Chapter 1
FANCY PARTIES AND FACADES
“You look incredible tonight.”
Diane Whitfield is already two champagnes in, her cheeks pink, her burgundy gown slightly creased from sitting down too many times. I squeeze her hand and tilt my head at the color. “Oh, stop. That shade on you? Stunning. How’s Mia doing in Barcelona?”
“She’s loving it! How did you even remember?”
“Are you kidding? She posted that photo from La Boqueria and I almost booked a flight.”
Diane laughs, squeezes my arm, and drifts off toward the bar.
The Webster Industries Centennial Gala fills the Four Seasons ballroom—crystal chandeliers throwing warm light over four hundred people in dark suits and designer gowns, an orchestra tucked behind a wall of white hydrangeas, the company’s hundred-year timeline displayed on backlit panels along the east wall.
My husband’s grandfather started this company in a garage.
Now it’s nearly a billion-dollar company.
My feet are killing me. The heels are perfect with the forest green Valentino but the balls of my feet have been grinding into marble for hours and every step sends a hot pulse up through my ankles. My jaw aches from smiling.
Martin Hale is near the hors d’oeuvres, a crab cake in one hand and a bourbon in the other. New hip, eight weeks of physical therapy, back on the golf course. I catch his eye and cross the distance.
“Martin. Look at you—you’re moving like a new man. How’s the swing?”
“Better than before the surgery, if you can believe it.” He grins, lifts his bourbon. “Duane’s wife remembers everything, huh?”
“Only the important stuff.”
He winks. Behind me, Patricia Walsh waves a champagne flute to flag me down, her husband Roger hovering at her shoulder with the expression of a man who’s already lost whatever argument they’re having.
“Rachelle! Settle this. Roger says you’ve been to that resort in Anguilla. Was the restaurant actually good?”
“It was incredible. Get the lobster risotto.” I touch Roger’s arm. “And don’t let him talk you into the steak.”
“See?” Patricia smacks Roger’s shoulder. “I told you.”
I laugh. They laugh. The gala spins on—handshakes, compliments, deals getting made in quiet corners behind champagne flutes. This is my husband’s world. My job is to make the human side of it run smoothly—the names, the details, the small rememberings that make people feel valued. It’s not nothing.
But my feet are done. I need Duane.
He’s near the east bar. I spot the charcoal Tom Ford I picked out for him before I spot his face.
He’s mid-conversation with a man from the Singapore office, one hand in his pocket, the other gesturing with a rocks glass.
Relaxed, open, giving the man his full attention.
I’ve watched him do this a thousand times—the posture, the easy lean, the way the person across from him always ends up smiling and nodding.
Duane is very, very good at making people feel like they’re the only person in the room.
The handshake ends. I close the distance before someone else fills the gap, touch his arm, lean in close.
“Do you mind if I duck out early? I’m fading.”
His jaw tightens. I’m six inches away and I feel it more than see it—the warmth draining out of his face, his eyes going flat and hard.
His hand closes around my elbow. Not a touch.
A grip. Fingers digging in above the joint, and he steers me toward the service door behind the bar. Smooth, casual. My stomach tightens.
The door swings shut behind us. The hallway is narrow, fluorescent-lit, lined with catering carts and stacked trays of glassware. The ballroom drops to a thick muffle. The air smells like industrial soap and warm bread rolls. He lets go of my arm.
“No.” Low. Tight. Every trace of the man who was charming the Singapore office is gone. “You have to be here for me. This matters.”
“Duane, my feet are destroyed. I’ve talked to every board member, every spouse—”
“Did I ask for a list?” He steps closer. The fluorescent light carves hard lines into his face—the jaw, the cheekbones, the crease between his brows. “I said this matters. Smile. Stay. That’s it.”
“You’re seriously telling me I can’t leave a party.”
“I’m telling you I need you here.”
“And I’m telling you I’m exhausted.”
“Don’t make this a thing, Rachelle.”
“I want to go home. That’s not a thing, Duane.”
“And I want you here.” He squares his shoulders. “So we’re at an impasse.”
His chin pulls back. Just half an inch, but I see it—a flash behind his eyes, the quick adjustment of a man who didn’t expect to get called out. His gaze drops to my elbow. Snaps away.
“I walked you in here so we could talk privately. That’s all.”
“Great. We’ve talked.”
A muscle jumps in his cheek. His jaw works. A caterer edges past us with a tray of champagne flutes, eyes down. Duane tracks her until she’s through the far door.
“Two more hours.” He straightens his cuffs. Tugs each one precisely into place. “Please.”
“Fine.”
“Thank you. I appreciate it.”
He pushes through the swinging door and his voice lifts—warm, big, instant.
“Senator! So glad you could make it. How’s Catherine?
” The hallway voice is still buzzing in my ears and he’s out there laughing, and my stomach does something ugly and tight because the shift was so fast. One second, the man in the fluorescent hallway with the hard eyes and the grip on my arm.
The next, the charming CEO with the easy laugh. Like flipping a switch on a machine.
The door swings shut. I’m alone with the hum of the fluorescent tubes and the smell of bread rolls. My hands are trembling. I press my palm over the spot where he grabbed me and the skin is hot, tender. My throat burns. My eyes sting. I push my knuckles into them, hard, and breathe through it.
Something is wrong. Not just the grab, not just the tone—something in his face when I said I wanted to leave. The way it went flat, the way his hand closed on my arm before he even thought about it. That wasn’t frustration. That was something harder. Something I don’t have a word for.
I smooth my dress. Push through the door. The ballroom crashes over me—noise, light, music, the warm hum of four hundred people having a gorgeous evening.
“Rachelle!” Diane again, fresh champagne, pulling me toward a cluster of wives near the dessert table. “You have to hear what just happened with the valet—”
“Oh no. Tell me everything.” My voice comes out bright and easy.
My smile lands right where it should. My elbow is throbbing and my hands haven’t fully stopped shaking, but I pick up a champagne flute and laugh at the valet story and nobody—not a single person in this room—can tell that anything is wrong.
Duane catches my eye from across the floor. Lifts his glass. Thank you.
I lift mine back. My elbow throbs when I raise it.
The scotch is smoky and too strong. The bartender slid it across the marble with “From the gentleman” and I didn’t have it in me to ask which gentleman or to send it back.
The ballroom has thinned out—maybe half the crowd is left, ties loosened, heels kicked under tables, the orchestra playing something low and slow.
Duane is on the far side of the room with two board members, leaning against a chair back, completely at ease.
My elbow still throbs. He hasn’t looked at me since the hallway.
A body drops onto the stool beside me. Heavy, graceless, the landing of a man who passed his limit two drinks ago.
“Rachelle! There she is.”
Albert Holt. His tie is yanked loose, his cheeks are blotchy red, and whatever’s in his glass has been refilled too many times. He claps a hand on the bar and grins at me like we’re old friends, even though I’ve talked to him maybe five times in seven years and every single time he’s been drunk.
“Great party, right? Centennial. Hundred years. That’s insane.”
“It’s a big deal.”
“Huge deal. Your husband’s a big deal.” He points his glass toward Duane across the room. “You know what kills me about you, though?”
“Tell me.”
“You’re so good at this.” He leans in, close enough that I can smell the scotch on every word. “Like, scary good. You walk into these things and just—boom. Duane hit the goddamn lottery with you.”
“That’s sweet, Albert.”
“No, I’m serious.” He takes a sloppy drink.
A drop escapes down his chin and he swipes it with the back of his hand.
“Like, genuinely. Because we were all so surprised when he married you. Not because of you—you’re great.
But Duane? Come on.” He settles back on the stool, loose-limbed, settling in.
“The guy was the biggest playboy in the building. And I don’t mean, like, dated around.
I mean he had a reputation. He swore up and down he was never settling down.
We had a pool going on whether he’d make it to forty single. ” He grins. “I had fifty bucks on yes.”
I almost laugh. It sounds so ridiculous—Duane, who brings me coffee in bed, who holds my hand at restaurants, who proposed on one knee in the Maldives with a string quartet. “You’re kidding.”
“Dead serious. The man went through women like—well. You must know.” He laughs, loud and wet, and a woman at the far end of the bar glances over.
“So imagine our faces when he shows up one Monday with a girlfriend. Then a fiancée. Nobody could believe it.” He shakes his head, still grinning.
“Though honestly? We all figured if anyone was gonna lock him down, it’d be Cassandra. ”
The glass stops halfway to my mouth. The name just—lands. A cold drop in the center of my chest.
“He was head over heels for that woman.” Albert is shaking his head, lost in the memory, riding the scotch right past every guardrail a sober man would see. “Completely gone. The kind of gone where you’d walk into his office and he’d be staring at his phone grinning like a teenager.”
Head over heels. My husband. The man who courted me with weekend trips and flowers and that shy, sweet smile that made me feel like the center of his entire world. Someone else got that smile first. Someone named Cassandra made his face light up when her name hit his phone screen.
“But she wouldn’t commit, you know? Led him on for years. Hot and cold, back and forth, the whole thing.” He waves his glass in a lazy circle. “So eventually I guess he just...” The glass drifts to a stop. “Moved on. She was at the office last week, though.”
My pulse is slamming. I can feel it in my throat, in my wrists, in the tender spot on my elbow. Moved on. That’s what I am. The woman he moved on to. Not chose. Moved on to.
“Cassandra?” My voice is steady. Calm. Everything from my collarbones down is shaking. “Who is Cassandra?”
Albert’s face changes. The flush drains out of his cheeks so fast it’s startling—blotchy red to gray-white in seconds. His mouth opens. Closes. He looks like a man who just heard his own voice on a recording and can’t believe what came out.
“Oh, fuck.” He puts his glass on the bar too hard. Scotch sloshes over the rim and pools across the marble. “I’m drunk. I am—that was—Rachelle, forget I said anything. Please. It was years ago, it was before you, it’s not—I’m sure he’s not seeing her again.”
“Albert.” My heart is hammering so hard I can hear it in my ears. “Who is she?”
“Nobody! She’s—it was nothing—please don’t tell Duane I said anything, oh God, please—I’ll lose my job if he knew I’d told you.”
He’s off the stool. Stumbles, catches himself on the bar with one hand, and he won’t look at me. His whole body is rigid, clenched, his face the color of old paper.
“I gotta find my wife. Rachelle, I’m sorry—I’m just drunk and mixing things up.”
Gone. Weaving between tables toward the exit, practically jogging, and my hands are wrapped around the edge of the bar so hard my knuckles ache. I watch him disappear through the doors and something hot builds in my chest.
He ran. He didn’t laugh it off, didn’t wave his hand, didn’t say oh that was a million years ago, don’t worry about it. He went white. He begged me not to tell Duane. A grown man in a three-thousand-dollar suit just fled from me like I’d pulled a pin on something he can’t put back.
Head over heels. For another woman. And everyone in the company knew. And who Duane saw last week.
The scotch trembles in my glass when I reach for it. My hands won’t hold still. I set it back down and press my palms flat on the marble, hard, because the bar feels like it’s moving under me.
Duane laughs somewhere across the room. That big, warm, easy laugh. My stomach twists. That laugh used to make me feel safe. Right now it makes me want to cross this room, grab him by his Tom Ford lapels, and say who is Cassandra?
My rings click against the marble. The wedding band.
The diamond from the Maldives—him on one knee, my hands over my mouth, the next table applauding.
I lay in bed that night tracing the diamond with my thumb, and my whole body ached from how happy I was.
His phone was charging on the nightstand.
Was her name on the screen? Did he text her from the bathroom while I was in the sheets, giddy, stupid, thinking I was the luckiest woman alive?
My throat closes. The burn behind my eyes gets worse and I dig my nails into the marble because I will not fall apart on this barstool. I will not give this room that. I will not give him that.
Cassandra.
Who the fuck is Cassandra?