Almost.
Scanning back up, I made my tone as cold as her blue eyes. “Daria.”
“Oh, my god,” she practically squealed. “What are the chances of us running into each other here? I hadn’t even planned to come, but then my friend Sarah told me about this sale, and I figured, why not?”
“Wow. Fascinating,” I said, struggling to piece together the bitch who threatened to ruin me and the bubbly Stepford wife smiling as if we were old friends. Then again, I shouldn’t have been surprised. She’d always been delusional and self-centered. It explained why she still occasionally tried to talk to Grace at charity events they both attended. It explained why she stood there rambling on and on without considering that I’d imagined her being hit by a car at least ten times by now.
“And then, John…ugh.” She laughed, unaware of how that name increased my ire. “He picked out a crib that was just so over the top. But you remember how he is—always going above and beyond. Especially for our little one.”
John.My best friend from college. The man Daria had an affair with for most of our marriage. Apparently, the man who managed to stick it out despite her being a soul-sucking bitch.
I hummed a noncommittal sound and tried to smile, but knew it looked more like a grimace.
“So, what about you? What brings you here? You’re not exactly the go shopping for apartment décor over the weekend kind of guy,” she rambled without giving room to respond before continuing. “Did Grace send you? Of course, it was Grace. It had to be because it couldn’t be anyone else. I know you too well to ever think you’d have gotten married again.”
And there it was…
The passive, catty personality she’d hidden from me for years. The bitch that brought me to the edge of ruin.
She smiled, but I caught the spiteful glint in her gaze. I saw her eyes tighten as she studied me for signs that her comment had hit its mark. My jaw clenched. An angry response, telling her to mind her own fucking business, clawed its way up my throat.
Before I could spew the words, a hand rubbed up my back to my shoulder while another slid up my abs to rest on my chest. Aspen curled around me like a possessive viper with a smile to match.
“Hey, babe,” she purred. “Who’s this? One of Grace’soldfriends from the clubhouse?” She glanced at Daria with her head cocked, delivering the words so innocently that I almost believed they weren’t secretly weapons of mass destruction.
Daria’s saccharine smile turned sour, looking more forced as she tried to stare down her nose at Aspen. “I’m Daria, his college sweetheart.”
“Oh.” Aspen’s smile slipped into a wince. “That’s right. He told me all about you—hisex-wife.” Aspen glanced at me and chuckled, bumping her shoulder against my side as if we had some kind of inside joke about the woman.
A smile barely clung to Daria’s tight lips as she shifted her feet, looking between us.
Aspen ignored Daria’s obvious discomfort and faced her with feigned genuine interest. But I saw the doe-eyed innocence and knew she only used it to lure Daria into a trap. “So, what are you out shopping for today?”
Daria collected herself, pinning her socialite smile back in place as she stroked a hand across her abdomen. “A crib for the baby. I heard great things about this store, and after finally getting pregnant with the love of my life, I couldn’t imagine anything but the best for our little one.”
Indignation rippled down my spine, remembering her cruel laughter as she told me she would never want kids—especially with me. Sensing the tension twisting my body tighter, Aspen soothed her hand along my back and tucked in closer. I leaned in and wrapped my arm around her, soaking in her comfort, letting it soothe the festering resentment I’d carried around for too long.
“Oh, congratulations,” Aspen said, releasing another soft laugh, tinged with the barest hint of malice. “I would’ve said it sooner, but you can never be sure nowadays. I was worried that maybe you weren’t pregnant and just kind of…” She gestured toward Daria’s body with a wince and shrugged. “It’s better safe than sorry to assume.”
I almost choked trying to hold back my shocked laugh, quickly covering it with a cough. It’d been so long since I’d witnessed Aspen’s cutting words. Watching her in action had me reminiscing about when we first met, wondering how the hell I survived her lethal barbs.
All polite decorum fled Daria’s features. Her jaw dropped before snapping shut, her eyes flaring with embarrassed anger. She swallowed twice before regaining a modicum of control, presenting the perfect lady who sat on charity boards and lied with every fake smile. “Better safe than sorry,” she agreed through a clenched jaw. “What brings you two here?”
“Just doing some shopping to spruce up the apartment. I swear Lucian has a fear of color,” Aspen joked, leaning her head against my chest. “But I told him that if he was that desperate for me to move in, then we’d have to decorate it together.”
Desperate?
My face contorted, but I forced it to smooth when Daria noticed; her gaze sharpened, and her lips twisted.
“Wow, living together. I never thought I’d see the day after I overheard Grace talking at the club about how you haven’t been in a serious relationship since…” she pursed her lips, pretending to think, before her thin lips curved into a malicious smirk. “Well, since me. I think everyone was starting to assume you wouldn’t recover afterImoved out.”
A low, rumbling growl started low in my stomach, but Aspen’s loud guffaw quickly drowned it out.
“Oh, gosh. That is funny,” she exclaimed, wiping away fake tears. “He claimed he couldn’t bear for us to be apart after he asked me to marry him. Although,” she started, lowering her voice as if sharing a secret between two girlfriends. “Asking is putting it lightly. And it’s crazy because everything has moved like a magical whirlwind—as if he knew exactly what he wanted but hadn’t found it yet.”
My lips twitched at the subtext:As if you could damage him. He just didn’t want someone like you, and once he found me, he couldn’t wait to be married.
Adding salt to the wound, Aspen flashed her engagement ring—unaware of how much Daria complained about it.
