A Wild Affair by Gemma Townley Read Free Book Online

around and stared at her. “Other woman?”
    “Saturday night,” she said, studying one of her long, red fingernails. “In restaurant. I em there with client, I turn, I see Mex, with lady.” She looked up. “Very sexy lady. Very elegant. Better hair than you. Much better.” She was looking at my ponytail scathingly.
    “Max was out with a client on Saturday night,” I said tightly, willing Helen to go faster with her unbuttoning. He'd told me it was a man. Not a woman.
    “Ah, client,” Ivana said. “Like me.” She smiled, her face losing its harshness for a few seconds. Then she looked back at her nails. “Did not look like client,” she continued. “Clients do not wrep arms around men at end of dinner, I think?”
    I looked down at her sharply. “He wrapped his arms around her? He was probably just being friendly.”
    “She wrep arms, not him. But he return favor.” Ivana was sounding less bullish now. She moved toward me and put her hand on my shoulder awkwardly; the whole “sisterhood” thing didn't come naturally to her. She looked at me for a few seconds, then opened her mouth again. “I think she is bitch,” she said. “I can tell this things.”
    “Whatever,” I said. “But it's not what you think.”
    “It look like what I think,” Ivana said, moving away and looking rather insulted.
    Helen had stopped unbuttoning and was looking at me in alarm. “Shit. You think Max is …?” She met my eyes and shook her head. “No, of course he isn't. Sorry.”
    “You should be,” I said, angrily swiveling the dress around so that I could finish unbuttoning it myself. “Max was out with a client, end of story. If she was hugging him it's probably because she was so happy to be doing business with him. He's very talented.”
    Ivana raised an eyebrow.
    “And you can stop making faces,” I told her. “Not all men are pigs, Ivana. Not all men are distracted by cleavage or think that skintight plastic is the last word in sexy. Max loves me. For who I am. Okay? Okay?”
    I was two inches away from her; I realized that I was blinking away tears. Ivana saw them, too; she moved her head back slightly.
    “Okay,” she said, putting her hands up. “Okay. I take it back. No boom-boom. Just business.”
    I bristled at Ivana's voice, which made even “business” sound dirty and suggestive. But I wasn't going to listen to her. Max wasn't like other men. I trusted him. I did. Even if he'd said he was out with a man. There would be an explanation. There had to be.
    “Yes, just business,” I said, tightly, wishing I could be as sure as I sounded.
    “Hello!” A head poked around the curtains—it was Vanessa, the shop assistant.
    “Hi!” I said, too enthusiastically.
    “So, that's the dress, is it?” She helped me out of it and put it over her arm. “It is lovely,” she enthused.
    “Yes, it is,” I agreed.
    She smiled, conspiratorially “And you're going to actually get married this time, are you?”
    She was joking. I knew she was just joking. We'd laughed about my last wedding on the phone when I made the appointment. But right now, it wasn't funny. It wasn't funny at all.
    “Yes,” I snapped. “Yes, I'm going to get married. To Max. Whom I love.” I looked pointedly at Ivana. “Who loves me. And if anyone has a problem with that, they can just deal with it because I'm not bloody interested.”
    There was silence as I pulled on my normal clothes, my normal clothes which now appeared drab and boring and whichdidn't light up my face the least little bit. I found myself irrationally hating them.
    “Of course you are,” Vanessa said, backing out of the cubicle. “I'll just leave you to … to …,” she said, not finishing the sentence, so desperate was she to get the hell out of there. I realized that's exactly what I wanted to do, too.
    “I have to go,” I said, picking up my bag.
    “Jess, is everything …,” Helen started to say, but I wasn't listening; I was already halfway to the