by Bella Grant
“Okay.” They were eager to get away and scampered from the dining room. I watched them stumble into each other as Laurel called out for them to walk and not run. They giggled, and I could hear the pattering of their footsteps as they started running again as soon as they were out of sight.
“You’re not eating?” I asked Laurel, who’d only had a half-eaten apple and a glass of milk.
“I’ll eat later,” she responded seriously, then turned the newspaper to me. “What is this?”
I glanced from her to the paper she held out to me and the forkful of pancake froze mid-air. The title screamed at me, and a floodgate rushed in my ear.
BILLIONAIRE BUSINESSMAN RESPONSIBLE FOR DEATH OF THE MOTHER OF HIS CHILDREN?
If the headline wasn’t already bad enough, a set of pictures were included in the story, one of me, one of the twins, and another picture of the lifeless body of the twins’ mother.
“Let me see that,” I said in alarm and grasped the paper from her hand.
“It’s true then?” she asked, horrified.
I ignored her, my anger mounting the more of the story I read.
Prominent billionaire businessman Jarrod Simpson recently acquired custody of his twin girls when the mother of the children committed suicide. It is alleged that Simpson, who is best known as the CEO of SimTech Industries, had neglected care of his two daughters prior to receiving full custody in February of this year.
I didn’t finish the story. I ripped it from the rest of the paper and crushed it into a ball before slamming my fist into the table. I was outraged. The paper had taken facts and spun a fine tale that depicted me as an unsuitable father who had abandoned my kids. They also implicated me as a person who stood idly by while Rachel had committed suicide. I was livid, not only with the newspaper for not cross-checking their story before printing but also the individual who had leaked the story.
“I guess you’ve arrived at your own conclusion?” I snapped at Laurel.
“Actually, I’m interested in what you have to say,” she said softly. “What happened, Jarrod? And how did they get this information? The picture of the girls is one I sent you the day we went to the aquarium.”
“It’s on my desk at work,” I answered stiffly.
“But who would have sent it to the paper?”
“Pearl, that’s who,” I spat out. “I should have known she had something up her sleeve. She wouldn’t have calmly taken what I’d said and walked away.”
“I’m confused,” Laurel announced. “Why would Pearl send this to the paper?”
“Because I told her I wasn’t interested in what she was offering!”
“What she was offering?”
“Sex, Laurel! Good God, will you keep up?”
Her face was blotchy with irritation. “If I understood the nature of your relationship with her then maybe I would be better able to keep up.”
“The nature of our relationship is business!” I exclaimed. “It’s never been anything but business between us. We make good business partners. Pearl is a bit of a shark, and she does her job well.”
“You’ve never slept with her?” she blurted out.
“Of course not! Laurel, I don’t mix business with pleasure,” I explained, then changed the tune I was singing. “Until you, that is.”
I scowled at the pleased look on her face. She must be feeling pretty smug right now that she had me by the cajones.
“Will you explain to me what happened?” she asked, changing the subject and pointing at the newspaper. “Is any of it true? As a matter of fact, I want you to tell me how the girls’ mother died.”
I was grateful she was asking and not condemning me. She needed to know the answer too, because with a news story like this, some nosy reporter would pop up in places for the next couple of weeks.
“Rachel and I met in college,” I told her. “She was a little flirty and loved attention. I flirted back but nothing hard. There was always a sadness to her I couldn’t explain. Then my parents and brother died in that accident and I was alone. When she was there, I sought solace in her. I started to care about her. I tried to get her help, but she didn’t want it. I got the feeling she liked being depressed and didn’t want to get out of it. She was perfect for my grief, but you can’t grieve forever. I emerged from mine, far later than I would have, but she didn’t want to leave that place of misery and melancholy. She needed help, but when she wouldn’t accept it, I severed all ties with her. It wasn’t hard to do because it was my final year of college.”
“And you never saw her again?” Laurel asked.
I shook my head. “I didn’t see her until she turned up in November.” I closed my eyes, going cold as I remembered how she had looked: like a meth addict. “She claimed I was the father of her twin girls and should come for them because she was going to kill herself. She wanted me to help her by taking the girls so they didn’t have to watch her do it.”
“You didn’t believe her,” Laurel whispered.
“I didn’t,” I confirmed. “I wish to God I had or she would be alive. The Rachel I knew was an attention seeker, but she never did anything to herself. She never self-harmed. I always believed she wanted to be different because being different was noticeable. Several times, I told her I would get her help during college and she said she was fine. She would laugh it off. For her to appear eight years later… I had no idea what to think but that she was on meth or something. How could I have daughters who were eight and not known anything about them?”
I clenched my fists, digging my nails into my palm, trying to get the physical pain to outweigh the emotional one, but it was useless. “I should have paid attention!” I confessed in anguish. “Do you know what it feels like knowing I could have saved her life but didn’t? That my girls could have had their mother as a part of their lives. I dread them growing up and finding out about this. They will resent me.”
“Ana and Isa love you,” she reminded me. “They’ll never resent you. You’re not a psychiatrist. No one can blame you for not reading the situation correctly and knowing Rachel would do something like that.”
“Apparently, the newspaper does,” I told her. “They printed all this crap to ruin my image. I didn’t want this coming out to affect the children, and now their faces are plastered all over the damn newspaper.”
“The girls must be protected at all cost,” she agreed with me. “They’ve come a long way and we don’t want to regress. What are we going to do?”
Not what I was going to do, I realized. She had said ‘we,’ implying she was with me on this. The desire to ask her if she was having sex with another man was strong, but I shunned it. The time to talk about all that wasn’t now. We would be talking about it very soon, though. I had to know if all the care she exhibited was general or if she genuinely cared about me.
“I’m going to have the newspaper retract that story and print a note of apology in their next issue,” I responded with steely determination. “And they will comply if they don’t want a lawsuit on their hands so big they’ll have to close operations. But first things first. There’s someone I have to fire.”
Laurel was alarmed. “Maybe she made a mistake?”
“This was no mistake,” I said through clenched teeth. “Pearl did this deliberately to get back at me for not wanting to be with her. For her sake, I hope she’s packed and left the office, with her resignation letter on my desk before I get there.”
Chapter 27
Laurel
I held my breath and waited as every other reporter did for Jarrod’s answer. He had been right that the newspaper article, published a little over two weeks ago, had blown up. The apology the newspaper company had issued afterwards had done nothing to quell the sudden interest other reporters had taken in Jarrod. Everyone was aimed at uncovering the truth behind the death of the children’s mother.
I read each news piece. An exposé about the children’s mother had disrespectfully uncovered what seemed to be every inch
of the woman’s life. I had been angered that they would be so hungry for a story they couldn’t have left the woman in peace. She had lived her life the best way she knew how, struggling with clinical depression, and she had met a sad end. Her whole life story didn’t have to be splashed all over Texas.
Our priority was to protect the girls, so I hadn’t objected when Jarrod had suggested I fly to Jamaica under the pretext of a ‘vacation’ for the girls until the story went cold. They didn’t suspect a thing was wrong, though they often asked why Jarrod wasn’t with us. I used the excuse of work for them to be satisfied that he would have preferred to be with us.
The press conference I now watched was his final attempt to quell the gossip. He’d reported to me two days ago that some companies had backed out of business deals with him because of the story. If I ever saw Pearl, I’d set her straight. What she had done was despicable, even for a woman scorned. She had gone way too far, and I hoped wherever she was watching the story unfold, she was miserable. She had no right to drag the children into this.
I felt pleased there was nothing between her and Jarrod. If only this mess was not happening, I would have told him about the baby and how I felt about him. I rubbed my hand over my tummy. My waistline was changing, I’d noticed, though nobody else would. My belly was thickening with the baby growing inside. If only I had someone to share the news with.
With a sigh, I tuned into the news as Jarrod started speaking.
“To answer your question, my wife has nothing to do with what you have insinuated,” he said, his voice strong and clear. “To postulate that I encouraged Rachel to commit suicide so my wife and I could raise the girls without her is absurd. I know the truth is simply hard to accept because you have no story, but I had no idea I was a father. I’d not seen Rachel in eight years and had no idea what to think of her mental health when she contacted me. Another simple truth is that it took some adjusting from being a bachelor to a father and husband, but there’s nothing more important in the world to me than my children and my wife. If you had asked me that question a year ago, I’d definitely have said my business was the dearest thing to me, but that was the past. Before I knew I had daughters and before I met my wife.”
His words foolishly brought tears to my eyes. I knew he was only including me for credibility. I imagined the field day the reporters in that press conference would have if they knew about our million-dollar deal. The wife who was not quite a wife, pregnant with his baby that he knew nothing about.
The press conference finished soon after his pronouncement, and I sighed, hoping they’d give it a rest now. Two weeks was a long time to hold on to a story that had no substance. I had wanted to be with him through it all, but Anabelle and Isabelle were priority. We would not let them revert to old behavior because of the thoughtless acts of reporters out to get a story.
I turned off the television and checked on the children before going to my empty bed. I missed lying next to Jarrod, even without the sex. Having him in bed with me was comforting, and if by chance I woke in his arms, I never once complained.
We were on the beach almost a month after the initial release of the story, collecting shells, when the girls shrieked and ran along the sand. They startled me, and I started calling out to them before I turned and saw they were sprinting towards Jarrod. My breath caught and my heart pounded in relief. I’d missed him so much. I had to talk myself out of flying across the sand and into his arms too.
I stood slowly, not able to stop my smile as he swung both girls up into his arms for a hug. I could hear their giggling from where I was standing. They were my family, and I loved them so much. And soon, there would be another child to add to the mix. I had to tell him, but was now the right moment?
I waited for him to reach me, and when he was close enough, I lost all inhibition and threw myself into his arms. Better than being in his arms was to feel him press me closer to his body, bringing us closer.
“You’re here,” I murmured. “Why didn’t you tell me you were coming?”
“I wanted it to be a surprise,” he replied as I stepped back so I could peer up into his face.
“It is some surprise, all right,” I agreed, pushing a lock of hair out of my eyes. “Does this mean we can go home now?”
He nodded. “Yes, but do you mind staying here another week? It’s been hell the last few weeks.”
“No, not at all.”
The one week spent with Jarrod there was better than the weeks we’d spent on the island by ourselves. He assured me the reporters had backed off and were already on another story, and we should be able to return home with little to no hassle.
During the nights when the kids were sleeping, we would stay up and talk. We didn’t have sex, though I wanted him, but I was shy about making the first move. The last night, as we sat on the porch, sharing a cup of hot chocolate, I attempted to tell him about the baby but kept going around in circles.
“Did you get to confront Pearl about what she did?” I asked him. Pearl had cleared out her desk before Jarrod could get to work the morning the story was released.
“No, and I don’t want to anymore,” he replied. “What would it solve now anyway? The harm was done, which is exactly what she wanted to happen.”
“She shouldn’t be allowed to get away with what she did, in my opinion.”
“I can’t pretend to know what it feels like to be in her shoes,” he explained. “And I literally had no idea she felt that way about me or I’d have nipped it in the bud before it reached this level. I’d have transferred her to another of my offices. She really is a good worker.”
“I could tell,” I remarked. “That’s why I thought you two were together. She was very umm… let’s just say her demeanor showed that she wanted the boss.”
He turned to regard me with a frown. “You thought I was involved with Pearl during our marriage?”
I shrugged nonchalantly and looked at the sea to avoid his eyes. “According to our contract, you’d have been well within your rights.”
“I’ve not been with a woman for a couple years, Laurel. At least before you.” He chuckled in amusement. “It’s good to know I wasn’t so rusty with my moves that you noticed.”
“I didn’t notice,” I replied, peeking up a him. I worked on leveling my breathing and not getting ahead of myself because I’d been the only woman he’d been with for a while. My stupid heart wasn’t having it, though.
“And you?” he asked, breaking the silence between us. “Have you been with anyone else?”
“Of course not,” I denied and turned my gaze boldly to him. “I couldn’t have done that. Jarrod…” I wrung my hands and bit my lip, chewing on the flesh as I wondered if I was doing the right thing by telling him how I felt.
“Yes...” he prompted.
“I-I’ve fallen in love with you.” I said it so softly I wasn’t sure he heard. It didn’t help that he fell silent. My harsh breathing could not be disguised by the sound of the crashing waves, and I rushed to add, “I know I wasn’t supposed to and I did try not to, but you’re an amazing man and a wonderful father… Jarrod, what are you doing?”
He was out his seat and by my side in a split second. He gripped me by the arms and pulled me to my feet.
“Say it again,” he urged me.
“I love you.” I sighed.
“You’re the amazing one,” he claimed. “Look at the amazing work you’ve done with the girls. And with me. You’ve done so much work on me, Laurel.”
“Oh, Jarrod, do you—”
Before I could ask him to clarify whether he loved me too, he wrapped his arms around me and kissed me. As usual, when his lips touched mine, I fell under the intoxication of his kisses. He swung me up into his arms and carried me inside the house and to our bedroom.
Our lovemaking was sweet and passionate, fueled by long kisses and touches. He kissed every inch of my body, working me with his hands and mouth until I begged him to take me. Finally, when our bodies joi
ned, I clung to him as we moved in sync with each other. His strokes were slow, languid, and deliberate, and the climax he coaxed from my body was like nothing I’d ever experienced. Our bodies strained against one another in the culmination of a beautiful act forged by love.
Afterwards, we lay in each other’s arms, my head pillowed on his shoulder while he traced my shoulder with his fingertips. He yawned sleepily, and I knew I had to ask before he fell asleep.
“Jarrod,” I called his name.
“Hmm?” He kissed my forehead.
“Do you want children in the future?” I raised the question and held my breath.
“We already have two girls,” he replied and nestled me closer to him. “We don’t need anymore. That’s why I had the vasectomy.”
I would have asked him what if the vasectomy failed, but I could already hear his light snores. I lay awake for much of the night, no clearer on what I should do. Jarrod and I couldn’t have a relationship if he didn’t accept our child the way he did his girls.
Chapter 28
Jarrod
“Henry, did Laurel say where she was going?” I asked with a frown as I settled behind my desk at home. I’d decided to come home early and finish what I had to from my home office as I had a dreadful headache.
“I think she mentioned the mall, sir,” Henry responded, bringing the glass of water and pills that I’d requested.
“Has she been gone long?”
“Almost three hours.”
“Okay, thank you, Henry.”
I was disappointed that the women in my life weren’t home. Since learning how Laurel felt about me, everything was right with our world again. No hesitancy existed between us when our bodies collided at night after the kids were asleep. And when minutes after having sex we started all over again in the shower, we were just as eager.
Downing the pills, I scanned a report my new assistant had provided me for an upcoming meeting. Following Pearl’s dismissal, I’d hired a male assistant to avoid similar problems. By observation, he was straight, too, so I shouldn’t have an issue in that regard. I had no more time to waste on anything that didn’t have to do with my family and business. I already wondered if I should cancel the contract between Laurel and me and remarry her, or continue on past the ten contracted years.
