Humiliated by Her Billionaire Husband (The Unseen Wives #2)

Chapter 1 – NOELLE

NOELLE

I'd been up since five folding napkins into bishops' mitres because the caterer folded them into fans and fans were wrong for a seated dinner. Nobody else would have noticed. I noticed, and the Calvellis noticed, and noticing was most of what I did for a living.

By seven the house was ready. Thirty-two guests, eight courses, the lilies swapped for peonies after Grant's assistant mentioned Diane Whitford's allergy in a footnote I almost missed.

Place cards hand-lettered because the printer's font was too thin for candlelight.

Wine decanted. The playlist adjusted so the Martinellis wouldn't have to sit through soft rock they'd complained about at the last one.

Grant was supposed to be home at six. At six-forty I got a text from his driver: twenty minutes. No apology, no context. The driver texted because Grant didn't think to, and the driver had learned over three years that someone should.

I checked the dining room one more time.

Moved a water glass half an inch to the left.

The table looked like a magazine spread, which was the idea, because Calvelli dinners were either magazine spreads or failures and there was nothing in between.

I'd learned that at my first one, a bride of three weeks watching Vivienne dismantle a florist over the phone while the guests were still arriving.

I'd learned most things about this family by watching.

Grant walked in at seven-twelve, guests due at seven-thirty.

He came through the kitchen, which meant he'd used the side entrance to avoid the setup in the front hall, which meant he hadn't seen the front hall, which meant I'd spent four hours on an entrance he'd never walk through.

He looked good. He always looked good. Tall, clean-jawed, his shirt cuffs folded once, the watch his father left him.

He had dark hair, darker eyes, and a face like a Roman statue.

He scanned the dining room from the doorway while loosening his tie, and I waited for him to say something about the peonies or the place cards or the four hours or the bishops' mitres.

"Did you put the Whitfords with the Langs?"

"Opposite ends of the table," I said. "They argued about the school board thing in March."

"Camille would have put them together. She always said people eat better when they're arguing."

He said it the way he said most things about Camille, like he was quoting a textbook he'd memorized years ago and still considered the standard reference.

Not to be cruel. I'd given up thinking it was cruelty around the end of our first year, because cruelty requires the target to be visible, and I don't think Grant saw me when he said her name.

He saw the dinner party Camille would have thrown, the room Camille would have arranged, the evening running on Camille's instinct instead of my research.

I was standing in a sketch someone else was supposed to have colored in.

"The Whitfords with the Langs would have been a disaster," I said.

"Probably." He was already moving toward the stairs. "I need ten minutes. Is my charcoal suit pressed?"

"It's on the bed."

"Thank you, Noelle." He took the stairs two at a time, and the thank-you sat in the kitchen behind him like a tip left on a counter.

The guests came. I worked the room. I'd gotten good at this, three years of practice at a skill I'd never asked to develop.

I knew the names, the marriages, the minor grievances, who to seat near the bar and who to steer away from it.

I put Arthur Martinelli next to Grant because Arthur was loud and generous and made Grant look warm by proximity.

I intercepted the Whitfords at the door and complimented Diane's earrings, which were new, which I knew because I followed her Instagram for exactly this reason.

Grant was good at dinners too, but differently.

He was good because he was handsome and because people wanted to be near him and because he could make a boardroom anecdote sound like a confidence.

I was good because I'd memorized which guests were lactose intolerant and made sure the kitchen had alternatives plated before anyone had to ask.

His good was visible. Mine kept the room from noticing anything at all.

Camille would have been good the way Grant was good. That was the point. That was always the point.

She wasn't there. She was rarely at the dinners anymore, which was its own kind of presence, because Grant mentioned her absence the way you mention a missing painting in a room you know well.

She and Lucien had "a thing," which could mean anything from a gala to an argument to Lucien drinking through another Thursday, and the vagueness was Camille's signature.

She stayed vague so you'd fill in the gaps with whatever you needed her to be.

My phone buzzed at nine-fifteen. Camille.

How's the dinner? Did you use the peonies?

She'd suggested the peonies a week ago, casually, when I'd mentioned Diane's allergy.

She was helpful like that. Always a suggestion, a little nudge, delivered in the voice of a sister who just wanted things to go well.

If you only heard the words, she was generous.

If you watched the pattern, she was stage-directing from offstage, and every suggestion left her fingerprints on a room she wasn't in.

I typed back: Going well. Peonies look great. Thanks for the idea.

She sent a heart emoji. I put my phone in my pocket and refilled Arthur Martinelli's wine.

At eleven the last car pulled away. The caterers packed up.

The staff cleared the dining room while I walked through doing the count, glasses, silverware, the small inventory you do when the pieces are worth more than your monthly budget used to be before you married into this.

One of the Waterford stems had a residue line the dishwasher hadn't caught.

I took it to the kitchen and washed it by hand, the warm water and the thin glass and the quiet house.

Grant was already upstairs. I'd heard the shower twenty minutes ago.

He would be in bed by now, reading, the lamp on his side, his back to the door.

When I came in he'd say goodnight without looking up.

Some nights he'd ask how the cleanup went, and I'd say fine, and he'd say good, and we'd both lie there in the dark in a bed big enough that we never had to touch.

Three years. Three years of this, and I couldn't point to a single thing he'd done wrong, which was the genius of it.

He provided. He didn't cheat. He didn't raise his voice.

He came to the dinners and stood where I told him and thanked me the way you thank someone who holds a door.

If I'd tried to explain it to anyone they'd have said I was lucky.

My own father would have said I was lucky, and meant it, because my father measured marriages by what they delivered on a spreadsheet and ours delivered on every line.

The water was still running in the sink. I turned it off and dried the glass and put it back in the cabinet with the others, twelve stems in a row, Waterford, a wedding gift from Vivienne. I dried my hands and hung the towel straight and stood in the kitchen alone.

Upstairs, Grant turned off his light. I heard the click from down here because the house was that quiet.

I could have gone up. It was my bedroom too, technically, the way this was my kitchen and my house and my marriage, all technically, all on paper, all mine like a hotel room is yours for the night.

Instead I walked through the garden doors and stood outside in the cold for a minute.

The garden was dark, but I knew it by feel, the raised beds I'd designed, the Japanese maple I'd argued for because the landscaper wanted a magnolia and I'd wanted something that turned, something that changed with the seasons instead of blooming once and staying the same.

Grant didn't know I'd designed the garden. He thought the landscaper did it. He'd never asked.

I went inside, locked the doors, turned off the kitchen lights, and went upstairs to the bedroom where my husband was already asleep.

I changed in the bathroom so I wouldn't wake him, which was a politeness he'd never requested and would never notice, and I got into my side of the bed and lay in the dark.

Tomorrow I'd confirm the Saturday brunch with his mother.

I'd send the follow-up thank-yous to all thirty-two guests with a personal note in each one.

I'd call the caterer about the napkins. I'd check whether the Martinellis' anniversary was this month or next and send the right flowers on Grant's behalf, because Grant didn't know when their anniversary was.

Grant didn't know when ours was, either, unless his assistant flagged it.

I lay there and I listened to my husband breathe and I thought about nothing at all, because thinking took energy I needed for tomorrow, and tomorrow there would be more napkins to fold.