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Ryder had a bit of an altercation.”
    “I guess you could call it that if you want to be polite. I like to think of it more as a rip-roaring fight.” Where she’d thrown a bridal magazine at his back, which she had to admit had been totally childish. But Ryder just pushed all her buttons, always had.
    “What happened?”
    Suzanne kicked off her shoes and padded into the kitchen, retrieving the envelope with the letter from the lawyer from the pantry where she had shoved it when Ryder wasn’t looking.
    What happened?
    Life as she knew it had just been knocked on its ass.
    “Ryder gave me a letter from our lawyer. It says we’re still married.” Even saying the words created a lump in her throat.
    “Excuse me? Are you saying you’re still legally married to Ryder?”
    “Yep.” Suzanne rubbed her forehead. Tears were threatening to make an appearance again and she was going to halt those suckers in their tracks.
    “Well, that’s something of a shock.”
    And that was something of an understatement. “No shit.”
    “But I assume this can be easily resolved. Is it just a matter of filing the correct papers again?”
    “I don’t know. I need to call the lawyer tomorrow. Ryder said he would, but I seriously doubt he will. If he did what he said he was going to, then we would have been divorced all along like we were supposed to be.” Suzanne leaned over and dug around in her refrigerator. She was sure she had a tub of cookie dough in there somewhere and she was damn well going to eat it.
    Ryder had always had a problem with finishing what he had started. Not in the bedroom—that had been a dig just to piss him off. It had been more that he always said with the best of intentions that he would cut the grass or plan her birthday party or get his license renewed, but then he never did and she was stuck dealing with it.
    Annoying, yes, but not the only reason they had wound up divorced. That had just been the day in, day out reality, and it had worn her down. When she heaped that on top of the fact that Ryder had never intended to marry her in the first place, she’d felt like his assistant with sexual benefits, not the woman he loved. Add in that he had been content to remain childless while she had craved a family, and that their fighting had escalated to nonstop, and the split had been the inevitable outcome.
    “But Ty said you and Ryder looked extremely tense. This doesn’t really sound like it warrants ruining your friendship with him.”
    Almost knocking over the jar of pickles on the top shelf of the fridge, she rolled her eyes. Did she really have a quality friendship with her ex? That was questionable. It wasn’t like they went on nature hikes together and talked about their feelings. They didn’t talk about anything at all that mattered. Mostly they engaged in superficial sparring and made fun of each other’s dates.
    “I realize it’s unnerving and probably has dredged up memories, both pleasant and unpleasant, but honestly Suzanne, this is merely a technicality. You have been emotionally divorced for two years, and that doesn’t alter that.”
    Screw the cookie dough. She went into the freezer for the vodka. Emotionally divorced? That sounded about as torturous as Nikki’s lettuce diet. “Do I seem like a woman who knows how to emotionally divorce myself from anything? Imogen, I’m the queen of stuffing shit down so deep I need laparoscopic surgery to pull it back out.”
    “Then perhaps instead of arguing with Ryder, you should just call the lawyer together.”
    That was crazy talk.
    Suzanne put the cold vodka bottle on her forehead. Or was it? “Why would I do that?” she asked Imogen suspiciously. Imogen was so logical sometimes Suzanne had trouble following her.
    “Instead of him trying to prove to you that he can handle this process, and you doubting his ability to handle it, you should just handle it together. A simple conference call with both of you and the lawyer should take care