Tonight, I am going to save my marriage. The plan is simple. I will stand in front of four hundred guests in the ballroom of my husband's flagship hotel, take the microphone during my welcome toast, and tell Gary I am pregnant. I have rehearsed this moment for weeks because I need to believe that the baby growing inside me is the answer to whether there is anything left of us worth saving. Gary has always been his best self when people are watching. He waited for our childless marriage to change the status as much as I did. After the news, he will probably cross the floor, and put his arms around me. Kiss me and hold me tight the way he used to, tell me that he still loves me. And maybe, if this baby holds, he will look at me and stop seeing the woman who failed him. So tonight everything got to be perfect, I did everything for that. My dress is midnight blue, the one that he picked out two weeks ago. The pearl drops he gifted me at our last anniversary are perfectly visible with my hair pinned up — he always says that I look younger with my neck showing. Eleven weeks I have hidden nausea from him. Because the last three times when I told him early, my body failed us both and I had to watch hope leave his face in stages. I see my husband across the room shaking hands with investors, laughing that generous laugh he saves for cameras and people with checkbooks. Garrison Pryce, still respectable and handsome in his forty years old, tall and silver-templed. He was an attorney when I met him — confident and ten years older than me, but the one who made me feel chosen. I was twenty-two, just inherited my grandfather's boutique hotel and Gary said he believed in my vision. He said we would build it together. And we did. Four grand hotels, a brand people recognized. Then he renamed it, and Breck Hotels went in as Pryce Hospitality Group came out. I signed the papers because I had just lost our second baby at the time, and the guilt made me willing to hand him whatever I still could. I couldn’t bear to see another disappointment in the eyes of the man I love. Two women near the bar catch my eye and look away too late. I know what they are whispering while looking at me. Useless heiress. Garrison Pryce’s infertile wife. “Blind” and brainless woman who can’t keep her husband in the family. And, unfortunately, they’re completely right. Everyone knows about Tegan — Gary never bothered to hide his mistress. The one who’s half his age, who’s energetic, and easy, and… younger than me. The one Gary was with in Positano when the third misscarige happened while I was home alone. I could not blame him, never. Only myself, only my mistakes and actions. Maybe I could have given him a healthy child, if only years ago I didn’t… "I bet you'd rather be anywhere else." The voice comes from my left, dragging me out of spiraling. When I turn, Beckett Morrow is standing right behind me. Gary's worst nightmare and our biggest rival. He’s so much taller than me — six-two, maybe more — that I have to tilt my head back. His black hair pushed back from his forehead and steel-blue eyes hold contact with mine a beat longer than comfortable. Sharp jaw and cheekbones, athletic build, suit worn like he forgot he put it on… Perfect image of a successful playboy. Every tabloid in the city photographs him with a different woman every week, and the gossip columns love him for it. New York's most eligible billionaire who has never stayed with anyone long enough for a second headline. And the absence of a date tonight stops me. Beckett without a woman on his arm is like Gary without an opinion — unnatural. "What are you doing here?" I ask, crossing my arms to stop fidgeting with the pearls at my ears. "Your husband sent me an invitation." He says it like it amuses him as his gaze drops to my mouth for half a second. "I don't pass up a chance to preview what I'll be acquiring one day." "That's quite the assumption, Mr. Morrow." I hear myself say. "Too self-confident, one might say. Even for someone like you." "It's more of a timeline, actually." He tilts his head, and the corner of his mouth lifts. "But the venue… there's a quality I didn't expect. Old-fashioned, but sleek. Gary doesn't have that kind of taste." "He doesn't," I say, before I can stop myself.

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