“The main thing is, I can’t go back on my word and break my marriage vows. I gave my word, and I am nothing without my word. I might want you more than anything in this world, but I cannot break the biggest promise I have ever made in my life. Does any of that make sense to you at all?” he asked, hurt and relieved and happy and miserable all at once.
She could not stop the flow of tears running down her beautiful face, and he lifted his finger to wipe them away. “It doesn’t make any sense, but I understand it. I want you, too… more than anything else, but I know I can’t have you. It just makes this all the more difficult. Kevin, you say that you want to be with us more than anything, but you can’t go back on your word… so where does that leave us?” She had never felt so confused.
He looked at her, this beautiful woman who had given him a daughter, who had taken more than all of his heart, who was generous and kind, who was beautiful and devoted, and who he could not imagine living his life without and he realized that word or no word, he had to make a difficult decision.
He could not leave her hanging in the balance, in limbo, making both of them miserable. He either needed to let her move forward with Lamar and remain married to Ellen, or go back on his word and divorce Ellen so he could be with Marina.
She watched him as her heart raced within her, and she knew he was working through thoughts that would probably determine the course of the rest of her life, and all she could do was hold his hand and wait for him.
She hoped beyond hope that he would choose her, that he would divorce his wife, although she had no right at all to hope for that, but the alternative of loving him from a distance while actually being so near him all of her life while they raised Maddie was almost more than she could bear.
Even if she did let Lamar into her life again as he wanted to be, it would be heart wrenching to be with one man and love another, especially one who was constantly in her life. She couldn’t imagine it. It would feel like a betrayal of the heart.
He touched her cheek. “Marina, this is a huge decision. This affects so many lives. I want to ask you to let me think on it for a short time. Let me consider it so that I can make the best decision for all of us. Can you give me just a small amount of time? Please?” he asked almost desperately.
She felt like she was being held in a vacuum. “Yes,” she said softly, turning her face to kiss his palm. He closed his eyes and lost himself in the intimacy of her lips upon his hand, wishing he could lay her back in her bed and make love to her, but knowing that for many reasons, it was not possible for them that day.
He pulled her to him and held her closely. “Thank you, Marina. Thank you. I will be quick with my decision, I promise you that. You won’t have to wait long.”
Then he cupped her face in his hands again and lost himself in her beautiful blue-gray eyes. “I love you so very much, lady. Much more than you will ever know. Thank you for your bravery and strength, and more than that, for your love.” He leaned close to her, kissed her forehead, and then held her in his arms for a long while.
When Maddie awoke, he cared for her, changing her and holding her until it was time for her to nurse, and then he watched Marina as she fed their daughter and he knew that the choice he made would be the most significant choice of his life.
He kissed Marina’s cheek when he left and then he drove home, the weight of the world on his mind and heart. He walked into the house and heard no noise, and he looked, but didn’t see anyone.
A search upstairs revealed nothing; it was empty, so he went back down the stairs and wandered the whole of the first floor, ending his search in his office when he opened his door and saw Ellen sitting at his desk. She looked up at him from the large file of papers strewn over his blotter and shook her head.
“Well, well. Daddy’s home,” she said slowly and evenly, narrowing her eyes at him.
Kevin rushed to the desk and saw that it was Marina’s file, filled with every bit of information about her and Maddie, including photographs and doctor’s records from the very first day of the endeavor. He stopped in his tracks and looked at her.
She pushed his chair back from his desk and took a long pull from the full whiskey tumbler in her hand.
“So, this is Marina. This is who you were pretending to have in your bed while we were on our honeymoon.” She pulled her feet up and placed two high-heeled shoes on the corner of his desk. “Here I was, so worried about being caught with the gardener, while you… you were out making a baby with another woman.” She took another long drink and then took her feet off his desk and leaned over, looking at him sharply. “Sit down, daddy.”
Kevin, his heart racing in his chest and his hands sweating, listened to her and sat down.
“You acted so holier than thou… so righteous… so never do wrong, and here you are breaking your word, breaking your vow, going outside of your marriage to procreate, and never breathing a word about it to me.” She leaned far over his desk and glared at him.
“Liar!” she stabbed him with the word he knew to be true.
She stood up and the white satin robe she was barely wearing swished around her body as she turned sharply at the corner of the desk and came to the front of it, sitting on the front edge and placing her long nude legs up on the arm of Kevin’s chair.
“And I thought you really meant it about fixing our broken marriage.” She laughed and took another drink, and then leaned down toward him and whispered loudly, “That’s okay, baby, because I didn’t really mean it either. You see, when you caught me in my little love bed, I was worried that you were going to divorce me and leave me without my beautiful home here, and without all your money, and I just couldn’t have that.
“Oh no! I have grown quite accustomed to being a billionaire’s wife, and I do not intend to lose that. So, I went along with your little game of 'fixit', and I played the loving, devoted, redeemed wife, so that I could avoid a divorce, and all along…” she laughed and drank again, “All along, you were screwing this other woman and having a kid with her.”
He looked up at her sharply. “I never slept with her, Ellen; it was an in vitro fertilization!”
She laughed at him. “Yeah, and here’s why that’s funny. No judge is going to believe that while I was here at the house being your devoted wife, you weren’t out screwing this woman that you now have a child with, even if it was medically initiated, because you have been buying her things left and right, taking care of her, and spending all your time over there.
“You know what I found? Cell phone logs, darling, ohhh, you like to keep in contact with her all the time, don’t you, baby? Yeah. I have so much information on you. You know what’s going to happen? I’ll tell you what’s going to happen.” She took another long drink and then leaned over to face him with an evil grin on her face.
“You are going to stop seeing her. Oh yes… you do not get to see her or your kid at all. If you so much as look in her direction or make a single call to her, I will drag your ass to court and take you for all the money you have, the house, the cars, your business… everything you have. Then what are you going to use to raise that kid? How will you ever pay for your woman then?”
She giggled and took a long drink. “Then, since I no longer have to pretend like I like you at all, I’m going to have all my lovers over here anytime I want, anywhere I want, and you don’t get to say one single word about it.”
He gaped at her in shock. She nodded and gave him a sly look. “Oh yeah, baby, there are several lovers. There have been all along. Since before I met you. I am really good at hiding them. Except for the gardener, of course. Oh well.” She giggled again and took another drink.
Kevin thought that he would vomit. She leaned down and hovered her breasts near his face. “And baby, you don’t get to talk to anyone about this. Not that gay assistant of yours, not your buddy Jacob, nobody. If anyone finds out, I drag your ass to court. If you go see your little girlfriend, I drag your ass to court. If you go see that bastard kid
of yours, I drag your ass to court. You do anything without my permission, and you will lose everything. Got it?” She smiled at him, batting her eyelashes.
He sat there motionless and stunned. He had not realized so much about her, but he could not begin to see how he had misjudged her so completely. He had no idea who the woman standing before him was.
“Get out of my office,” he said, standing up and suddenly becoming a wall before her.
She laughed at him and grinned, running her hand down the front of his suit and pulling his tied out from its tucked position. “Don’t worry about hiding that file, baby. I have copies of all of it, safely tucked away. You don’t stand a chance against me, so don’t even think of doing anything stupid or you’re going to lose everything you’ve got.”
Ellen giggled again and walked out of the office, stopping to look over her shoulder long enough to say, “Thanks for the honeymoon, baby.” Then she closed the door behind her.
Kevin went behind his desk and looked at the file. Everything was in it. His phone records were out, every purchase he had made for Marina was out, and all of it looked as though he had been having an affair with her the whole time, or at least since she was seven months along.
He was more than devastated. He began to second-guess everything. Why didn’t he divorce her when he caught her with the gardener? Why had he married her to begin with? He did not realize what an evil monster she was. He racked his brain and could find no way out of it. He knew she was right; he would lose everything in a divorce. How would he take care of Marina and Maddie then? He buried his head in his hands and closed his eyes. His life had become a nightmare.
His heart wanted nothing more than Marina and Maddie. Ellen’s heart wanted nothing more than money and self-satisfaction. He knew he had to find a way out of the situation, but she seemed to have blocked him at every pass. Every pass except perhaps one.
He sent a text to Mac. “Emergency, have Jacob come by house at earliest convenience. No phone calls.” He hit send and then erased it immediately. She would probably be able to get her hands on the actual text if she wanted to, but she would not know about it right away. He hoped fervently that Jacob had a solution for him. He had proven repeatedly to be the ace in Kevin’s pocket, but this time, there was no alternative.
Later that afternoon, Jacob walked into Kevin’s office and found him sitting looking out the window at his garden.
“What’s going on, Kevin?” he asked right away. Kevin lifted his finger to his lips and waved his hand for Jacob to follow him. They walked silently out the back door of the kitchen and Kevin quietly asked Sarah, his housekeeper, to keep it to herself that she had seen the two of them walking together. She nodded and smiled at him.
They walked down the gardener’s path to the beach and then walked away from the property. They were a good distance down the beach before Kevin spoke and told Jacob what had happened. Jacob shook his head and rubbed his hand over his chin.
“I never did like that bitch,” he stated flatly.
“Jake, please tell me you have something we can do about this.” He hoped against hope, his breath frozen in his chest while he waited.
Jacob thought carefully and said, “So you say she was screwing the gardener in her room, right?”
Kevin closed his eyes a moment and tried to get the image of it out of his mind. “Yes.”
“Do you think she’d have another fling in there?” he asked with a gleam in his eye.
“It’s possible. She said she was going to have her boyfriends back here at the house, anytime and anywhere she wanted them,” he said with a guttural disgust.
“Good,” Jacob said with a big smile. “We may be able to get you out of this. See, one of the things I insisted on before I let you marry her was to have her sign a prenuptial agreement.”
Kevin blinked and looked at him in surprise. “I didn’t know that. She signed a pre-nup? I told you we didn’t need one.”
Jacob chuckled at him. “Yeah, I know you did, buddy. The trouble is, I have seen things go poorly for too many men. I told her that she could not have access to all your money during the marriage unless she signed the pre-nup first. I spit out a lot of legal jargon and confused her and she panicked and signed the damn thing. Thank god. That pre-nup says that if she is ever unfaithful to you, she gets nothing if you two get divorced; not a single dime.”
Kevin stared at him in utter amazement. “I had no idea about that!”
“I know. It is alright. Listen. This is a little underhanded, but we can make it work. I have friends in the film industry. We call your little woman down to your office, and when she sits down with us, we offer her a settlement. A lump sum one-time monetary amount to divorce you, leave and never say a word about anything. If she takes it, we are all set. She probably won't take it, but that is alright, because while she's down in the office with the two of us, I will have an installation person up in her bedroom installing hidden cameras. We record her until we have some footage of her indulging in extra marital relations and then we have the upper hand. You can divorce her without worrying about paying her a single dime. She signed it; it's a done deal. Also, she doesn’t have much room to complain about you having an in vitro child if she was out having an affair.”
Kevin felt awful and good about it, volleying between the two emotions.
“I have to ask you this, though, buddy. Have you and Marina… uh… have you been more than friends at any point?” he looked at his friend with slight concern.
Kevin shook his head. “No. I kissed her today, but that was it. That was the first time and it’s the only thing that’s happened between us.”
Jacob looked at his friend with some pity. “Do you love her?”
Kevin sighed and nodded his head. “I do. Jacob, I love that woman so much. I wish I could spend every day of the rest of my life with her and help her raise Maddie as her husband. She’s amazing.”
Jacob nodded and smiled. “Does she love you?”
“Yeah, she said she does. She said she has been really struggling with it because of my marriage. She didn’t want to get in the way of my commitment to Ellen.” Kevin rolled his eyes at the irony.
“And you two haven’t done anything more than kiss today, right?” Jacob double-checked.
Kevin nodded. “That’s right. I want to do more, and so does she, but we are keeping this on the straight and narrow.”
“Would she testify to that if I needed her to?” Jacob asked.
Kevin looked at him seriously, “Yes, but I don’t want her dragged into this. This looks like it’s going to get ugly and she really does not need any of that. Let’s keep her out of it, please? Can we do that?”
Jacob waved his hand. “Don’t worry about it. I doubt we'll need her. What we need to do is get this plan in gear. It is not going to be easy for you to be underhanded.
“I know how you are, all morals and no risk. You have to commit to this fully or it won’t work. Are you in?” he asked, looking at Kevin, knowing he was asking a great deal from a man who prided himself on honor.
“I’m in,” Kevin said solemnly.
Jacob grinned and pulled his phone from his pocket, dialing a number and speaking to someone for a short period before hanging up and looking at Kevin with a wide smile.
“He’s on his way. We have a camera installer. Let’s do this thing.”
“Now?” Kevin asked in utter surprise.
“Right now. I want that bitch out of your house,” Jacob said staunchly and turned to walk back up the beach. Kevin just chuckled a little, shook his head and followed his friend back up to the house. He trusted Jacob completely, and he knew that no matter how ugly it got, his friend was going to help him through it and protect him the entire time.
They were sitting in Kevin’s office two hours later with newly printed paperwork ready for their meeting when Ellen breezed through the door and scowled at Jacob who finished a text on his phone and then looked up at her.
&nbs
p; “I told you not to involve anyone in our situation!” she snapped menacingly at Kevin.
“And what situation would that be?” Jacob asked, looking at her with piercing eyes and a killer stare.
She narrowed her gaze at him. “None of your damn business,” she almost growled at him. “What do you want?” she asked, standing over him with her hands on her hips.
“Why don’t you have a seat?” Jacob asked, indicating the sofa opposite him.
“I’m busy and I don’t have time for you.” She said it coolly, peering down her nose at him.
He looked at her in all seriousness. “You have time for this. Now sit down.”
She plopped down on the sofa and tilted her head at him. “So what’s so important?”
“Kevin wants to make you a very lucrative one time offer,” he said, leaning forward and placing a sheet of paper on the table.
She looked down at it and then back up at Jacob, not having taken the time to read anything on the paper he put in front of her. “An offer for what?” she asked, sliding her gaze sharply to Kevin and then returning it to Jacob.
The Baby Shower Page 38
