The Reunion: Claire's Rebuilding Contract (Starting Over Series)

The Reunion: Claire's Rebuilding Contract (Starting Over Series) by Angelina Rose Read Free Book Online Page A

Book: The Reunion: Claire's Rebuilding Contract (Starting Over Series) by Angelina Rose Read Free Book Online
Authors: Angelina Rose
Claire provided for her after the divorce, and sometimes Cameron would even send money.
     
    Their marriage was good for the first year until Cameron started getting major movie roles. He was out of town most of the year and missed the important milestones in Aven’s life. He didn’t see her learn to ride a bike or watch her first ballet recital. He missed her third birthday party, and forgot their wedding anniversary many times.
     
    But, that wasn’t the worst of it. About eight years into their marriage, he began to abuse alcohol. He went in and out of rehab at the request of his agents and producers, but nothing ever helped. He made an ass of himself on TV on several occasions. What people didn’t know was that he had become abusive to Claire. He would get into alcohol-fueled rages and mentally abuse her whenever he was in town. He started losing movie parts, sleeping a lot during the day and partying all night. Of course, he was sleeping with many other women also, and Claire had cut him off from sex for the last two years of their marriage for fear of catching a disease from him.
     
    He only hit her one time, and that was the last time. Claire had grown up around abuse, and she had promised herself if a man ever hit her, she was gone. And she was. She kept that one promise to herself. She walked out the very night he hit her. Thankfully, Aven had been with her friend, Selena, for a sleepover that night. She’d heard the mental abuse over the years, but had never seen her father violent.
     
    Unfortunately, the news of Cameron and Claire divorcing had been all over the press. They were on the front of tabloids and talked about on blogs. She was amazed her nursing school friends hadn’t ever known she was married to him. Even if they had, they were very good at acting like they didn’t know.
     
    Embarrassed after her bitter divorce, Claire moved back to a small town in North Carolina so she could start over. Living in Hollywood for all of those years had taken her nursing career from her, but she was able to start again at a pediatrician’s office in Dilham. She was thankful to have a job, although she had been offered money from the media on several occasions to tell the story of being married to Cameron. She couldn’t do it. He was still Aven’s father.
     
    As she pulled into her driveway a few hours after the reunion in Atlanta, Claire wondered what her future had in store for her. She wanted to believe she might find Mr. Right within the next two years, but her gut kept trying to convince her he didn’t exist anymore. After all, if he wasn’t in Hollywood, then what were the odds that she could just meet him while living her normal, average, single mom lifestyle?
     
     

Chapter 2
     
    “My baby has been coughing all night!” the hysterical mother said as she appeared at the front window of Hamilton Pediatrics. Claire was normally in the back tending to patients, but she had wandered up front for a few minutes while Natalie, the front desk worker, went to the restroom.
     
    “Calm down, ma’am. We will get you back as soon as possible. Dr. Ellison is working with another patient right now. Please have a seat over there, okay?” Claire didn’t know how Natalie did it. Dealing with overwrought parents at the front desk was not her idea of a good time. Of course, they didn’t get much calmer when they went back to see the doctor, but at least the doctor was in charge at that point.
     
    Natalie ventured back from the restroom, completed the woman’s paperwork and sent her back to room two. Thankfully, Claire wasn’t the nurse in room two.
     
    “How was your reunion, by the way?” Natalie asked Claire as she finished up some paperwork she’d started.
     
    “It was great. I loved catching up with my friends. Turns out, we are all divorced now.”
     
    “Aren’t we all?” Natalie asked with a laugh as she looked up from her papers.
     
    “Sure feels that way,” Claire said.
     
    Just as

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