The Silver Bride

PART TEN

Chloe Murphy's anxious face lit up with a hugely relieved smile the instant she saw Stella walking across the park towards her. 'Thank goodness you didn't stand me up!' she gasped as she flew off the bench. Stella dug her hands into the pockets of her jacket. 'I didn't want to meet up with you like this, Chloe.

I only phoned you because I need you to pass on a message to Dior. I appreciate now that that was wrong of me—' 'No! No way was it wrong!' 'It was,' Elite sighed. 'I didn't want to write to Dior because I didn't know what to say...and I didn't want to speak to him personally. But I never should've involved you—' Chloe g.r.o.a.n.e.d.

'Stella...Dior is frantic!' Stella frowned. 'Didn't you pass on my message?' Chloe gave her a wide-eyed look of wonder. 'Like telling Dior you were safe and happy and planning on divorce was going to make him less frantic?' Stella flushed.

'It's for the best. Did you remember to tell him that I'll let him see the baby as much as he likes?' 'It wasn't quite the consolation you seemed to think it would be,' Chloe responded. 'I mean the baby's not due for another six months.'

'Well, I can't help that,' Stella muttered flatly. 'Is he still in Paris?' 'No, according to Maxwell he spent that week looking for you. Then he went off on the most dreadful drinking binge. Maxwell dragged him home to sleep it off in our spare room—' Stella stopped dead.

'The most dreadful...what! Say that again?' 'OK. The sequence of events: Dior wakes up and finds your note...right?' 'I don't know. I'd gone by then. I thought he would have gone on to Paris.' That very same night Stella had thrown a few things in a bag and had crept out of the apartment, determined to avoid another harrowing confrontation with Dior.

She had lost enough face in that earlier scene. All she'd had left was her pride. And she would only keep her pride by staying at a safe distance from Dior until she'd got her emotions under better control. 'Well, if you'll excuse me for saying so, most husbands wouldn't get dumped and just go on like it was an ordinary day,' Chloe said rather drily.

'Even stubborn, macho ones like Dior have some feelings.' 'Look, you're on his side because you don't understand and you know him better than you know me—' 'No, to be honest, I've just been gobsmacked by the way Dior's been carrying on,' Chloe shared helplessly

. 'I never, ever thought Dior would be sleeping off a hangover in our spare room.' 'So he spent the first week looking for me...' Stella was hopelessly hungry for every tiny detail she could glean. 'How do you think we found out you'd gone? He phoned Maxwell. He was in a real rage at that point. You were lucky to stay lost,' Chloe confided. 'I don't understand him drinking...'

'He just went to pieces the second week. He sat in that apartment just drinking himself into a stupor, and Maxwell was worried sick about him.

Dior doesn't do things like that. You've gutted him, Stella...and I think that if you'd decided you wanted out, you could have been a lot more considerate about the way you did it.' Chloe gave her a challenging glance. Stella tilted her chin, although her color had risen.

'I told I was leaving.' 'He didn't think you meant it!' 'It just wasn't working for me.' Chloe slowly shook her head with a bemused frown. "The day of your wedding, I honestly thought you were insane about him, and when we had lunch the week after you got back from Chandos it seemed even more pronounced.

It was "Dior this...Dior that...'" 'I am insane about him,' Stella muttered ruefully. Chloe fell still. 'Then why the heck are you doing this to him?' she demanded. 'I suppose you've told her absolutely everything, Chloe,' Dior's dark growl intervened with sardonic grittiness. 'The big search, the unmanly despair, the buckets of booze and self-pity…' Both women whipped around.

Chloe hot-cheeked, Stella pale as death. But Dior had eyes only for his estranged wife. As Chloe backed away with a guilty grimace, his dark, deep-set gaze welded to Stella's pinched and shaken face and stayed there, 'I've messed up, haven't I?'

'Aria ...' The redhead whispered with measured female superiority before she drifted off. Dior flinched, and his bronzed skin lost color. 'Considering that Chloe set me up for you, you weren't very polite,' Stella said unevenly. 'I'd never have come to meet her if I'd known you were planning to show up.'

'Chloe tortured me with questions when I was at my lowest ebb. And even the worst sinners get their moment to speak on judgment day,' Dior breathed with an attempted lightness that was laced with strain. Stella stared back at him, her heart thumping like a hammer behind her ribs, her eyes full of pain. 'Don't look at me like that...it makes it so much we worse,' Dior g.r.o.a.n.e.d. Instantly Stella looked away.