The Love He Betrayed (Cheating Billionaire Second Chance #9)

Chapter 1

The caterers were seven minutes late, and Linnea had already rearranged the orchids twice.

She stood in the foyer of the Pacific Heights mansion with her phone in one hand and a seating chart in the other, listening to the florist's assistant explain that the centerpieces for the west table had been switched with the ones meant for the Harringtons' anniversary party across town.

White peonies instead of dahlias. Linnea said it was fine.

It was not fine, but she'd learned years ago that fighting with vendors on the night of an event burned energy she'd need later.

She hung up and checked her reflection in the hall mirror.

Hair pinned in a low twist. Dress the color of dark honey — simple lines, no jewelry except her wedding ring and a pair of gold studs Everett had given her for their fifth anniversary.

She looked like a woman who had things under control. That was the point.

The Montclair Foundation's annual spring dinner wasn't the biggest event she ran, but it was the most personal.

Sixty guests. Hand-selected. The kind of evening where every conversation mattered and every empty chair would be noticed.

She'd been planning it for three months, and the house had been in a state of quiet upheaval for a week — extra staff, rented glassware, the good silver brought down from the third floor.

She walked through the dining room one more time.

Two long tables set with ivory linen. Candles unlit.

Place cards in her own handwriting because she'd read once that people noticed that sort of thing, and she'd found it was true.

The french doors to the garden stood open, letting in the cool May air and the faint salt smell that drifted up from the bay on clear nights.

Everything was ready. Everything except her husband.

Everett had texted at four: Running late.

Don't wait. No estimate. No apology. She hadn't responded because there was nothing to say that she hadn't already said a hundred times.

He'd show up when he showed up. He always did.

And he'd walk in looking like a man who'd never been late for anything in his life, and people would forgive him because people always forgave Everett Montclair.

The first guests arrived at seven. Linnea greeted them at the door with a glass of her own wine — a small-batch Napa red she'd created years ago, before it had been folded into Everett's portfolio along with everything else.

She poured, she smiled, she asked David Chen about his daughter's lacrosse season and listened to Margaret Okafor describe a trip to Lisbon with the kind of attention that made Margaret feel like she was the only person in the room.

Linnea was good at this. She'd always been good at this.

By seven-thirty the house was full and warm with voices.

She moved through the rooms the way she always did — adjusting, connecting, filling silences before they became awkward.

She introduced the new board member to the outgoing one.

She steered a tipsy donor away from a conversation about politics.

She checked on the kitchen twice and caught a waiter using the wrong glasses for the white.

Small fires. She put them out without breaking stride.

At ten to eight, the front door opened, and Everett walked in.

He was still in his work suit — charcoal, no tie, top button undone.

Six-two and dark-haired, with the kind of jaw that photographers liked and a smile he could turn on like a lamp.

He had his phone in one hand and his keys in the other, and he dropped both on the entry table without looking, the way a man does in his own house when he knows someone else will move them later.

"Sorry, sorry." He said it to the room, not to her.

His voice carried the easy warmth that made people lean toward him.

He shook David Chen's hand, kissed Margaret Okafor on the cheek, clapped the new board member on the shoulder like they were old friends.

Within two minutes he had a drink and a circle of people around him, and the energy in the room shifted the way it always did when Everett arrived.

He was the center. He didn't try to be. He just was.

Linnea stood across the dining room, glass of water in hand, not wine. Her face was pleasant and still.

He caught her eye and crossed to her. "You look incredible." He kissed her cheek. His lips were cool, and he smelled like leather and something woodsy she didn't recognize. A new cologne. She filed that away without knowing why.

"You're an hour late," she said.

"Forty minutes." He smiled like that made it better. "The Nakamura call ran long. I couldn't cut them off."

"You could have called me."

"I texted."

"You texted at four. It's eight."

He touched her elbow, a practiced gesture that looked tender from the outside. "I'm here now. The house looks amazing. You did all this?"

She had done all this. She always did all this. But the compliment landed the way his compliments always landed — late enough to feel like an afterthought, sincere enough that she couldn't reject it.

"We're about to sit down," she said. "You're at the head of table one."

"Where else would I be?" Another smile. He squeezed her arm and moved away, already turning toward a voice that called his name.

Linnea stood in the doorway and let him go. Her hands were still at her sides.

#

Dinner was flawless. The peonies turned out to be the right choice after all — softer, less formal, and three guests complimented them.

The food was simple and good. The wine was hers, and she watched people drink it without knowing its history, without knowing that the vines had been planted on her and Everett's third wedding anniversary, that she'd driven up to Napa every weekend for two years to learn the soil.

Five years ago, when Everett had suggested folding the label into his company's portfolio — for distribution, for reach, it'll be better for the brand — she'd agreed because it had made sense.

It still made sense. She hadn't expected it to stop feeling like hers.

Everett gave a short speech about the foundation's work.

He was good at speeches — loose, funny, just self-deprecating enough to seem humble.

He thanked Linnea by name and raised his glass to her, and the room followed.

She smiled from her seat and felt the weight of sixty pairs of eyes and the strange loneliness of being praised by a man she couldn't quite reach anymore.

After dinner, she circulated. She made sure coats were retrieved. She thanked the caterers by name — Marcus, June, the one whose name she kept forgetting and then remembered: Priya. She walked the last guests to the door and stood on the front steps until their taillights disappeared down the hill.

The house settled into silence. Staff cleaned up around her. She kicked off her heels in the hallway and carried them by the straps, her bare feet cold against the marble.

Everett was in the study. She could see the light under the door. She thought about knocking. She thought about saying that went well or we should talk about the Nakamura thing or when did you start wearing new cologne? She thought about a lot of things she didn't say.

Instead, she went upstairs.

#

Their bedroom was large and white and very quiet.

California king. Two nightstands that matched but held different things — hers had a book, a glass of water, a small dish for her ring.

His had a charger, a sleep mask he never used, and whatever he'd emptied from his pockets that night: wallet, loose change, his phone.

Linnea washed her face. She brushed her teeth.

She changed into a cotton shirt that fell to her thighs and sat on the edge of the bed, rubbing lotion into her hands the way she did every night, slow circles between her fingers.

The house creaked. Somewhere below her, Marcus and his team were loading the van.

Everett's phone buzzed on his nightstand. Then again. Then a third time — not a text. An alarm, the kind he set to remind himself about early flights. It buzzed against the wood, loud enough to fill the room.

She leaned across the bed and picked it up to silence it.

The screen was unlocked. He never locked it — or rather, he locked it with a code she knew, and it stayed open for fifteen minutes after each use, and he'd used it recently enough that the home screen glowed up at her.

She swiped away the alarm. Beneath it, the phone showed a voicemail notification.

One unplayed message, except the timestamp said it had been played once already — listened to and saved.

She almost set the phone back down. She was not a woman who checked her husband's phone.

In eight years of marriage, she had never once scrolled through his texts or opened his email or questioned a late night at the office.

She had trusted him. She had trusted him because trust was the floor of their marriage, the thing beneath everything else, and if she started pulling up floorboards she'd have to keep going until there was nothing left to stand on.

But something held her hand there. The new cologne. The way he'd kissed her cheek without warmth. The forty minutes that were an hour. Small things. Things she'd been filing away for months without looking at the file.

She pressed play.

His voice filled the room. Low and easy, the way he sounded after a glass of wine, after a long day, when the performance was over and he was just himself.

She recognized the tone before she registered the words.

It was the voice he used to use with her — late at night, in the dark, when it was just the two of them and he'd say things that made her feel like the only real thing in his world.