The Trophy Wife by Evie Baxter

Two

Icouldn’t eat my breakfast. I’d barely eaten anything since arriving in London. I was surviving on caffeine and thin air. It was almost over though. I just had to keep myself together for one more day while the board restructured and appointed a new CEO for Widebeck. Tomorrow I would be home again, and all this would be over.

I hated being in the city. The constant reminders of the life I once led surrounded me here. Everything in me rebelled each time a landmark triggered a memory. St. Paul’s Cathedral, where we had married in the crypt. The American Embassy, where we had attended a number of functions. Nobu and The Ivy, because Richard liked to see and be seen in the very best restaurants.

Around every corner there seemed to be another memory, like I could see the ghost of my former self disappearing into buildings, attending functions still. I fervently didn’t want to be there, but it was ultimately worth it. Every last minute over the past five years spent accumulating the evidence to bury Richard. The late nights, and exhausted days, trying to find a balance between my new life and taking a knife to the old one.

The look on Richard’s face when I had shown up for the AGM had been priceless. He hadn’t laid eyes on me since the day I had walked out of his ostentatious town house. Our divorce had been handled strictly through our lawyers, his request for couples counselling turned down without thought, though I may have laughed maniacally at the very idea.

I hated him.

I hated him with a venom that some might be surprised I possessed. Bringing him down had been my obsession for so long, now that it had finally happened it felt rather surreal, like I would walk into the boardroom today and find his smug, bastard face grinning nastily at me from the head of the table like yesterday had all been a fantasy. Like he could still hurt me.

The headline on the newspaper someone had left on one of the sofas in the hotel lobby refuted that thought though. Richard was sunk. He would never do business in this city again. With any luck he would never do business of any kind anywhere again. If anything was right and fair in the world then my ex-husband would regret meeting me until his dying day.

God, it felt so good. If I wasn’t intent on keeping all emotion under wraps, I would have flipped a finger at his photo that stared out at me from the front page of the newspaper as I passed. Screw him and the horse he rode in on. He told me I was weak, but he was wrong.

I won. It was a hollow victory, but mine none the less.

I went to the ladies to check my hair and make-up before I left for the meeting. I refreshed my lipstick, hating the vivid slash of colour that I had once been forced to wear for all public outings. Now I wore it like an armour against all those who knew nothing. And I had needed that shield to hide behind for the ordeal of this week. Soon, I could walk away from this life completely, forever.

No one in this city knew me. The real me. They knew this façade of a woman who had swanned around, playing the society wife to perfection. I’d been a hollow, empty person back then, constantly walking on eggshells in fear of getting something wrong. I cared nothing for what any of these people thought of me now. And I knew what they thought. The word bitch muttered in my wake.

As I left the bathroom and crossed the lobby towards the exit of the hotel, I spotted Bastian Locke standing near reception, his eyes following my progress across the marble floor. His intense stare unnerved me and made my step falter, but I averted my eyes, and exited out into the dull greyness and crisp air of a late spring day in London.

My driver was waiting, opening the door to the car as I approached, and I slid into the back seat thankful when the door thunked shut and the tinted windows hid me from Bastian Locke’s eyes. He studied me like he was trying to figure me out, and there was nothing to figure out. I wanted him and everyone else to think that I was the revengeful ex-wife and no more.

The man was stupid good looking. Like he could give David Gandy a run for his money sort of way. His light brown hair was ruffled, like he had showered and finger combed it and left it at that. His jaw was shadowed by a day’s worth of beard, the angles of his face accentuated by the scruff. And below his straight brow were his jade green eyes, a startling colour that was impossible to miss.

He was ruggedly masculine, and he had the brooding look down to a T. The fact that that look had been focused on me the previous day was disconcerting to say the least. I didn’t need that kind of scrutiny. This was a difficult enough time to get through as it was without him unsettling me on top of everything else.

Just being in the same room as Bastian Locke made my heart race in a way that it hadn’t in just about forever over a man. I had been a teenager the last time I had had even a faint semblance of sexual attraction to anyone. Now, at the most trying time I had had in years, this bloody man was messing with my focus and my need to get this final act done so I could move on with my life.

It had taken all the self-control I had to sit in the same room as Richard and present the evidence I had amassed on him without showing a hint of emotion. To keep my face impassive as Richard spouted venom at me, all of it happening under the unfaltering gaze of the intimidating Bastian Locke. It had almost been more than I could take.

And I knew I could take a lot. I had at the hands of Richard. Three and a half years of a lot. He would regret every ounce of misery he had rained down upon me now. I hoped he rotted in hell, cursing my name into eternity.