My husband Richard was three times my age. He was the oldest available man I’d had the choice to marry, so, naturally, he was the one I’d picked. Too old to hit me, and, as harsh as it sounded, closer to biting the dust than any of the others.
“I have an idea—why don’t you save us both the trouble and not pretend to care?”
“Someone has to. Can’t say I’m surprised, though, that your husband turns out to be one of Ace’s richest men. Must make the marriage bed easier to stomach.”
A bitter laugh escaped me, and I turned my head to look out the window.
“Go to hell, Allister.”
“HE INSINUATED I WAS A money-hungry whore,” I told Val, pulling a cucumber slice off my eye and taking a bite of it. “Does this cucumber thing even do anything?”’
“Yes, but only if you can manage not to eat it,” Val said dryly, blindly reaching for a bowl of fresh slices beside her lounge chair and handing it to me. “And, seriously, what an asshole! As if you wanted to marry an old geezer.”
“I know.” I sighed and shoved a cucumber slice in my mouth.
“Can you imagine if you’d picked another of Ace’s men? You’d be waddling around pregnant with your third child already.” She shivered. Val had so far escaped the same fate with her husband Ricardo only because she was dealing with infertility. Or, so she claimed, anyway.
“Maybe I should have . . . chosen another.” The words escaped me, disturbing me as much as Valentina. I was married by name only, but I’d still been held in tight chains while being denied a family of my own. Sometimes, I thought I was beginning to desire more in life.
“What?” She sounded incredulous. “You don’t mean that.”
“No, of course not,” I said quickly. Right . . .? “I’m just tired, is all. Magdalena woke me up early vacuuming while spewing complaints about all the dust.”
Valentina laughed. “Magdalena, vacuuming?”
“Apparently, she has a date tonight, and she can’t make dinn
er for him at her apartment because her lazy daughter is home. Her words, not mine.”
“Lord, is it weird I want to be a fly on the wall for that date?”
“No,” I chuckled.
“If you’re letting her use your place, where are you going to stay?”
“I’ll probably just sleep at the penthouse after the party tonight.” I used to live there the last year Antonio and I were married, when I was avoiding him at all costs. It was Ace’s now, but it was still a second home to me.
Val groaned. “Honestly, I’m tired of all these get-togethers with the Abellis. It’s not like us women need to get used to their presence for the wedding. I say, let’s put all our men and theirs in one room and see what happens.”
I laughed. “Exactly. Us women are most likely the only thing keeping the peace.”
“True,” she sighed. “Women are goddesses.”
Legs crisscrossed on the lounge chair, I brought my gaze to the cloudless sky. Andromeda.
“So . . . how’s he looking these days?”
I ate another cucumber with a crunch. “Who?”
“Christian, of course.”
The vision of him standing in front of me a week and a half ago, his hands in his pockets and his lazy gaze on me, floated through my mind. An annoying warmth spread through my body.
“Good,” I grumbled.
She laughed. “That good, huh?”
Crunch.