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“Great.”
Keeping his eyes on mine, he speaks to Bonnie over his shoulder. “I’ll eat in my office. I have work to catch up on.”
“Of course, sir.”
He gives me a farewell nod, and I return it, like two knights just finished with their duel. Then he walks out of his kitchen and disappears down the hall toward the home office I’d glimpsed earlier today.
I sag against the kitchen counter. Confronting Victor St. Clair is becoming a hobby, and I don’t know if it’s one I enjoy.
Bonnie sets down a plate in front of me and the scent of fresh pasta and lobster washes over me. My prize and my reward.
“Good on you,” Bonnie says.
“Will you eat with me?”
She glances down the hall, weighing her options. Then she nods and grabs a plate of her own. “Of course, dear.”
And that’s how I spend the night of my wedding. Eating delicious, expensive pasta with Victor St. Clair’s housekeeper, adrenaline leaking out of me with every bite, as my new husband works in his office.
7
Cecilia
Victor and I find a routine in the coming days. It’s as beautiful as it is simple. It’s avoidance.
He gets up earlier than me. I hear him in the mornings, lying in my too-big, too-soft bed, listening to his feet in the hallway that connects our two bedrooms. They always disappear down the staircase.
He starts off by going to his home gym. Either he works out alone or has one of his twice-a-week sessions with a personal trainer. I know, because I’d scheduled and paid the appointments.
Forty-five minutes later on the dot, I hear him return up the stairs and the door to his bedroom shuts. Showering, I suppose.
It’s odd how I know a person’s life so intimately when I know so little about the person himself.
Victor is gone every day, from seven in the morning to eight or nine in the evening. When he returns, he heads straight to his office, eating his dinner at his desk. I want to ask Bonnie if he started with the dinner-at-his-desk routine when I arrived, but I don’t dare. I don’t know what I’d do with that information. Be pleased? Offended?
The apartment is most always empty when I start my day, and it is now too. I’ve explored more in the days since I arrived. I even went so far as to lift one of the dumbbells in his home gym and nearly dropped it on my foot.
There is personality in this space. It’s just hidden well. Like the bottles of wine in the wine cooler. The books scattered around the living room. None of them are fictional. They’re all biographies of great men and women of ages past, or books written by contemporary business leaders. Books he reads.
Today, I spend the morning working on my business proposal for Victor, interrupted sporadically by texts from Nadine.
Some are more welcome than others.
Nadine:Your mother will come to town at some point, you know.
Cecilia:I know.
Nadine:You know she’s my favorite person.
Cecilia:Ouch. You’re banned from getting pickles off my burgers.
Nadine:That’s a disproportionate response. I know you’d never keep me from pickles. Aaaaanyway, what are we going to tell her about you and your new HUSBAND?
I smile at my phone. Thank God for Nadine and her use of the wordwe. She doesn’t know about my intentions to use the money yet, or about Victor’s patronage of her art gallery.
Cecilia:I have absolutely no idea what I’m going to tell her. She’ll freak out. I’ll have to prepare a list of crazy things she’s done herself.
Nadine:Good one. Nothing says don’t-care-about-me-marrying-my-boss like pointing out the one time she parked outside of a fire department.
