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CHAPTER FOUR
She’d come home early.
That was her second mistake.
The first had been not calling to alert him.
Of course, Paige hadn’t realized at the time that alerting Noah was necessary. Or had she? Hadn’t she been at least a little suspicious? Wasn’t that the real reason she hadn’t phoned to tell him that Chloe and Matt had returned home an hour earlier than expected from their weekly date night—Chloe had obviously been crying; there was a suspicious-looking red mark on her cheek—and that she was on her way home?
Chloe’s usual babysitter had canceled at the last moment and Chloe had called in a panic—Matt was already waiting at the restaurant and he hated any last-minute changes in plans—and asked Paige if she could come over. “I’d ask my mother, but she’s…well, you know…my mother.”
Paige had said yes, she’d be delighted. She loved Chloe’s two young children as if they were her own and enjoyed spending time with them. Besides, she would do anything for Chloe, whose mother was a total disaster, a woman incapable of seeing anything beyond the tip of her own nose. It was a miracle that Chloe had turned out the way she had, which was, simply put, one of the sweetest people Paige had ever met.
Maybe too sweet.
Too sweet for a man like Matt, that was for sure.
Too sweet for her own good, Paige worried.
Noah hadn’t objected to Paige bailing on their plans at the last minute. In fact, he’d seemed relieved, saying he hadn’t been especially keen on the movie Paige had suggested anyway, and that he could use the time to prepare for the case he was working on, then get to bed early, hopefully catch up on some much-needed sleep. “It’s shaping up to be a very busy week,” he’d said.
Paige understood this was code for “no sex tonight,” even though it was the weekend and their sex life had been less than stellar of late. “I’ve just got so much on my plate,” he’d apologized the last time he’d blamed exhaustion and overwork for turning down her romantic overtures. Paige had smiled and said she understood. But she didn’t really. As a lawyer hoping one day to make partner with the large downtown firm that employed him, Noah had been exhausted and overworked since the day they’d met. It had never stopped him from being an eager and avid lover. But something had changed in the last few months, something she couldn’t quite put her finger on.
Or maybe she knew exactly where to put her finger.
And whom to point that finger at.
Maybe that was the problem.
Which was why she hadn’t phoned to alert him she was on her way home, why she hadn’t bothered shouting her usual hello when she entered the foyer of their small apartment, why she hadn’t even glanced into the living room to check if he was there as she’d tiptoed down the hall toward the closed bedroom door. Nor had she hesitated when she heard the giggles emanating from the other side, knowing even before she pushed open the door and saw the naked body straddling Noah’s whose body it would be, whose startled face she would find.
“Are you kidding me?” Paige had shouted as her cousin scrambled to her feet, tripping and almost falling as she struggled into her underwear. “I don’t believe this.”
Except shedidbelieve it. In truth, Paige would have been shocked if the woman she’d discovered straddling her boyfriend had been anyonebutHeather. Her cousin had always coveted whatever Paige had, be it clothing, hairstyles, or men. When Paige signed up for modeling lessons as a teenager, so had Heather. When Paige learned to play guitar, Heather had immediately signed up for lessons. When Paige bought a new pair of rhinestone-studded sneakers, Heather had run right out and bought the exact same ones.
When Paige later grumbled about these things to her father, he’d smiled and reminded her that “imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.” His brother had been the same way with him. “But he was never as good,” he’d added with a wink. “And everybody knew it.”
So no one was surprised that when Paige went into advertising after graduating college, Heather had followed suit, joining a larger if less prestigious agency, where she’d languished in an entry-level position for years before finally being promoted to one of six junior account managers. Paige, also to no one’s surprise, had risen quickly through the ranks of her smaller boutique firm to become director of strategic planning.
And then, out of the blue, her agency had been swallowed by a larger New York company. They’d brought in their own people, and Paige had found herself unceremoniously spit out, along with most of the original senior management.
“That’s so awful,” Heather had commiserated, managing to sound sincere despite the slight gleam in her eye. “After so many years. You must be devastated.”
“I’ll find something else.”
“Of course you will.”
Except it turned out that there weren’t a lot of options available for directors of strategic planning. In fact, there were none. The few jobs Paige interviewed for were for less senior positions, and while she would have happily taken any one of them, especially as one month stretched into six, she was repeatedly deemed “too qualified.”
Meanwhile, Heather had begun spending more and more time at Paige’s apartment, dropping over with supposed leads about potential jobs, bringing over take-out dinners she’d pick up at Eataly on her way home from work, listening with rapt attention as Noah talked about his day, laughing at even the feeblest of his jokes, and being so obvious in her attempts to flatter and impress him that Paige and Noah would sometimes joke about it after she’d left.
Turned out Noah liked obvious.
Turned out they’d been sleeping together for more than a month before Paige discovered them.
“I can’t even say he left me for a younger woman,” Paige had wailed to Chloe. “She’s two days older than I am. And we’re practically twins, for God’s sake, so it can’t be her looks.”
“Well, it certainly isn’t her personality,” Chloe said.
