Page 19 of Neglected By Her CEO Husband

"What's that supposed to mean."

"You spent eight years being nice for a living. I've heard about the dinners." He said it without any cruelty in it. "It leaks into the work, that's all."

"Ellie tells you a good deal about my life, does she?"

"Enough," he said with a glint in his eyes. "And I have to admit, I looked you up after we met. The tabloids told the rest. Madeline Sterling, trophy wife to the most powerful name in pharmaceuticals. Artist turned socialite, who turns her practiced eye for perfection on canapes and dinner parties."

I sniffed. "Points for honesty, I suppose."

"Wasn't a judgment, just an observation."

"So how do I un-flatten it?" I asked, and meant it.

"You stop painting the window you wish you had and paint the real one." He shrugged. "Or ignore me. I sell sad bus paintings to strangers, what do I know?"

"Sometimes the sad paintings are the most honest ones," I murmured.

"You keep looking at the door," he added. "Every few minutes. You expecting someone?"

"No. Habit. I used to have to be home by ten." I heard how it sounded and laughed. "Well, I suppose have isn't the right word. It was expected. Now I'm not sure anyone else ever noticed."

He was quiet a second. Then he stepped in, close enough to be a question. "Come use the back studio with me. I'll keep the music down. Mostly."

"I'm still married, Kellan." I held up my hand and let the ring catch the light. "Still not decorative."

He put his hands up and stepped back, easy about it. But he didn't quite let it go.

"Fair. I'll behave." He looked at me a beat longer than behaving. "I'll say this once and then drop it. If I had a wife who looked like you and saw things the way you see them, I would not leave her standing alone at a party often enough for some other guy to keep getting the chance. That's all. Whoever's got you isn't paying attention."

I didn't have anything to say back. He saw that, looked briefly sorry, and went to find someone else's glass to fill.

Ellie appeared at my elbow with a bottle. She'd watched the whole thing from across the room.

"He's harmless," she said. "Mostly. He flirts with the paintings too."

"He's not wrong, though. That's the problem."

She didn't ask wrong about what. She topped up my glass and let me not explain.

I finished it and got my coat. The line rode home with me in the back of the hired car, past every stoplight. Whoever's got you isn't paying attention. I'd known it for years. It took a near-stranger at a party to make me stop pretending I didn't.

The lights were on when I got in. Damon was in the kitchen in his work clothes, a glass of something in front of him he wasn't drinking. He'd been home before me, which hadn't happened in weeks. He'd waited up. That was almost worse than the dark house would have been.

He looked up. "Where were you?"

"The gallery. Ellie's show." I set my keys on the counter.

"You've been out every night this week."

"I've been out three nights. I'm surprised you counted." I hung my coat by the door. "I'm surprised you noticed at all, honestly. You've been at the office past midnight since Emily started."

He set the glass down. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"It means what it sounds like. You hired your college girlfriend, you didn't tell me, I found out in a room full of reporters, and now you're there until one in the morning and you want to stand in our kitchen and ask me where I've been?"

"Emily is a colleague."

"I didn't say she wasn't."