Page 38 of Fake Marriage with the Billionaire

“I know,” she admitted. “But I’m telling you, he couldn’t have met and gotten engaged to someone this quickly. It’s just unreasonably impossible.”

“Maybe he charmed her.”

She scoffed. “Trust me when I tell that’s completely impossible. Richard has the emotional range of a wooden board. He couldn’t charm a woman if you put a gun to his head.”

Richard clenched his jaw to keep from speaking out against her. She had a lot of nerve talking about him like that.

“I’ll have to call an emergency board meeting,” she said finally. “My husband had seventy percent stock in this company. That’s got to count for something. If I can convince them to oust him, then that’ll solve all this in a heartbeat.

“You don’t control that stock,” said the man and she chuckled.

“I’m still his wife. I can vote as his proxy.” She paused. Richard imagined the man, whom he believed had to be her attorney, was staring at her in disbelief or hopefully disgust.

“I have to do something,” she said to him. “If I can kick him out of his job, then he’ll drop this whole pretend engagement thing to get it back.”

Richard didn’t want to hear anymore. He stepped away from the door and started back to the parlor. In the hallway leading there, he saw Stella walking out, looking over her shoulder warily. She was so busy looking behind her that she nearly ran into Richard.

“Hey,” he said. She stepped back and looked up at him, her blue eyes wide and shaky. She was wringing her hands and shifting her feet nervously. “What’s wrong? Are you okay?”

She shook her head. “Can we leave?”

Richard paused, but only for a moment. Dinner hadn’t been served yet and it might be considered rude for them to leave…but he didn’t want to stay and it was clear something spooked Stella enough to want to leave. “All right,” he said. “Let’s go.”

***

Stella went stone silent in the car on the way back. Richard didn’t know what to say or do with that. He had never been good with tense situations…

“My ex was at the party,” she said finally. “I don’t know how or why, but I saw him there tonight.”

Richard blinked. “Maybe Rebecca knows him somehow.”

“I sincerely hope not. He’s a life ruiner.”

It occurred to Richard that he didn’t know anything about what happened in Stella’s divorce. But then, of course, he’d never asked her anything. He’d never bothered to find out very much about Stella outside of what she volunteered. He’d been working hard to keep the line between them solid since the last time they slept together.

But he couldn’t help the feeling in his heart as he looked at her. She was visibly upset and to his surprise, he didn’t like seeing her that way. Whomever this man was, he had done some serious damage to her for her to be so emotional.

“What happened?” he asked her.

She didn’t say anything at first. They were turning the corner now to her apartment. As they pulled up to the curb, she sighed, looking out the window to the door to her apartment building.

“Come up with me?” she said. “I…I don’t think I want to be alone tonight. And I can tell you what happened over drinks.”

Richard nodded, then told his driver that he would call him when he was ready to go. The two of them left the car and went into her apartment.

Once there, Stella kicked off her shoes, then walked barefoot into her kitchen. “I have wine,” she said. “It’s a cheap bottle, but it’ll do the trick.”

“That’s fine,” he said. He leaned against the arch leading into the kitchen as she pulled out two wine glasses from the cabinet.

“I was married for about three years,” she said as she poured the wine into the glasses. “And I was happy for maybe six months of that.”

She handed Richard a glass, then led him out to the living room. “Curtis was possessive and narcissistic. He didn’t want me to work or have any friends. It was like he thought of me like a doll in a glass case.”

They were sitting on the couch and she was looking out into nothing, remembering. “I was such a fool to have stayed with him, but the truth was that I was scared to leave him. He’d get so angry and he’d make me think that I was the cause of all our fights.”

“He sounds like a real prick,” said Richard, and she smiled.

“He is. And he’s manipulative, too. Stoney didn’t even know how bad it was until a month or so before our divorce. He had everyone believing that he was the best guy in the world.”

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