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I looked up and smiled winsomely at him. “Great,” I replied cheerfully, stepping out of my wicked boots and into some furry pink slides. A new wave of energy had rushed through me at both the thought of being done and possibly seeing Banks again.

I was stripped down to almost nothing and shrugged into a fresh pink striped robe.

I was scanning the crowd for my husband when someone else caught my eye.

A gorgeous woman with a glorious mane of black hair was making her way toward me. She was a standout in a room full of standouts, and I recognized her instantly.

Speak of the devil. She just kept coming up, things about her inserting themselves into my life against my will. Or perhaps they’d been there all along and I was too naive and sheltered to see it.

It was Fatima. My husband’s ex. The woman who had ruined him. And she was headed straight for me.

CHAPTER

TWENTY-FOUR

Fatima came directly toward me, not trying to hide the fact that I was her destination. She stopped about two feet away and just studied me with an air of amused disdain. What else could I do but study her back?

The backstage situation post-show was crowded beyond belief, but somehow her confidence and my fear were the only things in the room.

She was the quintessential enigmatic woman. Wicked and mysterious. Her eyes were black and sultry her lashes heavy and thick enough to hide all kinds of secrets. Her skin was a fine bronze with golden undertones that gave her a glow that outshone any makeup. A natural beauty that was all the more stunning with a bit of polish, which she had in spades. Her lips were painted blood red and they were lush, with an exaggerated cupid’s bow that contrasted interestingly with the mean twist to her mouth. She was sharply stunning.

And then there was the rest of her.

I was slender, toned and fit, but shapely, my hips and bust exaggerated against my smaller waist.

She was a few inches shorter than me, but still statuesque, and on another level of curvy. There’d been hit songs written about her ass. She was a wet dream come to life. I felt like a skinny child next to her.

Comparison was a man’s device, meant to pit women against each other. I knew that, so I tried not to let my mind go down that road, but it was a struggle.

I didn’t know what to say to her, but she had plenty to say to me.

When she spoke her voice was low, sultry, and dripping with poison-laced honey. “Ah. You. The bride. I suppose it’s time we finally met. I’m Fatima. I assume you’ve heard of me?”

“I have,” I said evenly. There wasn’t so much as a hitch in my breath. I was proud of that.

We’d never spoken before, but I knew more about her than I wanted to. Some I’d been told, the rest I’d looked up myself with morbid curiosity.

Theirs was an old-school, tragic love story. Star-crossed, Romeo and Juliet shit. His family was old, wealthy beyond measure, and above all respectable. Hers gained and lost fortunes like it was a game of Monopoly and were rumored to be closely connected to the Turkish mafia. Or possibly the Russian mafia. Or both, depending on the website.

In spite of his family’s disapproval, they’d been together for years. And she’d gone directly from being engaged to him to married to her husband with no downtime at all.

I’d also found plenty of random, useless tidbits about her. She was four years older than my husband, had an unholy obsession with all things Gucci, and her DD breasts were real, fabulous, and had been plastered all over the internet thanks to her penchant for frequent topless sunbathing on her yacht.

“Did you need something?” I asked her, polite as I could manage. She’d been staring at me for moments that had dragged into forever.

“From you? No. I was looking for your husband. We got separated in the crowd.”

This was a scenario I’d gone over in my fake wife training. It was in the handbook under: Never admit it’s a fake marriage, even to his lover. Of course I’d never realized that when it came up just how it would feel, and how my instincts would kick in much more powerfully than my training.

“I saw him in the front row,” I retorted with all the fake haughty pride I could muster. “You weren’t with him.” After a moment I thought to add, “Because he’s here with me.”

Her reaction didn’t show up in the way her face shifted but rather the way it smoothed over into even more perfect neutrality. I’d hit some sort of a nerve there. Score one for the wife.

Of course, it didn’t take the mistress long to recover.

“You’re not staying at his Park Avenue residence, are you?” she asked archly. “I’ve never seen any sign of you there.”

I couldn’t have said what moved across my face at her words, but what moved through my chest felt like jagged claws in the shape of her long, red, sharp nails.