Page 1 of The Lies Between Lovers

1.

“Vera Giana, how dare you?”

“Hannah—”

“I have been calling you for days!”

Four, actually. Since the day she arrived back from Paris.

Vera figured the exact number wouldn’t really matter to Hannah at the moment seeing as how it was the first time she’d picked up her friend’s calls. She couldn’t even use the excuse that she hadn’t noticed because that would be a boldfaced lie.

“You sound like my mother,” Vera said, eyeing the quiet street for any sign of the car that was supposed to arrive at her villa.

Hannah’s forlorn sigh crackled through the phone’s speakers. “I miss Claire.”

Vera did, too. It was hard not to when the very memory of her stepmother’s comforting, loving aura was enough to make her warm on the windy walkway. Hannah’s adoration for Vera’s mother was a testament to Claire’s sweet nature considering her friend had only met her mother twice in person.

“Maybe I’ll call her and tell her something is up with you,” Hannah said, reminding Vera that she wasn’t going to let this issue of hers go.

“You know, sometimes people just need time to think by themselves, Hannah.”

“Yeah, well—”

“I’m sorry if I worried you.”

The responding silence gave Vera the chance to check the street again, only to find the same thing waiting for her. Nothing but a group of kids kicking a ball at the far turn. She checked her watch—he did say ten.

But it was now quarter past.

“Did you even hear me?” Hannah asked, the annoyance clear.

Vera winced, knowing she couldn’t hide the fact that she hadn’t been listening when her friend came back to the conversation, and that probably wasn’t going to help her case where Hannah’s worry was concerned. Perfect.

“No,” she muttered.

“What are you doing? It sounds windy.”

“Waiting outside my place.”

“For?” Hannah pressed.

“I’m going to lunch with someone,” Vera replied carefully.

Or it was close enough to noon that lunch was the only real option she could go for without giving Hannah too many details. The only thing Vera planned to do today was cross one more thing off her list. She’d been avoiding it; ending it, really.

Feliks, that was, and properly stepping back from her role at The Swan House.

“Are you hiding something again?” Hannah asked.

“Again?”

“Like in Paris—come on, Vera, don’t deny it. You were being purposefully secretive about the guy you came with, and then he shows up at the tower, has a—”

“Stop.”

She didn’t want to get into Vaslav, or what happened that night under the tower. It wasn’t her place to discuss those things, or the private life of a man Hannah didn’t personally know. Even if that man had stepped off a jet and walked away from her without a look back after telling her that she would in fact marry him. Without details as to how exactly that would happen.

Four days later, Vera still didn’t have any damn answers. Hell, maybe that was for the best.