by Roxie Odell
At that point, Angelique’s face gathered as if she was about to cry. “Why not me?” she asked pitifully.
“Why not you what?” he parroted, not following her at all.
“Why didn’t you fall in love with me?” she asked.
“What!?” he asked with disbelief. “Is that what this is about? You stirred up all this custody shit because you’re jealous? You’re messing with our son just because I’m seeing someone new?”
She sulked away, refusing to acknowledge what he knew was the truth.
“You obviously didn’t fall in love with me or my son,” he said, disgusted. “If you would have, I couldn’t have bought you off to take a hike.”
“I have to live, too, you know,” she said. “You’ve always cared more about him than me.”
“Damn right,” he said, finally agreeing with her. “I love him. I love Thomas with everything I have.”
“Do you expect me to live with that, always playing second fiddle to a baby?” she hissed.
Brodie cast his gaze to his driver, who was still standing nearby, and the driver indicated with a nod that security had already been contacted. He then turned his glare back on Angelique. “First off, I offered to make a go of it, but you didn’t want to be a mother and wife,” Brodie said, doing his best to calm down the crazy woman. “We could have been a family. You had your chance.”
“Not good enough,” she said, shaking her head. “You fell in love with the baby, not me, and I know you love the woman you’re with now,” she said, as if she was utterly destroyed. “You never fell in love with me.”
“I haven’t fallen in love with her either,” Brodie protested, as the last thing he wanted to do was drag Cara into the baby-mama drama. He still couldn’t believe he’d made a baby with such a nutcase.
Angelique leaned around him, her face visibly transformed. “Really?” she asked with a satisfied smile.
“Where are you getting your information? The complaint alleges that I’m subjecting him to random women, but now you say I’m in love with just one. Which is it, and how do you know?”
“You’re a billionaire, Brodie,” she said.
“So you always say,” he said.
“As for how I know, everyone knows! You’re all over TMZ, for crying out loud, and it’s a small world. Don’t forget that I’m also a player in the business world. People love to talk, especially about you. She’s done a lot of talking. Maybe you don’t love her, but she’s apparently in love with you,” she said.
“Stop! I’m not in love with anybody, so just drop the bullshit!” he shouted, mortified and pushed to the point of totally losing his temper. He nearly choked on the lie as it crept out of his throat, but he was even more sickened by the awful woman who insisted on mocking Cara, who was much too good for any of it.
Suddenly, Angelique’s focus wafted to just over his right shoulder. “Trust me, I know how you feel, honey,” she said triumphantly.
Much to his horror and dismay, when Brodie spun around, he saw Cara standing there, completely stunned by his hateful words. The sad look on her face made it clear that he was going to have a difficult time making her understand that it was all a ruse, just a way to shut Angelique up, and he wasn’t sure she would believe him.
“Let’s go!” said a large member of the security team, tugging Angelique by the arm.
“No! Let go of me,” she said, resisting and flailing her arms and legs.
“Maybe it’s best to call the cops, Brodie,” the other guard said.
“Call them! I have this all on tape,” she dared.
“So do we, ma’am,” the guard said calmly. “As a matter of fact, this whole place is wired. Unless you want the cops knowing that you taunted him and threatened to set him up, don’t even go there.”
“Yeah,” Brodie said, never taking his eyes off Cara, who was obviously very hurt, “call the police.”
“The baby is settled,” she said meekly.
“Let’s talk,” he urged.
Before Angelique could gain one more ounce of sick satisfaction from the damage she’d caused, Brodie ushered Cara into the house.
“I know you’re hurt,” he said, unable to bear the visible pain on her face, “but I really didn’t mean any of those things I said. Of course I love you. I was just trying to shield you from her,” he said.
Seriously wounded, she wouldn’t even look at him, and she remained silent.
“Please, Cara! Let’s not make the same mistake we did before,” he begged.
“It wasn’t my mistake then,” she said, dissolving into tears, “but it obviously was this time.”
“Cara, I meant it when I said I love you. Surely you understand that this is sort of…an impossible situation.”
“I need to go,” she said.
Chapter Sixteen
Brodie was ready to lash out, to explode. Because of Angelique, his perfect world was crumbling around him. He couldn’t stop Cara from going; all he could do was charge out the front door to talk to his security team. “Get her the hell out of here,” he said with a growl, struggling to keep his emotions in check. He had his son to think of, and he didn’t want to make more of an ass of himself than he already had.
Angelique started to squawk like an injured chicken.
“For once, can you think about the baby?” Brodie asked, turning on his heel. “He’s asleep.”
At that, Angelique hit a high note, a long, sustained, very loud screech as security hoisted her to the curb.
Cara, still in the doorway, stared out at her, her eyes filling with tears.
“What are you staring at, Miss Goodie Two Shoes?” Angelique snipped.
Brodie corralled Cara back into the house, hoping he could convince her to stay.
“I’m tired, Brodie,” she said. “We’ve both been through the emotional wringer tonight, and I’m really just not ready to hear anything you have to say. I know we said we’d always talk things out, but I need some time to calm down, and—”
“I said what I said because she’s crazy,” he insisted. “If she knew how special you are to me…” he started, but his voice broke.
She conceded to sit on the couch while Brodie went outside to talk to the police.
“You’re just taking his side because he’s got money!” Angelique screamed as they slapped the cuffs on her, doing everything in her power to resist arrest until the police finally tucked her head inside the cruiser and closed the door.
Quickly, Brodie returned to the house, heartbroken.
“We just need some time apart,” she said. “This has all been too intense, and I just wanna sleep in my own bed.”
“At least let me drive you home.”
“No, Brodie.”
Finally, they settled on one of his drivers escorting her, and he walked her out to the Town Car, but there were no fond kisses goodbye.
Alone with his son in a painfully empty, quiet house, with no nurse and no Cara to help him, Brodie was a mental mess. Just as he was trying to find the rescue of sleep, all the events of the day came to haunt him.
The last time he’d felt so heartbroken was the night when he discovered Angelique wanted nothing to do with Thomas. Back then, he was stirred with worries for the survival of his little son, and he feared he could never be a good enough father. He already knew from that experience that stress and obsession did not make a good combination.
He decided to shower, then sat on his bed with his laptop. Online, he ordered as many bouquets of flowers as he thought would fit in her office at the nonprofit, an office he’d never been to, since they always met in the conference room when he was there for business. That notion plucked his pain, only making him feel sorrier for himself.
His intuition told him she was not just taking a breather or time to regroup. This is goodbye, he surmised before he dozed off to a fitful sleep somewhere in the wee hours.
He awoke to Thomas bellowing like he did back in the old days, when he was a newborn. Brodi
e’s sleep deprivation made him feel like he had a hangover, and it was a struggle to clear his mind so he could care for his little one.
After the baby was changed, fed, and settled into his swing on the tabletop, Brodie glanced at his cell phone. One by one, notices came in to alert him that the flower deliveries were rejected. He barely remembered ordering them, but the constant pinging of his phone to inform him of her refusal made him feel sick to his stomach. He was sure that was a sign that it was over after all.
Brodie quickly called the pediatric nurse with an offer to hire her away from the doctor’s office, selfish as it was. He was in dire need of a nanny, and he knew Thomas would do well with her. He had planned to take the rest of the week after the trip to go back to work, to let the baby adjust to his travel, but he didn’t want to toss him into another new situation with longer hours at daycare. Of course, he hadn’t planned on being emotionally destroyed either.
After he called the pediatric nurse with the job offer, he was forced to check the emails he’d been trying to ignore, in case she had questions for him. Before long, they were engaging in a long discussion, and for some reason, Brodie reverted to his old self and couldn’t help thinking, That nurse is pretty hot herself. He quickly put all the little-white-uniform fantasies out of his head, though, because he was not about to have play out a medical sex fantasy with a person who was potentially going to take care of his son.
“I am free for lunch if you are,” the nurse said. “We can talk about the job assignment.”
Brodie agreed, hoping it would take his mind off his aches and pains. Because he didn’t want to take Thomas with him, he readied him for a couple hours of daycare, then headed to the lunch spot just around the corner from his office. Much to his surprise, that appointment actually did dull the ache of his incredibly bruised heart.
The nurse, Julie, arrived at the same time he did, with her hair down. It was long and smooth, with lovely body, and Brodie wasn’t used to seeing her without it pinned behind her head in a bun. He had always been a hair man, and he couldn’t help admiring it. Nurse Julie also had a lovely figure that once again enticed him to entertain seductive thoughts, visions of rebound sex.
“So here’s the situation…” he said, holding her chair out for her.
She swept her luscious hair over her shoulders as she sat.
“As you might have overheard on our trip, my baby’s mother is suing me for joint custody. She made a huge scene outside my home yesterday,” he explained.
The expression on her face told him she wasn’t interested in that, and that was even clearer when she blurted, “I’ll take it.”
“Huh?” he said, caught off guard.
“The job. I’ll take the job,” she answered.
“Do you folks need a minute?” a waiter asked, suddenly appearing tableside.
“We are not ready to order lunch yet, but can we have a couple shots of Sambuca? We have much to celebrate today,” she said boisterously. She was the complete antithesis to Cara, almost like Angelique, without all the drama and darkness.
Wait. Why am I comparing her to anyone? Brodie thought. Surely there’s still hope for me and Cara.
“I can’t,” protested Brodie. “I have Thomas.”
“Where?” she asked with an arched eyebrow.
He knew she was teasing him, trying to coax him to be bad, and the temptation was almost more than he could take. He couldn’t resist peering down the V-neck of her blouse, and he was stirred by her voluptuous chest. “He’s, um…at the daycare, not far from here. I don’t drink when I’m taking care of him,” said Brodie.
She pouted, sticking her bottom lip out in a most alluring fashion. “Just one? You can have a little fun. If you run into trouble, Cara can help out,” she said.
Brodie could tell she was fishing, but he didn’t take the bait. “That’s not an option today,” he replied, “but I guess one shot won’t hurt.” Another ding of his phone, indicating another turned-down delivery, jolted him back to the reason for their lunch meeting. “You do want the job, right?”
“Right,” she said with a bright smile.
He held out his hand. “Shake on it?”
She gladly accepted and grasped his hand tightly.
“You’re our witness, pal,” Brodie said to the waiter, who was still standing by for their final drink decision. “Let’s make those double shots, two for me and two for her.”
Some indeterminable amount of time later, Brodie suddenly snapped out of darkness, still at the corner bar and as drunk as his companion. Fortunately, the daycare offered twenty-four-hour service, but he was coherent enough to realize he was in no shape to collect his son.
“Help,” he drunkenly texted Cara. “I’m sick. Baby at daycare. Please get him.”
“Where are you?” she responded a moment later.
“Bully’s. Please? Won’t bother you again. Sorry about all the flowers,” he said.
“I’ll be right there,” she texted.
Julie’s eyelids sagged, and she was absolutely smashed. She staggered off to the bathroom while Brodie waited.
“Buddy, can we get some coffee and water over here,” he asked the nearest waiter, “and clear away all these empties, would ya?”
When Cara said she would be right over, she really meant it, because she hurried through the doors of the popular lunch spot seconds later, then headed right to the booth where she saw him slumping over. “You aren’t sick,” she said after she lifted her dropped jaw. “You’re…loaded!”
With the worst possible timing, Julie stumbled back to the booth and plopped down.
Cara’s eyes widened, and she scowled at Brodie as he shamefully dropped his head in his hands.
Damn. I shoulda sent that nurse off in a cab before I called in the cavalry, he thought. He stared back up at two or three Caras, his eyes blurring from the alcohol, and sputtered, “This isn’t what it seems.”
“It never is,” Cara replied. “Where did you say Thomas is? I’ll take him until tomorrow, and you outta check in to some hotel to dry out. I refuse to spend a night under the same roof with you, but your son should be able to sleep in his own bed. I can’t believe you’re in this shape, Brodie. Seriously.”
“We were celebrating,” he said.
“Celebrating what?” she asked, tapping her foot impatiently on the floor.
“I just hired Julie, here, as my new nanny, and… Hell, I was upset,” he blurted. “You know, none of this would’ve happened if you just would’ve accepted my flowers.” Even as he said it, he knew it made no sense, but he was doing the best he could.
“You blame this on me? The nerve! I’ve been at work all day, and I’ve no idea how any of this is my fault,” she argued.
“I sent you all those bouquets, and you just turned them all away, just like you did my note that one time,” he said.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I didn’t get any deliveries from you, not one!” she insisted.
“Whatever. I sent ‘em to your office,” Brodie said. He knew Cara wasn’t one to lie, even casually. He was too drunk to investigate, but he was sober enough to wonder. He had no time to ask her, however, before she stormed out to retrieve his baby.
With the waiter’s help, he hailed a cab for Julie and sent her home, then contacted his driver to cart him off to the apartment he kept in the city. He had never been more ashamed of himself in his life.
Chapter Seventeen
Brodie sobered up quite quickly when he realized his own behavior kept him from his beloved son. He ordered Chinese food, his go-to cure for a hangover, and he picked at his moo goo gai pan while he reviewed his flower orders.
After a moment, he spotted the error: The first address he’d entered had a typo in it, and he’d foolishly copied and pasted it to all the rest, resulting in a whole list of wrong addresses. When he used a street view map, he discovered that all the flowers were sent to a body shop, and that gave him the first chuckle he’d manag
ed in quite a while. “Not so romantic, those greasy guys,” he said out loud.
With a nice regimen of Chinese food, coffee, shame, and a lot of fluids, he managed to flush his hangover by morning. The only remaining side effect was the massive guilt, and that was what spawned him to head for the nursery as soon as the sun came up.
Never in his life had Brodie been so happy to see the sweet, beautiful baby boy, and it was easy enough for Cara to slip out of the big house without bumping into the drunken fool who had ticked her off the night before. Without any concern over the gossip he might generate among his house elves, Brodie wept quietly, regretting all the actions he had taken in the past twenty-four hours, foolish words and deeds that had cost him time with the most precious person in the world to him.
Brodie had to give some serious thought about the part he’d played in all those grim events, even if they were not all entirely of his making. In the end, he decided his only option was to just lay all his cards on the table with Cara, that he would tell her, as honestly as he could, that he and Thomas really, truly loved her. He knew he needed to give her some time before he approached her. This time, even when she blocked his number, he managed to keep his cool.
Brodie Rogan, for possibly the first time in his life, was ready to go all in, ready to set every obnoxious character trait about him in the forefront. He was willing to be as manipulative and pushy as necessary to make the biggest deal of his life, to deal Cara into it.
After a nap that left him and the baby feeling much better, he put the baby seat in the Town Car and headed over to Cara’s place, hoping that bringing Thomas along would soften her a bit. Not only that, but he certainly wasn’t going to put the child through another trip to the daycare, nor would he subject him to any time with the lush nurse nanny.
Cara’s townhome complex was gated and guarded, and the guard stopped them and asked, “Name?”
“Mr. Brodie Rogan,” said the driver.
The guard looked in the back seat, peering at the smiling Brodie.
“And my son, Thomas,” Brodie said proudly, thinking he’d someday have a good laugh with the boy when he told the story of how he got them through the gate because he was just so darn adorable.
