Page 39 of Fake Marriage with the Billionaire

Richard waited while she took a drink from her glass, then asked, “How did he ruin your life?”

She took a deep breath and said, “Well, one night, I’d decided that I’d had enough. I waited until he went to work, then I packed my things and I went to stay with Stoney. The minute he realized I was gone, that’s when he started with his smear campaign against me. He posted things about me on social media and called Stoney every hour until Stoney blocked his calls. When that didn’t work, he called my job to try to talk to me and whenthatdidn’t work, he started calling and acting like he was a customer complaining about me.”

She didn’t say anything for a minute. He saw tears standing in her eyes. “That went on for our entire separation. He went around to anyone who would listen telling them lies about me.”

“What kind of lies?”

Stella scoffed bitterly. “Whatever he could think of, I imagine. I didn’t know he was doing most of it until I started getting messages from people who claimed that I did things that I didn’t do like stealing money or sleeping with their boyfriends. It got so bad that I had to leave my job. And when I went to find a new job, I couldn’t even get an interview. There’s no way I could ever prove it, but I’m pretty sure that he’d gotten to enough managers around town that no one would touch me.”

It was all beginning to make sense to Richard about why Stella agreed to do this whole thing. This ex-husband of hers ruined her chances to start over.

“And now, apparently, he’s graduated to stalking me straight out,” she went on. “The worst part is that I don’t even understand why. You’d think he could just let it go.”

Richard leaned back on the couch, absorbing the story he’d just been told. “Maybe he needs someone to impress upon him the benefit of leaving his ex-wife alone.”

He drank his wine and the corners of her lips turned up a little. “Thanks for the sentiment, but I wouldn’t want him to do anything worst than what he’s already done.”

“Nonsense,” he says. “Some men need to be put in their place. I’m sure Stoney would agree with me.”

She chuckled. “You’re right about that. After everything happened, all he wanted was to break his nose. He might’ve too if I hadn’t asked him to stay out of it.” She took another drink, this time draining her glass. “As satisfying as it would have been,” she said, “it would be just like him to file charges against me for it.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, “that you had to deal with that.”

She sighed and leaned across the table to the bottle of wine sitting between them. “Sometimes I wonder which is worse,” she said as she poured herself a new glass, “the narcissism or just the betrayal of the whole thing.”

He took a drink from his glass before allowing her to top his off, then said, “The betrayal. The betrayal is much worse. At least with the narcissism, you can chalk it up to a mental disorder. Betrayal is special because anyone can do it.”

She regarded him, her sparkling blue eyes seeing through him. “You sound like you speak from experience.”

“Betrayal has been a part of my life for as long as I can remember in one way or another,” he said softly. “But I don’t think any time hurt as bad as when I caught my ex in bed with one of the ad executives with the company.”

She raised her eyebrows and drank from her glass. “That’s terrible.”

“The irony is that if that hadn’t happened, I would have married her,” he said. “Had I married her then, I wouldn’t be in this predicament now.”

“I wouldn’t say that,” said Stella. “If you’d married her, it might’ve been the pool boy you found her with.”

She chuckled and that made him laugh with her. “You’ve got a point there.” He looked around them. The two of the sitting on the couch drinking wine, Stella with her feet up and tucked under her and him with his tie loosened around his neck. “We are pathetic.”

She raised her eyebrows. “Excuse me.”

“Look at us sitting here on the couch, drowning our sorrows when we should be celebrating. We did well tonight.Youdid well tonight.”

She wrinkled her nose at him. “You think so?”

“I know so. Nobody in that room believed that you weren’t with me.”

She looked down at her glass, swirling the golden liquid around. “Well, notnobody. I didn’t seem to fool your stepmother very much.”

“If we’re being honest, that’s more on me than you. I should have known better. She wasn’t going to believe me even if she had been there for my fake proposal.”

She didn’t respond and just smiled to herself as he was smiling as well and it occurred to Richard that he was happy. Not gleefully happy or any such thing, just…happy. Sitting there with Stella made him feel good and that was something that he hadn’t felt in a very long time with anyone.

He looked over at her in her shimmery blue dress and her curled updo, looking like a princess sitting on one side of a second-hand couch. Richard had a thought that she looked like a portrait to him. She was a tableau representing who she was. This beautiful, ethereal creature sitting amongst the garbage, placed there by some hapless idiot that didn’t know what to do with her once he had her.

She turned her eyes up and caught him staring at her. Her cheeks reddened and she looked away. “Maybe we should call it a night.”

He nodded and when she stood up, he did, too…but he didn’t want to go.

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