Chapter Eighteen
EVERETT
It's been three days.
Three days of not sleeping properly because Aria is too close and my body has apparently decided that proximity to my wife is now its favorite form of torture.
Three days of her leaving the villa in soft sundresses with her leather satchel over one shoulder, humming under her breath like she isn't dismantling my peace one French melody at a time.
Three days of her coming back with paint on her fingers and sunlight in her hair and a smile still caught at the edge of her mouth, like France has reached into her and dragged something long-buried back into the light.
Three days of seeing her at night in one of my T-shirts, bare legs, damp hair, and sleep-heavy eyes, moving around the bedroom like she belongs there.
Three days since the pool.
Three days since she found me doing laps in the middle of the night and asked if we were having separate honeymoons in the same villa.
Three days since I told her yes, more or less, that was exactly how this worked.
Three days since I said goodnight to Aria and watched her walk away, then got back in the pool and swam hard enough to punish myself for it.
None of this has improved my judgment.
Or my mood.
Or my ability to stop thinking about her.
The espresso machine hisses on the kitchen counter while my phone buzzes beside it.
Jeremy.
I answer without much warmth. "What."
"Good morning to you too."
I pour coffee into a cup and brace a hand against the marble. The villa is still quiet, sunlight just beginning to stretch across the terrace outside, the sea beyond it so indecently blue it looks fake.
"What do you need?"
"The Beijing proposal needs your review today," Jeremy says. I can hear keyboard clicks in the background, the usual efficient rhythm of him moving through five things at once. "And I sent over the top resumes for the Hawkeyes Head of PR candidates last night. I flagged three that seem strongest."
"I saw them."
"Have you looked through them?"
"No."
"Would you like me to narrow the list further?"
"If I wanted it narrower, I'd have asked."
"Understood."
That's Jeremy's gift. Never offended. Never rattled. Always just useful enough to fade into the machinery around me.
He goes on. "Also, the trustees requested a copy of the marriage license again."
I go still.
"Again?"
"Yes." Another small pause. "The copy just came into the office. I'll have a courier bring it over to the villa this afternoon."
I take a sip of coffee and stare out toward the terrace.
"They already have the filing confirmation."
"They asked for the physical copy."
I don't answer.
Jeremy does.
"They seemed impatient."
There it is.
The pressure, slipped in like an ordinary update.
I set the cup down a little harder than necessary. "Fine. Send it."
"Of course." Then, almost as an afterthought, "You're still on for dinner with Pierre and his wife tomorrow evening. Seven-thirty. Paris. Sienna confirmed museum access may be possible depending on his connections."
That gets my attention in a different direction.
Aria's face flickers through my head instantly. The museum. The look she tried to hide when Gabriel mentioned the opening.
"Let me know if Pierre replies before then."
"I will."
The line ends there.
Efficient. Clean. Precisely how my mornings are supposed to begin.
Instead of feeling productive, I stand in the middle of the kitchen with coffee in one hand and the uncomfortable certainty that my entire life now feels like it's being watched from too many angles at once.
I’m rinsing the cup when the phone buzzes again.
Not Jeremy.
Not Everly.
Genevieve Holiday.
My jaw tightens before I’ve read a word.
Your wife has been photographed several times this week in Cannes.
In each instance, she appears to be alone.
I understand that work follows you everywhere, Everett—believe me, I watched your father operate the same way for thirty years.
But a woman alone on her honeymoon is not a good look for a married couple.
The board notices these things. I’m sure you understand.
I read it twice.
The tone is pure Genevieve. She isn’t threatening—she’s informing. The way a referee informs you that your foot was over the line. No malice. Just the rules.
The board notices these things.
I lock the phone and slide it into my pocket.
Then I look toward the terrace, toward the path that leads down to the road, toward town, toward wherever Aria is right now with her satchel and her paints and her habit of being visible in all the places she thinks no one notices her.
But she’d be wrong… everyone notices her.
Every man with at least two brain cells, and every woman smart enough to be jealous.
I grab my jacket.
The trustees.
Jeremy.
The board.
And Aria, who has not once mentioned the pool conversation in three days, which somehow makes it worse.
I tell myself I'm going into town because I need air.
Because I need to get away from the villa for an hour before I start answering emails like a man whose patience has worn through.
I am not going out to find her. Or at least that’s the lie I tell myself. A lie that gets me almost all the way to the promenade.
Then I see her.
She's outside the gallery, talking to Gabriel Amaury… And laughing.
It’s not a laugh for his benefit, or something politely amused.
It’s a real laugh.
Gabriel is standing too close in a way that tells me he’s rarely ever been asked to step back.
He stands with the confidence of a man who is used to women welcoming his nearness.
One hand around a coffee cup. The other resting lightly on her arm while he says something else that earns another laugh from her.
My brain clocks the contact automatically.
His hand on her arm wouldn’t be considered obscene to anyone passing by, but it’s testing the patience of the man she’s married to.
Aria turns and sees me first.
"Everett."
Gabriel follows her gaze and smiles as if he’s used to people finding him charming.
"Mr. Kauffman."
I step up onto the curb. "Amaury."
Aria looks between us, probably catching the tension before she understands where it's coming from. "Gabriel was just telling me about a museum opening in Paris tomorrow night."
Something in her voice changes around the words museum opening. Brightens. Warms. Comes alive.
I look at her instead of him.
Gabriel nods. "A private preview. One of the featured painters is apparently a favorite of your wife's."
Tomorrow night.
I know exactly what tomorrow night is.
Aria does not.
"Tomorrow?" she says, and the excitement comes first. Quick and unguarded. Then reality catches up and dims it. "Oh."
Gabriel hears it too. "I'd get you a ticket if I could, but I barely got one myself. A former student works with the museum and is bringing me."
Aria gives him a small smile, the kind she uses when she's trying to make disappointment look graceful. "It doesn't matter anyway. We already have dinner with one of Everett's business associates and his wife tomorrow night. We wouldn't make it."
It doesn't matter.
It matters.
That look.
I've seen smaller versions of it for months now.
The first time I grimaced after tasting the coffee she made and watched her try not to react.
The day I told her her position at the Hawkeyes was an unnecessary duplication.
Every quiet moment where she wanted something and decided to smooth the wanting away before anyone had to acknowledge it.
She wants to go.
She has already decided not to ask.
My phone is in my hand before I consciously decide to reach for it.
I text Pierre.
Do you have connections at the museum in Paris? I need a favor.
I send it and put the phone away again.
Gabriel says, "Come. I want to show you the piece I mentioned."
Aria follows him toward the gallery entrance, still listening, still bright, still open in a way that makes me feel like I'm standing outside something I want and don't know how to ask for.
I should leave.
I don't.
Instead I drift closer to the gallery window, drawn by the pull in my chest that won’t shut up.
The front room is visible through the glass—tall ceilings, pale walls, careful lighting. A few pieces already hung for the upcoming show. And there, on the far wall where the light falls just right, is a painting I've never seen before.
I know it's me immediately.
A faceless man in a dark suit standing before a floor-to-ceiling window, phone to his ear.
Broad shoulders. Rigid posture. The skyline rendered in cold blues behind him.
A desk visible at the edge of the frame.
Glass everywhere—the window, the reflections, the sense of a man sealed inside something transparent and inescapable.
My chest locks.
Because I know that room.
That's the penthouse. That's my conference room. That's the exact view from the chair where Aria sat across from me and signed a contract that reduced our lives to clauses and timelines and careful, clinical language.
That's how she saw me.
Not across a dinner table. Not in a doorway. Not in any of the moments since that might have softened the image.
That day. That version. The man behind the glass who looked at her like a line item.
"You're drawn to this one."
I turn.
A young woman—gallery staff, based on the lanyard and the careful posture—has appeared beside me. She follows my gaze toward the painting with the kind of proprietary pride people get when they're excited about something they had no part in creating.
"It's stunning, isn't it?" she says. "Everyone who comes in stops at that one. There's something about it—haunting, I think. The loneliness in it."
I say nothing.
She doesn't seem to need me to.