The Sapphire That Cost Him His Wife (After She Walked Away #3)

Chapter 1

Ivy

Before tonight is over, my husband will stand in front of the cameras and tell the world we’ve been separated for some time.

First, he’ll be inside me on the dresser, telling me he loves me.

* * *

The florist has wired twelve white roses upside down, Beatrice’s medication is six minutes late, and someone has seated a gossip columnist beside the chairman he once called “a tax deduction in a tuxedo.”

I fix the roses first. They are the only crisis that cannot sue us.

“Move Ellison to table nine,” I tell the seating coordinator through my headset. “Put Mrs. Bell beside him. She owns enough Ashford stock to make him behave.”

The ballroom smells like cut gardenias, hot wiring, and the industrial lemon polish this hotel uses whenever three hundred rich people are expected to admire the floors.

Beatrice’s nurse appears at the service door. “Mrs. Ashford had another dizzy spell.”

I drop my clipboard to my side. “How bad?”

“Brief. Her blood pressure is settling. I’m taking her upstairs to rest.”

Beatrice is eighty-two and furious whenever her body remembers it. Tonight she was supposed to wear the Ashford sapphire, thank me for six years of work, and pull me into the formal family photograph herself.

“The speech and photograph can wait,” I say. “Text me if she needs anything.”

Emma would normally argue that her grandmother needs rest more than another photograph, but she and Daniel are out of town finalizing a wedding detail.

I solve the seating problem, approve the corrected flowers, and take the private elevator upstairs to change with twenty-three minutes left before guest arrival.

Gabriel steps into the elevator before the doors close.

“You have a ballroom downstairs,” I say.

“It appears to be running without me.” His hand settles at my waist. “Barely.”

The doors open into the top-floor suite. I cross the sitting room, kick off my work shoes, and reach for the zipper at the back of my black dress.

Gabriel closes the bedroom door.

The click changes the room.

Downstairs, I am the woman fixing his family’s mistakes. In here, he looks at me like I am the only thing in the hotel he didn’t inherit.

He comes up behind me and moves my hair over one shoulder. His mouth finds the place below my ear.

“You followed me twenty-eight floors for that?”

“No.” His teeth graze my skin. “For what happens next.”

I turn, catch his bow tie in my fist, and kiss my husband.

Six years have taught us where to hold, how hard to pull, which sound means more and which movement means wait. His palms slide down my back as I undo his bow tie.

“We have eighteen minutes,” he says.

“Then stop talking.”

He laughs, low and real.

I push his jacket from his shoulders. He drags my zipper down while I open his collar, and the dress falls around my feet.

His gaze moves over the black lace I chose because I knew he would see it tonight.

I take his hand and press it to my breast.

“Ivy.” My name comes out rough.

“We are down to sixteen minutes.”

He lifts me onto the dresser. A tray of cuff links rattles behind me as his mouth closes around my nipple through the lace. I open my legs and drag him closer.

His fingers slip beneath my panties. The first slow stroke is almost cruel after a day spent solving problems with my body held tight and useful. I rock against his hand, chasing more, and his thumb presses harder when my nails bite into his shoulder.

I bite his lower lip and work his belt open. My hand closes around his cock, hot and rigid, and his forehead drops to mine.

“Still charming?” he asks.

I stroke him once. “Undecided.”

He hooks my panties aside and kneels. His tongue finds me, and my thighs tighten around his shoulders. I pull his hair, tilt against his mouth, and he follows the movement with two fingers deep inside me.

The eighteen minutes disappear. So does the ballroom. There is only his mouth, his hand, and the dresser hard beneath my palms.

“Gabriel.”

He doesn’t slow down. I come against his tongue, my heels digging into his back, his name breaking out of me again.

He rises and kisses the inside of my knee before standing between my legs.

I reach blindly for the nightstand, find the familiar packet, and tear it open. My hands are not steady when I roll the condom onto him. His are worse when I hook my legs around his hips and pull him between my thighs.

He gives me one slow inch. I take the rest, dragging him close until he is fully inside me.

For one second, neither of us moves.

His hand cups the side of my face. “I love you.”

“I love you too.”

I mean it. That is the simple part.

I roll my hips. He braces one hand beside me and thrusts deep. The dresser knocks against the wall. Once. Again. The sound should remind me that people are waiting downstairs.

It does not.

All the careful words I use in public burn down to his name. He catches the broken sound and drives into me harder, his hand sliding between us.

He always listens in rooms with closed doors.

The thought barely forms before the climax tears through me. I lock around him, heels digging into his back, and take everything he gives me.

His control breaks two strokes later. He buries his face against my neck and comes with my name against my skin.

By the time my pulse begins to slow, Gabriel is back between my knees with a warm washcloth and water. My thighs are still shaking. Lace is twisted at my waist. He cares for me without ceremony, with familiar hands and a tenderness no one downstairs will ever see.

Then he finds the emerald gown hanging by the window.

“You planned this,” he says, taking in the gown and the lingerie currently on his carpet.

“I planned for after the gala.”

“I improved the schedule.”

I drink, then set the glass down. “Beatrice still intends to thank me tonight. And put me in the formal photograph.”

“Good.” He raises the zipper of my gown.

I meet his reflection in the mirror. “What about Celeste?”

“Your mother has been pairing you with her in photographs for three years,” I say. “Tonight is supposed to be different.”

“It will be.” He turns me and smooths one thumb over my cheek. “After the gala, I make the boundary clear. No more paired arrivals. No more foundation-host photographs. And tonight, you are not standing outside the cameras.”

I want to be done asking. So I kiss him once, put my work shoes back on, and return to the ballroom beside my husband.

Helena separates us before the first flash.

“Foundation protocol,” she says, guiding Celeste into the space at Gabriel’s right. “The co-hosts receive the major donors together.”

Celeste wears silver. Of course she does. It catches every camera in the room and makes my green gown look like scenery.

Gabriel glances at me over her shoulder.

One small step would fix it. His hand at my back. My name spoken clearly. A simple, public, This is my wife.

“We’ll correct it at the family photograph,” he says under the camera shutters.

Another later.

I move away before anyone can photograph me waiting to be invited into my own marriage.

Near the dressing suite, Lila is arguing with a young camera assistant beside a floral stand.

“Guests keep blocking the setup shot,” she says.

“I’ll raise the wide-angle.” He climbs one rung of a service ladder and shifts a small camera behind the upper hydrangeas, closer to the side service entrance.

Its red indicator glows, then goes black.

He taps the casing. “Dead again. I’ll leave it through setup and toss it in the unused box at teardown. ”

“Fine. We have three other cameras.” Lila sees me and winces. “Please don’t tell me the flowers are wrong.”

“The flowers are innocent.”

Official hotel security covers the main corridor, not the dressing room or its service entrance. Privacy is important when the people changing clothes own newspapers.

I point the assistant toward a safer ladder position. Helena is watching me.

“Emma’s little inn experiment has created a great deal of extra work,” she says.

“Seabriar is not Emma’s experiment.”

“No, I suppose it’s yours. After the wedding, perhaps you’ll finally tire of it.”

“After the wedding is when Seabriar truly begins.”

Her smile disappears.

Celeste, standing beside her, looks past me to Gabriel. The movement is quick, but not quick enough.

“Beatrice is still doing the formal photograph, isn’t she?” Celeste asks.

“When she feels well enough.”

“And you’re joining it?”

“That is usually what happens when a grandmother asks for her granddaughter-in-law.”

Celeste lifts her champagne. “Usually.”

Across the room, Gabriel is still standing in the silver reflection of her empty place.

I tell myself the formal photograph will be different.

I have been very talented at believing in later.

* * *

Beatrice’s nurse texts me twelve minutes later.

Her pressure is normalizing. She wants the backup medication nearby before she returns.

Before I can answer, Helena appears at my elbow. “The silver toiletry case is in the dressing suite. Would you bring it up to Mother?”

“I know where it is.”

“Of course you do.”

There are compliments that leave fingerprints.

I cross the main corridor, nod to the security guard outside the dressing suite, and set my satin clutch on the preparation table while I search. The silver case is behind a box of spare place cards. I take it upstairs, confirm the dosage with the nurse, and return to the ballroom.

My clutch stays where I left it. I am still wearing a headset, still carrying my work list, still solving three other people’s emergencies with both hands.

The band has just begun its second set when Helena walks onto the small stage and signals for the music to stop.

“We have a private family matter,” she says.

Nothing announced through a ballroom microphone is private.

Guests turn toward her. Staff freeze along the walls. Celeste stands near the dressing-suite doors with one hand pressed to her collarbone.

Helena’s voice remains calm. “The Ashford sapphire necklace is missing.”

The room changes direction all at once. Heads turn. Phones rise. Two reporters leave the media table before security can block the aisle.