Bought A Stripper Husband

Chapter 04 : Evalyne’s Gala Lies

Annalyne.

Anna preferred.

Evalyne’s younger sister appeared like a brightly colored problem, weaving her way through the crowd with a glass in one hand and an expression that hovered between amusement and aggression. Her copper hair was tumbling out of its pins, and her emerald dress was slightly less formal than the rest, like she might bolt to a dance floor at any moment.

“How nice of you to join us,” Evalyne said dryly. “Ten minutes late.”

“I was making sure your bartenders know how to pour, you’re welcome, Evie.” Anna slid into the circle, bumping her shoulder against Evalyne’s, then turned to Celine with a smile that showed too many teeth. “What are we shutting up now?”

“Society,” Laurent muttered.

“The never-ending hum of judgment,” Vivian supplied.

Evalyne could smell the slight sweetness of whiskey on Anna’s breath. She wasn’t drunk. She was warm. Loose. Dangerous.

“Celine was reminding me that it’s hard to call it success when my family fell apart,” Evalyne said, as if discussing the weather.

Anna’s head tilted. “Ah.”

“And that Theresa having no father figure must be so tough,” Vivian added, wincing as she said it, as if realizing too late that she was repeating something ugly.

Anna’s smile sharpened. “Right. Because it’s much better to have a father who cheats and lies and judges your mother for working. That’s the upgrade package, is it?”

Laurent coughed into his glass. Celine’s fingers tightened around her clutch.

“Now, now,” Celine said. “We’re just talking hypotheticals. No need to bring up… specifics.”

“You literally brought up specifics,” Anna said.

Evalyne touched Anna’s arm, a light warning. “It’s fine.”

It wasn’t. And that was the problem.

“It’s not fine,” Anna argued softly, but she let Evalyne’s hand stay where it was.

“Look,” Vivian sighed. “We’re not judging, Eva. Not really. We’re just… curious. You never date. You never bring anyone around. At your level, people expect a certain… image.”

“Ah yes, the successful woman with it all,” Anna said. “How dare she choose one ‘all’ instead of two.”

Laurent set down his glass. “Let’s not turn this into a debate panel, hmm? We came to see the clothes, not cross-examine our host’s personal life.”

“Please,” Celine scoffed. “Eva’s clothes are perfect. They don’t need defending. Her life, on the other hand…”

Evalyne’s chest felt tight, like someone had wrapped a measuring tape around her ribs and pulled. She could see herself reflected in the gallery’s glass wall: tall, composed, radiant. No one could see the way her fingers pressed too hard into the stem of her glass.

“You all seem very invested,” she said. “If you want to schedule a strategy meeting about my uterus, I’ll have Mina send out a calendar invite.”

Anna choked on her drink, laughing.

Celine smiled, but her eyes were still sharp. “We just care about you, darling. We want to see you… complete.”

Complete.

Whole.

Not broken.

Not divorced.

Not a woman whose daughter sat in a therapist’s office drawing houses with only one adult stick figure inside.

“You assume I’m not,” Evalyne said.

“Aren’t you lonely?” Vivian asked suddenly. Her voice was soft, cutting through the chatter like a blade through tulle. “I would be. If Laurent wasn’t there when I came home… if it was just the house and the staff and the empty rooms… I would be.”

Laurent looked at his wife, surprised at the sincerity in her tone.

Evalyne thought of her penthouse tonight, the way the city lights would paint the walls while she undressed alone. She thought of pushing Theresa’s door open and finding her already asleep, cheeks turned away.

“I’m fine,” Evalyne said. The words were too small for the space they were meant to occupy.

Celine tipped her head. “Even if you are, people don’t know that. People see a divorced woman with a quiet daughter and think, ‘poor things.’”

“Stop saying ‘people’ when you mean ‘you,’” Anna muttered. “Coward.”

Celine’s gaze flicked over her, then back to Evalyne. “You could change the narrative so easily,” she murmured. “Show up somewhere with someone real. Show that Theresa has a father figure, that you’re not just… alone with your money.”

So it always came back to that. As if solitude voided success. As if love was a trophy she hadn’t won.

Evalyne’s teeth clicked quietly together.

“There is someone,” she said.

The words slipped out before she fully decided to speak them. They landed in the circle like a dropped fork in a candlelit restaurant: small, sharp, instantly noticed.

Celine blinked. “I’m sorry?”

“There is someone,” Evalyne repeated, steady now. “In my life.”

Anna’s head whipped around. “Uh, what?”

“Yes,” Celine breathed, eyes gleaming. “Who?”

Vivian clapped her hands, the sound delicate and absurdly thrilled. “Eva, you dark horse. Have you been holding out on us all this time?”

Laurent lifted a brow, studying her. “Is that so?”

It would have been simple, in that moment, to laugh. To say she was joking, to deflect, to wave them away. There was still an exit.

Instead, Eva heard herself say, “We’ve been together for two years.”

Anna made a low, strangled noise into her glass.

“Two years?” Vivian echoed. “And you’ve never mentioned him?”

“We keep things private,” Evalyne said. A lie slid into place, smooth as silk. “He travels a lot. Business.”

“Business,” Celine repeated slowly. “What kind?”

“Something about partnership,” Evalyne said. The first vaguely bland corporate phrase that floated to the surface. “He’s currently based in London.”

London. Not too exotic, not too close. Far enough to explain his absence, near enough to sound plausible.

“Oh, international,” Vivian breathed. “Very chic. Is he British?”

“Half,” Evalyne said. Why not. “Half American because he's from here.”

Laurent chuckled. “You always did like complicated.”

Anna stared at Evalyne over the rim of her glass, eyes wide. There was a warning there, and something else. Worry.

“What’s his name?” Celine asked.

Evalyne’s mind blanked.

In the space of a single breath, she considered a dozen names. Each one felt like putting on someone else’s coat. Too tight, too loud, too obviously false.

She took a sip of champagne to buy herself a second.

“I’d rather not say,” she answered, letting her lashes lower slightly. “Not yet.”

Celine’s brows shot up. “Oh, come on. You can’t drop a bomb like that and then refuse to give us anything. We’re your friends.”

“Exactly,” Evalyne said. “Which is why you understand discretion. He doesn’t like… attention. He’s very private. We’ve worked hard to keep things… ours.”

Vivian pouted, but she nodded. “I suppose I understand. Laurent was like that, too, in the beginning. Didn’t even have social media. I had to drag him into the twenty-first century.”

“He still doesn’t have social media,” Anna muttered.

“And he is much happier for it,” Laurent said.

Celine’s eyes narrowed slightly. “Two years, though,” she said. “That’s quite serious. If you’ve been together that long, surely marriage has come up.”

There it was.

Evalyne felt her throat constrict. Images flickered through her mind, uninvited: white dresses, Harris at the end of an aisle, his eyes soft then, before they had hardened with resentment. Papers on a kitchen table, black ink on white lines. Theresa’s baby hands smearing pureed carrot across a highchair tray.

“I don’t… rush into things,” Evalyne said. It was half true. In business, she did not. In other areas, she simply did not move at all.

“But you’re not exactly twenty-eight anymore,” Celine said, and the knives were out now. Smooth, smiling, perfectly sheathed violence. “None of us are. Biology is biology, darling. If you plan to give Theresa siblings, the clock is ticking.”

Anna’s jaw clenched. “Are you serious right now?”

Celine ignored her. “And even if you don’t want more children, there’s the… optics. People wonder why a man would be with a woman for years without putting a ring on it. It doesn’t look good for either of you.”

“She’s a billionaire, Celine,” Vivian said weakly, as if that fact might be allowed to matter. “I think the optics will survive.”

“Money doesn’t fix everything,” Celine replied. “Unless she plans to die at her desk and leave it all to her trusts.”

Evalyne put her glass down on a nearby tall table before her fingers could crack it.

She could feel the eyes of other guests sliding over them, subtle and practiced. No one listened openly. They did what high society always did: pretend not to notice the blood in the water while taking careful mental notes for later.

“She’s right about one thing,” Laurent said softly. “If this man exists, and if he’s real… why isn’t he here tonight? Even if he lives in London, he could have flown in. It’s a big night.”

Evalyne’s pulse thudded in her ears.

“He had a meeting,” she said, grasping the thread of the story she’d started weaving and pulling it taut. “In Hong Kong. This launch was scheduled last minute. We couldn’t rearrange his commitments. We’ve managed two years of long-distance with our schedules. We know how to handle one night.”

“Two years of long distance?” Celine practically purred. “You, Miss ‘I don’t do messy emotions,’ have been maintaining a relationship across continents for two years and you expect us to believe that you don’t have a ring on your finger?”

Anna took a step forward. “Okay, I think we’ve established—”

“Fine, it's coming,” Evalyne heard herself say.

The circle went very still.

“What?” Vivian asked.

“The ring,” Evalyne said. “The wedding. I can make it happen.”

Celine’s smile turned slow, bright with something that felt less like pleasure and more like triumph. “Is it now?”

“We’ve talked about it,” Evalyne said. Had she? With this imaginary man? In her head, maybe. In that private, traitorous space where she let herself imagine a pair of hands that weren’t always leaving. “We’re… planning.”

“Well then,” Vivian breathed. “Finally. We were starting to think you’d decided to marry your work.”

Laurent gave Evalyne look that was almost kind. “It wouldn’t be such a terrible choice,” he said. “Work doesn’t talk back.”

“And yet, even you got married,” Celine said.

“Because Vivian is terrifying,” he replied.

Vivian slapped his arm lightly. “You love it.”

Celine turned back to Evalyne, her gaze cutting. “So when is this grand event happening? Or is it one of those endless engagements that never quite make it down the aisle?”

Evalyne’s lungs felt like they’d forgotten how to work properly. Her heart was beating too fast, tiny hammer blows against her ribs.

She could have said “sometime next year.” “We’re still deciding.” “We haven’t set a date yet.” There were dozens of vague, safe answers, the kind she’d used a hundred times in negotiations when she needed more time.

But she saw Celine’s face if she did. Of course, it would say. Of course there is no date. Of course there is nothing real.

She thought of Theresa sitting on that plastic chair in the school office, feet swinging, book in hand, teacher saying, “Is your father coming?” and Theresa shaking her head, “I don’t have one. Just Mommy,” and the looks that would pass between the adults in the room.

She thought of the way the word poor had attached itself to her daughter’s name in Celine’s mouth like a parasite.

Her cheeks felt hot.

Within a month, she thought. It was insane. It was impossible.

But it was decisive.

“Next month,” Evalyne said.

Anna made a small choking sound. “Eva.”

“Next month?” Vivian gasped. “That’s—”

“Fast,” Laurent finished.

“We’ve been together for two years,” Evalyne said, clinging to the lie like a rope. “It’s not fast. It’s overdue and we both capable.”

Celine’s eyes glittered. “You’re telling us that in one month, you’ll be married?”

“Yes,” Evalyne said.

“Properly? Wedding, vows, papers, everything?”

“Obviously,” Evalyne replied. “I don’t do half-measures.”

Vivian squealed, genuinely thrilled now. “Oh my God. This is huge. We have to celebrate.”

“Champagne,” Celine declared, snapping her fingers at a passing waiter. “More champagne. We’re toasting to Eva’s engagement.”

“Future engagement,” Laurent corrected.

“By tomorrow, it’ll be trending,” Vivian said. “Is he going to be okay with that?”

“He doesn’t like being in the spotlight since it's supposed to be my week,” Evalyne said. The lie was easier now, rolling off her tongue. Maybe because there was nowhere else to go. “We’ll keep it small.”

Celine arched a brow. “You? Small?”

“I can be discreet when I want to,” Evalyne said.

“We want to meet him,” Celine said. “Properly. No more hiding. You have kept this supposed paragon away from us long enough.”

“You will,” Evalyne said. “At the right time.”

“The right time is now,” Celine replied. “We’re your friends. We’ll be expecting a wedding invite. And at least one dinner before that. No more excuses.”

“Of course,” Evalyne said.

She tasted metal.

They toasted. Glasses clinked, laughter swelled, someone nearby shouted her name for a selfie. The moment dissolved into noise and light and the next crisis: the DJ needed approval on the final playlist, a lighting rig flickered for a second longer than it should.