Her Husband's Best Friend Stole Her LIfe (Can this Marriage Survive #6)

Chapter 1

Ella O’Donnell was standing barefoot in her kitchen, trying to decide whether the sauce needed more salt, when Noah came up behind her and slid both arms around her waist.

“You’re doing that face again,” he murmured.

“What face?”

“The one where the sauce has somehow become about your character as a person.”

“The sauce is about my character as a person.” Ella leaned back into him, wooden spoon still in one hand.

“Your best friend is coming over after what you described as ‘a terrible day,’ which could mean anything from she had a bad meeting to she witnessed a felony, because you and Lara both communicate in dramatic monologues.”

Noah laughed against her hair. “No felony. I don’t think.”

“You don’t think?”

“She said she didn’t want to talk about it over text.”

Ella stirred the tomato sauce and tried not to let the little pinch in her stomach become anything large enough to name.

Lara Collins was not the sort of woman who “didn’t want to talk over text” unless something had truly gone wrong.

Usually Lara’s texts were bright, sharp little things full of commentary and perfectly placed profanity.

She could make a parking ticket sound like a scene from a revenge comedy.

Noah had been quieter since the message came in. He had moved through the house with his phone in his hand, checking it too often, his thumb brushing over the dark screen.

Ella had noticed because in eleven months of living together, she had learned the moods he denied having and the silences that meant more than the words he did say.

“She’ll tell us when she gets here,” Ella said.

Noah kissed the side of her neck. “You’re good to her.”

“I like her.”

“I know.”

He sounded grateful in a way that warmed her, though it made her nudge him lightly with her elbow. “Don’t use that voice. It makes it sound like liking Lara is some noble sacrifice.”

“It’s not?”

Ella turned her head, narrowing her eyes. “Noah.”

He smiled, the one that bracketed his mouth and softened everything stern in his face. “Kidding.”

“You adore her.”

“I do. But Lara can be…a lot.”

“Most interesting people are a lot.”

“You say that because you’re nice.”

“I say that because I’m a therapist’s daughter and my mother taught me that ‘a lot’ usually means someone got punished for having feelings.”

Noah groaned. “I forget how dangerous you are with one glass of wine and a childhood anecdote.”

“I haven’t even had the wine yet.”

“God help us all.”

She laughed, and he tightened his arms around her for another second before letting go. The absence of his body behind hers left a cool place down her back. He reached over her shoulder, dipped a piece of bread into the sauce, and burned his fingers.

“Hot,” he hissed.

“It’s on the stove, genius.”

“Victim-blaming.”

Ella caught his hand and kissed the knuckle he had burned. “Set the table.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

He took two plates from the open shelf, then paused. “Three plates. Right.”

Ella watched him reach for the third. She loved their little house in West Hartford with its uneven floors and drafty windows.

The dining room table they had found at an estate sale and refinished together over one sticky August weekend.

The wedding binder currently occupying the sideboard because they had run out of empty surfaces.

Noah moving through the kitchen in shirtsleeves, competent, and beloved, and hers.

The doorbell rang at seven.

Ella wiped her hands on a towel. “I’ll get it.”

Lara stood on the porch with a bottle of wine in one hand and a smile that made an effort to be normal.

She wore a camel coat tied too tightly at the waist, her blond hair twisted into a low knot at the back of her neck.

There was nothing messy about her. Lara was not messy, generally.

Even when she was late, she arrived with lipstick on and some cutting observation ready.

Even when she complained, she did it with polish.

Tonight, though, her face looked pale beneath the porch light, and the skin around her eyes had that strained, tender look people got when they had cried carefully and then fixed the evidence.

“Hi,” Lara said.

“Hi.” Ella softened immediately. “Come in. It’s freezing.”

“It’s not that cold.”

“You’re shaking.”

Lara glanced down as if surprised to find her own hand trembling around the wine bottle. “Oh. That’s embarrassing.”

“No, it’s not.” Ella stepped aside. “Give me that.”

Lara handed over the bottle, then came in with a breath that seemed to catch halfway down. Noah appeared behind Ella just as Lara was unwinding her scarf.

For one second, no one spoke.

Then Noah said, quietly, “How are you, Lar.”

The sound of the nickname was simple. Familiar. It took up no more space than one syllable. But it changed Lara’s face.

Her mouth trembled.

She pressed her lips together quickly, almost angrily, and shook her head. “Don’t.”

Noah crossed the hall and wrapped his arms around her.

Ella looked away, not because there was anything wrong with it, but because the moment felt private in a way grief sometimes did.

Lara stood stiffly at first, her hands lifted as if she did not know where to put them.

Then she folded into him. Just a small collapse, the kind that happened when someone had held herself upright all day and finally found a safe place to lean.

Ella set the wine on the console table and gave them a moment.

When Lara pulled back, she laughed under her breath and swiped at the corner of one eye. “Well. Very elegant entrance.”

“You’re allowed,” Noah said.

“I know, but I prefer to be tragic with better lighting.”

“There’s candlelight in the dining room,” Ella offered. “Very forgiving.”

Lara looked at her then and her expression shifted into something grateful enough to make Ella’s chest hurt.

“Thank you for having me,” Lara said.

“Of course.”

Dinner began with normal things. Noah poured wine.

Lara complimented the sauce. Ella made Noah sit down instead of hovering with the parmesan like a restaurant waiter trying to earn a review.

The candles burned steadily between them, catching in the glassware and turning the windows black around their reflections.

Lara told them about a woman at work who had replied-all to a confidential email and then tried to recall it, as if email recall had ever worked once in the history of offices.

Noah told a story about his client who insisted the phrase “user-friendly interface” meant the website should “feel more humble.” Ella described the florist appointment that morning, where a woman named Bethany had said “wild but intentional” eight times and then shown her a centerpiece that appeared to have been frightened by its own branches.

Lara laughed at that. Ella relaxed into it.

She had been worried the whole meal would have that careful hospital-room quality, everyone speaking softly around a wound.

But Lara, whatever had happened, clearly wanted to be treated like herself.

Ella could respect that. She liked that about Lara, actually.

The refusal to dissolve into other people’s pity.

“You need to watch this Bethany woman,” Lara said, twirling pasta around her fork. “Anyone who says ‘wild but intentional’ that much is one step away from charging you four hundred dollars for sticks.”

“That is exactly what Noah said.”

Noah lifted his glass. “I know a sticks racket when I see one.”

“It wasn’t sticks,” Ella said. “It was textural greenery.”

Lara pointed at her. “You’ve been compromised.”

“I have a vision.”

“You have a binder.” Noah nodded toward the sideboard. “A binder with tabs.”

“Organization is not a crime.”

“There are sub-tabs.”

“They’re useful.”

“They’re color coded.”

Lara leaned back in her chair, smiling. “I love that you have a wedding binder.”

“Thank you,” Ella said, vindicated.

“No, I mean I love it. It’s very you.” Lara reached for her wine. “Competent. Warm. Slightly terrifying in a pastel way.”

Ella laughed. “I’ll take that.”

“She has an entire section for music,” Noah said. “Not songs. Music as a philosophical category.”

“That’s because you said you didn’t care what we walked down the aisle to, and then you vetoed every piece of music I played.”

“I have reactions. That’s different from opinions.”

“You called one song emotionally manipulative.”

“It brought in a children’s choir halfway through.”

“It was sweet.”

“It was blackmail with violins.”

Lara smiled into her glass. “He hates children’s choirs.”

Ella looked over. “You do?”

Noah shrugged. “I don’t hate them.”

“You do,” Lara said. “Seventh grade winter concert. You said a child singing earnestly made you feel like you were being grounded for something you didn’t do..”

Noah choked on his wine.

Ella stared at him. “You were like this in seventh grade?”

“I was precocious.”

“He was insufferable,” Lara said fondly.

“Everyone is insufferable in seventh grade.”

“Not like Noah.”

He threw a balled-up napkin at her. She caught it one-handed, victorious.

It was sweet, Ella thought. The two of them. Their ridiculous shared archive. There was something comforting about loving a man who had been known by someone good for such a long time. Someone who could confirm he had always beend kind and thoughtful.

Still, she felt a faint pang, not jealousy exactly. More like standing outside a room where people were laughing and knowing there was no cruelty in the fact that you had not been there.

Noah caught her eye and reached under the table for her hand.

The pang disappeared.

His thumb moved once over her engagement ring, a little private touch that steadied something in her she had not realized needed steadying.

“So,” he said after a while, his hand still around Ella’s. “Are you going to tell us what happened?”

The humor at the table thinned.

Lara looked down at her plate.

Ella felt Noah’s hand tighten.

For several seconds, Lara only turned the stem of her wineglass between her fingers. When she finally spoke, her voice had lost all its shine.

“Evan ended it.”

“Oh, Lara,” Ella said softly. “I’m sorry.”