The Marrying Man

Chapter 1

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A/N - I hate having to do this, but since NovelHD has already started to pirate some of my books, here we go. These works are mine. My poor little brain came up with the plots and characters, and I'd really prefer you to not steal them. If you're reading this on a site that is NOT Wattpad then it is most certainly stolen.

Thanks!

Loiosh

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I don't have much luck with women. I know that sounds odd, considering I have been married eight times, and only one of them wasn't happy, but it is the truth. That is a lot of marriages for someone who is 43, but most of those marriages were a little out of the ordinary.

When I was 18, I married my high school sweetheart, Julie. She was a green-eyed, blonde-haired beauty that had caught my eye as a sophomore, and we had been together ever since. We were madly in love, of course, and couldn't wait to start our new life together. We both went to the same college, me as a business major and her becoming a teacher, and then were able to get jobs in the same area. We had both agreed to wait on starting a family till we were financially ready, and things were looking up. We knew that our future was happy together.

Well, until she decided to get a head start on the family planning with the vice principal at her school, Mr. Mark Richards. She was pregnant, and he was the father.

It was an easy divorce. They were in love with each other, amazing how fast that can change, and wanted to sign quick so they could be married before the kids were born. Yep, kids. Evidently twins ran in his family, and they hit the jackpot. So, five years of marriage and three years of dating were flushed down the toilet, and I was single again. I never saw her again. My heart was shattered, I didn't even know how to move on, I had been with Julie for so long it was like all I knew how to do was be with her. But that wasn't an option anymore.

Remember when I said I don't have luck with women? I lied. I should have said I was lucky once. A few years after my divorce, my coworker Robin set me up with her best friend. Robin and her husband Jeff invited me over for a nice cookout dinner and invited Maria the same night. We hit it off instantly, and slowly my heart was able to mend itself a little bit at a time. She had gorgeous brown eyes, and soft auburn hair that framed her face like the art it was. Maria had grown up next door to Robin, and it was a nice set up having the four of us hanging out a lot. When I married her a year later, it was easy to have Robin be the maid of honor and Jeff be my best man.

We had a wonderful marriage. I had saved enough that we were able to start a family if we wanted, and we were looking for houses to buy near Robin's neighborhood so we could all be close. We closed on a little bungalow style house on the St Pete side of Tampa Bay and had just found out Maria was pregnant when she and our unborn child were killed while on her way to work. Some drunk driver trying to get home after an all-night bender swerved into her lane and she never had a chance. We had been married all of two years. The best two of my life. Their ashes were still in my bedroom, I could never decide how to part with them, nor where to spread them.

I don't know that I'll ever get over Maria, my heart certainly hasn't, but I always kept in touch with Robin and Jeff. They kept checking in on me to make sure I was all right. I wasn't, how could I be? But I kept telling them I was, if only to stop them from worrying. Several times I thought about joining Maria, but I could never do it. I'd always get a vision of her telling me that I needed to keep living.