Danielle Steel: Betrayal

Women had always been Victor’s nemesis. His first wife had cost him a fortune in alimony and a settlement twenty years before when she discovered that he had a mistress, a beautiful Italian model. He left his wife for her and married her. He had had two children with his first wife, and had twins with the second. Two years later she adapted to the American ways he had taught her, left him for someone much younger than he was, and took him to the cleaners. She’d eventually gone to Paris, married someone there, and he hadn’t seen his twin daughters in eighteen years. They were strangers to him, and he had been paying child support for them until that year. Fortunately his two older children were now adults and employed, and their mother had remarried, but for several years he had been supporting two ex-wives and four children.

And more recently, some bad investments made by his own financial adviser had lost him a considerable amount of money. He took far better care of his clients than he did of his own affairs. And at sixty-two, he had fallen madly in love with a young aspiring actress, and married her after a sexually charged weekend in Las Vegas. He had promised to use all his connections in Hollywood to help launch her career, which had turned out to be not as easy as he’d thought. As it turned out, Brianna had no talent, her screen tests had been a disaster, and the only work she’d been able to get was as a bathing suit model at trade shows, which was not what she’d had in mind.

Victor had just turned sixty-five, Brianna was twenty-nine and threatening to divorce him if he didn’t make good on his promises to establish her career in either movies or TV. She was great in bed, but not on the screen. And she hadn’t slept with him in six months anyway. She spent all her time getting plastic surgery, shopping up and down Rodeo Drive, and demanding money from him. She had threatened to leave him only the week before, and he didn’t want her to. As impossible as she was, she was a breath of excitement and glamour in his otherwise dull life and he was crazy about her. She seemed like the perfect trophy wife to him. He loved going out with her on his arm, and watching other men look at him with envy, or so he thought. Anyone who had spent an evening with her would have pitied him instead. But he was besotted and didn’t want to lose her, whatever it took. And the truth was, with his recent financial losses, he couldn’t afford her anymore, and he didn’t want her to know. He could barely cover her shopping habit. She was constantly angry at him and demanding things, or trying to improve on body parts she had already had altered before. She had had her first set of implants redone, a tummy tuck, a buttock lift, and recently had liposuction on her thighs. But whatever it took to keep her, he was willing to pay the price. It was cheaper than alimony and a settlement. But he didn’t know where to get the money from anymore. He felt like a magician pulling rabbits out of a hat.

He was much too busy juggling his own money to want to spend time on Tallie’s audit, which would be time-consuming. He had just promised to take Brianna to Europe, and if he reneged on that now, he was sure she’d leave him. She wanted to go to Brazil to check out a plastic surgeon there. His life had been a descent into hell for the past three years, and losing a large amount of money recently was putting his life and marriage at risk. There was no question in his mind that if Brianna knew, she’d leave him. Flat. His children would be happy if she did, but Victor would be devastated.

He left his office at eight o’clock that night and went home. Brianna was waiting for him, and the result of her day’s catch was still in shopping bags near the front door. He winced when he saw the familiar names. Dolce and Gabbana, Roberto Cavalli, Neiman’s, and Chanel. It was a full-time job for her, and as far as she was concerned, the only reason to be married to a man his age. Victor Carson was not an exciting man, and he looked older than his age. He wasn’t attractive, and Brianna was only interested in what he could do for her. He always meant to diet but never got around to it, and had never been to a gym in his life. And he had lost his hair in his early thirties. But he adored his beautiful young wife and was totally dazzled by her. Other men longed for expensive cars, or large blocks of real estate, or dreamed of success. All Victor ever wanted was a beautiful young woman in his bed. It had cost him two marriages and some very heavy debts so far, and he was well on his way to the same fate again. Unless he won the lottery, there was no way Brianna was going to stay with him.

“You’re late,” she said petulantly when he walked in.

“I had a lot to do today,” mostly trying to figure out how to pay her bills, but the upcoming audit for Tallie had caused him additional work. He had to get his assistants working on organizing her files.

“I want to go out to dinner,” she pouted at him. She had had her lips modeled on Angelina Jolie’s and had a fearsome pout.

He didn’t want to tell her he was exhausted and wanted a quiet evening at home. “Where did you have in mind?” He never denied her anything, and now wasn’t the time to start.

“Mr. Chow,” she said with a gleam in her eye. She loved seeing the stars who went there, and the paparazzi gathered outside. It was loud, trendy, expensive, and the food was very good. It was definitely the place to be and to be seen.

“All right. I’ll call and see if we can get a reservation,” he said quietly.

“I already did,” she said with a broad smile. “We have to be there in ten minutes. I invited Carla and John to join us.” They were her friends, not his, ordered the most expensive things on any menu, and fancy wines, and never reached for the check. And they were her age.

All of her friends expected him to be their sugar daddy, and so did she. His own friends had disappeared long since. The women he went out with, and now Brianna, made their wives uncomfortable. Victor felt they were just jealous. It never occurred to him that they thought he was a fool, and Brianna unbearable. She never talked about anything but plastic surgery and the gossip she read in movie magazines. He wasn’t looking forward to an evening of hearing about which Hollywood couple had broken up, who was sleeping with or cheating on whom, and whose facelift or new breasts looked the best. But it was the life he had chosen for himself, high-stakes marriage with a gold digger half his age. He never thought about it that way, although her insatiable appetite for his money had begun to frighten him. None of his clients had ever met his wife, although Brigitte had run into him at a nightclub one night and told Tallie she looked terrifying. She would never have expected somber, sedate, mousy Victor Carson to be married to someone like her. And he had looked proud when he introduced her to Brigitte, which was even worse. Brigitte thought he should have been embarrassed to be seen with her. She was expensively dressed, but it didn’t help. The obvious designer labels and flashy diamond necklace and ring didn’t alter the fact that she looked like someone he had rented for the night, not invested in for a lifetime. To Brigitte, Brianna looked like a colossal mistake.

Brianna’s friends were already waiting for them at Mr. Chow when they arrived, and they had brought another couple with them whom Victor had never seen before. They ordered everything that appealed to them on the menu, two expensive bottles of wine, cocktails before that, and champagne with their dessert. Victor could feel his credit card straining when he paid the bill, but Brianna looked happy when they went home. She sank into a bubble bath and thanked him for a nice evening, and then she asked him when they were leaving for Europe.