Neglected, Ignored Wife of a Billionaire Husband (Billionaire Marriage in Crisis #16)

1. Scarlett

— ? —

Scarlett

The chandelier light is throwing little diamonds across the ceiling of our dining room, and I’m thinking this is what seventy-four thousand dollars feels like.

I’ll never see that money, not really, even though I’m the one who made it happen.

It’ll go into the Cooper Land and Cattle account like everything else.

But the weight of it is proof that I’ve built something real.

Chef Martin has outdone himself. Herb-crusted lamb, those little potatoes he does with the rosemary, a chocolate something-or-other that Ines carried in like it might explode. The good china, the one with the gold rim that Beck’s grandmother brought over from somewhere in France. All of it for me.

Well. It’s actually for the sale. For the colt that went for more than anyone expected.

Beck stands at the head of the table with his glass raised, and God, he looks good doing it.

Charcoal suit, no tie, top button undone because he knows what that does to me.

Knows what all of it does to me. The way he commands a room without trying and every person at that table leans toward him like flowers toward sun.

“To Scarlett,” he says, and his voice rolls through the room the way it always does, low and certain. “Who took a colt nobody wanted and turned him into the talk of the county.”

I feel my cheeks warm. Ines is clearing the salad plates, and I catch her eye, and she gives me a little smile. The one that says I told you so.

“I’m so proud of you,” Beck continues, and my heart does cartwheels in my chest. “You’re such a great asset to this operation.”

Asset.

I wait.

He’s still talking. Something about the breeding program, something about next year’s prospects.

But I’ve stopped hearing words. I’m watching his mouth move and waiting for the rest of it.

The part where he says he loves me. The part where he says I’m more than a line item on the Cooper balance sheet.

“And those jeans you wore to the ring today, sweetheart, I don’t know how any of those old ranchers kept their eyes on the horse.”

The table laughs. Beck’s lawyer, his accountant, their wives. Everyone laughs because Beck Cooper made a joke, and when Beck Cooper makes a joke, you laugh.

I laugh too.

“I love you too, Beck,” I say, and I mean it to sound teasing, but it comes out wrong. Too much like I’m asking.

He grins at me across the table, that grin that undid me the first time I saw it in the tack room four years ago. “Of course you do. And I love those jeans. I’m serious, Scarlett, I need you to wear those jeans every single day from now on.”

“She knows that, son,” the accountant’s wife says, patting my hand like I’m a child who needs reassurance. “A man doesn’t throw a dinner like this if he doesn’t love his wife.”

Beck winks at me and raises his glass again. “To my wife.”

“To Scarlett,” everyone echoes.

I smile, drink my wine, and tell myself that’s enough. That some men say it different. That Beck danced me across the yard this afternoon, right there in the dirt in front of the crew, spinning me until I was dizzy and laughing. That means something.

Later, after the guests are gone and the staff has cleared, the house goes quiet the way it only does past ten. I find Beck in the nursery.

Josie is asleep on his chest, her little fist wound tight in his shirt like she’s afraid he might float away. She does that every time. Fifteen months old and already she knows that her daddy is the kind of man who leaves, even when he doesn’t mean to.

I lean against the doorframe and watch them.

Beck Cooper. Fourth-generation cattleman. Owner of more land than some small countries, more money than I can conceptualize, more power than anyone should have in one set of hands. And here he is, in a nursery with a baby drooling on his shirt and his eyes half-closed.

“Hey,” he murmurs without opening them. “Come here.”

I cross the room and sit on the arm of the chair. He turns his head and presses his mouth to my hip, right through my dress.

“Seventy-four thousand,” he says against the fabric. “That’s my girl.”

“She’s going to wake up if we move her.”

“Then we’ll be very, very quiet.”

He stands up in that way he has, all smooth muscle and certainty, and Josie doesn’t even stir. Just burrows deeper into his chest as he lays her down in the crib, arranging her little arms the way she likes, tucking the blanket around her.

I watch his hands. They’re rough even though he doesn’t have to do ranch work anymore. He does it anyway, can’t help himself, can’t be the kind of man who sits behind a desk while other men sweat. Capable hands that have built things, broken things and taken me apart more times than I can count.

He turns to me with intent in his eyes.

“Beck…”

“Shh.” He takes my hand and pulls me out of the nursery, down the hall, into our bedroom with its ridiculous California king and its windows that overlook a hundred thousand acres of Cooper land. He shuts the door with his foot and backs me toward the bed.

“This was supposed to be my celebration,” I say, even as my back hits the mattress.

“It is.” He’s unbuttoning his shirt, and I lose my train of thought watching his fingers work.

“You worked for eight months on that colt. You earned every penny of that seventy-four thousand dollars. And now…” He tosses the shirt aside and climbs over me, and his weight presses me into the mattress in that way that always makes me feel safe.

“Now I’m going to celebrate you properly. ”

His mouth finds my neck, then my collarbone. The hollow of my throat where my pulse is hammering.

“Beck.”

“What do you need, sweetheart?”

Tell me you love me, I think. Say it without a joke. Say it like you mean it.

“You,” I say instead, because that’s easier.

He pulls my dress over my head, and I watch his face as he looks at me. His eyes track down my body like he’s memorizing something, like he hasn’t seen me a thousand times before.

“There she is,” he murmurs, and his hands follow his eyes. “There’s my girl.”

I arch into his touch, and he makes a sound low in his throat, and then he’s kissing me like he’s been waiting for it all night. His tongue sliding against mine deeply, his hands everywhere.

“You’re so fucking beautiful,” he says against my mouth. “You know that?”

I pull at his belt. “Less talking.”

He laughs, the one that only comes out when it’s just us, and lets me push his pants down. Lets me wrap my legs around him. Lets me pull him down until there’s no space between us.

When he pushes inside me, he’s watching my face. He always watches my face, like he’s looking for permission, or proof that I’m still with him.

“There she is,” he says again, softer this time, and starts to move.

We’re quiet, because Josie is down the hall and the walls carry sound no matter how much money you spend on them. But quiet with Beck is still intense. He knows how to make me feel it with just his eyes, just the way he holds my hips, just the angle of his thrust.

I come with my face buried in his shoulder and his name caught in my throat.

After, he pulls me against his chest and I listen to his heart slow down. The windows are open and I can hear the creek that runs through the bottom pasture, can smell the juniper and sage that mean home now even though they haven’t always.

His phone lights up on the nightstand.

I wouldn’t have noticed, except that he notices first. He goes still against me.

I lift my head. “Everything okay?”

He reaches over and turns the phone face-down. “It’s nothing. I’ll handle it in the morning.”

“Beck.”

“It’s nothing.” He kisses my forehead. “Go to sleep, sweetheart. Big day tomorrow. Lots of people wanting to buy horses from my brilliant wife.”

I let my head fall back to his chest. Tell myself it’s nothing. Tell myself he’d tell me if it were something.

But I saw the name on the screen before he turned it over.

CAMILLE.

I know that name. There’s only one Camille in Beck’s life that I know of. Beck’s childhood best friend, the girl from across the road. The one he laughed off the night before we got married when I asked about her.

That was two years ago. Two years of silence from a woman who was like a sister to him. And now she’s texting him at eleven o’clock at night, and he’s turning his phone over like he doesn’t want me to see.

Ask him, I think. Just ask him.

But Beck is already breathing slow and deep, his arm heavy around my waist, and I’m tired. I just sold the colt for seventy-four thousand dollars, and he danced me across the yard in front of everyone.

So I close my eyes.

And this is the last good night of my marriage.

I just don’t know it yet.