Page 18 of Filthy Rich

I feel a stab of envy, which makes this whole exercise all the more ridiculous. As if I have any right. As if any good can come from my wallowing in the kind of woman who snags Lucien Winter’s interest.

But Ravenna’s profile is gorgeous. She’s an Angelina Jolie type, with perfect bone structure and her long black hair flowing against the white veil. She’s wearing a Vera Wang princess-style gown in the kind of gleaming white satin that probably costs a thousand dollars a yard at some Parisian fabric store. Confetti flutters around their smiling faces, making the picture even more magical.

It’s the perfect picture. The perfect wedding.

The perfect couple, madly in love.

I toss the phone aside, flop onto my back, stomp the bed and stare at the ceiling for a minute as girlish despair washes over me. What a stupid move, looking him up online. I thought I was ready. I thought I could handle it. Rarely have I been so wrong.

You’d think that the sickening knot of envy and longing in my belly would block any desire for additional chocolate. You’d be wrong. So I get up, trudge over to one of the lesser gift baskets that I grabbed from Mrs. Hooper’s room earlier and rummage around until I find a giant bar of Belgian chocolate. Then I open it and take several huge bites. Thus fortified, I head back to the bed, find my phone again and resume the self-torture.

Ravenna, I discover, grew up in the same circles as him. She also went to a fancy boarding school. Then she went to Wellesley, where she learned to be a graphic designer.

And then…

Articles about her accident two years ago, eight years after their wedding. She took her small sailboat out alone on Manhasset Bay near their house. A sudden storm popped up. They discovered the capsized boat when she didn’t return. It’s all there, all incredibly sad. The frantic coast guard search…the divers…the transition from a search-and-rescue to a recovery operation, with no body ever found…paparazzi shots of Lucien’s stricken face after her funeral once they declared her dead.

God. What a tragedy.

Poor Lucien.

I stare up at the ceiling for God knows how long, my heart aching for him, finally checking the time when I can no longer stand my morose thoughts. Only nine thirty. With my incipient sugar and caffeine rush, it’s going to be a long night for me, isn’t it?

May as well really wallow in the misery. I modify my search and pull up some recent pictures of Lucien. There he is at some Christmas gala. Not smiling. Oh, and there he is on his polo pony in the middle of a match, his expression fixed and focused beneath his helmet.

Fun fact: I stumbled onto a show about polo a few years ago. Those polo ponies cost a hundred grand. At least.

Oh, and there’s Lucien with a blonde at some glittering Manhattan event. There he is with a biracial woman. There he is with a redhead. There he is with basically all the flavors of women, although I can’t help but notice that several of them bear a significant resemblance to Ravenna. It looks like he drowned himself in mindless hookups for a while. I don’t blame him. Who wouldn’t after a tragedy like that?

Oh, and by the way? It goes without saying that all these women are, like Ravenna, tall, willowy and ridiculously gorgeous.

Not one of them is remotely like me. In any way.

Well, we all have hair, eyes and ovaries, but beyond that, there is no similarity.

They’re all swans. I’m a wren.

Not that any of that matters, because I’ll never see him again. And even if I do see him again, he doesn’t want me. I’m not his type. The end.

I toss my phone aside again, determined to snap out of this ridiculous funk by tomorrow at the latest. I plan to enjoy my time in Europe. I can sulk about a man and my ongoing sexless existence any old time at home.

But for now? Chocolate.

I help myself to another large bite?—

That’s when the phone rings, jarring me out of my self-pity. Not my cell phone. The ship’s phone on the nightstand by my bed.

Startled, I sit up and wonder who it could possibly be. Probably Mrs. Hooper, although her style leans more toward texting me or simply yelling for me from the next room.

“Hello?”

“Meet me at the Diamond Casino,” says that familiar voice.

Lucien Winter’s voice.

My astonishment is so complete that I hold the receiver away from my head and stare at it, certain I’m hallucinating. Otherwise, it feels like I conjured him from thin air, and God knows I’m not clever enough to manage something like that.

“Oh my God,” I say, determined to keep my feet on the ground, because what the hell is this? “Who is this?”

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