Best Friends Forever_A Marriage Pact Romance

by Jess Bentley

  Ayla read about a funeral for somebody called Frank Merryweather, Mick’s younger brother. He was a football star from Sheffield, England, and he’d died in some sort of traffic accident. Mick was mentioned as a “Royal Air Force” veteran, and Frank was survived by Mick and their parents, Beverly and Harry.

  Beverly and Harry. Preston’s grandparents.

  Ayla clicked on the next link, and a picture in the story stopped her heart. It was Mick, with tears streaming down his scrunched up face, next to his stoic father. They were standing near a statue with hands and three doves; somewhere called Bramall Road.

  Mick looked sadder than anybody Ayla had ever seen, and she was overwhelmed with the need to reach out and hug him, hold him, kiss his face, and take away his pain. It tore a hole in her, seeing such raw, terrible emotion on his rugged face. For as little as she truly knew about him, they’d shared something so deep and intense, that she felt his ache through the years and the miles that separated her from the man on her laptop screen.

  The sculpture was a memorial to Frank, Mick’s brother, she learned in the story.

  Answers only raised questions. How did Mick wind up in Las Vegas? For her, that night on the rooftop was totally out of character; a wonderfully insane aberration in her otherwise mundane existence. A magical moment that spawned the joy of her life, Preston. Did Mick even remember that night? Was she just one drop of water in an ocean of women for dashing military man Mick Merryweather?

  She texted Desiree and thanked her for her efforts and drifted off to a much-needed sleep, in-between kicks to the ribs from Preston, with whom she shared a bed when they visited Aunt Amy.

  A king-sized bed, but Preston’s nocturnal gymnastics; knees, feet, and elbows, were unforgiving, to say the least.

  For breakfast, Amy cut up what seemed like ten pounds of strawberries and several whole cantaloupes. The three children, Preston and his two cousins, inhaled the fresh fruit and asked for popcorn to top it off. Ayla was always amazed at Preston’s appetite; he’d go days surviving on a string cheese here and there, and then in one day eat enough to feed an entire football team. Today, evidently, was a “hungry” day. She cringed at the thought of filling his bottomless pit of a stomach at ballpark prices later that afternoon.

  When the kids went outside to play in the backyard, Ayla sat down with her sister on the porch.

  “You won’t believe this,” Ayla said. “But I’m pretty sure I found Preston’s dad.”

  Amy’s jaw dropped. “Sis! Are you serious? Tell me everything!”

  Ayla brought up the news story from two nights ago on her phone and played it for her sister. She paused it when Mick was on the screen.

  “Right there. That’s him,” she reported, pointing him out.

  “Holy shit,” Amy whispered. She looked out at Preston, running through the yard with a toy spaceship. “They’re practically twins. Now I just wonder who his real mom is!”

  Ayla playfully punched her sister.

  “I knew he didn’t look like a Murray, but good grief,” Amy said, staring at the image on her sister’s phone. “That man has some strong genes.”

  “Mick. His name is Mick Merryweather. The guy in front, Winston Watterson? He’s the president of Watterson Gaming, the big casino company back home.”

  Amy nodded.

  “Mick is his bodyguard. He’s from England.”

  “Have you talked to him yet?”

  “No, not yet. I just saw him on TV two nights ago. My roommate, Desiree, works with somebody who used to work at Watterson. She’s been doing my detective work.”

  “This is super-exciting, Ayla. What’s your plan?”

  “I have absolutely no clue,” Ayla confessed. “You’re my big sister, aren’t you supposed to have some advice for me?”

  Amy furrowed her brow in thought.

  “Watterson… Watterson… what’s his deal? The guy he guards, I mean. Winston, is it?”

  “Yep, that’s him, but I don’t know. Do you think he has a Wiki page? Let me look him up.”

  The sisters moved their deck chairs closer together so they could both look at Ayla’s phone.

  “Here it is. He went to Stanford, and then Northwestern for grad school,” Ayla narrated his bio. “Before that, he’d gone to a boarding school in Connecticut. But… it looks like he actually graduated from Oasis Academy. That’s that rich kid’s school out in Summerlin. It’s like $30,000 a year to go there.”

  “Naturally, that’s where you’ll be sending Preston, right?” Amy asked, sarcastically.

  “Oh, absolutely,” Ayla assured her. “I wonder if they’ll give me a break on tuition if I wanted to pay for first grade thru twelfth all at once?”

  “I’m sure they’d be willing to work with you. Maybe knock off a thousand,” Amy joked.

  “In that case, I’d just pay cash. I can’t figure why everybody doesn’t send their kids there!”

  “Well, that’s interesting, actually,” Amy said. “Do you remember my friend Char, from high school? Charmaine Anderson?”

  Ayla nodded. She knew the name, even if she couldn’t place a face with it.

  “Char dated a guy, for like a year, who went to Oasis. He was a total douchebag, but she got to go to their prom,” Amy explained. “The school rented out a club at the Hard Rock for it. Can you believe that shit?”

  “Only in Vegas,” Ayla said,

  “Only at Oasis Academy,” Amy countered. “No other school had anything like that. She said it made our prom look like, I don’t know, a middle school dance. She said people were arriving in Hummer limos and that a helicopter even landed in the parking lot to drop off two couples.”

  “What?” Ayla asked, in stunned disbelief.

  “Yep, true story. I thought I told you about it. Maybe not. Anyway, Char told me that the girls there were fierce. Like hair and makeup and jewelry you’d usually only see on a red carpet. She said she felt completely out of place.

  “Anyway, I wonder if Char’s prom date knew Winston Watterson at all. Or, check his Wiki – does it say if he has any siblings who might have been there?”

  Ayla scrolled back up to the top of the page. “He has two sisters. One older, one younger. The older one is… Wanda, she’s married to some Russian gazillionaire. The younger one is… well, I guess she works for Watterson, she’s not linked, it just has her name, Wendryn.”

  “That family loves W’s,” Amy noted. “Let me run this whole thing through Char. It would be a shot in the dark, I mean she may not even know the guy from Oasis anymore. But maybe he knew one of the Wattersons.”

  “It’s worth a shot,” Ayla agreed. “Preston! Stop!”

  Ayla stormed across the yard to make her son return a dinosaur he’d snatched from Amy’s crying three-year-old son.

  “Crisis averted,” Ayla announced when she returned to the porch.

  “Never for long. All they do is fuss and fight. I’d have thought having a boy and a girl would make them get along better than two of the same sex, but no, it’s a constant struggle. I guess being so competitive will serve them well when they get older, but right now it sucks.”

  Amy typed on her phone as she complained about her kids.

  “Alright, I sent Charmaine a PM. She’s in Phoenix, she usually gets back to me pretty quickly, we’ll see.”

  The kids played until it was time for Amy’s to take a nap and for Ayla and Preston to leave for Dodger Stadium.

  As they walked out to the car, Amy followed and pulled her sister aside. “Char just got back to me. She said she’s actually friends with the guy on Facebook. He’s a hotshot lawyer in Texas somewhere now. She said she doesn’t really talk to him talk to him, but that she’d message him and ask if he knew any Wattersons.”

  “Okay, cool. But yikes, I must look like a crazy stalker going through my sister’s classmates’ prom date from ten years ago to get me closer to meeting this guy.”

  “Oh, Ayla, you have no idea. I’m obsessed now. And you know me, I�
�m like a bulldog. Once I set my mind on something, I can’t stop until it gets resolved. If I have to apply for a job with Watterson Gaming and get an interview in order to get into their offices and maybe bump into Winston or Mick, I’ll do it.”

  “I know you will, that’s why I love you, sis. But do me a favor and please don’t do that. Having a nutcase for a potential future sister-in-law might not be the best selling point for me.”

  “Mom! We’re going to be late!” Preston called from the end of the driveway, by Ayla’s car.

  Ayla rolled her eyes, thanked her sister for the umpteenth time for the tickets, hugged her, and strolled down to join her son and, soon, the world famous Los Angeles freeway traffic.

  The game was a success, a 6-1 Dodger victory, and Preston had the time of his life. Between the hot sun, the excitement of the crowd, three Dodger Dogs, and ice cream, he was napping in the backseat before they were halfway back to Amy’s house.

  Preston and his cousins settled in for a movie once they were home, giving Ayla and Amy time to chat in the kitchen over a bottle of wine.

  Amy hadn’t heard back from Charmaine yet, but Ayla had something else she wanted to ask her sister.

  “Do you think, I don’t even know why I ask, but do you think if I manage to meet Mick, and things go well, and in some fantasy world we even get married, do you think mom and dad would ever want to be part of Preston’s life? Or mine?”

  “Oh God, Ayla, I can’t even begin to imagine. Honestly, I think given the chance, Dad would. I mean today, right now. Dad is, and I hate to even mention it because the whole thing with you and them totally sucks, but he’s been an awesome grandpa to our kids. As involved as he can be, from three hundred miles away, you know, but yeah. He asks me about you. When it’s just the two of us. About you and Preston.”

  Ayla fought back tears, and Amy rubbed her shoulder.

  “But mom is a different story. She’s just the same. Maybe worse. It’s like she acts like what she thinks a grandmother is supposed to be like, but it’s all forced, you know? Fake. It’s not sincere. She’s so stuck on image, on what things look like, not how things really are, or should be.

  “Whenever I’ve mentioned you, she always shuts me down. It’s like you could have killed somebody and you wouldn’t have done something as bad as having a baby out of wedlock. Or, actually, having sex, gasp, outside the bonds of holy matrimony.”

  “It just sucks sometimes. We make due, I mean it’s a struggle, but I do all I can on holidays and everything. But I always envisioned big Thanksgivings and Christmases and everything with mom and dad and all our kids. And now Allan is, where, Germany?”

  Amy nodded.

  “And you’re here, and mom and dad live twenty minutes away from me, but they might as well be on Mars.”

  “Trust me,” Amy said, refilling both their wine glasses. “You’re not missing anything not having Mom around. I guess you’re missing being endlessly judged and criticized, if that’s your thing, but truly you’re better off.

  “Allan would love having a brother-in-law, or just another guy in the family, even if he was just around as Preston’s dad. especially somebody with a military background.”

  “I’ve been thinking about it a lot,” Ayla conceded. “I mean; I don’t even know why I’d want to give Mom or Dad another chance, but there’s part of me that wants it to be the way it’s supposed to be. No matter how much they suck.”

  “No, I get it. They’re still our parents, no matter how shitty they’ve been to you. I go through wanting to cut them out of my life for how they’ve treated you, but I know, we’ve talked about it, it’s not how you want me to handle it.”

  As they spoke, Amy’s phone buzzed.

  “Okay, it’s Char, let me see what she says. Here it is:

  ‘Hi Amy, okay, so I messaged Gunther’

  “Gunther was her prom date,” Amy explained, and then continued.

  “Gunther says he didn’t know Winston, he was a couple years older, but that he did know Wendryn, who was a year behind him at Oasis. He didn’t know her well, but he knew people who did, and that he might be able to get a message to her through a friend of a friend.”

  “So, not dead end, but not super helpful, either. Maybe we ought to focus on the Mick side of it and forget the Watterson angle?” Amy said, setting her phone back down.

  “Whatever works, I don’t know, I’m like climbing out of my skin with anticipation,” Ayla explained. “But, also terrified. If that makes sense.”

  “It makes perfect sense, inasmuch as any of this makes sense.”

  Noah, Amy’s husband, joined his wife and sister-in-law at the kitchen table, cracking open a beer.

  “Any progress?” he asked.

  “No,” Amy replied. “I told Noah all about what’s going on, I hope that’s okay. I wanted to get the male perspective.”

  “Of course!” Ayla answered. “How are the kiddos?”

  “They’re into the movie,” Noah said. “Mesmerized. So, was Charmain any help?”

  “Not really,” Amy responded.

  “How do you think you’d react if, hypothetically, you were single, no kids, and somebody came up and told you that you were a father?” Ayla asked.

  “It’s hard to say, it would depend on who it was and I think I’d want some proof. Amy showed me the picture of the guy, and I don’t know what more proof anybody would need, but these days everybody wants their legal ducks in a row. So even if he’s not into being a dad, you’re still entitled to some support, right?

  “But Preston is great, and it’s not out of line to say that you’re attractive, hell, your sister is the most beautiful girl in the world, and the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, so yeah, I can’t imagine that the notion that he had a baby with you would be so shocking or anything to him. Surprising, at first, sure, but given a little time he’d have to see it as a positive, right?”

  Amy glared. “I’m so thrilled to know that you think my sister is hot.” Her voice dripped with false indignation. “I guess you need to stay in a hotel tonight, Ayla. Or you do,” she said to her husband.

  Noah leaned over and gave Amy a kiss. “We should get a hotel room tonight. Let Ayla watch the kids. Go make another baby.”

  “Yeah, the hotel sounds nice, but just for the blissful, uninterrupted sleep. Baby-making is on indefinite hold. At least until the diaper days are behind us for a while.”

  Noah shrugged. “Have it your way, baby.” He took his wife’s hand and turned his attention to Ayla. “I wish I could help, but all my Vegas contacts are musicians, and the guys I know wouldn’t have any more immediate access to a big-timer like Winston Watterson, or his staff, than you or anybody else.”

  “Back to the drawing board, I guess,” Ayla sighed, finishing her glass of wine.

  The next morning, Amy, Noah, Ayla, and all three kids visited the beach, splashing in the Pacific Ocean before Ayla and Preston drove back to Las Vegas in time for Ayla to get some sleep before she had to be a work at 3:30 AM.

  Chapter 12

  Mick had arranged a Sunday evening redeye flight from Las Vegas to London. He’d spend Monday night at a friend’s flat in the capital, then hire a car and drive to Sheffield on Tuesday morning and spend a few days talking his mum off the emotional ledge on which she always found herself this time of year.

  In order to help himself sleep on the plane, he scheduled a late Sunday afternoon workout with a friend down in Henderson. The friend was a jiu-jitsu black belt named Roberto Luiz, who owned a popular martial arts school near the Las Vegas Strip.

  Mick met Roberto at his home, where he’d converted his garage into a makeshift gym. It was Spartan and bare bones, no fans or air conditioning, just a mat on the floor. Fighters lucky enough to swing an invite to Luiz’s home gym called it “The Sweat Factory.”

  When Mick arrived, Roberto was practicing how to escape an arm lock with a muscle-bound, heavily-tattooed young fighter Mick recognized instantly; up-and-coming
UFC star Burke “the Bruiser” Powell.

  “Meu amigo!” Luiz greeted his friend in Portuguese as Mick walked in through the open garage door. They’d known each other since Luiz ran a hand-to-hand combat training seminar for MI6 recruits back when Mick had first joined the intelligence service.

  Mick clasped hands and then hugged Roberto before extending a hand to Powell.

  “Burke Powell, right? I’m Mick Merryweather. Nice to meet you.”

  The Bruiser grunted, shook Mick’s hand, and turned away dismissively. He wiped his face with a towel and called Luiz over.

  “Hey, this was supposed to be a private session, just you and me. Who’s the old guy?”

  Luiz chuckled. “The ‘old guy’ probably knows a dozen ways to kill you with his bare hands. He’s ex-British Royal Air Force.”

  Powell glanced over at Mick, who was stretching to prep for his workout. “He don’t look so tough to me. I don’t like having my training interrupted, and I wanted to go hard today. I don’t want to have to go half-speed for some guy chasing his glory days. I have a big fight coming up next month.”

  Roberto cocked his head to the side and laughed. “Okay, BP. Have it your way.” He turned his attention to Mick, sitting on the mat with his feet in front of him, leaning down to touch his toes and pull his face to his knees. “Mick. Burke wants to spar with you, but he’s got a fight coming up, so he doesn’t want to get hurt. Go easy on him, yeah?”

  Powell was infuriated, sucking down the remaining half of a bottle of water and tossing the empty into the trash can in the corner.

  “Bullshit,” he said, stalking back out onto the mat while shadow boxing. “Don’t try to be a hero. When you need to tap, just do it. No shame in it. Then you can go home and tell your old lady you were on the mat with a future UFC champion. That ought to give her a thrill.”

  Mick rose to his feet and leaned back, twisting slowly from side to side. “Sure thing, mate,” he replied.

  In jiu-jitsu, the fighters grapple until one of them “submits” the other, forcing the opponent to tap the mat, or his opponent, signaling that they’ve given up. Usually it’s done to avoid being choked unconscious, having a joint painfully damaged, or when a bone is in danger of being broken.