The Gallery (Contemporary Reverse Harem 4)

I stretched my neck and rolled my shoulders. “Si. It’s been a strange day. You know that financier, Devon Crane, from our meeting today? Had the nerve to refer to the wife he’d left just a week ago as a ‘nutbag’.”

“The world is full of people who are not very simpatico. I think you know that as well as anyone,” Sumner said.

I loved it when my friends used the Italian words I was always trying to teach them.

And yup, I did know as well as anyone about the creeps of the world. All I had to do was take a look at my arms-dealer father and how he’d thought nothing of putting our entire family in danger.

And I was curious to know if that woman we’d seen at the Hampton’s party really was as nutty as her husband said.

If Crane was as full of shit as I knew he was, he was the nut for leaving her.

Chapter 7

AVRIL

At four fifty-five p.m., I locked the gallery door, placed the be right back sign in the window, and returned to my office. At exactly five p.m., the phone rang.

“Devon,” I said, stomach churning.

“Av,” he replied.

I was swirling in a volcano of emotions, ratcheting back and forth between sadness, humiliation, and downright hatred. I moved my office trashcan between my legs in case I needed to vomit.

I forced myself to remain calm and cool. He wasn’t going to get the satisfaction of my freaking out.

“I was glad to get your email. Thank you for suggesting we speak,” I said.

“I figured it was about time. You know I’m with Dagney now, don’t you?”

A knife in my chest would have been less painful.

I held my chin high, even though nobody could see it. “I know that. I figured it out, Devon.”

“Oh. I wasn’t sure you knew.”

“Yup. I know,” I said simply.

If he was waiting for me to yell at him, he would be waiting a long time.

“Devon?” I asked.

“Yes, Avril?”

“Is there a reason you cut off the credit cards and emptied our joint bank accounts? I mean, do you think that’s fair, after you left me with no warning?” Okay, now my blood was starting to boil. I flicked on my laptop and looked at pictures of kittens.

“Well, Av, don’t you think it’s time you started…you know, supporting yourself?”

Stay calm. “If that’s your feeling, we could have talked about it. There might have been better ways to communicate that than just cutting me off without warning.”

“You’re right. You’re right. It’s just that all the guys I know said to be careful, and that when you got the news, you’d try to clean me out.”

“Glad to know your guy friends, who were probably also my friends at one time, advised you to leave me penniless,” I said.

“Oh, come on, Avril, it’s not like that—”

“It is exactly like that, Devon. The minute you turned your back on me, most of our friends did, too. And you know why that is?” I was getting pissed now.

“Um…well…I didn’t know that—”