The Wife Who Knew Too Much(32)
Nina watched him around the women they’d interacted with in the past two months, trying to gauge how susceptible he was. With Juliet, he was polite and friendly. With Dawn, her yoga instructor, who traveled with them, and who for some reason had taken a dislike to him, he was distant. With Nina’s friend Anna, whose castle they’d stayed at in Scotland, and who was a terrible flirt, he’d been flirtatious. In each instance, the woman’s conduct seemed to determine Connor’s response. That wasn’t very reassuring.
After what she’d been through with Edward, Nina would lie awake at night, watching Connor sleep, imagining him in bed with other women. She told him that if he ever cheated, they were through. He claimed he never would, but all men said that. How could she keep him faithful? Her mind kept coming back to the prenup Edward held over Nina’s head for years.
She opened the second file now and read what her lawyer had drafted. Upon divorce, each party took from the marriage only the assets they’d brought to it, with the following exceptions. If Nina divorced Connor for any reason within the first five years of marriage, he got a one-time ten-million-dollar payout. After five years, he received an additional five million dollars for each year they remained married up to ten years. After ten years, the marriage vested, and Connor would receive half of Nina’s assets upon divorce by Nina. But—if Connor initiated the divorce, or, if Nina could prove that he’d been unfaithful, or lied about a relationship with another woman, he forfeited all payouts. He got nothing.
The prenup was much more persuasive than a mere threat to end the relationship. It contained incentives and disincentives. It attached numbers—a cost—to leaving, or cheating. It was one thing for him to think, If I get caught doing this, she might kick me out. Another entirely to say, If I cheat, I lose ten million dollars.
Yes. The prenup just might work. The only problem was, you only signed a prenup if you were getting married.
Nina texted Juliet to return to the stateroom. When she got there, Nina handed her the investigator’s report.
“Destroy this. Don’t read it.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Nina went back to the master, where Connor lay tangled in the blankets, fast asleep. She threw off her kimono and got in beside him, her hands snaking under the covers to find his naked body. His eyes opened, and he smiled drowsily.
“Hey, gorgeous,” he said.
She stroked him under the covers until he got hard. He grabbed her and pulled her underneath him. The sex was intense, like always, and she was sad when it ended. Life would feel empty if they weren’t together. She relied on him—in her bed at night, walking into a crowded room, muting the phone on a conference call to make fun of something somebody said. Her long, difficult marriage had made her unsentimental about love. She didn’t quite believe in it. Yet, here she was, in love with Connor.
“Hey,” she said, nuzzling against his neck, breathing in his scent. “You remember that song you sang to me the night we met?”
He raised himself on his elbow, brow furrowed. He didn’t remember. How was that possible?
“Oh, yes, right,” he said, nodding.
He’d scared her there for a minute, but now he started to hum the tune into her ear.
“The one about the carpenter who asked the lady if she’d marry him? That one?”
“Yes. I love that song.” She paused. “So, what do you think? Should we get married?”
16
July 4—two years later
Nina sat at her dressing table in a black silk robe as her beauty team prepped her for the party.
“You asked to see me, Mrs. Levitt?”
Steve Kovacs, her security consultant, stood in the doorway of the dressing room. He was a six-foot-four ex-marine, ex–NYPD officer with a flattened nose, who’d worked for her on and off for years. She expected three hundred guests tonight, so Steve had brought in five off-duty cops to work security. They’d check invitations and keep out trespassers, but now she had a more delicate assignment for Steve. She wasn’t sure she trusted him with it, but she had no choice. She needed backup or she wouldn’t feel safe.
“Take a break,” she told her hairdresser and makeup artist.
When they’d gone, she got up and checked the adjacent bedroom. Connor had been avoiding her all day and was still nowhere to be seen. He must sense what was coming.
There was no one moment when Nina discovered that Connor was cheating—in violation of their prenup, and every promise he’d ever made to her. The knowledge of it filtered through her skin like osmosis. She knew him so intimately. Everything about him—his body, his turns of phrase, the way he made love. She didn’t need to read his private emails or mistakenly receive a text meant for someone else. She noticed every subtle change. The faint whiff of a strange perfume as he took off his shirt. A new rhythm to his speech. An echo of another woman in the way he touched Nina’s body. This other woman haunted Nina like a ghost. She had to run her to the ground.
Lauren was the obvious suspect. They had a history, and maybe it wasn’t exactly over when Connor and Nina got together. Connor’s current position as vice president for North American development for Levitt Global required regular consulting with the head of PR. His meetings with Lauren always seemed to get scheduled for late in the day—too late to travel back to Windswept, where Nina slept. He’d wind up staying at the apartment in the city. Did he think this was her first rodeo? Nina had to sell her old apartment to get rid of the stench from all the women Edward brought there, on nights when he supposedly worked too late to make it home to the East End. She’d bought a new apartment for herself, and she liked it enough that she made sure to put safeguards in place. The doormen and the housekeeper were paid to report on Connor, whenever he was there without her. So far, he hadn’t brought anyone there. That didn’t mean he was faithful, just that he was careful.