Read The Wives of Beverly Row 2: Lust Has a New Address for Free Online

it.”
    “Have you ever said anything about all this to Veronica?”
    “No. But I figure she knows how I feel. We’ve been such good friends for such a long time. She must know I have feelings for her.”
    “You’d be surprised what women know,” Ariel said. “They know everything and they know nothing. I bet she’s been telling herself for years that you’re just good friends.”
    “Exactly. But what is there to do about it? She’s happily married. Hank’s my best friend. Hell, he must even know I’ve got a thing for Veronica.”
    “I don’t think so,” Ariel said.
    “Are you sure?”
    “I watched him during dinner. I don’t think he suspects a thing.”
    “There’s nothing to suspect,” Matt said.
    Ariel laughed. “If there was nothing to suspect, you’d be having this conversation with him.”
    Matt’s face went pale.
    “Don’t worry,” Ariel said. “I’m not going to say anything to him.”
    “I think, in a way, Cathy’s craziness helped hide the truth,” Matt said.
    “In what way?”
    “Well, I think for a while there that Hank might have thought there was some truth to all her allegations, but then she confronted him and accused him of having a threesome with Veronica and me, and since then he was just as convinced as anyone that she was paranoid.”
    They sat there and finished their drinks. Neither spoke much.
    “You want another?” Matt said.
    Ariel shrugged. It had been a long day. “Sure,” she said. “I’ll have to get a cab home.”
    “Or come home with me,” Matt said.
    Ariel looked at him. It was tempting. Another few drinks and she’d probably have said yes, but something told her she’d regret it if she slept with Matt. He and Veronica had a thing, she wasn’t sure what to call it, but it was definitely something and it had been going on for years. She didn’t want to be in the middle of that. If she wanted to maintain her friendship with Veronica, she knew that the safest way was to avoid sleeping with the man that Veronica was secretly in love with.
    “It’s tempting,” Ariel said as the bartender poured her another martini.
    “But you don’t want to complicate things with Veronica.”
    “She’s been a good friend since I moved onto the row.” There was also the fact that Becky had fallen head over heels for Kyle but she didn’t bring that up.
    “I understand,” Matt said. He leaned over and kissed her on the cheek and Ariel closed her eyes as he did it. She was right on the verge of giving in. She would have loved nothing more than to let Matt take her home and spread her out on his bed. “At least let me get you a cab,” he said.

VI
    B ECKY WASN’T ONE BIT HAPPY. She was on the balcony outside her mother’s bedroom, peering into Trudy Luxton’s backyard through a pair of binoculars she’d bought at some garage sale when she was fourteen. She’d never had much use for them till now.
    “What are you doing out there?” Ariel called from her bed.
    It was Saturday morning and Ariel hadn’t seen her mother hungover like this in a long time.
    “Looks like you had a nice night,” Becky said.
    “It was fun, but I had too many martinis.”
    “You got back late.”
    “It wasn’t that late,” Ariel said.
    “It was after one. I saw the cab.”
    “Hey,” Ariel said, “at least I wasn’t sneaking in at six this morning with my tail between my legs.”
    Becky looked in at her. Ariel was lying on the bed with her blanket over her head.
    “Let me get you some aspirin,” she said. She might as well do something useful. She couldn’t see squat from the balcony anyway. She’d wanted to go to the mall with Kyle but he told her he was going over to Trudy’s to help her with her dating profiles. Becky had wanted to have a fight over it. She’d wanted to ask him why the hell he thought a forty-something year old woman was looking for his help on a dating profile but she’d held her tongue. She didn’t feel she knew Kyle well enough yet to have