Chapter 1

My husband, Darian Blackwell, was a straight-laced surgeon. Aside from performing surgery, nothing really interested him.

I used to think he wasn't good at dealing with people, until my fake, overly dramatic best friend, Fiora Grimshaw, moved into our house.

Fiora strutted around in a spaghetti-strap top right in front of Darian. "Darian, I'm so cold."

Darian replied, "That's a classic symptom of hypothyroidism. I recommend you schedule an appointment with the endocrinology department."

Fiora brought Darian a homemade lunchbox packed with love. "Darian, I made this for you."

Darian glanced at it and said, "High oil, high salt, high sugar? Are you trying to clog my arteries so you can inherit my estate?"

Fiora was left speechless after being shut down like that, while I laughed so hard I could barely stand up straight.

I had thought I'd married a robot whose only function was performing surgery. It wasn't until he started running a full diagnostic on Fiora that I realized this robot might actually have a pretty impressive core program.

*****

My marriage to Darian was as plain and uneventful.

He was the leading heart surgeon at the city's main hospital, young, accomplished, and with a future so bright it almost hurt to look at.

I was an employee at a design company.

To everyone else, we looked like the ideal couple with a talented guy and a pretty girl.

But only I knew that between Darian and me, there was always the cold, sterile glow of the surgical lamp keeping us apart.

He was always so busy that we hardly said anything to each other all week.

He was so quiet that, besides the TV, the only sound in our house was him flipping through medical journals.

He had zero sense of romance. For Valentine's Day, he gave me a human skeleton model and said the structure was beautiful.

He was totally clueless about intimacy. I twirled around in front of him in my brand-new sexy nightgown, and he reminded me. "Cotton's better for your skin."

For a while, I honestly wondered if I'd married a man or a precision-engineered, super-efficient, but ice-cold surgical machine.

That all changed the day my so-called bestie, Fiora Grimshaw, showed up at my door, dragging a suitcase and bawling her eyes out. "Lilith, I got played by a jerk, and now I have nowhere to go.

"Can I crash at your place for a few days?"

Fiora was my college buddy. She was sweet-faced, with that soft, girly voice that made guys want to play hero for her.

Seeing her face streaked with tears, I couldn't bring myself to say no.

Darian had just gotten home from his night shift. When he saw Fiora, he adjusted his gold-rimmed glasses without batting an eye. "Let her take the guest room."

His tone was completely deadpan, like he was announcing another emergency surgery.

I actually felt relieved. With Darian's total lack of romantic awareness, at least I didn't have to stress about the whole "protect your husband from your bestie" thing.

I settled Fiora into the guest room, and she clung to me, her eyes still full of tears. "Lilith, you're so sweet. Not like him, when I'm this miserable, he doesn't even react. He is so heartless."

Everyone knew exactly who she meant.

I gave an awkward smile. "Darian's always like that. It's how he is at work. He treats everyone the same."

Fiora wiped away her tears, but her eyes slid right past me and locked onto Darian in the living room as he changed his shoes.

There was a look in her eyes I'd never seen before, a mix of curiosity and that hungry, determined vibe.

My heart skipped a beat. A sense of dread crept over me.