On Lavender Lane by Joann Ross Page B

tomorrow afternoon?”
    “So soon?” A betrayal as hurtful and public as what her husband had committed wasn’t as easily dispensed with as a scorched béchamel sauce or a broken shrimp platter.
    “I know.” She reached across the small table and patted Madeline’s hand. “But the offer is time sensitive. Although you’re absolutely their first choice, they’re also considering Rachael Ray. Or Sandra Lee.” Her brow furrowed. Just a bit. “And, let’s face it, darling. Although your food is superb, their public profile is a bit higher than yours.”
    How about a lot higher?
And, since today’s department-store challenge, along with her encounter in the taxi line, the idea of adding yet more “synergy” to her already-filled plate had Madeline back to picturing tails and dogs again.
    “I’ll call you,” she countered. Pepper wasn’t the only one at this table who could negotiate.
    Although it obviously wasn’t the answer she was hoping for, Pepper’s red lips curved in a smile. “Wonderful.” She glanced down at Madeline’s glass. Which was, at this moment, closer to half-empty than half-full. Which, Madeline considered, could be taken as a metaphor for her life. “Would you like another?”
    “I’d better not.”
    Although the idea of getting wasted was even more appealing than it had been on the plane, she needed to be firm and clearheaded when she confronted her husband. Although she may be swinging between wanting to go straight to bed and sob copious tears into her pillow, or screeching and throwing a well-aimed cleaver between his legs, neither would help this situation she’d landed in.

7
     
    It was raining. A cold, hard rain that pounded against the windows like a shower of stones and blurred the lights from the traffic below the apartment and the bridge crossing the river.
    Maxime, who’d arrived back home before Madeline, had already lit a fire and opened a bottle of cabernet.
    She’d practiced all the things she was going to say. Questions she was going to ask, demands she was going to make, all the time staying coolly, calmly in control. Being the injured party, she was determined to hold the high ground and not allow him to weaken her resolve by setting a romantic atmosphere.
    Amazingly, proving how deeply their relationship had sunk into the morass of avoidance, she and her husband first exchanged a bit of chitchat about their flights. They compared her in-flight spaghetti salad to his Philly steak, and decided she’d gotten the better meal.
    Then they went on to discuss the weather. The weather!
    And, yes, even how many damn pots she’d sold in Omaha.
    Finally, unable to avoid the huge, rotting elephant carcass in the room another moment, Madeline stopped her pacing, stared unseeingly out the window at the cars making their way across the bridge, and said, “I don’t understand.”
    “I never meant to hurt you, Madeline,” he said with what sounded like sincerity. But then again, she’d believed him when he’d taken those marriage vows, which had includedfidelity. “Although it’s no excuse for what happened, I had no idea we were being videotaped. It was Katrin’s bastard of a husband’s doing.”
    “So the woman
is
Katrin Von Küenberg?” Despite the heat the crackling fire was sending out, Madeline was colder than she’d been in Nebraska.
    “Oui.” She’d noticed over the years that whenever he wanted to convince her of something she really didn’t want to do, his French accent would thicken. “He’s a greedy bastard who’s after her money. He wants to break the prenuptial agreement and humiliate her while doing so.”
    His voice was hard. And coldly furious.
    How strange that he’d be more concerned about his lover’s feelings than those of his wife.
    Strange and sad.
    She turned around to face him. The anger in his voice was echoed in his deeply hooded eyes. She countered, “That may be. But unless he forced you both at gunpoint into that bed, I