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She had managed to dance around the topic without either lying or telling the whole truth, and she hoped Maris would leave it at that. The WorldView deal needed no further complications.
Taking advantage of Maris’s silence, she said, “I’m glad we cleared the air. Would you like a bite of sea bass?”
“No, thank you.”
“It’s delicious, but I’ve had my fill.”
Actually, she was still hungry, but she pushed her plate away. One area of thigh tissue absorbed fat like a goddamn sponge despite the procedure she had undergone. She fanatically counted every calorie. Exercise was the only religion she believed in or practiced, and she worshiped strenuously every day.
Noah teased her about her rigid fitness regimen, saying she even brought it to bed with her. In fact, she counted sex as an aerobic exercise. She knew precisely how many calories were burned with each act of coitus.
Noah knew her well. He could be the sole man on the planet to whom she might be faithful. She didn’t love him, any more than he loved her. Neither of them bought into the myth of romantic love. He had readily admitted that his marriage hadn’t been inspired by amorous passion, but rather his burning desire to become part of the Matherly dynasty via the only Matherly available to him.
He had developed a mentor-protégé relationship with Daniel, but even that wasn’t enough to satisfy his ambition. Becoming the old man’s son-in-law was the next best thing to a blood kinship. Marrying Maris would cement his future, so he had made it happen.
Nadia admired that kind of single-minded scheming and the guts it took to carry out a bold plan. To her, ruthlessness was an aphrodisiac like no other. She spotted it in Noah the first time she met him. Recognizing in him a self-serving ambition that was equal to her own, she had wanted him, and she hadn’t played coy.
Their first business lunch date had carried over into an afternoon spent in bed at the Pierre. To her delight, Noah approached sex with the same self-gratifying appetite and animalistic detachment as she. By the time he left her lying tangled up in the damp sheets, she was raw and sore and exhilarated.
They were also compatible out of bed. They understood one another. Their individual drives to achieve were harmonious but competitive enough to spark arguments and add zest. They were good for each other. They complemented each other. As a team, they would be unconquerable. That was why Nadia wanted to become Mrs. Noah Reed.
Well, that was one reason why.
The other was harder for her to acknowledge: There was just enough of Nadine remaining in her to want to be married before she died. She didn’t want to grow old alone. Somewhere between power lunches and sundown specials, a single woman became a spinster.
Through her twenties and thirties, she had scorned the very idea of matrimony. To anybody who would listen she claimed no interest whatsoever in monogamy and the marriage bed. What a fucking—literally—bore.
But the truth was that, for all the men who had shared her bed, who had sighed and cried and groaned and crowed between her thighs, not one, not a single one, had ever asked her to be his wife.
And, to be brutally honest, Noah hadn’t actually proposed, either. He wasn’t the hearts-and-flowers-and-bended-knee type. She had more diamond rings than she had fingers and toes. How their plans for matrimony had come about was that she had told him she wanted to marry him. And Nadia never took no for an answer.
Now her future husband’s present wife was finishing a cappuccino that she hadn’t wanted. Usually Nadia could sweet-talk or browbeat someone out of a tidbit of information that she could expand into an item for her column, but Maris had remained stubbornly mute about her secret project. She seemed disinclined to talk on any level about the nature of the book or about the writer.
Not that Nadia gave a flip about Maris’s silly secret project. The purpose of this lunch had been to keep Maris derailed, unaware, and blissfully ignorant of what Nadia and Noah were doing with WorldView behind her back.
But Maris had tipped her hand. Noah should be warned that she might not be as malleable and naive as she looked. Nadia hoped her suspicion of an affair had been quelled, because the last thing they needed in these important final weeks was a jealous wife breathing down their necks.
“Anything else, Maris?” she offered graciously. “Another cappuccino?”
“No, thank you
. I should get back to the office. I’m playing catch-up after being away, as I knew I would be.”
“Then why’d you come?” The question was out before Nadia realized she was going to ask it. But having done so, she owned up to being curious. Why had Maris accepted her invitation?
“For a long time now, we’ve detested the sight of one another. But we always played polite,” Maris said. “I hate phoniness, especially in myself.” She looked inward for a second, then added, “Or maybe I’m just disgusted with lies and liars. In any case, I thought it was time to tell you to your face that I’m on to you.”
Nadia took it all in, then smiled wryly. “Fair enough.” As they made their way to the entrance, she said, “You’ll still feed me industry news items, won’t you?”
“News. Not gossip.”
“When you’re ready to reveal this mysterious author and book, will you give me the scoop?”
“The author is very publicity-shy. I doubt—”
“Nadia, what a nice surprise.”
Nadia turned at the greeting and found herself looking into the colorless countenance of Morris Blume, the last person on earth she would choose to bump into when Maris Matherly-Reed was standing beside her. She didn’t find the surprise nice at all.
