At the Stroke of Midnight (Naughty Princess Club 1)

“Isn’t she just the cutest thing you’ve ever seen? I want to adopt her,” Ariel chirps, shooting a beaming smile at the woman sitting next to her.

“I’m Isabelle Reading, by the way. I live around the corner. You have a lovely home.”

The woman holds her hand out to me, and having no other choice, since I don’t want to be rude even though she’s a stranger sitting in my home, I shake it.

“Thank you. And thank you for your assistance during my . . . episode. It’s nice to meet you, Isabelle.”

When our hands drop, she looks over at Ariel.

“I think you should apologize and tell her what you did,” Isabelle speaks quietly.

“But it’s so much fun watching her lose her shit. She’s like a bat-shit crazy wind-up toy, just spinning around and around until she smacks into a wall,” Ariel replies.

Isabelle sighs and nods her head in my direction.

“Ugggghh, fine. You’re cute, but you’re a buzz kill,” Ariel complains, rolling her eyes before looking at me. “Your husband didn’t give me herpes. I made the doctor’s bill I gave you in Photoshop and just said that to get a rise out of you. I figured you knew what that lying sack of shit was up to, so you started spreading rumors about me around the neighborhood.”

My mouth drops open in shock before I realize how unladylike I must look and quickly close it.

“So, you didn’t sleep with my husband?” I ask in relief.

“Oh, no. I totally banged him. But in my defense, it was right when I moved here, and we ran into each other at a bar one night. He gave me this sob story about how you two were getting a divorce because you’d been cheating on him. I felt sorry for the guy. I even shared my own problems with that fuckwit over entirely too many glasses of wine. One thing led to another, and I guess I sort of tripped and fell on his penis.”

My heart is beating so fast I’m pretty sure I might be having a heart attack. I can feel my face getting hot, and my scalp tingles with sweat.

“It was only that one time, seven months ago, and it was subpar at best, let me tell you. I don’t know how you put up with that two-pump chump for all these years, but you must be praising the good lord that he skipped town with your babysitter,” Ariel finishes.

I start patting my forehead, trying to remember how to breathe.

Ariel leans forward and grabs the cupcake out of my hand that I didn’t even realize I was using to wipe the sweat from my brow.

“They taste like shit, but look at that! They double as sweat rags!”

“I thought we agreed that you’d tell her gently,” Isabelle says.

“That was gentle! The guy skipped town and hasn’t been seen for six months. She knows he was banging the babysitter. Jesus, everyone knows he was banging the babysitter,” Ariel mutters.

“He didn’t skip town! He’s away on business!” I argue frantically, trying my best to pick up the pieces of my life, which I thought I had a good handle on until they were vomited all over my sitting-room floor.

“He stole money from his own father’s company and most likely fled the country with a woman-child who used to babysit for you.”

Just the mention of Brittany, the twenty-one-year old I’d known since she was thirteen—I first hired her to sit for Anastasia when she was five and Brian and I had to go to a PTA function—makes me feel sick to my stomach. Not to mention the fact that a woman I barely know, whom I didn’t like before I knew she slept with my husband, knows entirely too many intimate details about my life. The life I’ve tried so hard to keep intact, to not let what Brian did mar it in any way.

“Brian didn’t steal money from Castle Creative, that’s just preposterous,” I reply with an indignant huff, crossing my arms in front of me, still trying as hard as I can to stop my life from unraveling.

I refuse to be that girl from the trailer park ever again, and if lying my way through this nightmare is the way to do that, then so be it.

Brian had been the creative director at his parents’ business since he graduated college. Castle Creative is their pride and joy, a company that manufactures custom-made princess beds. As much as I want to pretend Brian would never do something so low and disgusting, I have hundreds of voicemails from my in-laws on my phone stating otherwise. They want to know where he is. They demand that I tell them where the money went. They think I actually knew about him stealing from them for years, and they won’t leave me alone until they get answers.