CHAPTER 3
The mushroom vol-au-vents tasted like cardboard soaked in wallpaper paste, but since the dish was a favorite of Nathanael’s and he’d eaten it here several times, he knew that the problem lay with him, rather than a calamity in Monsieur Maes’s kitchen.
Throughout the first course, Shaundra kept her head down, poking dolefully at the dish like a kid threatened with a spanking if she didn’t clean her plate.
It filled him with frustration that he couldn’t even find an innocuous subject to make small talk about, he who was known as the talker among his group of business partners and colleagues, especially Alex and his brother William. They called him the man with the quicksilver tongue. He could bullshit anyone into or out of anything.
And yet, the silence settled around the table like a sudden spring snowfall, when everyone had been hoping for a sunny day.
He allowed the waiter to clear their half-eaten starters, and then sat back and admired her, even though she was looking everywhere but at him.
With a clenching heart, he remembered the happy evenings they had spent here, chuckling their way through a bottle of the best wine in the house, chatting so much that dinner often went cold, sharing a chocolate dessert, and leaving wrapped in each other’s arms. One evening—probably even the night Shaundra had become pregnant—they hadn’t even made it back to their stately home. They’d been so into each other that he’d suddenly pulled aside on a lonely road, where they’d clambered into the back seat to frantically screw each other’s brains out.
And now this.
The garlic-crusted rack of lamb came, and although it smelled divine, his stomach rebelled. But he was a man, and men did what they had to. He attacked the lamb like a French soldier clambering out of a trench at the Battle of the Somme. Knowing that it would probably kill him, but doing his duty, anyway.
“The lamb is excellent,” he said lamely.
“Mmm,” she responded. But she’d barely tasted any.
He sighed, wondering whether this last-ditch effort of his to reach out to her hadn’t been a crappy idea after all. Just what the hell had he been thinking? Had he really expected this strong-willed, independent woman to be charmed by his gangster tactics?
Her purse began to inch slowly across the tabletop, like a large, surreptitious caterpillar. For a moment, he couldn’t understand what was happening, and then it hit him that her phone was vibrating. Surely she wouldn’t—
She pulled it out of her purse, looked at the screen, and smiled delightedly. Then answered it, in the sweetest voice he ever did hear. “Hi!” Pause. “Oh, babe, I’m so sorry! I know. I know.” Frowny face. Pout. “My husband showed up. Unexpectedly.”
She gave him a brief, dark look. “I couldn’t get out of it. I knowww! I’m so sorryyy!”
He sat back in amazement, making no secret of the fact that he was listening. Surely she couldn’t be talking to someone in the middle of their dinner! Shaundra never took calls at the table. She’d even got mad when business calls came in for him! And now she was sitting across from him, her fingertips idly stroking her collarbone as she cooed into the phone?
He felt his inner Hulk begin to turn green.
He signaled to her to hang up. She glanced at him uncomprehendingly, shrugged, and kept on talking. He wasn’t in the habit of speaking over someone on the phone, but he said softly, in a tone that brooked no resistance, “Shaundra, could you please hang up the phone?”
It was as if he’d never spoken. She began twirling the platinum necklace she was wearing—a necklace he’d bought for her while they were on a trip to Cannes—and simpering in a sugar-coated tone that made his ears bleed. “Sure… sure, honey. We can reschedule. I’m dying to see you—”
Kill me now,he thought. He said, more firmly, loudly enough to be heard by whatever asshole she was talking to, “Hang up the phone, Shaundra!”
She batted her long lashes at him and then said lazily. “Hey, babe. I gotta go. No, no, it’s nothing important. I need to talk to him, I guess.” Then, with a languorous laugh she ended the call, throwing daggers at him with her eyes.
He waited until she’d slid it back into her purse before grating out, “Boyfriend?”
Her expression was elaborately perplexed. “What?”
He leaned forward, shoving aside the barely touched plate of lamb. “You heard me. Was that the man you were supposed to meet tonight?”
“What’s it to you?”
“I am your husband!” he roared.
The waiter, who was hovering in the doorway, had been about to come and check on them. He darted back into the shadows like a scared rabbit.
“Are you, though?” she asked impertinently.
“Good God, Shaundra! Are you sleeping with him?”
“How’s that any of your business?”