Read Online Disastrously Fabulous: A Novel of Loves, Betrayals and New Beginnings by D.A. Prince - Free Book Online Page B

areas that were loaded with canapés, snacks and expensive bottles of champagne and wine.
    For the first time in a long time, I felt a little out of my depth. Luckily my sassy attitude was always an asset for me in those situations. Celebrity faces were all over the yacht, and no expense was spared for the wedding that would take place there.
    Max knew Michael Jordan well, and Jordan apparently wanted to make a statement with the events and luxury of the day. With such status, there were a lot of secrets floating around. Husbands were only faithful to their wives in concept. Meanwhile, behind closed doors almost anyone was up for grabs.
    More than once, as Max was engaged in conversation with industry types, I milled around finding my own fun. I was pulled into a beautiful blue room by one charming man, who wanted to get intimate. And it happened again when I was exploring the top deck, sitting under a copse of umbrellas by the main bar. As a good wife, I excused myself from these situations to maintain my husband’s integrity.
    While on the top deck, sipping colorful cocktails and reclining with several interesting people around me, I looked down to find Max engrossed in conversation with a young woman. I could instantly tell that his interest went beyond the quality of her words.
    I decided it was a fair time to head back down to him, in case he was tempted by a quick cabin hook-up. I moved quickly and interrupted their conversation. “This is my wife, Crystal…” he said to the woman. She left soon after that.
    “What are you doing talking to that lame chic?” I asked him frankly. Subtlety was never my strong point.
    “Come on, honey, I was just making conversation. She works in finance. Do you have to be jealous of everyone I speak to?” The faint irritation in his voice told me I had inconvenienced him, or ended a game that he had been playing with her.
    “I get to be jealous of anyone that you flirt so openly with,” I reminded him from behind my Chanel sunglasses.
    He quietly shook his head and sipped on his champagne. “It’s the same every time with you, isn’t it?” he said into the distance.
    “Don’t try and make this about me, Max. You were the one touching her arm and turning on the charm.”
    It was not the first time I’d caught Max flirted so obviously with another woman. He’d already been unfaithful once, and I’d been watching him closely ever since.
    I regularly fought with Max about his predilection for other women. I was convinced that he was playing me, and he insisted he wasn’t. Many of the fights ended in one of us leaving, or a lingering grumpiness that grew more and more sour as our relationship wore on.
    Max was a good man, but he was also good-looking, smart and libidinous. He loved partying, and women were a natural by-product of that lust. Then the day came when his dirty laundry was aired.
    The year we were getting married I found texts between him and another woman named Gina, a light-skinned black with pronounced cheekbones. It was clear that they were having some kind of affair.
    I forced him to call her in front of me and break it off. “I’m getting married next week,” he said, “and I don’t want to drag this into my marriage. It’s over.”
    I was satisfied. He swore that it would end when we got married, and I believed that it did. Max did an outstanding job keeping his affair with Gina a secret from me.
    Then, the day came when it all unraveled for him, and I was there to watch it happen. Max took me on a trip to Europe—I complained because he had been going there a lot lately, and staying for one or two weeks at a time, every time. He took me to France, and we stayed in a palatial hotel right in the center of Paris.
    All of a sudden I was called back to the States on some work emergency, three days into the holiday. “You head back home I still have business to do here,” Max told me. He didn’t know I had found a hotel confirmation booking that he had