“Are you fucking kidding me?” She never swore and he flinched, but she didn’t care. She wanted to hurt him. She wanted to upend his world like he’d upended hers. She wanted to destroy him. She threw her handbag and keys on the counter and marched to the fridge. The only bottle of alcohol was French Champagne. If she opened it, did it mean she was celebrating the end of her marriage?

“I’m sorry,” Nick said. “That was a stupid thing to say.”

Her hands trembled on the slippery bottle as she fumbled with the foil. “It’s not stupid. Stupid is fucking my best friend!”

“I know, I know. I should have told you earlier.”

The cork popped, the sound as hollow as she felt inside. She poured the liquid into the glass and it fizzed up the sides before spilling over like her emotions. “What you should have done is not had an affair with her.”

“She told you it was an affair?” He poured himself a drink and took a big gulp. “It so wasn’t an affair.”

“What then?” She forced herself to ask the question she feared the most. “True love?”

“God, no! Did she say that? It was nothing like that. Tesoro mio, you’re my one true love.”

He reached for her but she side-stepped him. The thought of Nick touching her made her skin crawl.

“How can you say I’m your true love and mean it? You slept with her! You have a child with her. You wanted to move her and that child next door to us so you could keep sleeping with her.”

“Libby, no. I don’t want her anywhere near us.”

“Then why are you buying Sulli’s place with her?”

Nick’s head dropped and his curls drooped. Libby got a flash of Leo and the air rushed out of her lungs so fast and sharp, she almost cried out.

When Nick looked at her again the only emotion she could detect in his Tuscan eyes—oh God, Leo’s eyes—was anguished exhaustion.

“I thought I owed it to Leo,” he said quietly.

Libby thought she’d experienced every possible emotion from shock and betrayal to an all-encompassing fury that had driven her to claw and rip her dress off Jess’s shoulders. But none of those feelings had prepared her for the savage grasp of jealousy that tightened around her like a vice.

“You thought you owed it to Leo?” she said quietly and then lost control of her restraint. “What about what you owe me? Your daughters?”

“I’m sorry.” He wrung his hands. “I’m just trying to do the right thing by everyone in a very difficult situation.”

“A situation you created because you can’t keep your dick in your pants!”