He dropped the sides of his jacket and began a slow crawl across the bed, caging me into the pillows once more.
“I didn’t mind being trapped in an elevator with you.” His lips were soft against mine, the rub of stubble delicious on my skin.
Instinctually, my hands slipped over his shoulders, feeling the grace of taut muscle under the refined cotton. I wanted to strip it all off again—not to repeat what we’d just done, but more to hold him close. When I was in the hospital after giving birth, the nurses had suggested bringing Olivia to my bare chest, skin to skin, to utilize the bonding effects of oxytocin. It’s the reason we should hold our children so close from the start.
I was never touched as a child. My father was gone, my mother more familiar with her wine collection than with me. So I never understood how much I was missing. Not until I met him.
Touch heals. And none so much as Matthew’s.
“I don’t want to go,” he said between kisses. “But I have to. Fuck, it feels wrong.”
Reluctantly, I let my hands fall. “Go. I’ll try not to call again. I’m sorry I did this time. I just couldn’t…”
“Help it,” he completed with a bittersweet smile. “Trust me, I know the feeling.”
The heaviness of the circumstances descended all over again. The reasons that made even sneaking around like this so dangerous. Some weeks ago, my husband’s name, and mine, had been splashed all over the local papers. Sometime soon, likely in a matter of months, it would happen again once the trial began (although Matthew assured me there were all sorts of ways to delay the inevitable).
On the one hand, I was eager. If he was successful, I’d finally be rid of the nightmare I was chained to. But in a way, I was also dreading it. Because there was another truth neither of us was willing to say out loud: this was our last remaining connection. Even after the trial was over and I could file for the divorce I desperately wanted…we still couldn’t be together. I wouldn’t put Matthew’s career in jeopardy. And he wouldn’t risk bringing me under possible investigation.
We were written in the stars, he said.
But apparently that just meant we were star-crossed.
“I love you,” I whispered as I framed his beautiful face between my hands. This time it was almost painful to admit.
Matthew sighed, nuzzling into one palm. “I love you too. Goddammit, but I do. I’d give you the whole fuckin’ world if I could, baby. You deserve it.”
He kissed me again, this time slower, as if it might be the last time. I didn’t rush him, just enjoyed the last few tastes he was willing to give me. I didn’t fight it when at last he stood up, grabbed his hat off the floor, and set it on his head.
Matthew paused, drawing his eyes over me one last time, as if to memorize what I looked like in this bed, still rumpled from the effects of his passion. Of his love.
I didn’t look away. Didn’t assume any sort of mask or attempt to hide a single bit of what I was feeling.
“I’ll see you, doll,” he said as he turned for the door.
It was then I closed my eyes. I couldn’t bear to watch him leave. “Goodbye, Matthew.”
When I opened them again, he was gone.
Chapter Seven
“This looks amazing, Marguerite. Thank you.”
The diminutive cook nodded politely and backed out of the dining room to let me eat. She had never had very good English, but that mattered less than the fact that she was excellent at making just about anything we possibly wanted. A meal for one or forty.
This room, much like every room in the apartment, was ridiculously over-decorated. Part of my husband’s never-ending campaign for legitimacy in this social set. Sweeping window treatments, Romanesque statues beside the ornate wainscoting, bright teal jacquard wallpaper, and an enormous chandelier suspended above a table for eighteen…all for an audience we had never had. Parties we had never hosted.
And why would we? It would only be inviting guests into a den of lies. To view the charade of our life up close. Neither Calvin nor I were willing to risk that. It was maybe the one thing we had in common anymore. Or had ever had in common.
I turned to the meal in front of me and the empty place setting to my left, at the head of the long, empty dining table. It was nine o’clock at night. I couldn’t honestly say I’d been waiting for hours for Calvin to come home from “work,” but I’d learned the hard way some three weeks earlier that he did not find it acceptable for me to eat without him when he was in town anymore.
My jaw still ached from that particular lesson.
Fuck that, doll. You gotta eat.
I smiled as I turned to the plate of linguine and clams. Apparently, today I was quite the rebel. For a moment, I considered snapping a picture of my meal and sending it to Matthew. An inside joke of sorts—he was always trying to get me to eat pasta. I’d consumed more simple carbohydrates with the man over the last six months than I had in ten years. It meant doubling up on my trainer’s hours to keep my pants fitting correctly…but it was worth it. So, so worth it.
I was just lifting a sumptuous forkful of noodles to my mouth when the elevator doors chimed open, and Calvin’s heavy footsteps sounded, followed by another pair of shoes that were identifiably female from the way they clicked on the parquet.
In a hurry, I emptied my fork, wiped it clean on my napkin, and set it to the side. Acting as though I had been waiting patiently instead of about to stuff myself silly.
“I’m guessing she’s in here waiting for me,” Calvin was saying as he walked in with his guest. “Ah, see? I was right, as usual.”
Perhaps my cheeks would have reddened if I hadn’t been so numbed. Or if I wasn’t that much more surprised by his companion—my once-best friend, Caitlyn Calvert. Even my composure had its limits.
Calvin clicked his tongue as he took in the empty table, his place setting, and my untouched food. “You’re so predictable, princess. Do you always do as you’re told?”
I repressed the urge to throw my fork at him for using the pet name “princess.” He had called me that from the very beginning, disregarding every request I’d ever made for him to stop. It didn’t have the same lilting fondness as Peppe’s principessa. It never sounded anything but condescending. Resentful. Even nasty.
“She does,” Caitlyn chimed in as she delivered air kisses to my cheeks. “But that’s why we love her, don’t we? Not everyone can be a leader.”
I swallowed. “No. I suppose they can’t. Hello, Caitlyn. This is a surprise.”
“Calvin and I ran into each other at Madison Fletcher’s engagement party tonight. Why weren’t you there, by the way?”
I opened my mouth to say I hadn’t been invited, but they would have already known that. It costs to break with your set. Madison was one of the many who had distanced themselves from me over the last several months. That was what happened when you sided with your black sheep cousin and his eccentric wife over the schemes of petty ring-seekers. The moment Eric had returned to the Upper East Side it was clear that nearly every single woman under thirty-five understood him as her “territory” and had not taken kindly to the fact that he was marrying a half-Korean nobody from Chicago instead of one of them. This had actually included Caitlyn, who had done her best to disrupt their wedding.
At one point, I had been sympathetic. After all, Caitlyn had grown up with us and nursed a terrible crush on Eric since she was small. Her feelings for Eric had been deeper than the average socialite bent on a good marriage. But I had come to like Jane quite a lot since the wedding last November, and I didn’t take kindly to betrayal.
Which was why it was so curious that my husband had been at this party too.
But before I could say as much, Caitlyn kept talking. “Anyway, there will be others. I’ll make sure you get invited next time.”
I coiled some pasta around my fork and tried not to smart at the idea. A decade ago, it had been the other way around. I had been the one responsible for conducting Caitlyn through our social milieu.
When I had first met the girl, she was a frumpy, frizzy-headed no one with a New Jersey accent a mile long. Now she was swanning all over the city with blond extensions, two ex-husbands, and a brand-new face (among other things).
And I was the charity case? How rich.
“You look…refreshed,” I remarked tactfully before taking a bite. “Did you do something new to your hair?”
Caitlyn’s cheeks pinked as she took a seat across from me. “Just a few new highlights. Thanks for noticing.”
“It looks nice,” I said demurely. It did look nice. It also looked exactly like my color, which happened to be perfectly natural. But no, that wasn’t it.
Caitlyn seemed to sense my suspicion as she mischievously tapped her chin. “Not everyone can have the impeccable de Vries jaw line without a little help. Mum’s the word, of course.”
Ah. So it wasn’t her hair, but her chin. Yes, now that I was looking, I could see the change. A bit more pronounced, a sharper angle. She’d always had a weak profile, but now that was mostly hidden by what were probably some injections.
“I asked Caitlyn over to cheer you up,” Calvin said as he shoved a fork into his pasta and took a bite roughly appropriate for a hippopotamus. With his mouth full, he continued. “She’s been—I don’t know—lost, somehow. Maybe you can help her. I can’t take living with such a damn grump all the time.”
He patted my hand with a few flat thumps, and I resisted the urge to jerk it away. I only kept it there because if I didn’t, I’d pay for it later.
“Calvin, dear, really. Can you blame her? Your arrest wasn’t exactly easy. And people have been viciously unkind to her since Eric’s wedding, you know.”
I stared at my pasta. They had been unkind, in part, because of her.
Calvin rolled his eyes. “How has any of that affected her? I’m a damn pariah with the great de Vries family these days, through no fucking fault of my own. First, I get totally jilted with the old lady’s will…”
I opened my mouth to point out that hardly any people who had married into the family had inherited anyway, but quickly realized I was wrong. Jane had, of course, and she had literally married Eric on the same day Celeste died. And then, of course, there was his mother.
It was the men, then, whom Celeste ignored unless they were literally born into the family. My father, who hadn’t been a part of the family in years anyway. And my husband, who had forced his way in.
“And then I’m the one who was carted away like an animal, thanks to that sniveling DA.” Calvin took his phone out of his inner jacket pocket and pulled up a picture. “Can you believe he had the guts to call a press conference last week? Look at that guy. What a greasy rat.”
He displayed his screen around the table. I resisted the urge to rip it away and gawk at the picture of Matthew standing in front of a number of microphones in front of his Jay Street office building. He looked like a character from one of his favorite Hitchcock movies, full of panache and savoir faire, his natural charisma practically jumping off the small screen. My chest ached.
He was beautiful. Intelligent. Perfect.
Not as perfect as you, doll.
Oh, God. It really did hurt.
“That’s the prosecutor?” Caitlyn guffawed. “Goodness! I’ve seen him before! At the opera this spring. Nina, wasn’t he with you, or did you forget?”
I looked up sharply. I hadn’t forgotten that night at the opera with Matthew. So sweet, salacious too…until we had bumped into Caitlyn and Kyle, and it had been obvious that she and Matthew had had their own extramarital affair at one point. It was before I really knew him, but I hadn’t been pleased.
I was much less pleased that she was bringing it up now.
“He was nosing into the family before, believe it or not,” Calvin said, oblivious to the sudden tension. “Even guilted Nina, so Eric forced her to take him, if you can believe that. Slimy little worm was digging into us even then, wasn’t he, princess?”
My face felt wooden, though visions of that night flashed behind the mask. The way he looked in his tuxedo, a red rose pinned to the lapel. The look on his face when he’d seen the red Valentino dress that had literally been sewn onto my body hours before. The feel of his hand sliding between my legs as the tenor’s voice rose.
Oh, yes, I remembered. I’d never forget any part of that.
“Fucking freeloader,” Calvin sputtered.
Caitlyn flashed her blue eyes at me, then turned to Calvin. I mentally begged her not to say anything.
She turned to Calvin. “My, that is devious of him.”
“Yes,” I said a little too loudly, more for Calvin’s benefit than for Caitlyn’s. “It was. He’s perfectly awful.”
“He’s a crooked, conniving little fucker,” Calvin agreed. “And he has no idea what’s coming to him. No. Idea.”
The sudden violence that rippled through my body caught me by surprise. I wanted to ask what in God’s name he meant by that. I wanted to demand he take it back or suffer the consequences. More than that, I wanted to reach across the table, grab my husband’s tie, and strangle him with it. All that at even the hint of a threat toward Matthew.
Good lord. Who had I become?
“Anyway, let’s not let one bad apple spoil the dinner,” Calvin said. “Happy anniversary, princess.”
He slapped a familiar blue box on the table in front of me. I put down my fork.
“Ooh, Tiffany’s!” Caitlyn crooned. “Aren’t you lucky, N!”
I smiled grimly, still trying to swallow back my rage as I picked up the box. “This is a surprise.”
“Ten years. Thought I needed to do a little something, even if you didn’t. I never even bought you a real engagement ring. You got that ugly thing yourself, remember?”
Caitlyn snorted. “It does look like something we would have picked out when we were twenty, doesn’t it, N?”
I examined the enormous pear-shaped diamond on my left hand. Well, they were right about something. The engagement ring I had worn almost continuously for ten years was legitimately hideous. I had hated it when I was twenty, and I hated it now, and not just because everything it represented was a lie. The only reason I had even purchased it was to protect the pride of the man sitting next to me. Calvin had insisted I had to wear something, and unbeknownst to me, he was broke at the time. But when we had walked into Tiffany’s that day and I had pointed at a much smaller, plainer stone that would be more realistic for a man of his means to supposedly give me, he simply shook his head and found this one instead.
I won’t be embarrassed, princess. Not by you. Not by anyone.
“Open it,” Calvin said. “Come on. It’s an upgrade, I promise. No one will laugh at us now.”
Were they laughing before? I wanted to ask. Whispering, maybe. But Calvin had always imagined so much more.
Conscious of my audience, I slowly pulled off the white ribbon, then removed the ring box and opened it.
It was awful. A strobe light. A very, very pink one. I removed a ring bearing a massive, carnation-colored diamond encircled with not one but three wreaths of tiny white diamonds, all nestled in a setting of flashy yellow gold. It was the jewelry equivalent of Studio 54. And not in a good way.
“Oh…my,” Caitlyn said, quickly recovering the flash of revulsion that crossed her face
“The guy at the store said it was a princess cut,” Calvin said proudly. “It was the most expensive one they had. A princess for the princess. So…how about it?”
I looked up, dumbfounded. “How about what?”
“You. Me. Vow renewal. This September. It’s been ten years, princess, so I figure it’s time to have the wedding we never got. A big horse and pony show at St. John’s or maybe St. Patrick’s. We’ll get you the biggest dress with the longest train or whatever, and really show New York who we are. No one will ever laugh at us again after that. And besides, a little good PR won’t hurt with all this trial bullshit going down.”
I stared at the ring with a dif
ferent kind of horror. He wanted another wedding? In front of the entire city? Eric and Jane had done the same thing less than a year ago. Was he jealous of the attention? Did he not see how ridiculously tacky it would be to have a similar affair for a marriage that had already taken place? Not to mention that the idea of saying vows again to this man literally made me nauseous.
But before I could find a way to say anything else, another thought crossed my mind.
“You bought the most expensive ring at Tiffany’s?” I asked.
Immediately, Calvin’s face clouded. “Of course I did. You act like we’re paupers or something here, Nina.”
“Of course we’re not,” I said quickly. “No, it’s, um, it’s really something, Calvin. It’s just…”
“Just what?” he spat, looking quickly between me and Caitlyn, embarrassment rising on his face.
But I couldn’t stop. “It’s just that given the situation we’re in…and the lawyers…don’t you think maybe…this should have…”
“What are you saying?” The question slipped between his crooked, yellowing teeth.
I took a deep breath. I couldn’t stand down now.
“I’m saying,” I said as gently as I could. “Perhaps it’s not the best optics for you to be spending several million dollars on a piece of jewelry and then millions more on a fake wedding when you’ve been indicted for less-than-savory business practices.”
As the steam started to rise on Calvin’s face, my heart sped up. Oh, dear. Oh, that was a big mistake.
You said what you said, doll. It’s not your fault he can’t fuckin’ handle it.
Wasn’t it?
Calvin looked like he wanted to toss his dinner all over me—what little there was still left of it. And if Caitlyn hadn’t been sitting next to us, he very well might have, along with a few other things. I could easily imagine it. The way my body would fly out of the chair. The way my cheek would crack against the sideboard edge. The way I’d be forced to my knees, my hair yanked, face slapped until my ears were ringing.
But Caitlyn, to her credit, did not make the sleek exit most people would do in her situation. She simply sat beside me and waited.
The Perfect Woman (Rose Gold Book 2) Page 8
