Chapter 3
Not to employees. Not to attorneys. Not to men who sat across tables from him and tried to steal pieces of his empire.
Yet there he stood, thirty yards from the courthouse where she intended to end their marriage, asking instead of commanding.
“Hospital,” he said again, quieter. “After that, if you still want the courthouse, I’ll bring you back myself.”
She hated that it was reasonable.
She hated even more that she was frightened enough to accept.
“All right.”
Adrian exhaled.
It sounded like he had been holding his breath for three years.
Their marriage had begun as an arrangement respectable enough to appear in society magazines and old-fashioned enough that Naomi had initially laughed when her father explained it.
The Bennett family controlled commercial real estate along several Great Lakes freight corridors. The Vales controlled shipping.
A merger would have attracted too much scrutiny. A marriage looked romantic.
Naomi had been twenty-eight, independent, stubborn, and already making a name restoring nineteenth-century paintings for museums and private collections. Adrian had been thirty-four and newly responsible for an empire after his father’s sudden death.
They had met four times before their engagement.
On the fifth meeting, Adrian had taken her onto the terrace of a private restaurant overlooking the Chicago River.
“I won’t pretend this is normal,” he had said.
“I’d be worried if you did.”
The corner of his mouth had moved.
She remembered thinking then that he should smile more often.
“I will never interfere with your work,” he continued. “Your money stays yours. Your property stays yours. If the arrangement becomes intolerable, tell me.”
“How romantic.”
“I’m trying not to lie to you.”
That had mattered.
More than flowers would have.
She had also made one terrible mistake.
She had fallen in love with him.
May you like
Not immediately.
It happened in pieces.
