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There were even a couple of photos of them kissing, one through the sheers on his hotel suite windows taken with a telephoto lens. It was rather grainy and only someone who knew his build well would suspect the man in the picture was Lysander.
The other was in the back of a car, the driver standing beside the open door making the shot possible.
Each had a time and date stamp that coincided with the previous week. Rowan quickly sent all the photos to her own phone before handing her mother's back.
CHAPTER 28
"Where did those pictures come from?" Rowan asked, finding it difficult to keep her fury in check.
"Cyrus hired a private investigator to follow Lysander," her mother confided. "He didn't trust his brother not to be using you to get back at him."
Rowan almost laughed. If anything, it was the opposite way around.
Only, it wasn't. Not really. And never really had been. Whatever excuses Rowan had given herself for approaching Lysander, she was adult enough to acknowledge the real reason she'd shown up at his gate that day.
She'd wanted him and once her divorce was final, she could have him.
Rowan shook her head, hoping the older woman had been as taken in by the lies as Cyrus had hoped Rowan would be. Regardless of their strained relationship, she hated to think her mother was playing not only a willing but witting role in this farce.
Lysander didn't just get angry. He got even. And Rowan didn't like the chances of any of the players purposefully creating the false narrative coming out of this unscathed.
Rowan looked at Adele. "You want me to believe that you and Sander went from you being his platonic escort to necessary social events to having sex behind my back?"
She made no effort to disguise the skepticism in her tone now that she knew the details of the scam.
"Is that what he told you?" Adele trilled a mocking laugh. "That we only slept together once?"
"Adele, you said you wanted to help my daughter, not hurt her," Vanessa Johnson admonished.
The words surprised Rowan. It almost sounded like her mother cared.
"The truth sometimes hurts," Adele replied.
Rowan rolled her eyes. Cliché much?
"Surely by now, you realize what a powerful libido Lys has. Is it even remotely believable that he and I would have spent so many evenings together without having sex?" Her tone said:Look at me, who wouldn't want to worship this?
What Rowan realized was that Adele was a very proficient liar. Just like Cyrus.
Unfortunately for Adele and this little scheme she and Cyrus had come up with, Rowan was no longer the woman who had let herself be manipulated into a loveless marriage to a narcissist.
She'd grown in ways people like them would never understand. She knew her own value andbecauseof her years with Cyrus and before that, growing up with her father, she knew the difference between a manipulative liar and an honorable man.
Lysander was the latter.
He'd told her that his relationship with Adele had been platonic after the one time of having sex. And him? She believed. 100%.
"I do know how deliciously strong Sander's sex drive is," she said now. "We've spent the last week having fantastic and very satisfying phone sex over video chat. You have not been in his bed."
Rowan's mother gasped. "Do not be vulgar. We are not here to discuss your…what you and Lysander do behind closed doors."
As amused as she was by her mother's clear embarrassment, Rowan was much angrier about the lies Adele was spouting and her mother's willingness to give them credence.
"But discussing his supposed sexual exploits with Adele is all right?" Rowan shook her head. "I don't think so."
Adele's face was pinched. The conversation was clearly not going the way she had expected.
"It is naïve to believe a man like Lysander Baros would be satisfied with that kind of thing. When he had acompanionat hand." Her mother waived her hand, her discomfort with the topic clear.
