The Replacement Wife (14 page)

Oddly enough, looks weren’t as much a factor as she’d once thought. At every meet-and-greet, there was the usual bevy of beauties, but not everyone was gorgeous or handsome. Camille’s assistant was the embodiment of the agency’s unwritten motto: You didn’t have to be a princess to find a prince. Dara might look like the love child of Sandra Bernhard and Lyle Lovett, but with her combination of style, sexiness, and sass, she had men eating out of her hand. At the opposite end of the scale were the babes who, after sparking some initial interest, fizzled like dud Roman candles and the oh-so-hip and handsome who were bypassed in favor of the sweet, fun-loving guys who were more cuddly than cute.

There were no hard-and-fast rules, Angie had learned. You just had to put yourself out there and hope for the best. Camille was good at her job—you could tell just by watching her work the room—but more often than not it was a matter of being in the right place at the right time. Which was where Angie was the first Friday in May when she spotted a tall, strikingly handsome man who momentarily made her forget her aching feet and the heavy platter she was carrying.

He was standing alone by the buffet table, sipping a drink and trying to look inconspicuous.
Fat chance,
she thought. With his soulful dark eyes and thick, wavy black hair flecked with gray at the temples, his swarthy complexion and face that screamed
Take me to the casbah!
, he had as much chance of blending in as a rare tropical tetra in a bowlful of goldfish. She pegged him as a newcomer. She’d never seen him before, and a face like his you didn’t forget.

Angie wasn’t in the habit of striking up conversations with the guests at these events, but she found herself inquiring of Mr. Tall-Dark-and-Handsome as she set down her platter, “First time?”

He turned to her, smiling sheepishly. “Is it that obvious?”

“I’m a trained observer,” she said, doing her best impression of an international spy by lowering her voice to a near whisper and tapping the corner of her eye.

He chuckled. “Clearly, that’s not your only talent,” he said, gesturing toward the sumptuous spread she and her staff were in the process of laying out. “I’m sure it tastes as good as it looks.”

Angie was warmed by the compliment. “I don’t think you’ll be disappointed,” she said, confident in her abilities in that one area even if she was no competition for the glamorous women circulating about. “By the way, I highly recommend the eggplant
involtini.
It’s my signature dish.”

He gave a full-on smile then that went through her like a warm knife through buttercream. Up close, she could see his eyes were more amber than brown, with thick lashes and emphatic brows, which at the moment were arched in bemusement. With his noble forehead and strong jaw offset by a sensuous mouth, he looked . . . princely. There was no other word to describe it.

“You must be Angie.” He put out his hand, and she noted with approval that he had a nice, firm grip. “Edward Constantin. It’s nice to meet you. My wife has told me a lot about you.”

His wife?
Angie felt her heart sink as her eyebrows shot up, despite knowing she wouldn’t have stood a chance with this guy even if he were up for grabs. “You’re married?” She kept her voice light. Before he could reply, she went on in an arch tone, “At the risk of pointing out the obvious, aren’t you in the wrong place?”

His smile widened. “I’m Camille’s husband,” he explained.

“Oh.” It made perfect sense. Naturally, Camille would be married to a walking billboard for her services. Angie put on her brightest smile. “Well, I’ve heard a lot about you, too.” It wasn’t strictly true—she and Camille communicated mostly by email and at the meet-and-greets were usually too busy to chat with each other—but she knew enough. “You’re a doctor, right?”

He nodded, and she thought,
Ma would have a field day
. Loretta D’Amato’s last, great hope was that she’d live to see her youngest daughter walk down the aisle. If Angie were to marry a doctor, her mom would think she’d died and gone to heaven.
Why can’t you meet someone nice?
she’d say.
Not the riffraff you go out with
. Meaning a man who wore a suit and tie to work instead of chef’s whites and who wasn’t covered in tattoos or scars from cuts and burns.

Edward leaned in to confide, “Don’t tell anyone, but I’m here under duress.” His gaze drifted to his wife, wearing a red halter dress and chatting with one of the other guests, a tall brunette who looked like a fashion model. “Parties aren’t really my thing.”

That explained why she hadn’t seen him at any of the prior meet-and-greets. “They’re not really my thing, either,” she told him. “Reminds me of when I was in my twenties, and they were just an excuse to get drunk. Now I get to watch other people drink too much and makes asses of themselves,” she added with a laugh, eyeing a bosomy blonde standing nearby, whose efforts to make an impression on the man with whom she was chatting were working in all the wrong ways, from the trapped look he wore. “Also, I don’t wake up the next morning with a hangover. Sore feet maybe but no regrets. Though,” she added in a wry voice, “if I were looking for a husband, I’d be the proverbial kid with her nose pressed against the window of the candy store.”

“But you’re not looking?” He gave her a questioning look.

“Nope,” she replied cheerfully, and she went on to explain, “I have four sisters, all married but not all happily so. They’d sooner die than admit it—they enjoy lording it over me too much—but if they had it to do over again . . .” She shrugged. “So the way I figure it, I’m just avoiding the mistakes they wish they hadn’t made.”

“Not every marriage is unhappy.”

“No, but it’s still a crapshoot. You never know what you’re going to get.”

“It’s not like winning the lottery. You have to work at it.”

“Some people have to work a little too hard, from what I can see.” Angie caught a flicker of some buried emotion in his eyes and was quick to say, “But hey, what do I know? I’m just the armchair quarterback.” She turned to gaze out the window. The rented space they were in, the top floor of a converted factory in West Chelsea, had floor-to-ceiling windows that wrapped around two sides of the building. From where she stood, she could see all the way across the Hudson River to New Jersey. Closer to shore, the reflected glow from the buildings along the waterfront showed the remnants of an old pier jutting from the water like rotted teeth. “You know the saying
Always a bridesmaid, never a bride
? That’s me. Not because I never caught the bouquet, but because I’d rather be single than stuck in a miserable marriage.”

“You never wanted kids?” he asked.

Angie brought her gaze back to him. Edward was smiling in a way that made her weak in the knees. The hard little nugget of cynicism that kept her from making a fool of herself with attractive men—attractive married men in particular—had turned into a quivering
panna cotta
. “Sure. But I have nieces and nephews coming out of my ears. Little beasts, every one of them,” she added with a fond chuckle. “The birthday cakes alone keep me plenty busy. In addition to being a caterer by trade, I’m also the family baker,” she explained with a laugh at the quizzical look he gave her.

“I can’t imagine my life without kids.” His expression softened as he told her about his children, a son and daughter. “Kyra’s fourteen going on forty, and Zach’s your typical nine-year-old, all knees and elbows. They can be a handful at times, but they never cease to amaze me.”

“You also have an amazing wife,” Angie reminded him.

“That I do.” His gaze traveled once more to Camille. In her red dress, with her tumble of auburn curls against skin so fair it was almost translucent, she glowed. Any man would be proud to call such a woman his wife. Yet, strangely, the look on his face was one of melancholy.

“Hey, are you all right?” Angie touched his elbow.

He blinked and returned his gaze to her, his smile slipping back into place. “What? Yes, I’m fine. I was just thinking of something.” He didn’t volunteer any more than that.

Angie felt a queer urge to comfort him nonetheless, which would have been entirely presumptuous since they’d only just met. He would think she was pushy or possibly coming on to him. So instead she did what any self-respecting Italian girl would do in a situation like this. “Why don’t I get you a plate of food?” she offered. “You look as if you could use something to eat.”

THE MOMENT EDWARD
had walked into the crowded room, he’d known it was a mistake to come. Instead of the soft music drifting from the speakers, he heard the sound of the band playing as the
Titanic
went down. His gut churned at the thought of the evening ahead, which—he suspected—was just the opener before Camille got down to the real business at hand. As she guided him around, introducing him to people, it was an effort to make polite conversation when he longed to head for the nearest exit. But he’d agreed to accompany Camille to the meet-and-greet and he was a man of his word, so he soldiered on.

One woman caught his eye: a striking brunette in a tailored black business suit that was in marked contrast to the cocktail attire worn by the other female guests. She was tall, six feet, at least, and not at all self-conscious about her height, judging by the five-inch heels that had her towering over the balding man with whom she was chatting. The man looked smitten, and it was easy to see why. She was a knockout, with her willowy figure and exotic good looks: high cheekbones and jade-green eyes that stood out against her golden-hued skin. Part Asian, he guessed. She looked familiar. Had he seen her somewhere? Probably in a magazine or on a billboard.

She caught him staring and flashed him a look over the balding head of her admirer, one that said,
Don’t go anywhere. I’ll be with you as soon as I can get rid of this guy.
Edward realized, to his chagrin, she must have thought he was scoping her. It was a reminder of his real purpose in being here, in Camille’s mind, at least—for all he knew the brunette in the black suit was earmarked as his next wife—and he regretted once more having agreed to come.
What the hell was I thinking?

Not that the women he’d met tonight weren’t attractive, but he had no interest in any of them. To him, they were like paintings in a museum, to be admired but not possessed . . . or desired. He had eyes only for his wife. When the brunette in the black suit parted company with her balding admirer and began moving in Edward’s direction, he took advantage of the opportunity, as she momentarily passed from his line of sight, to duck away and lose himself in the crowd.

KAT FISHER HAD
almost decided not to come. A late-breaking news story had kept her banging out copy until after the end of her shift, leaving her no time to dash home and change for the party. She’d have bagged on it on altogether if she hadn’t been so damn pissed. It was that girl, Natalie, from the assignment desk. Flashing her industrial-chip diamond around the newsroom, complete with cutesy story about how her boyfriend—now fiancé—had hidden it inside a fortune cookie prior to popping the question over Chinese takeout. It had been all Kat could do not to gag.

Not that she had anything against the girl; Natalie was nice enough. But why
her
? She wasn’t pretty or even especially interesting. How had she managed to get engaged when Kat, who was known to cause men to grow weak in the knees just walking into a room,
just breathing the same air,
was still husbandless? Was it just that she was unwilling to settle? Or was there something wrong with her, some hidden flaw, like in a diamond, that was invisible to the naked eye?

The irony was she’d had no interest in getting married until recently. Marriage meant settling down, and she couldn’t afford to do that in the early years of her career. She’d been too busy climbing the ladder, which had meant working the farm teams until she was ready for the big leagues. She’d started out as a junior copy editor at one of the local news stations in Sacramento. After six months, she moved on to Abilene, where for two years she cut her teeth with her first on-air gig, before it was on to Buffalo, followed by stints at WOFR in Miami and then WSB in Atlanta. It wasn’t until Kat had made it to the top, as a reporter for the number-one station in the number-one market, WABC-TV in New York City, that she could pause to take a breath and focus more on her personal life, only to discover that life didn’t sit still while you pursued your career. At thirty-nine, she had as much male interest as ever, only now the men in her age group were either married and looking for some action on the side or carrying so much baggage she’d need a forklift.

Three years ago, she’d gotten her wakeup call when her ob-gyn had informed her, during her annual checkup, that her window for childbearing was rapidly closing. “You have less than fifty percent chance of getting pregnant at your age.” Dr. Berg gave it to her straight. “By the time you’re forty, the odds will be even slimmer. I’m sorry,” she said at the look of dismay Kat must have worn, “but those are the facts. Better to know now than to have regrets later on.”

“But that doesn’t apply to
me,
” Kat protested. “Look at me! I work out like crazy. I run marathons, for God’s sake. I know women half my age who can’t even make it to the five-mile mark.”

“It’s not a race, Kat,” her doctor said gently. “What you see on the outside doesn’t always reflect what’s on the inside.”

“So what you’re saying is my expiration date is almost up?” Kat, who almost never cried—she viewed it as a sign of weakness—found herself suddenly, and perilously, on the verge of tears.

Dr. Berg nodded her graying head. “That’s one way of way of looking at it. I’m not saying this to worry you, but if you want children, you’re going to have to get on it fairly quickly.”

“But I don’t even have a husband!”

“That can wait. Your biological clock can’t.”

Dr. Berg gave her a comforting pat on the arm. But there was no comforting Kat. How could she relax knowing her ovaries, to which she’d scarcely given a thought all these years except when she was on her period or getting a Pap smear, were decomposing as rapidly as roadkill.