by Sherie Keys
“You sacrifice your money to me, and I have to sacrifice my sex life; I have to be stuck with one man for the rest of my life, and unfortunately, that guy was you. It just got to the point where sex between us is best used for business; like when I wanted my car, or the yacht that I am still waiting for you to get off your lazy ass and buy me. That's fair trade. You get laid, I get what I want. We both win. That's good business."
He stared at her in astonishment. "You can't be serious." He could think of no other response at that moment.
"I'm dead serious. I was also dead serious when I saw how much your little fling meant to you, because the last thing I need is you falling in love with someone else and wanting to marry them, so she had to go, and I got rid of her, and now it's all fixed. I fixed the massive mess that you created. You're welcome." She smirked at him.
"How dare you!" he shouted at her. "I swear to God if it's the last thing I ever do I'm-"
She held up her hand and shook her finger at him as if he was an errant schoolboy in trouble with a grownup.
"Now, now. Don't go making idle threats to me, Mr. Jamison, because see, I've got your balls in a sling, and you gave them to me in that sling when you married me. See, it goes like this. You can stay married to me and except for the occasional high ticket item, like my yacht which I expected to already have, my regular maintenance and upkeep is fairly low, considering that I'm the wife of a billionaire.
“Now, if you start throwing around the D word and bring up lawyers and the possibility of a divorce, well, that's just going to make me angry with you, and then I'll have to get a good attorney of my own, which I will make you pay for.
“Then I'll go to court weeping and heartbroken, crying and bleeding on about how you broke my heart and had an affair on the side. Then I will tell the judge that all the while we have been married, I've been a good and faithful wife to you. But now you've gone and thrown it all away so you can go be with your little slut girlfriend.
“The judge is going to give me at least half of everything we have, if not more, and I will demand all that I can get from you, and then I'm going to demand alimony on top of it. By the time I'm done with you, you won't have much left at all.
“So, my dear, you can see what good business it is for me to be married to you, and what good business it is for you to stay married to me, because if you don't, it's going to cost you everything."
She finished her lecture and sat down near him in a chair, as a smile of smug satisfaction spread over her face and she gazed at him like a cat watches a mouse.
He shook his head, looking at her in utter disbelief. "How could you?" he asked quietly.
"Easy," she told him. "I wanted money, just like your little tramp did. She took that fifty grand and disappeared, and you are never going to see her again. So you let that little money-hungry whore go, and be grateful that we aren't in court."
He shook his head at her. "You're going to wish you'd never met me by the time this is all over,” he told her in a cold, hateful voice, his eyes narrowing in a loathing glare. "You think I'm such a fool."
He turned to walk away and then stopped, looking back over his shoulder at her. "You're right, actually, I was a fool to think that there was ever a time that you cared about me or loved me, and I was a fool to stay in this sham of a marriage as long as I have. But if I've learned anything from you, it's that I should go after what it is that's really important to me; what I want and need and love most. For you, that's money, for me, it's a woman. You can start packing your bags right now, because you're going to be out of here faster than you can blink."
She laughed at him and shook her head. "Honey, I'm not afraid of you. I have so much evidence against you about your affair that I'll wind up owning this whole house and everything else that you own. Pack your own bags. If you take me to court, I'll get everything you have, and then I'll keep sucking you dry until the day you leave this miserable earth." She laughed again and watched him as he walked out the door.
Kyle drove himself to Central Park and got out of his car, walking in the rare warm sunshine of early spring. He could not believe that he had spent so many years of his life with someone who cared nothing for him and who was interested in nothing more than his money.
It was a shock to him. He thought about what she had said about Brandy and he realized that he did love Brandy. He was in love with Brandy, and no matter how he had tried to push it away or keep it from happening, it had happened, and it had totally overtaken him, in a slow and silent way, becoming the most imperative aspect of his life, until nothing meant more to him than she did, and it had happened so fast.
Then, as he thought back, he realized that it hadn't really happened all that fast. She had been so good to him the whole time he had known her, from their very first meeting in the spa and all the times since then. When they were just client and masseuse, she had been kind and compassionate, and he had found her to be trustworthy, sharing his inner thoughts and feelings with her, growing closer to her than to any other woman in his life.
Then things had changed between them, but those changes had only brought them closer, and he realized that their new romance on top of their old friendship, had made the perfect bond, and he thought back to all of the times when she had told him that she loved him and he wouldn't say it back to her.
He regretted it deeply. How hard must it have been for her to say it to him, hoping he would return her love and say it to her, express it as lovers should, and he didn't, yet she still continued to tell him because she wanted him to know it and feel it. All along he would not give that back to her, and for no good reason, because he did love her, and he ought to have realized it, and he ought to have told her so many times.
He realized that her love and compassion was so profound to him because he had been suffering for years alone without love and compassion, and like summer rains on a parched desert, her love had brought new life back to him, and that was why he needed her so much. That was why he had fallen in love with her, for everything she had given him, yet when she had needed him, he hadn't been there for her.
His heart ached for her, and for the pain he had obviously put her through, and for all that he had cost her. As he walked through the park, looking at new life beginning to bud all around him on the trees and bushes, he vowed to himself that he would find her. He would make it up to her, and if she would have him back, he would make her his own.
Chapter10
Brandy opened her eyes and looked around the room. She had spent years in this room. Most of her childhood had been spent waking up in that same room, and now she was back laying in her old bed in her old room, with a baby growing inside of her and no real direction in her life. She was grateful to have somewhere to go, but she was miserable that she had to be there.
She sighed and sat up, her eyes wandering over all of the time evident on the walls. There were photographs of her during all of the different stages of her life. Pictures of her as a child playing in the yard out behind the house, pictures of her building snowmen and sailing on the sea. There were photographs of her on her tennis team in school and running in track.
There were dusty old trophies around the room, old posters of actors and rock stars she had admired when she was in school, and on one shelf was a row of yearbooks that were filled with memories of high school and friends she had once built her world around.
Almost all of them were long gone, spread to the winds and the far reaches of the earth, except for those few stragglers who stayed in their little neighborhood and would never leave. Those were the people who would replace their parents as the steady pillars of the community. While she never wanted to be one of them, she was glad that someone was there to hold it all up while she was gone.
She thought about New York. If you can make it there, you can make it anywhere the song went... but she couldn't make it there. New York had chewed her up and spit her back out. She was back at the beginning, back in Boston, back to her roots
where she was safe and sound in her quiet little neighborhood, and no better off or further along than she had been when she graduated from high school.
No accolades or bright shining achievements were hers to claim, no, she had come back pregnant with a married man's baby and nothing at all to show for what she had done while she was gone and what she had made of her life, other than a mess her parents had to help her work through.
Brandy felt like a complete failure, but somehow, finding herself back on solid, familiar ground gave her the little push that she needed and she knew that she would be able to begin again and try to make it all work. She found security and comfort, and she knew that having tasted failure once, she was never going to let it happen again, and she would work as hard as she could for what she wanted.
She looked down at her belly and rubbed it gently.
"I promise you, baby, we are going to get out of here and we are going to have a good life, a really good life, somewhere wonderful. You will be so happy and so lucky. I'm going to make things amazing for us. I promise you that,” she said softly.
After one more nostalgic look around her, she pushed herself out of bed, showered and dressed and went downstairs to see her parents.
Her mother Mary was scrubbing potatoes in the sink. Beside her, all along the counter, was a series of vegetables; more potatoes, carrots, celery, kale, onions, tomatoes and various other produce.
Mary smiled brightly at her and leaned her cheek out to her daughter for a kiss. "Good morning, baby. How'd you sleep?" she asked with a smile.
"I slept alright. I'm not feeling as sick as I was, so that's a nice change." Brandy walked around her mother and poked at the vegetables all along the counter.
"What are you making?" she asked curiously.
"Stew. The weather man said there would be rain here this afternoon, so I'm making something to keep us warm and full tonight." She smiled at her daughter and Brandy felt good just being there listening to her mother and finding comfort in what she was doing.
"Thank you, Mom, you’re the best." She kissed her cheek again.
Mary nodded to Brandy's stomach. "How's my little grandbaby doing today?" she asked with excitement.
Brandy nodded and shrugged. "Good, I guess. It's still early for me to really know anything, but I feel alright."
"Your vitamins are there by the fridge," Mary told her.
Brandy walked over to take one and her mother continued to talk to her. "I know you're just getting settled in, but I thought I'd try to help you out. I talked to Marge down at the local massage parlor here and she said she could let you come in and work part time there, and if you build up your client base, she said she'll give you more hours.
“She said it will be part salary and part commission based, so you'll have to work at building up that clientele so that you have some money coming in, but it's a start. She's just added another room there because she is doing pretty well with her business, so now there are three rooms there to massage in."
Her mother looked impressed and Brandy felt herself cave inside just a little. That spa she had come from, had fifteen rooms and twelve massage techs on hand at any given time, not to mention the other workers that were there to do a whole litany of spa services for any of the multitude of clients who walked in the door. This was a tremendous step backward, she thought to herself, but seeing the hopeful smile on her mother's face made her change her sentiment. Maybe it wasn't a step backward. Maybe it was just a step in a new direction. A different direction. One that had no obvious end to it.
Then she thought about Marge's little parlor, and she realized that there was no real future there. It was a dead end job and it would be regular money, but it would never be really good money, and it would never be a place where she could move up, only forward, and continuing forward with no other change of direction for the foreseeable future.
Her mother smiled at her. "I told Katie and Jackie that you were coming back to town and they were glad to hear it."
Katie and Jackie were her mother's oldest friends, and they were tantamount to being aunts to her. Katie's son Riley had a romantic interest in her all through middle and high school, and while she had dated him a few times out of obligation, she had never really liked him.
As if reading her train of thought, her mother smiled shyly at her and said, "Riley has been working over at his dad's garage and he was happy to hear that you were back. He saw me at the store yesterday and said hello. He's such a nice boy, you know he's always been very polite to me. He's practically family.
“Anyway," her mother laughed lightly as she tried to bring herself back on track, "he was talking to me in the store when he ran into me and I mentioned that you were going to be back here. He seemed very excited and he wants to see you. I told him he could come around for dinner tonight if he wanted to, and of course he did want to, so he'll be here later tonight."
Her mother turned and looked at her, lowering her gaze over Brandy's sweat pants and jersey. "You probably want to wear something really cute for dinner tonight. We'll want you looking your best, of course."
Brandy listened to her mother going on and felt her heart and soul wither just a little bit.
Mary smiled lightly over her shoulder at her daughter and kept on talking. "...of course I didn't tell him about the baby, you'll have to do that, but I've seen lesser men than him take on someone else's child, and honey," she looked at her daughter pointedly, "...he has always liked you so much. I don't think it would be a problem."
She went back to chopping vegetables for the stew. "Actually, I didn't tell anyone about the baby. I thought I'd leave that part up to you. You can do it in your own time and in your own way,” she said sweetly.
"I do need you to run into town for me, though. I forgot to pick up bread while I was at the store. I get so busy visiting with everyone that I sometimes miss a thing or two that I meant to buy, and we'll want rolls for the stew tonight. Would you mind running over there for me, honey? You can take the car. I saw how full yours is packed, so just leave your car here and take mine. Okay?" she asked brightly.
Brandy nodded. She went back upstairs and changed her clothes, dabbing on some makeup and combing her hair, and then she went back down to the kitchen and took the keys from her mother.
"Is there anything else I can get for you while I'm there?" she asked politely.
"Maybe something for dessert. Chocolate cake or something, okay?" her mother smiled at her. "Thank you, honey. I'm so glad to have you home. I missed you!" She smiled again and then went back to chopping her vegetables.
Brandy drove to the store and several people honked and waved at her as she made her way through their neighborhood, thinking that she was her mother. She parked and went in, and right away she was greeted by people who had known her for most of her life. They were always there, like old oak trees that were so far rooted in the ground that they could never go anywhere else.
She was standing at the bakery, deciding between the chocolate cake and a berry pie when she heard someone behind her call her name. She looked up and saw her mother's friend Jackie walking toward her.
"Well! Hello there, young lady." The older woman dropped a kiss on her cheek and smiled at her warmly. "I didn't think I'd see you so soon, but I'm glad to run into you here. Are you picking things up for your mom?"
"I am. She forgot the bread for her stew tonight," Brandy said.
Her Auntie Jackie nodded. "That's right. The weatherman called for rain. I should pick up some soup myself. I'm not as a good a cook as your mom is; if it doesn't come already packaged, then it's usually more work than I'm interested in doing,” she admitted with a smile.
"So your mom tells me that Riley is going over for dinner tonight, too." She looked at Brandy with an eyebrow raised in a double meaning.
Brandy sighed. "Yes, I guess he is."
Auntie Jackie winked at her. "You better watch out for that one; your mom will have you married off to him before you can blink
. She's so tickled to have you back here, and she's looking for any reason she can to get you to stay a little closer, especially now with your little one on the way." The woman winked again and smiled at her. "Congratulations, Brandy."
Brandy stared at her. "Mom said she didn't tell anyone."
Jackie shook her head and shrugged. "She didn't tell anyone, just me and your Auntie Katie. That's it. She didn't tell anyone else."
Brandy had forgotten that in their circle of friends, telling the two best friends was synonymous with not telling anyone at all, except that as always, anything they told each other always had a way of leaking out until the rest of their neighborhood knew.
She nodded and smiled with some chagrin. "Well, let's not let anyone else in on the surprise yet, please." She hoped that Jackie would respect that request.
The older woman nodded and patted her, smiling as she promised to keep it quiet. She gave her a kiss on the cheek again and then walked away and Brandy sighed and went to the cash register with her chocolate cake and bread.
