Chapter 5
By the next afternoon, the story was starting to circulate among the high society set.
Angela knew because people had stopped looking directly at her.
In New York, pity among the rich was rarely offered plainly.
It came wrapped in longer hugs, softer voices, texts that began with thinking of you and ended with nothing useful.
It came in the way women who had once envied Angela's marriage now smiled as though they had been proven wiser for never believing in it.
By noon, three people had asked if she was "holding up."
By one, someone had sent flowers without a name.
By two, Angela wanted to burn down every arrangement in the suite.
Instead, she dressed.
A black sheath dress. Gold hoops. Her hair smooth.
A red mouth, because if the city wanted to watch her suffer, it would have to work harder than whispered gossip.
Nothing anyone of those women could say would hurt as much as what Blake had done.
Even if he couldn’t remember it Angela would never forget.
She could still Lily sitting there on her bed in Blake’s shirt, while he slept. Angela pushed away the painful memory.
Connor had offered to have breakfast sent up, but Angela declined. She couldn’t hide in a hotel owned by another man while Lily floated through the gallery acting like a wounded dove. Vellum & Verdigris was hers. It didn’t belong to Blake or to Lily and it was time that people remembered that.
The gallery became oddly silent when Angela walked in. She hated that most of all.
Her assistant, Mya, stood from behind the front desk. "Mrs. Hunter."
"Please don't look at me like I'm made of glass."
Mya flushed. "I'm sorry."
Angela softened because Mya was twenty-four and frightened and hadn’t staged a betrayal in anyone's bed. "It's all right. Is Lily here?"
Mya's eyes dropped.
Angela's spine straightened. "Where?"
"In your office."
Of course she was, it seemed Lily had more audacity than decency.
Angela walked through the main gallery without hurrying.
The paintings from the opening still glowed on the walls, indifferent to scandal.
Half-empty floral arrangements perfumed the air too sweetly.
Someone had forgotten to remove a champagne flute from a windowsill, the gold liquid gone flat beneath a lipstick print.
Every detail told Angela what had happened while she was gone.
The staff had been unsure who had authority.
Lily had used uncertainty, no doubt. The calls, the gossip, the delicate social panic after a scandal.
She had stepped into the vacuum and sat down behind Angela's desk as if grief had created an opening for promotion. Angela had taught Lily enough to make her dangerous. She wouldn’t make that mistake twice.
Lily sat behind Angela's desk. Angela paused in the doorway and felt a new kind of calm settle over her. Lily looked up. She had dressed for innocence in a pale gray cardigan and pearl earrings, her hair pulled back from her face. Her eyes widened as if Angela were the intruder.
"You're here," Lily said.
Angela closed the office door behind her. "Get out of my chair."
Lily stood quickly. "I'm sorry. I was just trying to help. There were calls, and Mya didn't know what to say."
"Mya knows enough not to sit at my desk."
Lily's lips tightened. "I have worked in this gallery for years."
"You have worked in my gallery for years."
The correction landed exactly where Angela intended.
Lily folded her hands. "I know you hate me."
"Hate requires me to care."
Lily's mouth tightened before she recovered.
"I never wanted to hurt you."
Angela set her handbag on the desk and looked at the woman she had mentored, defended, invited into rooms where people like Lily would have spent years waiting outside.
"You wore my husband's shirt in my bed."
Lily's eyes glistened. "It wasn't like that."
"No? Then tell me what it was like."
Silence.
Angela smiled faintly. "That's what I thought."
Lily's softness shifted, just enough for the viper underneath to show. "You want me to say I seduced him, don't you? That I plotted and schemed and dragged poor Blake away from his perfect wife."
"I want you to leave my gallery."
"He was lonely, Angela."
The words slid under Angela's skin because Lily knew exactly where to place the knife.
"He was tired of being judged," Lily continued. "Tired of standing in rooms you built and feeling like a guest in your life. You think being elegant is the same thing as being warm."
Angela walked behind her desk slowly. Lily stepped back.
"You know what I think?" Angela asked. "I think you practiced that speech."
Lily's face flushed. "Because you can't imagine anyone seeing you clearly?"
"No. Because women who are truly sorry don't come to the wife's office to explain why she deserved it."
For a second, Lily looked nakedly furious.
A knock sounded on the door, interrupting. Angela walked over and opened it.
Connor King stood outside with Mya hovering anxiously behind him.
"I'm early," he said, his gaze moving once from Angela to Lily and back again. "Should I wait?"
"No," Angela said. "Lily was just leaving."
Lily stepped out of the office, her mask back in place for the audience. "Connor. I didn't realize you were coming in today."
He gave her the mildest glance. "Why would you?"
Her smile faltered.
Angela almost enjoyed that.
Lily passed him and walked toward the front gallery, every inch the wounded woman making a graceful exit. Staff watched her go. Angela knew by dinner someone would say she had been cruel. By tomorrow someone would say she had thrown Lily out in tears. Let them.
Connor entered the office but left the door open. Respectful. Careful.
"You didn't have to come," Angela said.
"I had an appointment."
"That painting can wait."
"I didn't come for the painting."
Angela looked at him.
Connor's voice lowered. "I came because a woman who should have been protected in her own place was forced to defend it instead."
Her throat tightened. "Be careful, Connor."
"With what?"
"Being kind to me."
He held her gaze. "Is kindness dangerous now?"
"From a man?" Her laugh was quiet and bitter. "Usually."
He took that without offense. Another mark in his favor. Angela wished he would stop collecting them.
"I won't ask for anything you don't offer," he said.
"I'm not offering anything."
"I know."
The simplicity of his calm acceptance made her composure falter.
Mya appeared again, looking miserable. "Mrs. Hunter, there are several calls. Mrs. Harlow from the museum board, Mrs. Bell from the foundation, and Mr. Hunter has called twice."
"Which Mr. Hunter?" Angela asked.
"Your husband."
Not my husband, Angela almost said, but didn’t. The ring mark on her finger still made her heart ache, and the lie would have sounded too much like hope.
"Tell Blake I'm unavailable."
"Yes, ma'am."
"And Mya?"
"Yes?"
"Cancel Lily's system access. Have her personal items packed and messengered to her apartment. She is not to enter staff areas again."
Mya's shoulders eased, as if someone had finally named the obvious. "Yes, ma'am."
Angela looked toward the gallery floor where Lily had paused just long enough to make sure everyone saw her leaving. "If anyone calls asking about Ms. Saint, the gallery's response is simple. She is no longer associated with Vellum & Verdigris."
Lily's head turned. She heard it.
Angela didn’t raise her voice. She didn’t need to. Lily was always listening.
Connor glanced toward the gallery. "Do you want me to go?"
Angela should have said yes. Instead, she looked through the open office door at the staff pretending not to listen, at the pale flowers, at the room that had become a theater for her humiliation.
"No," she said. "I want you to walk through the gallery with me."
Connor didn’t smile, but something in his eyes changed. "Of course."
They walked side by side through Vellum & Verdigris. Not touching. Not performing. Just two friends sharing space and enjoying beauty. Everyone saw them. Angela didn’t mind.
Let them see that Angela Hunter hadn’t been abandoned in a hotel room to crumble. Let them see that she could stand beside a man who looked at her as if she weren’t someone damaged, but someone formidable.
Near the front, Lily lingered by the door, speaking to a junior assistant as though she hadn’t been dismissed. Her gaze moved to Connor beside Angela.
Angela saw the flash of panic.
Angela stopped a few feet away. "Mya will box your personal items."
Lily's lips parted. "You're firing me?"
"I'm removing you from my gallery."
"This is emotional."
"Yes," Angela said. "It is."
Lily looked toward Connor as if searching for a witness to Angela's cruelty. Connor's expression offered nothing.
"You'll regret this," Lily whispered.
Angela stepped closer. "No, Lily. I regret letting you close enough to require it."
Lily's face went white. The door opened behind her, and she left with the kind of trembling dignity designed to be reported later. Angela watched until the glass door closed. Only then did she realize her hands were shaking. Connor noticed. Of course he did.
"We should go to private sitting room upstairs," he said quietly. "If no one’s using it today."
Angela almost refused out of habit. Then she looked at the employees pretending not to watch and the street beyond the windows where gossip was already running faster than rain.
"All right."
They took the back stairs to the small upstairs room Angela used for difficult collectors and artists too famous to be told no in public. Connor closed the door behind them but stayed near it, giving her the whole room.
Angela walked to the window and folded her arms.
"I hate that everyone is looking at me," she said.
"They're looking because they expected you to disappear."
"I almost did."
"But you didn't."
She turned. "Don't make me into something braver than I am."
"I'm not." Connor's voice was quiet. "Bravery is usually less glamorous when it's happening."
A laugh escaped her. It sounded almost real, which made her want to cry.
Her phone buzzed in her bag.
Blake.
Again.
Angela stared at his name until the screen went dark.
Connor said nothing.
"He says he doesn't remember," Angela said.
"That must be hell."
She looked at him sharply. "For him?"
"For both of you."
Angela hated the fairness of that answer.
"If he didn't sleep with her," she said, the words scraping out of her, "if somehow this isn’t what it looked like, what am I supposed to do with everything before it?"
Connor's face softened. "That's the question, isn't it?"
Angela pressed her fingers to her bare ring finger. "I warned him. I told him she wanted more. He made me feel cruel for saying it."
"Then he owes you for that no matter what happened in the bedroom."
Angela closed her eyes. Downstairs, the gallery phone rang. Somewhere on the street below, a car horn cut through the afternoon. Life moved on with insulting ease, while she was fighting not to fall apart and to figure out if her marriage was worth saving.
"Have dinner with me," Connor said.
Angela opened her eyes.
His expression remained calm, but his gaze wasn’t casual now. "Not tonight if you don't want. Not as a date if that feels like too much. But you should eat somewhere no one is waiting for you to look broken."
"Connor."
"I'm not asking you to choose anything."
"No," she said. "You're too smart for that."
A faint smile touched his mouth. "I am."
That should have annoyed her. Instead, it steadied her.
Angela looked back out at the city. Blake's calls sat unanswered. Lily's perfume still clung to the gallery downstairs. Her marriage lay somewhere between a bedroom, a lie, and a man who claimed not to remember.
She should have said no.
Instead, she said, "Dinner. One hour. Public table."
Connor nodded once. "Public table."
"And I'm not discussing Blake the entire time."
"Good. I've always found him less interesting than you."
Angela looked at him then, really looked, and felt the first dangerous stir of something that wasn’t grief.
It wasn’t love well, not that kind of love, and it wasn’t desire, but it was the idea of possibility. It was knowing that she could have a life after Blake if that’s what she wanted. The problem was Angela wasn’t sure what she wanted at all.
Her phone rang, Blake again. Angela silenced the phone before it could stop ringing.