He drew one more clear breath and answered it.
“There you are,” purred Missy’s most seductive voice. “I’m so glad I caught you.”
Zane’s heart thumped so hard she should have heard it on her end. “What do you want?” he asked tightly.
“Just to congratulate you. Coming out like that was clever. I’d almost think you didn’t mind.”
Zane gripped the phone and tried to project calm. “Missy, what I did to you doesn’t warrant this reaction.”
“Doesn’t it? You wasted my time, Zane, when all along you were in love with your CFO. I can have any man I want. I won’t be humiliated by some bastard billionaire using me as his beard. Does your new whore know that’s all she is to you? Does she realize you and your precious Trey count the minutes until you can be alone? Will she tell her friends she’s certain you’ll be popping the question any day?”
Was that what Missy had told people?
“Look,” he said, “I’m sorry you misunderstood my intentions, though—frankly—I can’t fathom how you could. You knew you weren’t the only woman I was seeing.”
“Oh, no, no, no,” she said, her voice crisp and hard with anger. “You don’t get to turn this around on me. I’m the victim, and you are going to pay—you and your precious gay boyfriend.”
“Missy—”
“Turn on Boston AM,” she advised, naming a local daytime talk show. “You’ve got—oh—about ten minutes until it starts. We’ll call this ‘Revenge, part deux.’”
She ended the call, leaving him to curse at no one. He glanced up the rear of the mansion to the quiet third-floor windows where he and Trey had shared so many nights. Rebecca joining them had felt natural—inevitable, even. She fit them both, and they fit her. He saw that now, as clearly as the sun beaming down on him. What he didn’t see was why people like Missy needed to twist their happiness into a different shape. Couldn’t they ignore it and go be happy themselves?
Because he guessed they couldn’t, he went inside to find the others.
They weren’t in the library. He found them in the twins’ guest room, standing in a loose cluster in front of the wall TV.
“My friend Caroline called,” Charlie said as he came in. “She said Boston AM was promo-ing an interview with Mystique.”
He’d barely finished speaking when the smartly dressed female host of the show appeared onscreen. Frieda Finch, a forty-something auburn-haired woman, was as birdlike as her name. To the swells of show’s theme music, she introduced her guest as the world famous swimsuit model, Mystique. Missy sat in the opposite chair, seeming to like the description. She’d dropped her recent Marilyn Monroe kick and was looking more Kim Novak in a primly buttoned but very curve-hugging light gray suit.
Finch leaned toward her sympathetically. “Mystique, you and billionaire Zane Alexander have been viewed as an item for a few years. What’s your take on these recent shocking developments?”
“First of all, Frieda,” Missy said, establishing their rapport and her own composure, “other people built more on that relationship than I did. You know how it is when someone’s famous. Everyone they blink at must be their boyfriend. I’d say Zane and I dated casually. On the other hand, I don’t deny that today I’m feeling a bit misled.”
Treys snorted as Missy smoothed her snug skirt primly, not coincidentally drawing attention to her legs.
“So you don’t believe Zane Alexander’s claim that he’s bisexual? Don’t you think the tape supports that?”
“Well, I’m no expert on these things, but some might say if he really did like women, he’d have tried harder to hold onto me.” Missy attempted to look modest, but wasn’t selling that.
Whatever Finch believed, she maintained her poker face. “You must feel like you dodged a bullet. If Zane Alexander had pursued you harder, that could have been you in that tape.”
This question was a bit sharper than Missy expected. She drew herself straighter and pursed her mouth. “I assure you, the . . . sort of activities in that recording aren’t what I go in for. I have more self-esteem than that. My concern is that other vulnerable women don’t get taken in by Zane or Trey Hayworth. Behind that rich bad boy glamour, the truth is unsavory.”
“You’re saying Trey Hayworth, CFO of TBBC, is also to blame for this?”
Missy turned her million-dollar fake-lashed eyes toward the camera, her expression oozing sincerity.