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Damn, she was hard to read.

I made two more omelets. One for Jovie and one for myself. Right before I took my plate to the table, Chester and Vincent returned to the apartment and made themselves right at home.

I felt a tick start up in my temple as I watched Chester casually take the seat next to my wife.

The only empty seat left next to her, as Jovie had her other side.

The bastard had some nerve.

He seemed to notice me for the first time. He grinned. He leaned back, kicking the chair opposite him out from underneath the table. “Here ya go, boss.”

The tick intensified. I tried my best not to react. I calmly sat and started eating.

“What are our plans for today, Duchess?” Chester asked my wife. He was smiling fondly at her, looking directly into her eyes.

And her. She was smiling back at him with unabashed warmth! Vaguely I heard my fork clatter onto my plate. I glanced down. My hands were both in fists.

I looked around the table. Chester and Vincent were looking at her with unmistakable affection.

Like they were one big happy family.

What the hell was happening here? These men were paid to guard and drive my money hungry wife. Yet here they were acting like she was a Disney fucking princess and they were a couple of mice about to burst into song.

My wife was speaking, answering his question, but I couldn’t hear her over the roaring in my ears. Chester said something and she laughed. It was a real laugh, beautiful and genuine, and I hated that she was laughing like that for him.

Eventually I got the word out that had lodged itself in my throat. It came out in a loud growl that burst through the room and interrupted the happy little fucking exchange. “Duchess?” I asked.

Her face froze. Her smile fell. She flushed. “It’s a nickname,” she explained. “I’m not even sure how it started. Chester’s just always called me that.”

I looked at him. He met my eyes, not backing down whatsoever. “Doesn’t it suit her?” he asked casually. Insolently. “She always struck me as a proper lady.”

“It’s perfect,” Jovie piped in. My gaze swung to her. She was smiling with some sort of keyed up, wicked glee. “She’s a total, extra as fuck Duchess. You nailed it, Chester.”

Abruptly I stood. “I’m late for a meeting,” I said. A cursory excuse, though it might have been true. I couldn’t remember any of my plans. It had been a strange, completely out of my control morning. I took that control back by leaving without another word.

“Have a great day, Banks!” Jovie shouted cheerfully at my swiftly retreating back.

CHAPTER

TWENTY

NOURA

After my husband left like my apartment had caught fire, I didn’t expect to hear from him again anytime soon.

I tried not to think of him again that day, but when I did my lips and fingers trembled. If I didn’t turn my mind in another direction, the shaking moved to my hands, my arms, my shoulders. Usually I had enough self-control to stop it there, but in weak moments, when I let my mind stick on messy thoughts of him, it kept going, that trembling. It throbbed through me, always unpleasant at first, but if I let it keep going, let it move to my chest, the tips of my breasts, to my churning stomach, my aching loins, that’s when it became truly disturbing and not so very unpleasant at all.

And worse, my mind kept going back to the way he’d stood up for me with Asha. Why had he done that?

And why did it weaken me so? It didn’t change anything. One kind act didn’t change the hard facts: My husband held my whole life in his careless hands, and he did not feel one soft thing toward me.

Luckily I had a busy day. I didn’t have two spare seconds to rub together. It helped.

I was one of the lucky models selected for the VS fashion show. It was the runway event of the year. The most televised, viewed, obsessed over walk in the world. And, thanks to my fake marriage and newfound fame, I’d been selected to model two looks.

The show was coming up in mere days, and prep was well underway. The fittings lasted more than ten hours, and I was utterly exhausted by the end.

Presumable, it may have been a shorter day if not for a drawn out argument between the VS people and mine. I heard (indirectly—through Asha, of course) that my husband (or my handlers, it was never clear which) wanted me to only model all white/cream looks that covered X amount of my skin, and they were insisting on full approval rights.