prude and was certainly no poster boy for fidelity, he disliked the casual way Cal Hamilton flaunted his prowess with women. It was one thing to be unfaithful. It was another thing to trumpet your indiscretions, to wave your infidelities in other people’s faces.
    John took a long sip of his beer. He’d never understood women. His mother had been a study in contradictions, quiet and withdrawn one minute, loud and boisterous the next. Bipolar, they called it today, although when he was growing up, they just called it crazy. Certainly his father had lost patience early on with her erratic mood swings and unpredictable behavior. He buried himself in his work, and when she died of breast cancer in her early forties, everyone said it was a blessing in disguise. But John still missed his mother’s wonderful sense of humor and biting wit. His father had remarried within a year of his mother’s death, this time to a woman with no sense of humor whatsoever, at least not one that John had ever been able to detect. But she seemed to make his father happy. Another of life’s mysteries. John took a prolonged sip of his beer, emptied half the glass. It seemed he didn’t understand men very well either. Maybe he was in the wrong line of work.
    “Nobody’s seen her,” the waitress said when she returned to John’s table about ten minutes later. “I even asked some of the customers,” she added, shaking her head, as if to say, No luck there either.
    “Thanks.” John finished the last of his beer, returned the tall, empty glass to the waitress’s tray. She promptly replaced it with a full one.
    “They’re on the house,” she told him before he could object.
    What the hell, he thought. Why not? Two beers simply meant he’d have to sit here a little longer before he got back behind the wheel of his cruiser. He checked his watch. It was already after nine o’clock. He could probably stay and nurse this beer for another half hour at least, and then he’d check in again with the Martins—he’d already dropped over to their house to give them an update after talking to Liana’s friends—before heading home. With any luck, Pauline would be asleep. The thought of having to make idle conversation, or worse, of having to make love to his wife, was simply too depressing.
    He picked up the second glass of beer, raised it to his lips. When had the thought of making love become depressing? When had sex ceased to be a release and become yet another chore, another burden to bear? It hadn’t always been that way. There was a time, and not all that long ago, when just the thought of sex was enough to get him through the day. That he didn’t love his wife, had
never
loved her, had never really loved anyone, for that matter, was irrelevant. He’d never been one to confuse sex with love. And for a long time, sex with Pauline had been enough to sustain him. When had it stopped being enough?
    He was still relatively young. The waitress tonight had proved he was still capable of being easily, even indiscriminately, aroused. So what was his problem? Why did he findit so difficult to get, let alone sustain, an erection where his wife was concerned?
    He knew he couldn’t pin all the blame on Pauline. When she’d first sensed his eye wandering and his interest waning, she’d done her best to spice things up. She’d bought some sexy lingerie and sprinkled scented candles around their bed and bath, suggested they try new positions, even hinted he bring his handcuffs into the bedroom. These things worked for a while, and then they didn’t.
    He doubted Pauline was any happier than he was at what had happened to their sex life, but at least she could pretend. He wished he could fake arousal and orgasm, but it was much more difficult for a man than a woman. Fantasies would take you only so far, and you couldn’t bully a limp dick into action. Pauline had it much easier. Hell, all she had to do was lie there.
    “Excuse me, Sheriff