AllFreeNovel
Share Us
After Luke left, I sprawled out on the spot on the couch where Luke had sat. I could feel the lingering warmth of his body and soaked it all up from the cushion before it disappeared. When I dipped my head down to sniff my old, ratty couch, I realized how crazy I was acting.
I needed to stop. So I called Claire.
I told her about everything that had happened—how Luke had hired me as his PA, how he’d taken me out to lunch, and how we’d only just got done getting hot and heavy on my couch.
“You slut!” she squealed. “Honestly, Tess, making out with your own husband! In the privacy of your apartment? I don’t even know what’s happening to you anymore. You’ve changed, girl. This is all just too damn wild. Do I need to make an intervention?”
“Shut up, Claire.” I laughed. “I’m serious! What am I going to do? I can’t keep carrying on doing stuff like this if we’re supposed to be getting divorced.”
“I told you. Why do you even want to divorce him in the first place, you idiot? I’m still going to stick with that line of reasoning. Billionaire? Check. Hotter than freaking sin? Check. Actually seems like a decent guy with a sense of humor? Check. Honestly, are you on crack or something? What are you even thinking?”
I wailed in despair. “You’re not helping, Claire! I called you for help, not for you to reinforce my bad decisions, okay? Can’t you come up with reasons for me not to stay married to him?”
Silence for a few moments.
“Okay, I’ll help you out here,” she said. “But only because you’re my best and oldest friend, and I want to make it clear that I don’t actually believe this stuff I’m about to show you. I’m only doing it to make you feel better.”
I heard her tapping away on her laptop in the background. “I’m sending you some links to TMZ. These are all the girls your husband has been seen with over the past six months. There are . . . quite a few. Can you see them?”
My chest squeezed with a strange pain as I flipped open my laptop and took a look.
There had been, like, a dozen different women, at least. All of them impossibly thin, impossibly beautiful, impossibly famous.
I scrolled through the pictures feeling faintly sick. It was honestly horrible, and I was surprised by the pang of jealousy stabbing my chest.
I was a complete nothing compared to these girls—what did he even see in me anyway? I couldn’t compete with international supermodels.
And why the hell did I think his interest could possibly last anyway? He seemed to change women every few weeks. Use them until he gets bored of them, then move on to the next one.
Not me, though. I wasn’t going to be one of those. I would do this on my own terms—not get treated like a fucktoy and then discarded once he grew bored with me.
“Thanks for the reality check, Claire,” I said. “You always look out for me. That’s just what I needed to see. He and I, we’re just never going to work out.”
“No, you fool,” she shouted. “He didn’t marry any of those floozies, for one thing. And have you noticed how he hasn’t been seen with a single model on his arm after your wedding?”
I scrolled up and down the webpage, checking the dates on the posts. Claire was right.
“Also, I haven’t met him yet, but I get the feeling he genuinely cares about you,” she said. “You need to believe me. If you don’t, my dream of summer holidays on a private island in the Bahamas will never come true.”
“I’m hanging up now,” I said, laughing. “I’ll see you soon.”
I sat there for a while in silence after that. I had to close the laptop—it was too gut-wrenching to keep looking at those pictures. But they steeled my resolve.
I was making the right decisions, and Luke was exactly who I’d always feared he was. Sooner or later, he’d go back to banging a new, statuesque, beautiful model every week. I just need to remember that, even in the face of his irresistible charm.
Luke’s a freaking billionaire. He can afford to make grand gestures like a surprise day trip to Paris without even thinking about it. I shouldn’t read too much into it.
If we stay married, he’d get bored of me within weeks, and I’d have my heart broken. My kid would grow up without a father–or worse, Luke would hire the best team of lawyers in the country to take my kid away from me.
There’s a baby to think about now, and it has to be my top priority. I can’t—I mustn’t get carried away. I need to enjoy the ride for what it is and not get too emotionally invested. This is a professional lunch on a business trip . . . I need to act accordingly.
