Read Online The Wives of Beverly Row 5: Lust Has a New Address by Abby Weeks - Free Book Online Page A

advantage of.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “He’s gotten the better of me too,” Ariel said.
    Gabe had been taking a sip of his coffee and he put his cup down very deliberately. He held Ariel’s eye. “What do you mean,” he said in as stern a voice as she’d ever heard him use.
    “He fucked me, Gabe.”
    “When?”
    “Recently. I ran into him in a bar close to here. Very close. It was after working on the painting. I ran into him and he showed me a video clip of his wife fucking another guy.”
    “What?”
    “Yes, he had a video on his cell, it was Zola with one of his friends from the internet forum.”
    “Why did he show you that?”
    “He was flirting with me. Trying to get me to spend the night with him.”
    “And he showed you that? Why would that make you want to sleep with him? It’s disgusting.”
    “Well,” Ariel said. She knew she was using Gabe’s feelings for her to manipulate him. She was trying to make him get involved in her plan by using his jealousy. “It worked. What can I say? I’m not as innocent as I once was.”
    “He told you they were swingers?”
    “Yes.”
    “And that convinced you to just jump into bed with him?”
    “I was drunk. I was stupid. I can’t really excuse what I did. But it happened, Gabe.”
    Gabe didn’t say anything. He was thinking. Ariel didn’t know what was going through his mind. She’d taken a big risk telling him what she’d done. There was a good chance he’d tell her to go to hell. Why should he give up his forgery for some half-baked plan she and her friend were dreaming up? But she also knew that if she hadn’t told him this, there was no way he’d have been involved enough in Zola’s situation to risk the forgery.
    “How was it?”
    “What do you mean?” she said.
    “Did you like fucking him?”
    “Gabe!” she said. “Look, it was just a drunken fling. To be honest I don’t even remember the sex.”
    “What night was it?”
    “What does that matter?”
    “Just tell me.”
    “I don’t remember, Gabe.”
    “It was the night I asked you out, wasn’t it?”
    Ariel said nothing. It had been that night. That was going to hurt Gabe’s feelings.
    “It was, wasn’t it?”
    She nodded her head.
    Gabe looked at her. Then he grabbed his sunglasses and phone and got up and walked out of the cafe.

VIII
    “Y OU’VE GOT TO TELL ME everything,” Ariel said. She was sitting with Veronica at her kitchen table, two cups of coffee steaming in front of them.
    “I can’t,” Veronica said. “I don’t even know what I think of it myself yet.”
    “I told you I slept with Jake,” Ariel said.
    “That’s different.”
    “Why is that different?”
    Veronica covered her face in her hands. “I don’t know,” she said. “It just is.”
    “Well,” Ariel said, “I’ve got more information to share.”
    “What is it?”
    “No way,” Ariel said with a smile on her face. “You have to go first.”
    Veronica hid her face in her hands again. She was clearly very shy about her news. That only made Ariel want to hear it even more.
    “Okay, so you know Matt came over to help me with the restaurant, right?”
    “Yes.”
    “Well, we were taking a break, and he took off his shirt.”
    “Oh my god, Veronica, there better be more to this story than just that.”
    “Well, one thing led to another, and he took me back to a motel room.”
    “No way!”
    “Yes way,” Veronica said.
    Ariel got up and hugged Veronica.
    “I don’t know if I should be celebrating this,” Veronica said. “I mean, I just cheated on my perfectly loving husband.”
    “But you’ve been pining for Matt for years. You’re in love with him.”
    “I am in love with him,” Veronica said.
    “I can’t believe it. I’m so happy for you.”
    “It’s going to mean a lot of changes in my life,” Veronica said. “I can feel it already. It’s not just going to be an affair. I’m going to have to tell Hank that I’m in love with Matt. It’s going to mean