Before I can respond the phone goes dead. I raise my head to meet Jessica’s eyes with a smile. But I can immediately tell it’s too late to reassure her. Even through the haze of drugs she saw . . . something. She knows the conversation wasn’t about business.

“Mr. Gable will be stopping home in about forty minutes.”

“Why?” Jessica asks, unwittingly repeating my own reaction to the news. She studies the magazine, although I’m not sure she’s actually reading the words.

“That’s a very good question,” I admit.

And it’s a question I’m a little worried about.

She smiles weakly and runs her palm over an image of a girl selling perfume and sex. “Perhaps,” she says, “I’ll show you the shoes some other time.”

chapter twenty-nine

A full hour later Travis arrives and heads straight into Jessica’s office, where we’re working out the seating arrangements for the upcoming fund-raiser dinner. His walk is less a strut than it is the stalking gait of a predator.

Jessica opens her mouth to say hello, but my charming employer doesn’t acknowledge his wife at all. Instead he smiles down at me, more warmly than he ever has before.

It’s enough to scare the shit out of me.

“Bell,” he says, “you look beautiful as always.”

I glance toward Jessica. She has her head down, but even from this angle I can see that she’s fighting for composure.

“Thank you, Mr. Gable,” I begin. “Mrs. Gable and I—”

“I thought we could have a family dinner tonight, Travis,” Jessica interjects. “The children will be home early and—”

“And how would you know what time my children are going to be brought home?” Travis asks without bothering to turn and look at her.

“They’re our children, Travis,” she says with a nervous laugh. “It’s important that I keep up with the structure of their day. Is it so odd that I would memorize their schedule?”

I look away, hoping Travis didn’t have time to read my knee-jerk reaction to that. Jessica didn’t memorize a thing. I checked the calendar just twenty minutes ago and told her what the kids had scheduled today. But I don’t want the credit. I want Travis to believe that Jessica is being a halfway decent parent. I want him to soften toward her, if only for a few minutes.

If only long enough to get his attention off me.

And for a moment I think I’m getting my wish. Travis finally turns to face her. “I’ll call the nanny,” he says. “I’ll ask her to take Braden and Mercedes out to dinner. You shouldn’t be around them tonight.”

“But . . . I promised Mercedes we would play Chutes and Ladders tonight after dinner—”

“Then you’re going to have to break your promise to your daughter.”

Jessica shakes her head as she mouths the word why.