Chapter 4
Blake returned to the penthouse because hell had an address and apparently it was his bedroom.
The apartment had been cleaned. Someone, likely his housekeeper, had stripped the bed and opened the windows.
The city air cut through the rooms with damp July heat, but beneath it Blake still smelled Lily's perfume.
He wanted to rip out the walls. Instead, he stood in the bedroom doorway and forced himself to look. This was where Angela had found them.
This was where Lily had sat in his shirt.
This was where his wife had taken off her ring.
His hand moved to his pocket. Angela's diamond was there, wrapped in a handkerchief like something too fragile for his skin.
Blake heard the elevator and turned walking toward the living room with hope blooming in chest. It died when Lily stepped into the penthouse as if she still had the right.
She wore a soft pink dress and no coat, her hair loose, her face pale. In her hand was a small clutch Angela had once complimented. Blake remembered because Angela had leaned close at a dinner and whispered that Lily had good taste when she wasn’t trying so hard to borrow someone else's.
"Get out," Blake said.
Lily stopped. "I wanted to check on you."
"You wanted to get back inside."
Her eyes filled. "That's cruel."
"Yes."
The tears paused. She hadn’t expected him to agree.
Blake walked toward her. Not close enough to touch. He didn’t want to touch her. The thought made his skin crawl.
"You’re not welcome here."
"Blake, after what happened, we need to talk."
"Nothing about last night gives you the right to walk into my home."
Her face crumpled. "Your home? I thought you said you felt like a stranger here half the time."
The words hit too close because he had said something like that. Not that. Not exactly. But enough. God, he had given her pieces. Frustrations. Complaints. Moments of weakness he had mistaken for harmless because they hadn’t been bodies in a bed. Angela was right.
Lily saw the recognition and moved toward it like blood in water.
"She never listens to you," Lily said softly. "Not really. She loves the version of you who stands beside her and makes everything look perfect, but when you're tired, when you're angry, when you need someone not to judge you, she turns cold."
"Stop."
"I didn't make you lonely."
"No." Blake's voice came out hoarse. "I did that. And then I was stupid enough to let you pretend you could fix it."
The hurt vanished from Lily's eyes so quickly he wondered how he had ever believed it.
"You think this is all me?"
"I think you knew exactly what you were doing."
"I knew you were miserable."
"I was married."
"You were neglected."
"I was married," he repeated, louder this time. "And if my marriage was hurting, I owed that truth to my wife. Not to you."
Lily stared at him.
Blake had the strange sensation that he was seeing her clearly for the first time. The softness had always been a costume. The fragility had always been false.
"From now on," he said, "you do not call me. You do not text me. You do not come here. Anything involving the gallery goes through Angela or her attorney."
A bitter smile touched Lily's mouth. "You think Angela will take you back if you throw me away hard enough?"
"No."
That seemed to surprise her.
Blake looked toward the bedroom, then back at Lily. "I don't think she owes me that. I think I may have lost my wife because I defended you when I should have defended her."
Lily's expression twisted before she could stop it. It was gone in a heartbeat, but he saw it.
"Then go grovel," she whispered. "Men like you always grovel when the wife takes the ring off. Let's see how long it lasts when she keeps saying no."
Blake stepped past her and pressed the button for the elevator.
"Leave."
For a moment, he thought she might refuse. Then she turned on her heel and walked out, brushing his arm with her shoulder as she passed.
Once the doors closed behind her, he called building security and removed Lily from every approved visitor list connected to him.
He sent a message to his assistant instructing that Lily Saint wasn’t to be admitted to his office, his family offices, or any Hunter event under his authority.
He forwarded the same instruction to Angela's attorney and wrote only one sentence.
Angela shouldn’t have to ask me to do what I should have done months ago.
He didn’t send it to Angela. He sent it to her lawyer because apology didn’t need to beg for applause. Then he called Mya at the gallery.
The young woman answered cautiously. "Vellum & Verdigris."
"Mya, it's Blake Hunter. I won't ask where Angela is."
A pause.
"I want you to know Lily Saint no longer has permission to enter any Hunter property or event under my control. If she comes to the gallery and Angela doesn't want her there, call security. If anyone connected to my family gives you trouble, direct them to me."
Mya was quiet long enough that Blake could hear the faint gallery noise behind her.
"Does Mrs. Hunter know that?"
"Her attorney does. Angela doesn't owe me a conversation for doing the minimum."
Another pause.
"All right," Mya said. "I'll note it."
Minimum. The word followed him after the call ended. His phone rang before he could move. His father.
Blake almost let it go to voicemail. Then he answered because avoidance had done enough damage. He knew this call was going to be unpleasant at best. Richard Hunter wasn’t a man unfamiliar with scandal, usually of his own making but all the same he disliked it intensely.
"Dad."
"Finally," Richard Hunter said, as if Blake had been late to a meeting and not standing in the wreckage of his marriage. "We need to discuss this before it gets worse."
"It's can’t."
"It can always get worse. That's why we manage things."
"Manage things," Blake repeated.
"There are whispers. Angela leaving the hotel under Connor King's protection. Lily being seen at the penthouse. Your absence from the back half of the opening. People are drawing conclusions."
"They should."
Richard's voice lowered. "Blake, listen to me. Whatever happened, the family cannot afford a spectacle."
"The family," Blake said. "Not Angela. Not the woman who walked into my bedroom. The family."
"Don't be dramatic."
"My wife found another woman in our bed."
"Then be careful how you handle both women."
Blake's grip tightened around the phone. "Both women?"
"Don't be naive. If Lily has any claim, any story, any grievance, she can make this ugly and expensive. You need to calm Angela down and make sure Lily feels respected enough not to talk."
Blake had grown up hearing his father talk like this.
Problems weren’t solved. They were contained.
Women's pain wasn’t addressed. It was softened until it could be placed in public without staining anyone important.
Blake had vowed to be different, be better.
For years, he had thought he was different.
He believed he was better. Now he wondered how much of Richard Hunter had been living in him quietly.
If the family blood was just pure poison.
"Angela does not need to be calmed down," Blake said.
"She needs to be practical."
"She needed a husband who listened to her before another woman was in our bedroom."
Silence then Richard sighed. "You sound emotional."
"I am."
"That has never helped a Hunter man."
"No," Blake said. "I'm beginning to understand that."
He ended the call.
For a long while, he stood in the middle of the penthouse with the phone in his hand, surrounded by expensive furniture and the ruins of his own arrogance. He opened his messages.
His thumb hovered over Angela's name. He wanted to write a dozen things.
I love you.
I'm sorry.
Please let me see you.
Please don't let Connor be the man sitting across from you tonight.
Please remember who I was before I became this.
All those sentences wanted something from her, and Blake he he’d lost the right to want anything from Angela the second he left the gallery with Lily.
Blake put the phone down. For the first time since he had woken up, he didn’t reach for his wife to ease his panic.
He stood inside the silence he had earned.