Fool Me Once (First Wives Series Book 1)

by Catherine Bybee

  “I’ve never seen domineering parents loosen their grip on their children.”

  “Perhaps Avery will pry their fingers off.”

  A fast-paced song had the woman of the hour bouncing to the beat. “She is certainly breaking loose tonight.”

  “What is she drinking?”

  “It’s called a ball and chain, otherwise known as Fireball and tequila shots.”

  “That’s gonna hurt in the morning.”

  A chattering of women increased in volume and brought both their attention to the front door. A tall, muscle-bound twentysomething walked in wearing the fakest cop’s uniform Lori had ever seen.

  Sam shook her head. “When the stripper arrives, that’s my cue to leave.”

  Lori waved her off. “Go home to your hot man. I’ll stick around and make sure our client doesn’t do anything tabloid perfect.”

  Sam kissed the side of Lori’s cheek before skirting around the crowd.

  Someone handed Lori a plate full of cream cheese frosting smothered cake.

  Strippers and sugar.

  It could be worse.

  The sound of glass crashing to the floor brought Lori’s eyes wide open.

  In front of her, the world shimmered into focus.

  Bright light glared.

  Avery’s condo . . . commando stripper . . . it all came back in a breath.

  Fuzzy pain sat in the back of her neck and threatened serious pain if she didn’t change position.

  She shifted and closed her eyes.

  The guttural sound of someone attempting to empty their stomach shot her into action.

  Lori zeroed in on the noise.

  Avery, God love her, had made it halfway to the stone and lacquer bathroom before losing the previous evening’s indulgence.

  Choking back the involuntary desire to follow Avery’s stomach, Lori swallowed hard, moved past the mess, and grasped the girl’s hair as she found the toilet.

  “Oh, God.”

  Lori wasn’t sure who was praying to the porcelain throne, Avery or her . . . but one of them was exclaiming something.

  “I got ya,” Lori said as she closed her eyes and thought of rainbows and unicorns.

  Avery emptied her stomach, the hard way, into the pristine white Kohler toilet.

  Just when Lori thought the worst was over, it wasn’t.

  “Oh, damn.”

  Lori sucked air in through her mouth.

  Only when the sound of the toilet flushing hit her ears did Lori open her eyes. “You good?”

  Avery heaved.

  Nope.

  Two minutes later . . .

  For every day she sat at her desk charging five hundred dollars an hour for her efforts, this wasn’t one of them.

  Nurses, Lori decided then and there, deserved a half-off deal when they showed up looking for representation.

  “One too many tequila shots.”

  Avery’s comment had Lori grinning. “Or five.”

  Avery leaned against the tub, head in her hands. “You said my divorce wasn’t going to be painful.”

  Laughing, Lori said, “Your divorce was final before Patrón and Detective Dan.”

  Avery opened one eye. “Was that his name?”

  “I never got his name.”

  “He was firm.”

  Lori grinned, thinking of the fake stripper cop. “Everywhere.”

  They both laughed.

  “Stop, it hurts.”

  “C’mon.” Lori helped Avery to her feet and down the hall.

  “I need to clean that.” Avery turned her head away from her own mess.

  “I got ya.” Or she’d call someone from an emergency maid service with combat pay who would get it.

  After placing Avery on her sofa, Lori turned to the open kitchen. “Coffee.”

  Avery moaned.

  “For me. You get crackers and ice chips until noon.”

  A fancy single serving coffee dispenser was a divorce gift from one of Avery’s friends. Lori had cracked it open after midnight in an effort to sober up a few guests before they left.

  Most of them went by way of overtipped Uber drivers.

  “That party was epic.”

  Lori felt five years past the epic days of her life. “It was memorable.”

  A coffee cup made it under the stream of hot cappuccino. Just the smell helped her headache.

  “I’m really divorced?” Avery asked on a sigh.

  “Yep.”

  “And my bank account has five million dollars in it?”

  “Yep.”

  Avery’s laugh started low and built. Lori smiled as she lifted the coffee cup for her first taste.

  “Bernie’s a nice man, he just needs . . .”

  “Someone closer to his age?”

  “Yeah.”

  Lori avoided conversations with her clients during their marriages unless something legal came up. And since most of the time she represented both parties in these “arranged marriages,” from prenup to divorce, it was best to stand clear.

  Alliance, a successful marriage-for-hire service for the rich and famous who needed a spouse quickly and quietly, was Sam’s brainchild. The marriages were designed to be temporary, twelve to twenty-four months, including a six-month uncontested divorce grace period. Sam often fostered the relationship with the payees, mainly women, where Lori dealt with the payers, often men. Lori wasn’t an employee of Alliance per se, but she did financially benefit from every prenuptial agreement she wrote up, and again when the couple split.

  Once the divorces were final, Lori often took on the role of transitioning the divorcées from “married to a rich man” to “cast-off wife.” And yes, Sam paid her for that service as well.

  Even though her role with Alliance went beyond the professional scope of a divorce attorney, she didn’t mind. Her involvement kept her clients out of the papers and on the path to the happiness they sought when they entered into their counterfeit marriages.

  The irony lay in how many times Alliance marriages actually worked out. Between Sam’s vetting of the couples involved, the extensive background checks, and the overall matching process, it wasn’t uncommon for the couples to have a physical attraction that sometimes grew deep roots filled with I love you and forever. Considering the divorce rate was 50 percent in the normal world of happily ever after, the fact that the fabricated marriages that Samantha Harrison’s company arranged had a 28 percent success rate was astounding.

  And those success stories alone kept Lori in the mix.

  As jaded as a divorce lawyer with one failed marriage under her personal belt was, she liked to believe happily ever after existed.

  “Was it really that easy? Taking the job as Bernie’s wife paid me over nine grand a day.”

  It was too early for math.

  “Uhm . . .”

  “Five million and the condo.”

  Yeah . . . the condo had cost Bernie close to two million after renovations. Every client was different.

  Every client had a price for a year or two of their personal freedom.

  Not to mention the gifts Bernie had bestowed upon his wife during their marriage. All a facade.

  Even now, Bernie was happily hooking up with a woman slightly older than Avery with the real possibility of that happily ever after in his future. It seemed having a trophy wife broke down some of his personal demons that prevented him from seeking out relationships.

  There were pitfalls for Avery, however . . . things she’d discarded when she’d signed contracts that she would now face. Dating after being labeled a gold digger would be challenging. Not to mention the opportunistic men out there who would try to hook up with her to get a piece of her bank account. Avoiding the lottery curse and blowing the five million she gave up a portion of her life for was also something Lori and Sam both tried to help their clients avoid. Hence the reason Lori was standing in Avery’s condo and not hers at nine in the morning with puke dripping off the walls. Avery already trusted and respec
ted her, but now that the marriage and divorce were over, Lori hoped their relationship could develop into a friendship so Avery would seek her advice during what could be a challenging transitional year.

  “Water?” Lori offered.

  Avery shook her head.

  Lori leaned against the kitchen counter.

  “You need to ease your life out of purgatory just a little bit longer,” Lori warned. “Give the papers someone new to follow.”

  Avery laughed with half-open eyes.

  “Avery?” The younger woman caught Lori’s gaze. “This isn’t going to be easy.”

  “Yeah, yeah . . . you told me people would call me a gold digger, a user. I know.”

  Avery Grant had been ostracized by her parents’ crowd for not conforming to the plaid skirt wearing teen or the perfectly polished Stepford wife type as an adult. Her wealthy, Ivy League–educated family didn’t know what to do with her wild, unorthodox personality. Her parents sent her to one boarding school after another, never letting Avery develop any lasting friendships. Avery continued the pattern by floating in and out of three colleges before graduating with a liberal arts degree after five years. Avery said she was bulletproof after her unsettled childhood.

  “It’s more than being called a name,” Lori said.

  “You’ve told me this before, Lori. I’m good.”

  Lori’s phone rang like an exclamation point.

  She followed the ringtone until she found her cell plugged in by the kitchen sink.

  It was Sam.

  “Good morning.”

  “You left before all the fun.” Detective Dan had earned his three hundred bucks.

  “Are you sitting down?”

  Sam’s abrupt tone shook the remaining cobwebs from Lori’s head. “No.”

  “Sit.”

  Lori took the seat opposite Avery. “I’m sitting.” And her heart was beating too fast.

  “They have art.”

  They and art were never a good combination. “Last night?”

  “Yeah. A picture of Avery letting Detective Dan take a Jell-O shot off her belly is making the rounds.” Sam rambled off the tabloid that had managed to obtain pictures from the previous night’s party.

  “That’s not good.”

  Sam sighed.

  Avery opened both eyes as she took in half the conversation.

  Lori faked a smile. The reaction was preprogramed in her head in an effort to keep control of her emotions when she felt her blood pressure rising.

  “That’s not all.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “Fedor Petrov squeezed the trigger of his .45 millimeter point-blank to his head last night.”

  Lori’s stomach protested. She swallowed. Hard. “God, no.”

  “I wish I was joking.”

  “Where is Trina?” Petrov was their payer, and Trina was the temporary wife halfway through her two-year contract.

  “Secluded in Petrov’s estate in the Hamptons.”

  “This is bad.” Lori closed her eyes and envisioned Trina the last time she saw her. She was packing up her apartment after her brief fake honeymoon and moving back east. “How did you find out?”

  “Trina called, hysterical.”

  “My God, is she okay?”

  “No. I’m not sure it’s possible for her to be okay right now. My plane leaves in two hours.”

  “I’ll be ready.”

  Chapter Two

  By the time Lori and Sam landed in the Hamptons, every newscaster, rag, and wannabe paparazzo had beat them there. Cameras blinded them as the car passed through the gate of the Petrov estate.

  Thankfully, the media had no idea who Lori was, so she rushed in first. But when Sam stepped out of the car, cameras renewed their frenzy. Sam had already established herself as Trina’s friend, so her presence wouldn’t be questioned.

  Lori found Trina sitting on a chaise in her bedroom with an empty bottle of wine at her side.

  The dark skinned, ebony haired woman looked up when Lori entered the room.

  She’d been crying. A broken shell of the woman Lori had last seen just six months before.

  One look in Lori’s direction and Trina’s tears flowed again.

  Lori folded Trina into her arms and listened as she sobbed.

  Through hiccups, Trina spoke.

  “I didn’t sign”—Lori patted Trina’s back—“up for this.”

  “It’s okay . . . you’re going to be okay.”

  Trina buried her face in Lori’s shoulder.

  Lori looked up at the sound of Sam’s footsteps. She and Sam kept eye contact for several seconds of silence.

  “I should have seen this coming,” Trina managed once Sam sat on the other side of her.

  “Did Fedor say anything to you?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Then how could you have known this would happen?” Lori asked.

  “I’m his wife.”

  Lori glanced to the closed bedroom door. “In name only.”

  “People are going to blame me for not seeing this coming.”

  Lori couldn’t argue with that. “It’s not your fault.”

  “Doesn’t matter. He’d been quiet this last month. Almost never away from the hospital. I thought the changes in him were about his mom. I asked him how he was doing, but he didn’t offer more than that he was holding up. He obviously wasn’t holding up,” she cried.

  Fedor was a devoted son, his mother was his world. Suffering from cancer, Alice Petrov had been on her deathbed for the last few months, and Fedor knew it would bring her peace to see him married.

  Cancer was stealing her lungs, and a stroke had left her in a wheelchair. In the past week, she’d had a second stroke and no longer recognized anyone. The doctors didn’t give her long to live.

  Sam’s theory behind Fedor’s suicide was that he couldn’t cope with his mother’s impending death. And since she no longer recognized him, he wasn’t hurting her by exiting this life.

  “Did you find a note, a suicide letter?” Lori asked.

  “No, nothing.”

  “We’re going to get you through this,” Sam told her.

  Trina’s tears were drying up. “Two years and I’d have the means to be able to start my own company. That’s all I wanted.” Her eyes welled again. “I didn’t think anyone was going to die.”

  While there were clauses in the prenuptial contracts for the unlikely event of one of the spouses dying during their marriage, in the history of Alliance, they’d never had to revisit the clause.

  A knock on the door caught their attention. “Mrs. Petrov?”

  Lori recognized one of the housekeepers. “Yes?”

  “Your parents are here.”

  Trina blinked a few times before she spoke. “Give me a minute.”

  The housekeeper nodded and closed the door behind her.

  “Do they know the truth about your marriage?” Sam asked.

  Trina shook her head. “No. I’ve told no one.”

  Lori attempted to put Trina at ease with a smile. “It needs to stay that way.”

  “I know.”

  “Do you want us to stay while you talk with your parents?”

  Trina closed her eyes. “No. I need to talk to them on my own.”

  “We’ll go, then.”

  Trina’s eyes opened wide in protest.

  “To one of the spare rooms,” Sam assured her.

  “Okay. Don’t leave.”

  Lori stood. “We won’t. We’re here for you, Trina. We’ll get you through this.”

  Sam and Lori kept quiet until they were shown the rooms they were going to occupy. Once alone, they started to plan. “She looks awful,” Lori said straight out.

  “She’s a sensitive soul.”

  “Does she have any friends here?”

  “Not close ones,” Sam told her.

  Lori looked around the dark walls of the old estate. The black clouds outside didn’t help the somber mood inside. “We’ll have to get he
r away from here as soon as possible.”

  “I think that’s a sound plan. Someplace warm and sunny . . . and far enough away that people won’t recognize her.”

  “And where is that?” Lori wasn’t sure such a place existed.

  “Europe, on the sea . . . I don’t know. Let’s help her get through the funeral, give her the support she needs to dig out of this mess, and remove her from this sadness.”

  Lori leaned against the dresser. “I’ve never transitioned a client after a spouse’s suicide.”

  Sam blew out a slow breath. “This is going to take more than one-on-one. She’s going to need more than you and I talking her through this.”

  Lori thought of the client she’d left in LA. “Let’s include Avery . . . it’s hard not to smile around that woman.”

  “I like that idea. Take them both—” Sam’s phone buzzed. She reached for it.

  “You know who else would be helpful?”

  Sam glanced at the screen on her phone, promptly dropped it onto the bed. “Who?”

  “Shannon.” One of the highest profile divorces Lori had to date. If anyone could be a sympathetic shoulder, it was the former first lady of California. The one client that Lori had failed to help readjust after her marriage was over. Not that she’d stopped trying. “Maybe this would be helpful for all of them. An intimate group in the know about their marriages.”

  “I like this idea, Lori.”

  They both heard Trina sobbing from across the hall when someone opened a door.

  Lori’s heart sank in her chest.

  An angry male voice pulled Lori from the few hours of broken sleep she’d managed.

  Trina was yelling, her voice wavering.

  Lori jumped from the bed, grabbed the robe, and shoved her arms into it as she fled into the hall and down the stairs.

  Before she reached the bottom step, she caught sight of Ruslan Petrov, Fedor’s father, shaking his fist in Trina’s face. Lori remembered the man from his pictures, big, unmoving . . . a man you didn’t want to find yourself alone with in a dark place.

  “Your fault. My son was fine before you.”

  Trina stepped away.

  From behind Lori, someone barreled down the stairs, nearly knocking her over. Trina’s father, a man half the size of Ruslan, shoved his frame between the two of them.

  “Get away from my daughter.”