CHAPTER 5
Aiden found Lorraine on the second try.
The first hotel had been the obvious one.
The Waverly, where Lorraine sent clients when discretion mattered more than skyline views.
He walked into the lobby at nine in the morning wearing yesterday’s exhaustion beneath a clean shirt and asked for his wife with the quiet authority of a man used to doors opening when he spoke.
The concierge had looked at him with professional regret.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Devereaux. We don’t have a guest by that name.”
He had not believed her.
Not because the woman seemed dishonest. Because Lorraine should have been there.
Lorraine liked the Waverly’s tea service.
She liked the way the lobby smelled faintly of bergamot and old money.
She liked the private elevator bank and the fact that photographers could not loiter outside without being gently removed by men in dark suits.
Aiden had known where his wife would go.
Except he had not.
That realization followed him back to the car and sat beside him like another passenger.
The second hotel was smaller. Newer. Not one of his. That annoyed him before he could admit why. Lorraine had chosen a place outside his reach. No favors from general managers. No discreet calls from staff who owed him loyalty. No suite upgraded because his name carried weight.
She had paid for distance.
He found her because Claire found the floral delivery record. Not through the hotel. Through the florist, who used the same courier service Lorraine had requested for several client events and who mentioned, too casually, that the arrangement had been refused at the Beaumont.
Aiden should have hated that he used the information.
He told himself marriage made certain rules different.
By noon, he stood outside suite 1804 with his hand lifted and his pride arranged into something he hoped looked like remorse.
It was harder than he expected to knock.
The door opened after the third tap.
Lorraine stood in the narrow gap wearing soft black trousers and a cream sweater that slipped off one shoulder.
Her hair was down, brushed smooth and tucked behind one ear.
She looked rested in the way women looked when they had spent hours forcing themselves not to fall apart.
Her face was bare except for mascara and lipstick, a muted rose that was not the shade he liked best.
The detail hurt, which irritated him. He had no right to be wounded by lipstick.
Her gaze moved over him once. Not warm. Not surprised.
“How did you find me?”
Aiden had prepared three answers. None survived her voice.
“Flowers.”
Her expression didn’t change. “I refused them.”
“I know.”
“That was an answer.”
“I needed to see you.”
“No, Aiden. You wanted to.”
He pressed his palm against the doorframe, then dropped it because even that felt like too much pressure. “Can I come in?”
Lorraine looked past him into the hall. A housekeeper pushed a cart near the far end, eyes carefully forward. The idea of being seen like this, of his marriage becoming hallway theater again, made Aiden’s jaw tighten.
Lorraine noticed. Of course she did.
After a moment, she stepped back. “Five minutes.”
The suite smelled like coffee, rain, and Lorraine’s shampoo. Not her perfume. He noticed the absence immediately.
Aiden walked in slowly. The room was too impersonal for her.
Cream walls, gray furniture, orchids on the table.
Her laptop sat open near the window with papers arranged beside it in tidy stacks.
Her overnight bag had been unpacked. The ivory dress from last night hung over a chair, the satin dull in daylight.
His chest constricted at the sight of it.
Lorraine closed the door but didn’t move farther into the room. “Say what you came to say.”
He turned to her. “I’m sorry.”
The words were real. They were also insufficient. He heard that even before her eyes made it clear.
“I handled last night badly,” he said.
“Handled.”
Her voice was quiet. It still cut.
“I shouldn’t have said what I said in the hallway.”
“No.”
“I embarrassed you.”
“Yes.”
The directness scraped against him. He deserved it, probably. That didn’t make it comfortable.
Aiden exhaled. “Brittany shouldn’t have given that toast.”
Lorraine folded her arms. “Interesting.”
“What?”
“That you started with Brittany.”
His brows drew together. “I started with myself.”
“You started with the hallway. Then you moved to Brittany’s toast. You still haven’t reached the marriage.”
He looked away, then back. “That’s why I’m here.”
“Then get there.”
It should not have made him angry. The anger rose anyway, defensive and useless, the ugly reflex of a man used to explaining himself and being believed.
“Nothing physical happened,” he said.
Lorraine’s mouth softened into something almost sad. “There it is again.”
“Because it matters, Lorraine.”
“To you.”
“To anyone.”
“No.” She stepped away from the door and crossed to the table, putting the width of the suite between them. “It matters, but it is not the defense you think it is.”
“It means I didn’t cheat on you.”
Her eyes lifted.
Aiden regretted the sentence instantly, but pride kept him standing inside it for one second too long.
“You gave another woman emotional access to our marriage,” Lorraine said. “You let her call you at night. You let her touch you. You let her make herself fragile enough that I became cruel if I objected. Then you let her humiliate me at my own anniversary table, and when she cried, you chose her.”
“I didn’t choose her.”
“You moved toward her first.”
“She was crying.”
“I was your wife.”
The words from the hallway, returned to him with no audience to soften them.
Aiden dragged a hand over his mouth. “I was trying to stop a scene.”
“You made one.”
“I know.”
“You don’t.” Her voice sharpened for the first time. “You know I’m not home. You know I won’t answer your calls. You know people will ask questions. You know this is inconvenient and ugly. But you don’t know what you made me feel.”
“I’m trying to understand.”
“Are you?” Lorraine gestured toward the space between them. “Because you came here to tell me you didn’t sleep with her, as if that means I should be relieved. As if I should thank you for leaving the worst line uncrossed while you stepped over all the others.”
He closed his eyes for a beat.
The worst part was that he had expected relief. Not forgiveness, maybe, but some return to reason. A recognition that he had not done the thing husbands did when marriages broke beyond repair. He had not taken Brittany to bed. He had not promised her anything. He had not told her he loved her.
Why did the absence of one sin feel meaningless in the room with his wife?
“I love you,” he said.
Lorraine looked tired then. More tired than angry. “I know.”
That hurt more than if she had denied it.
“You know?”
“I know you believe that.”
“I don’t believe it. I know it.”
“Then why doesn’t your love protect me?”
Aiden had no answer.
The suite hummed with distant hotel sounds: a door closing somewhere, the muted rush of plumbing, rain ticking against the window. Lorraine turned away first, and his gaze landed on the documents spread beside her laptop.
Lang House.
The logo sat at the top of a proposal draft. Black lettering on heavy cream paper. Beneath it, Lorraine had sketched a rough floor plan in pencil, notes in her elegant, precise handwriting along the margins.
Aiden moved before he thought better of it. “You’re working with Everett Lang?”
Lorraine followed his gaze. “Yes.”
“He contacted you when?”
“Yesterday.”
“Yesterday.” The word came out flat. “That didn’t take long.”
Her face changed.
Aiden heard himself then. Heard the accusation, the entitlement, the jealousy pretending to be concern.
Still, he kept going. “He’s been waiting for an opening.”
“Careful.”
“You know what he is.”
“A hotel owner?”
“A rival.”
“To you.”
His jaw tightened. “Lorraine.”
“He hired me for a gala.”
“He hired my wife in the middle of a marital fight.”
“He hired an event designer whose work he respects.”
Aiden looked at the proposal again. The neat sketches. The notes. The evidence of Lorraine building something that had nothing to do with him.
The jealousy was ridiculous. Unfair. Immediate.
“Is that what this is?” he asked. “Punishment?”
Lorraine stared at him.
For the first time since he arrived, she looked genuinely disappointed.
“No,” she said. “This is work.”
“You expect me not to question the timing?”
“I expect you to question yourself before you question me.”
Aiden stepped back. “I didn’t come here to fight about Everett Lang.”
“Then stop fighting about Everett Lang.”
“He wants something from you.”
“He wants a gala.”
“He wants more than that.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I know men.”
Lorraine’s laugh was soft and humorless. “Apparently not as well as you know fragile women.”
That hit its mark. He felt it and deserved it, which made his voice lower.
“I don’t like him near you.”
“You don’t get a vote.”
“I’m still your husband.”
Lorraine looked at him for a long moment. Then her gaze dropped to his hand, where his wedding band remained, polished and gold, as if metal could hold together what behavior had cracked.
“Yes,” she said. “You are. And you used that word last night like a locked door.”
Aiden’s temper drained, leaving something colder beneath it.
He had come to apologize. Somehow he had ended up sounding like a man checking the locks on property that had walked out of his house.
Lorraine gathered the Lang House papers and placed them into a folder. Her hands were steady. That steadiness was starting to feel like a place he could not reach.
“You don’t get to be jealous of a man who respected boundaries you forgot existed.”
The sentence struck clean.
Aiden looked at her, and for one second, everything in him wanted to argue.
To say Everett had not earned sainthood by making one phone call.
To say Lorraine was vulnerable and Everett Lang was too polished not to know it.
To say she was his wife and this separation was temporary and no other man had a right to stand close enough to offer anything.
But beneath all of that was the memory of Brittany’s fingers at his collar.
He said nothing.
Lorraine walked to the door and opened it.
The five minutes were over.
Aiden stood there, feeling the shape of his own failure around him. “I’m trying.”
“I know,” she said.
It was not comfort.
He walked to the door, stopping in front of her. She didn’t step back. She didn’t soften.
“What do you want me to do?” he asked.
“For once?” Her voice was quiet. “Figure out what you broke before you start asking how to fix it.”
Then she closed the door between them.
Aiden stood in the hallway for several seconds, aware of the housekeeper at the far end pretending not to notice him.
When he finally walked away, he hated Everett Lang.
He hated Brittany.
He hated the closed door.
Most of all, he hated the suspicion that Lorraine had been right.