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

about Matt saying it, about the way his strong, tanned hands looked on the table, and she couldn’t help but laugh at the thought of him working on her with his hands.
    “So is it mostly houses you build?” Ariel said.
    “He builds the most amazing homes. He did Paris Hilton’s place last year.”
    “Really?” Ariel said.
    “Not singlehandedly,” Matt said. “I own the business with my two brothers.”
    “So it’s a family business?”
    “It sure is. My grandfather started the business in fifty-eight. My father ran it before passing it along to us boys. We’ve been building homes in the Hollywood hills for three generations.”
    “He’s been in the houses of half the stars in Hollywood,” Veronica said.
    “True, but always with my boots and hardhat on.”
    “Do you have any pictures of your home?” Ariel said.
    Matt took out his cellphone and showed her a few snaps he’d taken. Most were during some construction work he’d completed during the winter. The house looked really amazing, like a glass cube with a steel frame perched on a hundred-foot cliff over the ocean. She wondered what Becky would think of him. She was getting ahead of herself, she didn’t even know if he liked her. She didn’t even know if she liked him .
    “How do you know Hank?” she said.
    “We go back years,” Hank said.
    “Hank does his books,” Veronica said. “He does all our contracting.”
    “There’s more to it than that, though,” Matt said. “We’ve been good friends for a long time. Hank and I golf. Veronica used to be friends with my wife before our divorce.”
    “ There’s a story,” Veronica said.
    “What is it?” Ariel said.
    Veronica looked at Matt. The way they looked at each other was strangely intimate, almost as if they were a couple. For a second Ariel wondered if Veronica and Matt might have had an affair together at some point in the past. It wouldn’t have surprised her. Compared to Matt, Hank Roycroft looked like an old man, and considering everything Veronica had said about not being sexually fulfilled, it just would have added up.
    “Do you mind if we rehash all of this?” Veronica said to Matt.
    Matt waved his hand to indicate he didn’t care.
    “Well,” Veronica continued, “we used to hang out all the time, the four of us. I was really close with Matt’s ex-wife, Cathy. Hank and Matt got involved in a few business ventures together. We all just socialized all of the time.”
    “A lot of late nights on the deck,” Hank said.
    “A lot of great nights,” Matt added.
    “We even took vacations together, once to Hawaii, another time to Aspen,” Veronica said.
    “Vegas,” Hank added.
    “That’s right,” Veronica continued. “We couldn’t have been closer, really.”
    “We were too close,” Matt said.
    “Well, exactly. At least, that’s what Cathy said.”
    Hank cleared his throat. “Cathy became convinced that Matt and Veronica were having an affair,” he said.
    “She even accused us of having threesomes without her,” Matt added.
    “She basically lost her marbles,” Veronica said.
    Ariel looked at Hank. She wasn’t so sure Cathy had lost her marbles. She might have suspected the same thing if she was in Cathy’s position. She couldn’t see the threesomes, but Matt and Veronica, there was definitely something going on between those two.
    “Sometimes people get an idea in their mind and there’s no getting it out,” Ariel said.
    “She just grew more and more paranoid about it,” Matt said. “I did everything I could to assure her nothing was going on but I couldn’t get her to come around.”
    “It must have put a strain on the friendship.”
    “To say the least,” Veronica said. “She attacked me with a scissors one night.”
    “You’re kidding.”
    Veronica shook her head. She lifted her arm and showed Ariel a small scar on the inside of her left wrist.
    “Jesus.”
    “That was it,” Matt said. “That was the last straw. I just couldn’t see