All That Glitters

by Danielle Steel

  The crassness of his suggestion gnawed at her all weekend. She hadn’t decided yet if she was going to keep the baby. But if she did, on Sunday night she had an idea of her own. The prospect of his giving up all parental rights showed his total lack of feeling for her and the baby, but was not entirely a bad suggestion, once you got past the heartlessness behind it. If she kept the pregnancy, buying off his parental rights would avoid years of battles over joint custody, disagreements over how to bring up the child, and visitation, and what the child would be exposed to when with him, if he ever saw it. And she was not about to sacrifice a house worth millions to him. But if she kept the baby, she would be more than willing to give up the Sussex property, which had cost her very little and she had no real use for. She didn’t intend to give weekend house parties without Nigel, and it would be an excellent trade if he’d accept it, to buy their child’s freedom from him and her own, to raise a child in peace.

  She wrote him back, suggesting the Sussex property in lieu of the London house, if she continued the pregnancy, and got no immediate answer, and advised her attorney of the name of his. The more she thought about it, the more she liked his proposition. Parenting was a two-person endeavor, but not with a man like Nigel. The child, if it was ever born, would be better off without him. His value system, and morals on every front, were deplorable. In Coco’s opinion, he was a disgusting human being, if one could even call him that, after all he’d done. Knowing him, she was sure he would try to justify his actions, buying houses and chartering yachts, as a way of “improving her life” and “putting her inheritance to good use,” which she knew now had nothing to do with her. It was all about him, and he had used her to impress the friends in his social circle, and elevate his own status with them. She was just taken along for the ride, to pay the bills, which she had done willingly, because she loved him. It all seemed like a cruel joke now, and a terrible trick he had played on her for his own gain.

  It took Nigel two days to respond to her email, and much to her amazement, he accepted her offer to trade the Sussex property instead of the London house for all parental rights to their child. He was smart enough to take the lesser offer when he didn’t have a winning hand. Coco thought his idea would benefit both of them, and even the baby, to keep it out of Nigel’s clutches, and she forwarded the email exchange to her attorney. He called her as soon as he got it.

  “You didn’t mention that you’re pregnant,” he said in a serious voice. “That could be complicated, although the exchange that he’s suggesting would certainly simplify it. We’ll have to choose the language very carefully, to make it palatable to the court. A judge might feel that he was protecting the child’s rights, by not depriving him or her of a father. You’d be satisfied with that exchange, though, for your property in Sussex?”

  “Yes, I would. Very much so. I’d rather lose the money I spent on it, and have him out of our lives.”

  “When is the baby due?” he asked cautiously. The exchange they had unofficially agreed to, and come up with between them, was one he had never done before, but even he agreed it had its merits.

  “I’m not sure,” Coco said in answer to his question. “Probably next summer, if I have it. I haven’t decided yet.” He understood the option she was referring to, and refrained from comment.

  The following week, Nigel’s attorney communicated the rest of what he wanted from her, in light of her personal fortune. Nigel was trying to annul their prenuptial contract, claiming that he had not been represented by an attorney, which had been his choice at the time. He had simply signed it and handed it back to her. Now he was claiming that he hadn’t understood what he was signing and no one had explained it to him. He wanted a five-million-dollar settlement as consolation for the pain and suffering and trauma of the divorce, another million in damages, citing his being fired as her fault, because she had kept him so busy supervising the work on the houses and their demanding social life. He wanted spousal support of three million dollars a year for ten years, to help him get on his feet, and to live in the style to which she had accustomed him. And another million for his summer vacation, using the yacht they had chartered as the model for it. In addition to the Sussex property, as compensation for losing his home in the city, on the terms that they had agreed to. In its totality, he was asking for a thirty-seven-million-dollar divorce, plus Sussex, for eleven months of being married to her. It amounted roughly to a forty-million-dollar divorce for breaking her heart and eleven months of her time. Ed Easton had been an amateur compared to him.

  “He has an ambitious attorney,” hers said in a cool tone. They had said that given the size of her fortune, it was a drop in the bucket to her, and a negligible amount in proportion to what she had. “He puts a high value on himself, doesn’t he?” He already couldn’t stand the guy, just reading his demands. He stayed neutral in the cases he handled as a rule, but Nigel’s proposals were so outrageous that her lawyer, Harold Humphreys, felt protective of her. Nigel’s intentions were plainly transparent. It was interesting that she had managed to hold down a job during the entire time, despite two house remodels, a full social life, and even a pregnancy, and he couldn’t, and had made no effort to find one after he was fired. “I think a judge will take a very dim view of this, Miss Martin.” She had called him using her maiden name, and not her married one. She wanted nothing more to do with anything of Nigel’s, not even his name. “Judges are human too, and work for a living. They have families to support, and the same expenses the rest of us do. For him to ask for support in these amounts, damages, and compensation, no matter what your parents left you, will infuriate any judge after an eleven-month marriage. You could even ask for an annulment on the basis of fraud, but it might take longer. I think you’ll be best served by being rid of him as quickly as possible, for the least amount of money.”

  “Thank you, I’d like that.”

  “I’ll get the ball rolling immediately.”

  She hadn’t heard a word from Nigel since his email about the Sussex property, and she suspected she wouldn’t. She could just imagine Nigel and his lawyer going over the numbers and trying to figure out how much they could get away with. What they had come up with was shocking, and according to Harold Humphreys, offensive. He said that with luck, the marriage should be dissolved within six months. Their coming to an agreement would speed it along. The lawyer suspected that what Nigel wanted most on the list was the Sussex property. And as much money as he could get. The issue of parental rights could be more complicated, if he didn’t agree to the Sussex property, or reneged on the arrangement.

  “I’d like that part of it settled before the baby’s born,” Coco said. But if she was two months pregnant, she’d be divorced a month before the baby was born.

  “I’ll do my best,” he promised her. She knew she had some battles ahead with Nigel, and probably very nasty ones, and there was always the danger that it would leak to the press, particularly with those amounts, but she thought that her lawyer was the right man for the job, and Nigel’s had overshot the mark, possibly to his client’s detriment. Nigel had probably spurred him on in his unlimited greed and total lack of remorse.

  After the first exchange between the lawyers, and several calls between her attorney and her trustee, Coco did what she’d been planning to do all week. She packed up every last shred of Nigel’s belongings, some personal files he had, his gym equipment, his clothes, the few things he had brought from his apartment. She boxed it up, hired a delivery service, and sent it all to her house in Sussex, where she knew he was living, until further notice. If they didn’t make the agreement he had suggested, she intended to evict him and put it up for sale. She didn’t want the headache of a country estate and didn’t need it. She hadn’t made a decision about the city house yet, and needed to think about what to do about the baby first, before she dealt with real estate. There was so much to think about. She returned his grandmother’s
ring to her attorney to turn over to Nigel’s.

  She didn’t miss their social life at all. She had stayed off that circuit since his first catastrophic indiscretion in September, and she had no desire to see any of his friends again. She was out of his life for good, and wanted to stay that way. Her only close friend in London was Leslie, and Sam in New York. She had lost touch with her school friends in New York when her parents died, and the last of them when she moved to London. The people she knew at Columbia had all graduated after she dropped out, and were scattered everywhere by now. She had meant to stay in touch with some of them, but hadn’t. Her life had changed too much after her parents’ deaths, when she’d moved to London for Time, and married Nigel. The currents of life had swept her along in one direction, and them in others.

  * * *

  —

  It took her a week after she walked in on Nigel for the second time to call Sam. At first she was too upset and embarrassed by what had happened, again. She felt stupid for having given him a second chance, and it was all so sordid. Other people learned about cheating partners from others, or suspected an affair from lipstick on their husband’s collar. Instead she had had the privilege of walking in on him having sex with cheap women, twice, and the humiliation it had caused. She hated to tell Sam about it, but they hadn’t spoken since he got engaged, and she didn’t want him to think she disapproved of his engagement, although she did. She felt sorry for him and thought he was making a mistake, but she wanted to be supportive. He had sent her several texts asking if she was okay. She had responded that she was, which wasn’t entirely true. She had started getting morning sickness after her email exchange with Nigel about relinquishing his parental rights. She wasn’t sure if it was physical, or her upset over filing for the divorce. But either way, she threw up at least once every morning, and several times at night. It made eating anything a chore, and from both circumstances, she was losing weight, and had lost ten pounds. Already thin to begin with, she was looking gaunt, and Leslie was concerned about her. She hated what she was going through, and knew nothing about the pregnancy. If she kept it, Coco didn’t intend to tell anyone for a long time, until it showed. She needed time to adjust to it herself, and didn’t want advice or opinions, except her own.

  She had gone to her doctor, who confirmed the pregnancy with a blood test. They had discussed the possibility of an abortion. The baby was due in August, her doctor told her, and Coco had to decide what she was going to do. They did a routine ultrasound, saw that the fetus’s heart was beating nicely, and seeing the baby on the screen made the decision harder than she’d thought. She felt too young for the responsibilities of motherhood at twenty-four, but that would have been true if her marriage was still intact, and she would have had it then. Nigel giving up his parental rights would make it both easier and more difficult. And like everything else in her life for the past two and a half years, she would have to face it alone. Sam had his own problems now, she didn’t expect him to be constantly present to help shoulder hers.

  When she called him, he sounded busy, but relieved to hear from her.

  “You’re not pissed at me?” he asked her, sounding anxious. “I know you didn’t think I should get engaged to Tamar.”

  “I just don’t want to see you settle. How are you feeling about it now?”

  “About the same. I think I owed it to her after all this time. It was the right thing to do.” For everyone but him, Coco knew.

  “A year and a half isn’t an eternity, Sam. You didn’t keep her chained up in the garage. She didn’t have to keep dating you. It must have been working for her.”

  “She kept thinking I was going to propose, and I took my time.” He felt guilty about that too. It was why his parents had insisted that he was duty-bound to marry her, which sounded to Coco like a poor reason to get married. Duty over love. Sam had bought into it, not wanting to disappoint them as his sisters had. But these were modern times. It wouldn’t have ruined her if he didn’t marry her, and she wasn’t pregnant. But he was always willing to take the weight of the world on his shoulders, and do the right thing, even if he sacrificed himself. “Tamar is all excited planning the wedding now. It’s nice to see her happy.” Coco would have preferred to see him happy, and thrilled about who he was marrying, instead of resigned. Doing the right thing was more important to him than marrying the right girl, which seemed crazy to her. But a lot of what she’d done had been crazy too, like marrying Nigel too fast. “We’re getting married at the end of June. I expect you to be there,” he said seriously, and she did a rapid calculation and knew she couldn’t. She’d be six weeks away from giving birth by then, if she kept the pregnancy, and wouldn’t be allowed to fly.

  “I might not be able to make it then,” she said hesitantly, dreading telling him, in the circumstances she was in. She knew he wouldn’t approve.

  “You can’t possibly know that now. Do you have some other wedding to go to?” It was the only reason he could think of. Coco being pregnant hadn’t crossed his mind.

  “No, not really.” And then she took a breath and leapt in. “I’m pregnant. I don’t know what I’m going to do about it, but I am.”

  “Isn’t that good news?” It didn’t sound like it to him. “Nigel must be thrilled. Now he can start filling all those bedrooms with babies. It was all he could talk about when I saw the house.” And then he thought of something else. “Is there something wrong with the pregnancy?”

  “No, with the father. I walked in on him again, having one of his charming little escapades, with a blonde I didn’t know this time. Porno live. On his desk, at least not in my bed again.” She tried to keep it light, but they both knew it was anything but.

  “Oh God, Coco. How did that play out?”

  “Pretty badly. I threw him out, and I’m filing for divorce, for real this time. No hall passes for cheaters. I’m done, and he knows it.”

  “Does he know about the pregnancy?”

  “Ironically, I went home to tell him, which is how I walked in on them. And, interesting, he’s trying to sell me his parental rights in exchange for the house in Sussex, and I’m willing to make the deal. In fact, I want to, to get him out of my life. He wanted the city house, but I wouldn’t give it to him, so I can sell it myself, and get some money back. But he’ll settle for the house in Sussex, which was originally his idea, not mine. And he wants another thirty-seven million in ‘damages’ and support.”

  “Damages for what? Is he insane?”

  “No, I think he’s pretty lucid. My lawyer says he won’t get it, but he might get something, in addition to Sussex. So that’s why I haven’t called you. I’ve been trying to sort this mess out. It had just happened two days before you got engaged.”

  “I thought something might be wrong at first, but I told myself I was paranoid, and decided you were pissed.”

  “Of course I’m not. And I’m sorry I can’t come to the wedding if I have the baby.” She was genuinely sad about it, and not being there for him, if he was really going to do it. She wanted to be there to support him.

  “What do you think you’ll do about the pregnancy?”

  “I’m not sure. I have to figure it out soon. I don’t feel right doing anything about it. But I’m not so sure I can do a good job of being a parent alone, or if I want to take that on,” she said honestly.

  “You can do anything you want,” he reminded her. “You’re the strongest human being I know, man or woman. I wish I had your balls.”

  “You do, you just don’t know it,” she said gently. “You’re such a good person, you always want to do the right thing for everyone. Sometimes being strong is not doing it, and taking care of yourself.”

  “I wish I felt I had the right to do that. I don’t want to let Tamar down, or my parents. Maybe I’d never meet another girl who would be the right wife for me anyway. She’s the perfect traditional choice th
ey want for me,” he said, sounding discouraged.

  “Is that what you want, Sam? Tradition? Or something more exciting that suits you better?”

  “Exciting is your downfall, Coco. Ed is exciting. So is Nigel in a way, in his world. That’s all flash with no substance.”

  “And Tamar is substance without flash,” she finished for him.

  “I don’t want an exciting marriage. I want a peaceful one. And so will you one day.”

  “I thought Nigel had substance,” she defended herself. “I thought he was a good guy.”

  “You didn’t know him long enough to tell. And Ed was cheating on his wife, which should have disqualified him. It’s the flash, Coco. Those damn exciting guys. It screws you every time.”

  “I’ll try to find some really dull guy next time.” She wasn’t entirely kidding. “The next flashy guy who shows up, or comes out of the mists, I’m going to run like hell.”

  “I hope so. Are you thinking of coming back to New York if you’re pregnant?”

  “I don’t think so. I love my job here. It’s really fun, and Leslie is terrific to work for. I’m learning a lot about interior design, real estate, all kinds of stuff.” Sam could hear her getting farther and farther away from going back to school. He doubted now that she’d ever go back for her degree, especially if she had a baby. That would keep her busy for years, particularly if she was alone. But it might make her happy too, as consolation for losing her parents. It might be just what she needed, but he didn’t want to interfere. The decision had to be entirely up to her.

  He was sure he’d be having babies soon too. Tamar wanted them immediately, as soon as they got married. It unnerved him to think about it. He could feel his youth flying out the window for good, at twenty-five. He had hoped to avoid fatherhood for several more years, but it didn’t look like that was going to happen. Tamar’s parents already thought she was late getting started at twenty-three, and were greatly relieved by their engagement.