Nine Months to Save Their Marriage
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Annie West
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17
PROLOGUE
‘I WENT INTO this with my eyes open, Bess, and there are compensations.’
Bess watched her old friend admire her diamond bracelet, her other hand smoothing the shantung silk of her designer dress.
Lara caught her eye. ‘Not just clothes and jewellery, sweetie. I might be at George’s beck and call, but when he’s away I can please myself what I do, like catching up with you.’ She leaned close. ‘It really is good to see you. It’s been too long.’
‘It has. Jack and I have been travelling a lot.’ Bess smiled as if continually hopping from one city to another, instead of putting down roots and making a life in one place, was what she wanted.
‘You always were good company.’ Lara pouted. ‘George and I go everywhere, but when it’s just me... People are small-minded. I’m not accepted in a lot of homes.’
Bess wasn’t surprised. Since Lara had become a rich man’s mistress, society wives didn’t trust her. If Lara could hook one wealthy tycoon, she could hook another.
‘They’re nervous. No-one dazzles quite like you.’
‘Thanks, sweetie. I try.’ Lara flashed the grin Bess had first seen in the classroom, but her expression sobered as she surveyed the Eiffel Tower view over the rooftops.
‘You’re not completely happy?’ Bess asked.
Lara’s smile didn’t reach her eyes. ‘I made my bed so I’ll lie in it. But sometimes I’d like what you have.’
‘Me?’
Bess had been feeling under par. Jack was often absent on business and she was starting all over again in a new place. If they’d bought or even rented their own Paris apartment, instead of staying in a hotel, it would have been easier. Felt more like the home she craved.
Maybe it’s not your accommodation that’s bothering you.
Instantly she shut that voice down, as she always did.
‘You and your delicious Jack. It was such a whirlwind marriage I wondered at first, but I know you, Bess. You wouldn’t marry for anything but love. I’m happy you both found that. I remember how radiant you were in the wedding photos. And Jack looked like the cat who’d got the cream, obviously smitten.’
Lara lifted her cocktail and Bess followed suit, hiding shock behind her glass. Her stomach had gone into free fall at the mention of love.
Would Lara see the cracks in her façade? Guess all wasn’t well in Bess’s supposedly perfect marriage? Bess gulped her drink, the alcohol going straight to her head.
Or maybe it was the idea of Jack loving her.
If only.
She’d thought, hoped, he would one day. She’d believed that though he hadn’t fallen instantly in love like she had, it would come in time.
She was still waiting.
‘George is sweet,’ Lara continued, ‘but it is a transactional relationship. His priorities always come first. He’s so used to getting his own way it doesn’t occur to him to ask what I want to do.’
Bess was silent, thinking of her own social schedule, mapped out to meet Jack’s needs. Dinner with potential investors here, events to promote his business there, charity events for networking. Each week his PA sent Bess an appointment schedule with copious background notes so she could perform her role, helping Jack access and charm the elite of European society and business.
After all, that was why he’d married her.
Lara continued, ‘I hadn’t realised how much time a mistress spends waiting for her man to make time for her.’
Lara expounded on the theme but Bess didn’t hear. Her head buzzed and her heart pounded too high and fast.
Lara could be describing her own marriage to Jack.
The waiting. Coming second to his requirements every time. Not even being asked if she’d like to go out or stay home. His business ambitions took priority over their relationship, such as it was, though Jack Reilly was already an incredibly successful, wealthy man.
Oh, he could be tender and warm, thoughtful too, and when he set out to charm, which he often did, he was impossible to resist. As for intimacy...
Bess took another gulp of her cocktail to counteract the heat flushing her cheeks, thinking how very well Jack did intimacy. Just his kiss turned her knees to jelly and her brain to mush.
‘Even though I’ve got plenty of time on my own,’ Lara continued, ‘it’s hard to plan anything because George expects me to be ready for him at any time.’
Again, Lara could be describing Bess’s life. Every time she began to settle in a city, Copenhagen, Madrid or London, Jack or his PA informed her they were moving on. There was little notice as the tentative life she’d tried to build was abandoned.
‘I never dare relax in an old T-shirt or flannel pyjamas.’
Bess remembered her favourite sleep shirt. The cosy one she used to enjoy snuggling into. Jack had deplored it, preferring her to wear silk and lace, or nothing, in bed. Somewhere during their many moves she’d lost it.
‘Sorry, Bess. I shouldn’t complain. I’ve got an easy life for all that.’
Lara summoned a waiter for more drinks. Usually Bess would have stopped at one cocktail since she was attending an event later. But she was caught up in the creeping horror that pinched her nape and chilled her blood.
Jack had married her, but she might as well be his mistress.
Bess swallowed convulsively. Her throat lined with the razor-sharp shards of her broken dreams.
The truth hit like a hammer blow, cramping her lungs and smashing her already bruised heart. Her hands trembled and she put down her glass.
That carping voice, the one she usually silenced, was in her head again.
You’re a trophy wife, no more than a mistress with a wedding ring.
The only difference between her and Lara was the marriage ceremony she’d attended, she with stars in her eyes and Jack with satisfaction at acquiring an asset to help his domination of the world’s renewable energy market.
After eighteen months of marriage Jack was no closer to falling in love with her.
A great ache opened up inside Bess, so vast it threatened to consume her. Because she finally faced the truth she’d avoided for so long.
Her husband would never love her.
And every day spent in this one-sided marriage was slowly killing her.
