Page 45 of Charmingly Obsessed

I don’t move for nearly a minute. Kelly, having made her point with a surgical, devastating precision, doesn’t need to say another word. My stunned, frozen paralysis says it all.

A faint, insidious chill spreads through me.

A feeling that has been stretching wider, growing deeper, over the past few days.

It’s outgrown me now. It no longer fits into my usual, carefully constructed frame of reference.

This… this is a different league of cruelty. A different level of mind game.

“It seems,” I say finally, my voice as cold, as sharp, as a shard of ice, as I turn my back on her and head towards the exit, “that it is far more appropriate to address these… housekeeping matters… directly with you, Kelly. Considering you, and the rest of the hotel staff, are clearly the ones who handle the… trash .”

I hear the soft, satisfied click of the storeroom door closing behind me, but I walk steadily, my head held high, to the private elevator.

It stings, of course. Of course, it fucking stings.

So, I put on my best, my only, truly spectacular dress for the Fifth Gallery opening that evening.

The black one. The one I’ve been saving for a special occasion.

Black, I’ve always been told, suits me. And the daring, corset-style bodice is just enough of a risk, just enough of a statement, to show off my chest, my shoulders, my… confidence.

Damn it, I’m his wife. She knows that. They all know that. God, I’m not that ridiculous, am I? Not that inappropriate a match for him?

I might be from a different world, a different universe, than Mykola Frez and his coterie of supermodels and heiresses. But worse, more mismatched, more scandalous pairings have happened. It’s not like I look like a goddamn Vegas stripper named Wild Cherry, for crying out loud.

“Hugo, my former driver in Paris, found the hotel. He worked for me here, on and off, for a couple of weeks,” Mykola is saying later, as we’re getting ready to leave, his voice carefully neutral as he adjusts the knot of his silk tie in the mirror.

“And tomorrow,” he adds, his gaze meeting mine in the reflection, “we are definitely going to Guy Savoy for lunch. The early seating. I’ve already made the reservation. Myself .”

He unpacks the new, top-of-the-line laptop the concierge has miraculously procured with a focused, almost aggressive determination.

I hurry over to help, needing a distraction, needing to do something with my hands.

His restless, intense gaze flickers over me a few times as I unbox the machine, and I tilt my head slightly, a silent question.

He says nothing, but it’s always so painfully obvious when he wants to say something, and then, for whatever reason, changes his mind.

I’m a little too dressed up for the fourth day of a relatively minor contemporary art exhibition, even though tonight is the gallery’s official anniversary celebration. I know this.

I usually hate, hate, feeling out of place, overdressed, conspicuous, in situations like this. But tonight… tonight, I’ll allow it. I’ll embrace it. I need the confidence boost. I need the armor. So be it.

It’s odd, though, that Veniamin, my old acquaintance, the junior art consultant, only speaks to us once, right at the beginning of the evening, a brief, slightly flustered greeting.

I had planned things differently. I’d hoped for a longer, more substantive conversation. A chance to… pump him for information about the senior curator.

But other, more important, more established guests keep him occupied.

Mykola, sensing my slight disappointment, or perhaps just bored with the schmoozing, decides, on a whim, to purchase a large, dramatic black-and-white photograph that dominates one wall of the gallery.

I like the way the light, or rather, the absence of it, plays in the image.

The stark, almost brutalist composition.

It’s a simple, almost obvious choice, for a man like him. But it always works.

Most of the people around us are foreigners – wealthy American tourists, a contingent of Japanese collectors, a couple of loud Brazilians with really good tastes. So, at least, we don’t feel the full, crushing weight of that uniquely Parisian air of condescending, intellectual superiority.

Mykola, for his part, idly, almost possessively, plays with my simple gold wedding band, even though my hand is hanging limply at my side. His fingers find mine, lacing through them, his thumb stroking the ring, over and over. A silent, public declaration.

I suggest he try one of the delicate, slightly pretentious-looking canapés – a single, perfect, glistening grape skewered with a sliver of aged Gruyère – and he somehow, with a devastatingly charming, utterly infuriating maneuver, turns the situation so that I end up feeding it to him.

By hand. Right in the middle of the crowded, buzzing gallery.

In front of everyone. He’s utterly, completely, insufferably infuriating.

A devious, manipulative, ridiculously handsome bastard.

After that, I avoid looking anyone directly in the eye, glancing only sideways, my cheeks flaming. And he… he just keeps nuzzling my cheekbones, my temples, with his nose, his lips brushing against my skin, murmuring wicked, inappropriate, and frankly, hilarious things in my ear.

We manage to catch Veniamin just before the gallery officially closes for the evening, to discuss the all-important senior curator contact.

He assures me, a little too quickly, a little too nervously, that he has already made the call on my behalf, and that tomorrow, I should reach out directly to a woman named Orsana, and try to arrange an in-person meeting first. Before mentioning Mykola’s name.

My mood lifts instantly. We didn’t come here for nothing!

It worked! My ridiculous, over-the-top dress, my newfound confidence, my… status as Mrs. Frez… it all worked! Even if my beautiful, ridiculously expensive, and wildly uncomfortable new shoes are currently trying to amputate my feet.

Back in our suite, I examine the delicate, stiletto heels of my new Louboutins. Damn it. Three minutes, three, on those lava-hardened, unforgiving French cobblestones outside the gallery, and goodbye, flawless, iconic red-lacquered soles. Ruined.

I crawl onto the enormous, inviting bed, pushing my narrow, restrictive black skirt of my dress up to my thighs, and sprawl out, exhausted but triumphant, to check tomorrow’s meticulously planned, color-coded schedule.

“So,” a low, dangerously quiet voice says from across the room, “he’s completely, utterly, head-over-heels in love with you.”

Frez is standing by the unlit, marble fireplace, his hands shoved deep into the pockets of his impeccably tailored trousers, his legs casually, elegantly crossed at the ankle.

I look at him, a sudden, cold unease prickling my skin. He’s playing at being relaxed. But he’s not. He’s… coiled. Tense. Like a predator waiting to strike.

Who exactly is “he”? And why am I, as always, the last to know what the hell is going on in my own goddamn life?

“Mykola,” I try to keep my voice light, my eyebrows from arching into my hairline, “what in the world are you talking about now?”

He just keeps staring at me, his expression unreadable, his fingers moving, twitching, over something small and hard in his pocket. The only part of him that moves.

“You’re completely blind, Diana,” Frez murmurs, his voice barely audible, laced with a strange, almost bitter amusement. “Utterly. Almost… pathologically so. Beyond all reason.”

“Who are you talking about, Mykola?” I demand, my patience finally snapping.

“The art consultant,” he spits the words out suddenly, his voice sharp now, unrestrained. “The one we just visited. Veniamin. The one who’s so obviously, so pathetically, in love with you he can barely fucking speak in your presence. Like some kind of…”

“Venya?” I echo, my voice filled with genuine, skeptical disbelief. “What on earth makes you think that? I’ve known Venya for ten years. He’s practically a brother to me. And besides, look, he didn’t even come over to us a second time all evening.”

“He didn’t come over,” he laughs, a cold, harsh, humorless sound, “because your brand-new, extremely jealous, and notoriously possessive husband never left your goddamn side, Diana. Not once. Not for a second. You… you can’t possibly be this oblivious. No one is this oblivious.”

“You mean… dumb, right?” I say, the word tasting like ash in my mouth. “That’s what you really mean, isn’t it?” I nod slowly to myself, a familiar, bitter wave of self-deprecation washing over me. I reach for the bottle of complimentary Evian water on the nightstand.

“What?” He almost whispers the word, his voice filled with a sudden, shocked indignation. “I… Not at all. I didn’t mean that. You’re… you’re phenomenally, almost supernaturally, unaware of how other people, how men, feel about you. He’s smitten, Diana. Like a goddamn schoolboy. Like…”

“Don’t you think you’re exaggerating, Mykola? Just a little?”

“Oh, I always exaggerate, Diana. It’s part of my charm. Except,” his voice drops, becomes a low, serious rumble, “when it comes to you. With you… I have to downplay everything. Constantly. Otherwise, I…” He stops himself, his jaw tightening.

He pushes off from the cold marble of the fireplace, taking just one, single, deliberate step towards the bed. His hands are still buried deep in his pockets.

“Doesn’t matter,” he says, his voice flat, dismissive.

“I’m your husband now. And you… you became my wife.

” His foot, clad in an impeccably polished, ridiculously expensive leather shoe, twitches slightly.

Just once. Like he’s rocking it in place, trying to discharge some of the restless, coiled energy thrumming through him.

I set my glass of water back down on the nightstand with a hand that’s not quite steady.

“Mykola, you’re confusing me.” My voice is a whisper. “Maybe… maybe he likes me. A little. As a friend. And yes, of course, I became your wife. I don’t think… I don’t think it could have gone any other way. Not really.”

I feel embarrassed by how brightly, how hopefully, I smile at him then.

But his expression doesn’t shift.

Not even by a fraction.

“ A little ,” he repeats, the words flat, dead.

“He likes you… a little . Do you know,” he continues, his voice still quiet, but laced now with a raw, almost painful intensity that makes my blood run cold, “that I dreamed about you for three solid years, Diana? Every single fucking night. I came home that first night, after… after what happened in the kitchen… and I just… I sat in one place, in the dark, for half the goddamn night. Just in shock. Every morning, I woke up with a new, pathetic plan – like, ‘ Today. Today, I’ll do something. I’ll fix it.

I’ll talk to her. ’ – and then I’d fall asleep, hours later, in absolute, utter drunken wreckage.

Knowing I’d just… I’d stay in this self-made hell. Forever.”

“Three years?” I repeat, the words a choked whisper, shaking my head from side to side, a slow, disbelieving movement, like a wound-up, broken music box. “That… that can’t be…”

“Oh, sure. That can’t be,” he laughs again, that same harsh, bitter, heartbreaking sound.

“One day isn’t enough to fall in love. Right?

Yeah. Maybe for everyone else. For normal people.

But I… I lived on that one single, catastrophic, beautiful day for three fucking years, Diana.

And after that… after that, I don’t give a good goddamn what’s considered ‘enough’ or ‘normal’ or ‘sane’ anymore. ”

I push myself up onto my knees on the enormous, rumpled bed, but I can’t seem to get comfortable.

The soft, ambient light in the luxurious bedroom isn’t enough for me to fully make out his face, to decipher the shadows, the emotions, flitting across his features. But if that’s the case… if what he’s saying is true… I don’t want the light to get in the way at all.

I keep coming back to his clouded, haunted eyes.

He’s like an exhibit in one of the galleries.

Mounted in place. Perfectly composed on the surface.

But with a restless, almost violent energy thrumming just beneath.

All of it condensed, right now, into the way his leg subtly, almost imperceptibly, sways.

“It’s… it’s hard for me to process all of this at once, Mykola,” I whisper, my voice trembling. “I… I wanted to talk to you. So many times. At least once. Over these… these past three years.”

“Yeah?” His voice catches. Breaks. “Yeah? You… you wanted to?”

“You stopped coming to the office,” I say, the words a quiet accusation. “Because of… because of me? Because of this?”

“Diana.” He says my name like a prayer. A curse.

“My God. You know why I stopped coming. I looked at you. And you saw it. You saw what you do to me. You can’t not know.

You can’t.” He finally shifts his shoulders, a small, almost imperceptible movement, like a man shrugging off an impossibly heavy, invisible weight.

“And it just… it became impossible to keep… looking. And not… touching.”

I thought I had imagined it all. The intensity. The hunger. The… obsession. I mean, I had been looking at Frez, too. All the time. And I had never, ever been in a situation like this before. Never felt anything remotely like it.

“You don’t fully understand what’s happening here, Diana,” his words stretch out, slow, deliberate, as if there’s a delay in the sound, in the connection between his brain and his mouth. “And that’s… that’s partly my fault. My mistake.”

“What is happening here, Mykola?” I whisper, my voice hesitant, fearful, hopeful.

His body stills… gradually. His eyes, when he finally meets mine again, reveal something so tangled, so complex, so impossibly, achingly intense.

It’s like a reel of invisible film is running through them, scrolling upward, a chaotic, flickering montage of a thousand stories, a million emotions, a universe of unspoken signs and symbols. And he’s looking at me through all of it.

I shift again on the enormous bed, trying to find a more comfortable, less vulnerable position.

The pounding of my own heart, which had been a dull, steady thrum in the background, crashes down on me suddenly, loudly. As if my hearing had been muffled, suppressed, until this very second.

“Come closer, Diana,” Mykola enunciates, his voice low, a soft command that’s not really a command at all. It’s a plea. Each word deliberate. Precise. Irresistible. “Come… to the very edge of the bed.”