My Husband Moved His Mistress In So I Invited My Three Lovers novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Be Civil
At the family roast Phillip announces his mistress is moving in, so Bea moves in her doctor and rock star. Ends on a taxi at the gate.
My mother-in-law asked for a grandson between the soup and the lamb, one course earlier than last month.
"Three years, Beatrice," she said.
She wrote something in the leather notebook beside her plate.
I had seen that notebook before.
It had a page for every week of my marriage, and none of the pages had a baby on them.
"A boy, ideally," she said. "The Aldous chin does better on a boy."
I looked at my husband.
Phillip was cutting his lamb into very even pieces.
He had gone selectively deaf around the time the soup arrived.
"I'll try my best, Mother," I said, with my most dutiful smile.
I meant it, too.
There was a great deal of family money in that house, and I did not want it going to a cousin.
In the car afterwards, Phillip waited until we were past the gates.
"Linnea is moving in tomorrow," he said. "She has nowhere to go since she came back from Europe."
I knew the name.
On our wedding night, he had stood at the foot of the bed in his tuxedo and told me his heart belonged to Linnea Frost.
Then he told me he would never touch me, and that we would divorce in a few years.
I had married him partly because he was gorgeous, so I took that personally.
"You'll be civil to her," Phillip said.
He said it to the windshield, which was safer.
"Of course," I said. "The place is enormous. It's lonely with just the two of us."
He glanced at me, suspicious, and found nothing wrong with my face.
I opened the calendar on my phone.
I kept one for the household, color-coded.
Red was Jax Rowan, the rock star who was the face of my luxury line.
Green was Dr. Christian Sterne, my personal physician and the most thorough man I had ever met.
Blue was Willem, my boyfriend since college, who still did not know about the other two.
I did the sums I always did.
Jax and Sterne each got two visits a week, and every round trip cost ninety minutes of traffic.
Four visits was six hours a week in a car, to see people who could be sitting in my house.
Phillip was about to put a woman in a guest room on the third floor and call it a household.
I decided that if he could have a houseguest, so could I.
In the elevator I typed into the group chat with Jax and Sterne: Linnea Frost is moving in tomorrow. Phillip wants me to be nice. I need two witnesses that I did nothing.
Sterne answered first.
Sterne: Then I should be on the premises. I'll pack.
Jax: Say the word and I put him through a wall. Or I pack too. Either.
I wrote back: Pack.
Linnea arrived the next afternoon with one suitcase and a casserole dish.
She was blonde and soft-voiced, in a cardigan the color of oatmeal.
She carried her own bag up two flights before the housekeeper could stop her.
Then she came back down and offered to dry the dishes.
"Beatrice," she said, "I know this is awkward. Thank you for having me."
"It's Bea," I said. "Make yourself at home."
I liked her a little.
That was the annoying part.
She stood at the foot of the staircase and looked up.
"How many steps is it from the third floor to the second?" she asked.
"Sixteen," I said.
"I'll count them," she said, and laughed at herself.
Phillip had left a card for the chef on the kitchen island, in his small square handwriting.
It said: Linnea. No allergies. Favorite dessert: peach pie.
Linnea read it over my shoulder and went pink.
"Oh, that's so sweet. I'm allergic to peaches, actually. But he tried."
"Typo," Phillip said from the doorway, without looking at either of us.
I had never seen Phillip make a typo.
He had corrected the grammar in our prenup, in pen, in the margin.
The housekeeper crossed out peach and wrote pear.
At six o'clock the doorbell rang.
On the camera screen by the door stood Dr. Christian Sterne, in a pale linen shirt, holding a leather suitcase.
He had a second suitcase at his feet and a garment bag over one arm.
Phillip opened the door himself.
"Christian. What are you doing here?"
"Linnea is back," Sterne said gravely. "Last time she was, you phoned me at two in the morning every other week. I would rather be on the premises."
He stepped over the threshold with the luggage.
"Think of me as the house doctor."
"You live eight blocks away," Phillip said.
"Eight blocks is nine minutes at night," Sterne said. "With an emergency, thirty-eight."
Phillip opened his mouth, closed it, and tried a different argument.
"We have no spare room."
"The fourth floor has two," I said.
Sterne looked at me over his rimless glasses and almost smiled.
I kept my face perfectly polite in front of my husband.
Phillip stood very still in his own hallway.
Then the camera screen flickered again, and a taxi pulled up at the curb.
A man got out with a battered monogrammed suitcase and a cigarette.
He looked straight up into the lens and waved.
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