On stage, Boomer claps his hands for attention, and the murmurs from the crowd dwindle to nothing. “Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to our exclusive behind-the-scenes confessional special! Today, our trophy wives will reveal their unfilteredthoughts about life, love, and the cutthroat world of daytime drama!”
The audience applauds with the enthusiasm of people who’ve been promised gossip juicy enough to require NDAs.
As much as I’m looking forward to hearing what the wives have to say, I’m certainly not looking forward to providing a confessional of my own.
And aren’t these types of things supposed to be conducted in private? I frown over at the drama-hungry producer because of it.
Boomer lifts his microphone. “First up, the incomparable Val Cruz-Henderson!”
Val saunters onto the stage in a skintight red dress that defies both gravity and maybe good taste. She arranges herself in the confessional chair like a cat claiming a sunbeam with her legs crossed at precisely the right angle calculated to make middle-aged men develop arrhythmias.
“Val, what do you think of the other wives?” Boomer wastes no time in cutting to the quick.
“The other wives?” she purrs in response. “Honey, they’re like department store knockoffs of designer originals.”
An audible gasp circles the theater.
“Beth is still playing the wide-eyed ingénue at forty-three,” Val continues, “and Harper carries that leather-bound notebook around like she’s writing the next great American novel instead of a grocery list.”
I lean toward Elodie. “She’s not wrong on either point.”
Boomer leans forward. “And what about your relationship with Santino? Thirty years is practically a millennium in Hollywood marriages.”
The woman is married to the wickedest soap villain who has ever died and come back to life.
Val’s smile turns predatory. “Let’s just say that some men, likefine wine, improve with age. Santino may be pushing seventy, but he still performs better than any battery-operated toy in my collection.” She winks, and more gasps ensue. “And I have quite the collection.”
“Wow,” I whisper to Elodie. “Sometimes less is more.”
Elodie snorts. “What she didn’t mention is that her collection has its own climate-controlled closet on the ship. She had my staff set up a special display case. And might I add, I was quite impressed.”
“Good grief.” I sink in my seat a little at the thought.
Val continues to dispense increasingly explicit details about her marriage that will definitely require heavy editing for daytime television, and the audience erupts in scandalized titters.
I shake my head. “I was not ready for any of that.”
Beth takes the stage next, her usual nervous energy channeled into picking invisible lint from her pastel dress.
“Of course I love the other wives,” she says, her smile so tight it threatens to shatter. “We’re like sisters! Sisters who occasionally want to slip arsenic into each other’s champagne, but sisters nonetheless.”
I arch a brow at the thought of slipping something into someone’s drink—like poison.
When asked about Dr. Luca Carrington Jr., her expression softens into something that might be genuine affection or might be the result of excessive Botox.
“Lance is my rock.” Her voice quivers. “My slightly forgetful, occasionally wandering rock. Did you know he once forgot our anniversary because his character was getting married to his evil stepmother that week? He sent me the prop ring from the show by accident.” She laughs, but there’s a brittleness to it. “It’s not easy being married to Dr. Luca Carrington Jr., especially when your husband sometimes forgets he’s not actually Luca.”
“I’d be happy to help him remember who he is,” Nettie shouts from her seat.
“Nettie!” Bess hisses. “But honestly, I wouldn’t mind being his Laurie for a day either,” she calls out just as loud. “Or a week. A month, even.”
The room breaks out in laughter and applause.
“You’d have to fight me for him,” Nettie counters. “I’ve been practicing saying, ‘Luca, take me to the Riviera and ruin my reputation!’ in the mirror for thirty years. I’m prepared.”
“Ruin?” Bess murmurs. “That ship sailed in 1964.”
The room titters again.
