by Noelle Adams
She didn’t think she’d come across as too clingy with Luke or given him any reason to think she’d developed sappy feelings about their relationship. If she’d done something like that, she would have totally understood why he might back off. She’d felt a little strange, but she didn’t think she’d acted strange. So she couldn’t think of a reason why he might hint that he wanted things to cool down between them.
She kept trying to tell herself she was making a big deal out of nothing. He was probably just busy. He’d always been a workaholic, and sometimes there were corporate crises that kept him at the office for days.
But she couldn’t help but wonder if he was coming home so late because he knew she’d already be in bed.
For the last two days, Molly had worked late too, since there was clearly no reason to hang around the apartment wondering if her husband was going to bother coming home.
After another half-hour, she gave up trying to work. Her eyes blurred from fatigue, and George wasn’t going to leave until she did.
She packed up her stuff, sent George home, and then headed back to the apartment. As she ascended on the elevator, she couldn’t help but feel a flutter of hope. Maybe Luke would be home when she got there.
She was greeted by an empty apartment, and she couldn’t help but fight back annoyance as she drew herself a bath and dumped bath oil into it.
She tried to relax as she soaked, to clear her mind and soften her body, but her mind kept returning to questions about Luke. Maybe he wasn’t really busy at work. Maybe he was getting tired of her company. Maybe that weekend in New York had affirmed that she was more trouble than she was worth to him.
If he wanted another wife, he could find one without taking ten steps out of his building. Women were always coming on to him, even knowing he was married. There wasn’t any particular reason why he’d need to put up with a wife who lied to him and nearly got herself arrested.
Yes, they had great sex. That was an obvious fact. But he could get sex—even great sex—somewhere else.
Maybe he already had.
There was nothing keeping him from having sex with call girls if he wanted to. Even now. He’d said they were starting to bore him, and she couldn’t help but think the sex they’d been having was better overall than any paid fuck with a professional.
What she and Luke had was starting to get a little complicated, though, and he had married her in the first place to avoid complications. In the last weeks, he’d had to put some effort into their relationship, even though she was the wife who was supposed to be easy for him.
She was starting to see why he might have pulled back.
She sank into the bubbly water until her chin was covered, and she tried to feel relieved that hard decisions might be taken out of her hands. She remembered how anxious and fluttery she’d felt in New York. Those were feelings she definitely shouldn’t have been having. She probably would have pulled back herself, if he hadn’t first.
It was just as well. It was probably for the best.
It would keep her from making a mistake worse than the one she’d made in falling for Baron.
It just didn’t feel like it was for the best. It felt like she wanted to cry.
She was tired, depressed, and incredibly lonely as she got out of the bath, dried off, and pulled on a dark blue silk lounge set, made up of loose pants and a sleeveless top. It was comfortable but also looked kind of sexy, just in case Luke decided to come back before she went to bed.
She got herself some mocha ice cream and went to find something on television in the living room. She was just starting to talk herself into feeling better when the phone rang.
“Hey, Erica,” she greeted, after glancing at the caller ID.
“Hey. Are you alone?”
“Yeah.” Molly frowned and pulled her legs up under her, something in her friend’s voice making her chest tighten. “What’s up?”
“I’ve got something. And I’m not sure if I should show it to you or not.”
“What are you talking about?”
“It’s about Luke. And I don’t know if I should… I’m sure you know I’m not the biggest fan of your marriage—I just think you’d be so much happier with someone who really loved you—but I’d never do anything to hurt you. And I don’t know if it’s better for you to see this or not. It might not be anything.”
“For God’s sake,” Molly gritted out, her heart hammering with intensifying fear at Erica’s stammered explanation. “You’ve got to tell me now! What the hell do you have on Luke?”
Erica paused for a long time. So long that Molly was on the verge of screaming when she finally said, “I’m going to send it to you by email. But first I have to preface it by saying that we have no idea about the context of this picture and it might not even be him. We get all kinds of gossip tips at the blog, and half of them end up being nothing. That could be the case with this one. The person who sent it to us said he took it fifteen minutes ago and it was Luke. I called someone up to check it out and get a better picture if it’s true. I won’t post it if you don’t want me to, though.”
“You’re freaking me out, Erica,” Molly said, her voice oddly blank now that she was starting to get a vague picture of what Erica might be sending her, the kind of thing that might be posted on a gossip blog. “Tell me what’s going on.”
“I’m sending it now. Check your email.”
Molly grabbed her tablet and pulled up her email. As she did, Erica added, “I hope I’m doing the right thing. Molly, if it’s true, it might…it might hurt you.”
“Then it will hurt me,” Molly replied, that same unnatural emptiness in her tone. She tried to mentally prepare herself, imagine the worst thing about Luke she could. “I’d rather know.”
“It might not be anything. It might not even be him.”
“Okay.” Molly waited as Erica’s message pulled up.
Finally, was able to open the attachment. She stared at the photo of a man in a business suit with close-cropped dark hair who had a slender redhead pressed up against the wall. His face wasn’t visible because he was kissing her neck. One of his hands was lifting her thigh around his leg, the way Luke sometimes did with Molly.
“Molly,” Erica asked. “Are you all right?”
“Yeah,” she said, although the word came out as more of a croak. Her hands trembled. Her stomach trembled. Her whole body trembled.
The image was time-stamped that evening, about fifteen minutes ago. Exactly when Molly had been sitting on this couch, wondering if Luke was ever going to come home to her.
She was frozen. Crushed. The way she’d felt four years ago.
Except Baron had never cheated on her.
And this was somehow worse.
Erica began, “I’m going to come over there. I can—”
“No,” Molly interrupted. “Thanks, but don’t. You’re right. It’s probably not him. We can’t see his face. You’re not going to post this if you don’t know it—”
“Of course not. I can let you know if we find out…if you want…”
“Okay.”
When she hung up, she just stared at the picture some more, trying to determine from details like the cut of his trousers and the spread of his shoulders whether it was really Luke. The picture was a little blurry, though. It was impossible to tell.
He might be fucking some other woman as she sat there. He might have been fucking some other woman for the last two weeks.
She shook her head roughly.
Nothing was tying Luke to her but their agreement. He could end their agreement whenever he wanted. He’d never treated her unfairly before. She didn’t think he would have started now.
If he wanted to be with someone else like this—not a call girl, in a public place—he would have told her and they could have gotten a divorce.
Even if he didn’t feel loyalty to her, he would never break a contract.
She just didn’t think he would do this.
She m
anaged to slip on a pair of shoes and cover her lounge set with a belted sweater. Then she had the doorman call her a cab to take her over to Luke’s office.
His office building was nearly empty at this time of night, but the security guard recognized her and let her up to the top floor. She breathed in fast little pants and felt rather nauseated as she walked down the hallway to Luke’s executive suite.
The lights were dim on the floor. His assistant’s desk was empty. Luke’s office door was closed.
He didn’t appear to be there.
But she couldn’t—she just couldn’t—believe he would have done that to her. He might decide he wanted out of their agreement, for any number of reasons, but he would have told her first.
She trusted him at least that much.
So she still felt a glimmer of hope when she knocked on his door.
It swung open so quickly she gave a squeak of surprise.
Luke stood in front of her, his dress shirt wrinkled, his tie pulled loose, and slight shadows under his eyes that made him appear incredibly tired. His expression was tightly confused as he stared at her. “They told me you were coming up. Is everything all right?”
“Can I come in?”
He stepped aside to let her into his office and shut the door behind him, although they seemed to be alone on the floor.
Her knees felt so weak that she sat down in one of the leather side chairs, holding her satchel on her lap.
He was here. And surely he couldn’t have gotten to his office so fast from that club.
Luke sat down in the chair across from her, leaning forward and trying to peer at her face. He looked intently focused, concerned, with an unexpected tension underlying his expression.
“Molly, tell me what’s going on.” He reached out to put a hand on her knee. “I’m assuming, despite the fact that you’re in your pajamas, that you didn’t come by to surprise me with sex, since we’d negotiated that as off-limits.”
Molly’s breath hitched at the dryness in his tone. She knew he was trying to break the tension. “They’re not pajamas,” she insisted, in a valiant but wobbly attempt at wit. “It’s a lounge set.”
He almost smiled and that underlying tension in his expression seemed to relax. “My mistake.” His hand squeezed her knee gently before he pulled it back. “Tell me what’s going on, Molly.”
She licked her lips and managed to say, “I’ll just show you.”
Luke waited rather stiffly as she pulled her tablet out of her satchel and then pulled up the photo again.
She looked away. She didn’t want to see it anymore.
Luke’s face was unreadable, completely still, as he studied it. And he was silent for a long time.
Finally he asked in rough voice, “Who sent this to you?”
“Erica did.” She swallowed hard, wishing she could read something in his tight, stoic face. “Someone sent it in as a tip to her blog.”
“So it wasn’t sent to you directly?”
“No,” she choked, overwhelmed with emotion as all of it seemed to catch up to her. It obviously wasn’t him in this picture. The relief was overwhelming. “They sent it to the blog.”
It wasn’t him kissing someone else.
She knew he wouldn’t have done that to her.
“Molly,” Luke said, suddenly leaning forward and grabbing her shoulder, “Molly, you didn’t think it was me, did you? I’ve been working here all evening. You can ask security. I haven’t left the office since five this morning. You couldn’t think I would have—”
“No,” she said, still feeling ridiculously emotional. “I didn’t think so. I mean, you could have ended our arrangement, if you’d wanted to… I didn’t think you would have…” She looked away, her features working as she tried to keep from crying in relief and the aftermath of her fear.
“It looks like you did think it was me. You did think I had cheated on you.”
“No,” she insisted, straightening up in her chair. “I didn’t really. If I had, I would have just left you. I wouldn’t have come to show you this.”
Luke was silent, scrutinizing her face closely, searchingly, almost frantically.
“Besides,” she added, feeling self-conscious about her responses and trying to sound more natural. “It wouldn’t really have been cheating. I mean, it would be humiliating for me and I wouldn’t like it, but it’s not like we’re…we’re…” She made a vague gesture, waving her hand between them to signify everything they weren’t.
Luke’s brow lowered. “We’re married. We’re having sex. At the very least, it would have been breaking our contract. I hope you can trust me not to do that.”
Molly swallowed hard and stared down at her lap. She did trust him. Things might have gotten kind of weird between them, but there was no reason that would have changed.
A few months ago, she would have just laughed off a picture like this, assuming it was nothing.
She felt a flutter of fear, reminding her that she was treading very dangerous waters.
“Molly,” Luke prompted, reaching out to tilt her chin up so he could see her face.
She nodded. “I do. I do. I don’t know why I even considered it. You were just gone all day for the last two weeks and seemed like you were avoiding me and I…I…” She bit her lip, suddenly terrified she’d revealed too much of her bewildered muddle of feelings.
When she darted her eyes up, she saw Luke still peering at her, as if he were trying to bore into her soul. It made her decidedly nervous.
She cleared her throat. “Why did you want to know if it was sent to me directly?”
“If it was, then there would have been someone who was actively trying to hurt me rather than just someone trying to get on a gossip blog.”
“Hurt you?”
“By damaging my marriage.”
Molly’s lips parted as she processed this. Naturally, if Luke had been married for real, a picture like this, sent to her, could have really caused problems. It almost did even with his fake marriage.
He got up and walked over to pick up his suit coat and pull it on. “Let’s go home.”
She blinked at him. “Don’t you have to work?” He’d been working from five in the morning to midnight every day this week.
“I’ve done enough. Let’s go home.”
He called for a car, and she sat beside him in the backseat. She felt exhausted, relieved, and still kind of shaky. They didn’t talk until Luke reached over and picked up her hand.
For a startled moment, she thought he was going to hold it. Instead he turned it over and looked at the ring finger of her empty left hand.
“I took them off when I took a bath,” she explained, feeling suddenly guilty that he kept catching her without her rings. “I didn’t know I was going back out.”
Luke just nodded. He lowered his hand but didn’t drop hers. So her hand ended up on his lap, where he idly stroked her ring finger with his thumb, right where her rings should have been.
He seemed distracted and unusually quiet. She wasn’t sure why.
She still didn’t know why he’d been working all week long.
“Is everything okay at work?” she asked into the silence.
He darted a surprised look at her. “Yes. Of course. Why?”
“Oh. You were working so much this week. I was just wondering if something was wrong.”
Luke grew very still beside her.
She gave him a sideways glance and took a deep breath. “Were you avoiding me on purpose?”
He hesitated a long time before he answered. “I sometimes get in a mood,” he began carefully, “When it’s better not to be around me.”
He’d been in bad moods before, but usually something prompted them. “Okay. So it’s not about me?”
He looked at her searchingly.
“I mean,” she explained, blushing for no good reason, “I mean, you’re fine with the way things are between us? Our arrangement? You don’t want it to change back to what it was o
r want out or anything?”
“I don’t want it to change back to what it was,” Luke said, very softly. “And I don’t want out.”
She let out her breath, not sure why she was so relieved. Things would almost certainly have been easier and less messy if Luke had decided to end their marriage.
She had to be honest with herself, however, and admit that wasn’t what she wanted.
* * *
When they got home, Molly decided she was hungry, so she got some crackers, cheese, olives, and wine and took them into the living room to sit in front of the television.
Luke came to sit with her, taking off his tie, jacket and shoes. He drank wine and helped her eat her snacks, and they watched a cable news channel until Molly got bored and flipped over to an old movie.
They didn’t say much, but Molly was really glad Luke hadn’t left her alone.
In a way, it reminded her of when her father had died. He’d sat with her then too, without speaking or touching her. As if he didn’t know exactly what he should do, but he wanted her to know he was there if she needed him.
That had been after a year of their marriage, and it might have been the first time she’d realized Luke cared about her as a person. Not that he’d ever treated her badly before, but she’d assumed he could take her or leave her, according to his own needs.
But he had really helped when her father died.
She’d needed him then, even just to sit beside her.
She needed him now too. She felt shaky and needy and confused about everything, and what she really wanted to do was cuddle up against him and seek comfort and security.
She didn’t. Their relationship had never been like that, and it would only further blur lines that were already becoming too fuzzy for her.
Luke was slumped against the back of the sofa, his eyes on the wall-mounted, high-end television. He’d finished his glass of wine and had pushed up the sleeves of his shirt. He looked rumpled and incredibly tired, those dark circles under his eyes standing out even more starkly than before.
She wondered if he’d gotten any sleep at all this week.
“Are you okay?” she asked out of the blue, putting her own wine glass on the coffee table.