I’ll call him after Lexi falls asleep. Talking to him will be the icing on the cake of this day.
When the movie ends, we tuck the food in the fridge. Then we decide to pick another terrible movie, hoping to find one even worse than the last. “Oh, God. Celebrity gossip. Are you obsessed, Lexi?” I go to grab the remote from her. “I don’t know why you love this trash.”
“Wait.” She puts her hand over mine, stopping me. Her eyes are wide as she stares at the screen. “Isn’t that…” She pales. “Okay, you’re right, let’s shut this off.”
The panic on her face makes me look to the screen.
“Is that... Gabriel? And who’s that woman he’s with?”
I can’t look away. It’s an enlarged photograph.
Gabriel stands tall, staring at the camera, a look of intense pride shining on his face. He’s wearing a black tux, looking even ten times more handsome than he does in his posed model ads.
Because his face is filled with pure and utter joy.
Beside him stands a beautiful woman—too beautiful, so stunning it almost hurts to look at her. Big, almond-shaped brown eyes that you can’t tear your gaze from. A heart shaped face with full, red rosebud lips.
She’s smiling, too.
Pain rips through my chest. I can’t breathe.
It’s not her beauty, or the joy in his eyes that kills me. We’ve all had exes. It’s something else that makes my heart detach from my body and rip into shreds.
She’s wearing an all-white dress. A wedding dress. She holds a bouquet of red roses in her hands. She wears a sparkly diamond large enough to ice skate on.
On the ring finger of her left hand.
They are married. He is married.
Or was? It has to be was.
My eyes go big when I read the caption, though. Gabriel Lord and wife Phoebe.
“Lexi. How did you get into my apartment today?” My voice is light, floating like a ghost. I feel cold and hot all at once.
She turns to me and stares. “Shane let me in. He said you gave him a key.”Chapter SeventeenGabrielI pace back and forth in the suite, staring at my phone as if I can somehow will it to ding with a text or call from Miranda. I call the shots. I get what I want. And I pay people—generously—to make it happen. Even so… there are some things you can’t fucking control.
This is one of them.
“Come on, dammit,” I mutter, gripping the phone so hard my fingers hurt. “Where are you?”
Finally, I can’t take it anymore. I’m going to find her. I grab my wallet and keys and head for the door, and as I do, my phone rings. I scowl at it.
Shane, not Miranda.
“Yeah?”
“Where are you?”
“Suite. Just going to get my car and go to Miranda’s.”
He sighs. The kind of sigh that makes a guy wanna shake another guy by the collar. The kind of sigh that tells me he knows something I don’t. He’d better spill it.
“Shane.” There’s warning in my tone, as I’m trying to keep myself calm. “What is it?”
“Fucking news, man,” he says. He covers the phone, talks to someone, his voice clipped and hard like it gets when he’s commanding people to get shit done.
“What about the news?”
“They did a fucking exposé about your marriage to Phoebe.”
Jesus. I run a hand through my hair.
“You mean former marriage to Phoebe, don’t you?”
He blows out a breath on the other line. “That’s not how they framed it. She’s decided she’s going to sue you, says you’re still married.”
I grit my teeth. “We were married in France, and that marriage is no longer valid.” Six months to the day after taking vows to the woman I thought I loved, I found out the marriage was invalid. She’d been married three times before she was “married” to me. She was a goddamn con artist who only married me for my money. She would’ve been perfect for Lexi’s Tom.”
“Tell me about it,” he says. “I know that. You know that. But the news definitely didn’t cast it in that light, and Lexi said—”
“Lexi? You talked to Lexi?”
“Yeah. I called her cell to see if I could get in touch with Miranda.”
Jesus.
“And?”
“Lexi says… well, she says Miranda doesn’t want to talk to you.”
“She said it? Just like that?”
“Dude, you don’t wanna know what she actually said. Made this whole ‘daddy’ thing you like a lot more appealing to me, because if that little Lexi girl were mine, I’d have—”
“What did she say?”
He speaks in a high-pitched falsetto, mimicking Lexi. “The Montague sisters are done with your philandering ways. Lose this number, lose her key, and if Gabriel Lord ever comes near my sister again, we’re calling the police.”
Shit. This is worse than I thought. I feel as if someone’s dumped a bucket of ice water over my head.