Page 95 of Perfect Satisfaction

“I thought you were saving that to use over him?” Angie pipes in curiously.

“I have so much over him. His terror of little rubber duckies is the last thing he needs to worry about.”

“Ben’s issue is fear of being clean. His logic—and I have no idea which cartoon this came from—is that bath time is something you do when your pajamas stand up on their own. Literally.” She sighs.

“You know the way to fix that?” I offer.

She tips her head to the side, waiting for me to continue.

“Dunk his PJs into some glue and water.” Both women look at me in shock. I give them a stare back. “What? I lived in a freaking mausoleum. If a bow was out of place, the decorators might never have been seen again. One day, I asked. Knowledge,” I say haughtily in my best impersonation of my father, “is better than money, Ursula. Remember that. Use it.”

“As grateful as I was for your brothers’ support after everything that happened, I don’t believe I’d have wanted to have been raised in your family,” Angie concludes.

“Trust me, you didn’t.”

“Well, it certainly hasn’t impacted your innate ability toward children. I’ve only seen Ben take to one other stranger that way, remember Angie?”

She laughs. “I think I spent the better part of a week picking leaves out of my hair.”

“Ahh, the early ‘Winsome Ward’ days,” I drawl.

Angie tries to choke me. I pull back my coffee with horror. “How dare you, madam?”

Both women crack up. I take a sip, stretch out my legs, and just relax. “I feel like it’s been forever since I’ve done this.”

“Technically, we haven’t done this—brunch—yet,” Carys calls from the stove where she’s pouring icing on homemade cinnamon rolls.

I smirk. “I meant relax. Smile. Laugh.”

“Is it that bad at your place?”

I feel the tension permeate back through my skin at her concern.

She turns with a plateful of heaven and plops it into the center of the table. “Let me ask you a question.”

“Shoot.”

“If you met Arek today without knowing he owned StellaNova, would you hold his past against him?”

I think about the question seriously and then clarify, “Is he really a man whore or a moderate one?”

“There’s a difference?”

Angie nods frantically. “Her dad versus say Becks.”

“One has a major asshole element,” I clarify.

“Moderate man whore. Lots of sex, friends with exes,” Carys states.

“No. I wouldn’t.”

“Then...”

“Why do I care when we were separated?” I push up from my chair and wander around the kitchen before giving my thoughts a voice. “My father made me wonder some days if having Hannibal Lecter as a blood relative would be such a bad thing, but one thing he never did was lie. It’s degrading that Arek lies to my face. All he had to do was hire someone—it took you all of an hour?”

“A day,” Carys cedes.

“Right, a day. If he gave a damn about finding the truth, he could have found it. If what he wanted to leave me with a semblance of pride, some part of my heart to be able to share with someone else, then why not simply divorce me?”