Power Play: A Novel

by Steel, Danielle

  “I just got lucky,” he said modestly. “I was writing for a show in England, and I think my agent sent them a script. They probably wanted a little British humor on the show. What about you, with twin girls? That must keep you busy!”

  “They’re adorable,” Ashley said proudly. “Do you have kids?” She had forgotten to ask him, she was so happy to hear from him. And she remembered perfectly the huge crush she’d had on him. He was a very cute boy. They had gone to school together for about five years, but only fell in love when she was in seventh grade. And then he left.

  “No wife. No kids,” he answered her question. “I had a girlfriend for four years, whom I lived with. A crazy French woman, an actress, who drove me insane. We broke up a few months before I got the offer to come here, and I was feeling sorry for myself. She dumped me,” he said, but didn’t sound upset about it. “So I decided to come to L.A. and close up shop in London. I’m glad I did. I love being back. I’ve been driving around for three days looking at landmarks from our childhood. I love this city. I always missed it. I lived in New York for a year, but I hated it. The weather is as bad as it is in London. I missed the sun. It’s so great living in good weather. Everyone in London is depressed all the time, because it’s either raining or freezing cold. I can’t wait to see your girls. Do they look like you as a kid?” They had met when she was about that age, so he would be able to tell when he saw them. But she thought they looked more like Marshall except for their hair.

  “A little. They look a lot like their father.”

  “Who is, or was? I notice you said you’re single.” He assumed that meant she was divorced, and she didn’t explain.

  “He’s a fascinating man. A ‘captain of industry,’ as they say. He’s twenty-one years older than I am. And it’s a long story.”

  “Save it for lunch. How’s tomorrow for you? The Ivy?”

  “Perfect. Twelve-thirty,” she confirmed. She couldn’t wait to see him and wondered what he looked like now. Eighteen years later, it was like finding a long-lost brother, or best friend. She wasn’t looking for romance, just old times. And she was sure that that was what he wanted too.

  “Will I recognize you?” He sounded suddenly concerned.

  “Easily. I weigh three hundred pounds. I have black hair, and I’ll have a rose in my teeth.”

  “I’d know you anywhere.” He laughed at her. She hadn’t changed. She was as silly as she’d been as a kid, when he found her enchanting. He had spent his whole allowance on a box of Valentine chocolates for her the week after he kissed her. He had always been a really sweet boy, even when they were younger.

  “What about you?” She hadn’t thought about it before, and expected him to show up at the restaurant looking thirteen. And in his mind’s eye, she was still twelve.

  “I look the same, only a bit taller. Well, actually, a lot taller. I’m six-four.” He had been a tall kid, but not that tall when she last saw him.

  “I’ll look up to find you.”

  “Don’t you worry,” he said happily. “I’ll find you, Ashley Briggs.” When they hung up, it made him wish he had stayed in touch with her. Talking to her now, he realized he had missed her, and he was happy he’d contacted her again. And so was she. She went to bed that night excited about seeing him. And she had an appointment with her therapist in the morning before lunch. She was looking forward to that too. It helped to talk to her about Marshall, although it was hard to explain the relationship to her, why she had been willing to remain hidden for so long, and had waited eight years for him to leave his wife, and why he still hadn’t. The therapist was sympathetic and nonjudgmental about the relationship, and she acknowledged that Marshall must be an exciting and even fascinating man, but he also had a wife he couldn’t seem to leave. She questioned Ashley about that at length. And Ashley had told her he didn’t want to upset his kids. The therapist had just nodded, as though she understood, and Ashley felt foolish. After eight years, it sounded like a thin excuse to her too, when she said it to someone else. It seemed to make more sense when Marshall said it to her. But for once, she wasn’t thinking about him. She was excited about seeing Geoffrey Miles.

  When Ashley got to The Ivy the next day, she looked for a tall man who looked like Alfalfa, and didn’t see one. All she saw were couples and groups sitting on the terrace and in the restaurant, and one well-known actor tanning in the sun, but no one who looked like Geoff. She felt a little lost for a minute as she stood on the terrace, waiting for the maître d’, to ask him for Mr. Miles’s table, and then she heard a familiar voice behind her. She would have known it even if she hadn’t spoken to him the night before on the phone.

  “Meeting someone for lunch?” he said softly, and she turned and looked up into the same handsome face and broad smile eighteen years later. He hadn’t changed, he’d grown up, literally. He was a tall, very attractive man, and she wasn’t short either. She was almost as tall as Marshall in heels, but not nearly as tall as Geoff. And he was slim with broad shoulders, but all she could see were the familiar eyes and smile, and he looked thrilled when he kissed her on the cheek and admired the woman she’d grown into. “Wow! You turned out to be a knockout!” he said, and she laughed. He thought she looked like an actress or a model, and she was much better looking than Martine, his French girlfriend in London, who had been very Gallic and a little nuts, smoked three packs of cigarettes a day in his tiny London apartment, and never did housework, in the hope that a maid would appear to clean up the mess she left everywhere. Geoff put up with it because he loved her, or thought so. She had left him for one of his friends, who was complaining about her now, and Geoff figured he’d gotten what he deserved. A giant pain in the neck, with subtitles. She hated speaking English, and his French had gotten pretty good as a result, as he explained to Ashley once they sat down and ordered lunch. They both ordered salads, and he ordered a bowl of chili, which he said he had missed.

  They had a lot of news to exchange, and he told her he was sorry about her parents once she told him.

  “I miss them,” Ashley said wistfully, “but I have the girls. They’re my family now.” He nodded, and envied her that.

  He told her he was sorry he had wasted four years with Martine, and hadn’t gotten around to marriage and kids yet. She hated kids, and thought marriage was redundant, although he’d asked her twice. “She said marriage is superfluous for intelligent people. I’m not sure what that had to do with it,” he said to Ashley, and she laughed. “So when did you get divorced?” he asked her, as the waiter brought their salads and his chili. He looked blissful when he took a bite.

  “I didn’t,” she said simply. She wasn’t going to lie to him. They were old friends. She figured she could be honest with him, and if not, why bother? She wasn’t proud of her situation, but she had made her peace with it, for now. Or she wasn’t ashamed of it, at least. “I don’t think marriage is ‘redundant,’ but I never married the girls’ father. Or at least not yet.”

  “He’s still around?” Geoff looked intrigued, and she nodded.

  “Two days a week,” she said, and he raised an eyebrow.

  “This sounds mysterious. Tell me more.” He wanted to know everything about her that he’d missed. They had a lot to catch up on. And her situation seemed odd to him.

  “It’s not mysterious. It’s complicated. He’s the CEO of a big company. He lives in San Francisco.” It sounded normal to that point, and then she added the rest. “With his wife and three kids. One of whom is in college, the other in law school, and the third one is in high school. He didn’t want to get divorced and upset his kids.” She tried to make it sound normal, but it didn’t to him.

  “He’s still married?” She nodded, and her eyes looked worried.

  “For now. He says he’s going to get divorced when his daughter graduates next year.”

  “And you believe him?” Geoff asked, wondering if she did. She hesitated and looked thoughtful.

  “Sometimes. I want to believe
him.” And then she sighed, and looked her old friend in the eye. “After eight years, I wonder. It’s been a long time. And he has a lot of reasons why he can’t get divorced. Maybe he just doesn’t want to. He spends two days a week with us. The girls are crazy about him,” she said, as though to justify why she was with him. It sounded like a classic setup to him—married man with beautiful younger woman—but not a good situation for her. He was sorry to hear it.

  “And you get two days a week, and no holidays or weekends. And you can’t call him at night.”

  “Or in the office,” she admitted. “He’s very careful. He has a lot to lose if someone finds out.”

  “Like what? Alimony?” She could tell Geoff didn’t approve of the arrangement. He approved of her, but not Marshall.

  “Like his job. He can’t afford to be involved in a scandal. He was for a minute this spring, and it was a mess.”

  “What kind of scandal?”

  “A woman he had a one-night stand with, who basically blackmailed him, and got two million dollars to retract it. She went public.”

  “So he’s married, and he cheated on you both. One-night stands count,” he pointed out to her. “And you can’t even call him in the office. Is that enough?” He wondered if her lover was supporting her royally in grand style and she needed the money, but Ashley wasn’t the type for that, and she had worn a simple cotton sundress, and wasn’t wearing diamonds. She was wearing the same gold cross on a chain around her neck that she’d worn as a child, and nothing she had on looked expensive. She was obviously in it for love, not for money.

  “No, it’s not enough,” she said, looking off into the distance as she thought about it, and he was bowled over again by her beauty.

  It was easy to see why her man wanted her, he thought. Who wouldn’t? What wasn’t clear to Geoff was why she was willing to accept so little, and to live on the thin hope that he’d leave his wife one day. But he agreed with Ashley, after eight years most men didn’t leave their wives. They got away with it for as long as they could, and apparently Ashley had let him. He sounded like a powerful man, and he was calling all the shots. It made Geoff sad for her, and her children. She deserved so much more than she was getting.

  “It’s what it is,” she finished the answer to his question. “I can’t force him to get divorced.”

  “And you never wanted to leave him?”

  “Maybe I would have by now without the girls,” she said honestly, “but he’s their father. I don’t feel like I have the right to deprive them of him. And I love him. I keep hoping, and he always promises that after next year … next this … next that … after some major event happens, he’ll leave her. But he hasn’t yet. And I’m trying to come to terms with the idea that maybe he never will. That’s new for me. It changed things for me when that woman came out of the woodwork in May, and he admitted to me that he’d slept with her. Once. But I wouldn’t have done that to him. I think I’ve felt differently ever since.”

  “I’ll bet his wife was thrilled too,” Geoff commented.

  “He didn’t admit it to her, just to me. She doesn’t know about me either. I sat next to his son in a restaurant recently, and it was a weird feeling, realizing that he had no idea who I was or that the girls are his sisters. It really hurt,” she said, and the look in her eyes made him want to reach out and hug her, but he didn’t want to scare her, or make her uncomfortable.

  “It’s amazing the compromises we all make just to hang on to someone we care about. I’ve finally come to believe it’s not worth it. I knew Martine cheated on me the whole time we were together, but I pretended I didn’t know, to her and myself. It costs you something to do that, and in the end it undermines the relationship, because it’s not honest. A man who is living a lie, like your children’s father, is not an honorable person. And if he lies to his wife, he’s capable of lying to you.”

  “I know,” she said softly. “I don’t trust him anymore. But I love him. I keep hoping I’ll win in the end.” Geoff didn’t want to challenge her on it, but he couldn’t help wondering what she’d “win.” A dishonest man. It sounded like a bad deal to him. “Anyway, so that’s my story. No husband, two kids. It’s not what I had in mind when I was twelve, but I love my girls, and I’m lucky to have them.” Geoff knew from looking at her and listening to her that there were a lot of men who would have been thrilled to give her two babies and a lot more than what she had. But he didn’t say that to her. He didn’t want to upset her. “I want you to meet them,” she said, smiling at him, and he reached out and took her hand in his and held it while they looked at each other.

  “Thank you for being honest with me. You could have told me you were married, or divorced, or to mind my own business.” She had been so open with him and looked so vulnerable, it touched him deeply, and he would have liked to take a good swing at the married bastard who was breaking her heart, and had been for years. Geoff thought he should have gotten divorced and made an honest woman of her long since. She was decent, to her very core, which was more than he could say for the guy she was in love with. “So when can I meet your kids?” he asked with a warm smile. “How about tonight?” She looked surprised by the suggestion and then nodded. Marshall wasn’t coming home till the next day, so it was fine. She didn’t want to spend her brief time with him with anyone else, and never did, but tonight she was free.

  “Sure. Why don’t you come for dinner? The girls will love it. You can tell them what a brat I was as a kid.”

  “You weren’t,” he said, smiling at her. “You were a little angel.”

  “That’s not how I remember it,” she said, laughing at him. “We got in trouble in school together all the time.”

  “Well, you looked like an angel at least.” And then he sat back and gazed at her with a nostalgic gleam in his eye. “You still do. You really haven’t changed. You’re just taller.”

  “You too. A lot taller.” They both laughed at that.

  And as they reminisced about their shared childhood, the time passed too quickly, and she had to leave to pick the girls up at day camp. And he had to see three apartments. He promised to be at her house at six. As she was driving to pick up the girls afterward, she felt as though a part of her history had been returned to her, and she was surprised by how good it felt. It was as though a piece of her that she didn’t know was missing had slid back into place, like part of a puzzle, or her identity. She felt whole in a way that surprised her now that Geoff had found her. And it was nice to remember those carefree, happy days when they were children. And he had grown up to be a very sweet, gentle man. He had been sweet as a kid too, and she had liked his parents, although his father was very British and a little clipped, but his mother had been a warm, wonderful woman. Geoff said that she was still alive and living in England, and had remarried, to another writer, although this one was less famous than his father. Geoff said he went to visit them whenever he could. They lived in the country somewhere on a farm.

  The twins were lively and excited when she picked them up, and she told them all about her friend that she had gone to school with when they were her age and older. She didn’t tell them about the first kiss, she didn’t think they needed that information and weren’t old enough to know. But they liked the idea of her having a friend from school who had turned up. And they were very intrigued by Geoff when he arrived promptly at six o’clock with a big bouquet of flowers for Ashley, and a tiny one for each of the girls, and a bottle of wine for their dinner.

  “We don’t drink wine,” Kendall explained, “but my mom does.”

  “That’s good to know,” he said seriously. “Do you drink beer?” he asked her, and she burst into gales of laughter.

  “No!”

  “What about Coke?”

  “Sometimes,” she explained. She was the more serious of the twins, and Kezia was more mischievous. He thought they were both gorgeous little girls, and looked just like their mother, soft blond hair and all. “But we’re only allowed
to have one Coke,” Kendall explained to him, “and we have to share it, so it doesn’t keep us awake.”

  “I see.” He smiled over their heads at their mother, and he could see how much she loved them. Maybe it explained why she had stayed with Marshall for so long, in spite of the bad deal she was getting, and so much less than she deserved.

  She made hamburgers, a big bowl of pasta, and a salad. She poured the wine he had brought, and they had dinner on the deck. He had looked at the work in her studio while she was cooking, and the girls showed him their room and their favorite toys, and after dinner, they scampered off to play before bedtime, while he and Ashley talked.

  “They’re an amazing pair,” he said with a look of admiration. “And you’re a great mom.”

  “They’re great kids. I was barely more than a kid myself when I had them. I was a temporary receptionist in his office for a month, to make money for art school, and then I got involved with Marshall, and life happened. He was going to leave Liz then, before I had them, but he didn’t. And everything got complicated after that, and still is. We used to fight about it all the time, and lately I have been putting pressure on him. It just screws everything up when I do. He asked me to wait another year.” She sounded sad as she said it.

  “And you agreed?” Geoff asked with a look of regret. He was sorry for her.

  “More or less. I started seeing a therapist recently, and I’m trying to take it day by day. Otherwise I just get worked up about it and upset myself. And there’s no point screwing up the little time we have together. It feels like real life when he’s here, and then I just kind of float the other five days.” And as she said it, it occurred to him that she was missing out on five-sevenths of her life while she waited for Marshall to return. It was a lot to miss. Seventy-five percent of her life was spent waiting for him, and a real life. He wondered what she’d think if he said it to her, or if she’d ever thought about it like that.