Money Man's Fiancée Negotiation

by Michelle Celmer

  Covering his face with a handkerchief, he walked through a small living room with outdated, discount-store furniture, snapping on lights and opening windows as he made to the kitchen. He saw the culprit right away, an unopened package of ground beef on a faded, worn countertop, next to a stove that was probably older than him. She must have taken it out to thaw right before the accident.

  He opened the kitchen window, then, for the landlord’s sake he grabbed the package and tossed it in the freezer. He was sure the contents of the fridge were similarly frightening, but since neither he nor Mel would be returning, he didn’t feel compelled to check.

  There was nothing else remarkable about the room, so he moved on to explore the rest of the house.

  The bathroom counter was covered with various toiletries that he didn’t recognize—and why would he when they didn’t share a bathroom—but everything was distinctly feminine. He checked the medicine chest and the cabinet below the sink but there was no evidence that a man had ever lived there.

  He searched her bedroom next, finding more old and tacky furniture, and an unmade bed. Which was odd because back home she always kept things tidy and spotless. He found a lot of familiar-looking clothes in the closet and drawers, but again, nothing to suggest she’d had any male companionship. Not even a box of condoms in the bedside table. He and Melody had at one time kept them handy, but not for quite some time. They were monogamous, and he was sterile, so there really never seemed a point.

  She had obviously had unprotected sex with someone, or she wouldn’t have gotten pregnant. It hadn’t even occurred to him earlier, but now he wondered if he should go get himself tested for STDs. Melody had callously put her own health and his in jeopardy. One more thing to hold against her.

  He searched the entire room, top to bottom, but didn’t find the one thing he was looking for. He was about to leave when, as an afterthought, Ash pulled back the comforter on the bed and hit pay dirt. Melody’s computer.

  In the past he would have never betrayed her trust by looking through her computer. He respected her privacy, just as she respected his. But she had lost that particular privilege when she betrayed him. Besides, the information it contained might be the only clue as to who she was sleeping with. The only explanation as to why she left him. She owed him that much.

  He wanted to look at it immediately but he honestly wasn’t sure how much longer he could stand the stench and he still had to pack Melody’s things. Most of her clothes he would ship home and have his secretary put away, keeping only a smaller bag in Texas, to make his two-week trip story more believable.

  He looked at his watch and realized he was going to have to get moving if he was going to get back to the hospital before visiting hours were over. Though he was exhausted, and wanted nothing more that to go back to the hotel and take a hot shower, he had to play the role of the doting fiancé.

  He crammed her things into the suitcases he found stored in her bedroom closet, shoved everything into the trunk of his rental car to sort later, then headed back to the hospital, but when he got there she was sleeping. Realizing that he hadn’t eaten since that morning—and then only a hurried fast-food sandwich before his flight boarded—rather than eat an overpriced, sub-par meal in the cafeteria, he found a family diner a few blocks away. It wasn’t the Ritz, but the food was decent, and he had the sneaking suspicion he would be eating there a lot in the next week to ten days. When he got back to Mel’s room she was awake, sitting up and clearly relieved and excited to see him. “I was afraid you wouldn’t make it back.”

  “I said in my note that I would be back. I just had a few things to take care of.” He pulled up a chair but she patted the bed for him to sit beside her.

  She looked a lot better than she had earlier. Her eyes were brighter and there was more color in her cheeks, and as he sat, he noticed that her hair was damp. As if reading his mind, she said, “They let me take a shower. It felt so wonderful. And tomorrow they want me to start walking, to get the strength back in my legs.”

  “That’s good, right?”

  “The nurse said the sooner I’m up and moving around on my own, the sooner they’ll discharge me.” She reached for his hand, and he had no choice but to take it. “I can hardly wait to go home. I’m sure that once I’m there, I’ll start to remember things.”

  He hoped not. At least, not for a while. That could definitely complicate things. “I’m sure it will,” he told her.

  “Did the hotel still have my things?” she asked hopefully.

  “Hotel?”

  Her brow furrowed. “I just assumed I was staying at a hotel, while I did my research.”

  He cursed himself for letting his guard down. The last thing he wanted was to rouse her suspicions. He swiftly backpedaled.

  “You were. I just thought for a second that you remembered something. And yes, they did. Your suitcase is in the trunk of my car. I’ll keep it at my hotel until you’re released.”

  “What about my research? Were there papers or files or anything?”

  “Not that I saw,” he said, realizing that the lies were coming easier now. “But your laptop was there.”

  Her eyes lit with excitement. “There might be something on it that will shake my memory!”

  “I thought of that. I booted it up, but it’s password protected, so unless you remember the password….” He watched as Melody’s excitement fizzled away. “Tell you what,” he said. “When we get back to San Francisco I’ll have the tech people at work take a look at it. Maybe they can hack their way in.”

  “Okay,” she agreed, looking a little less defeated, but he could see that she was disappointed.

  In reality, he would be calling work at his soonest convenience and with any luck one of the tech guys could walk him through hacking the system himself. Only after he removed anything pertaining to the baby or the affair, or anything personal that might jog her memory, would he let her have it back.

  It would be easier to have the hard drive reformatted, but that might look too suspicious. He’d thought of not mentioning the laptop at all, but it stood to reason that since she was a student, she would have one.

  He could have lied and said it was destroyed in the accident, but unfortunately it was too late for that now.

  “Can you do me a favor?” she asked.

  “Sure.”

  “Can you tell me about myself?”

  “Like what?”

  “My family, my friends, where I’m from. Anything.”

  The truth was, despite living together for three years, he didn’t know a heck of a lot about Melody. If she had friends at school, she didn’t mention them, and when she wasn’t in school, he really wasn’t sure what she did with her time, other than cooking his dinners, cleaning their condo and of course shopping. She had always kept personal things pretty close to the vest. Either that or he had just never thought to ask.

  But she looked so hopeful, he had to come up with something.

  “Your mom died before I met you,” he told her. “Ovarian cancer, I think. You told me that you never knew your real father, but you’d had something like five or six stepfathers growing up.”

  “Wow, that’s a lot. Where did I grow up?”

  He struggled to remember what she had told him when they first met. “All over, I think. You said that she moved you around a lot. I know you resented it.”

  Just as he had resented so many things from his own childhood. The cancer not even being the worst of it. But he was in no mood to dredge that up. Besides, she had no idea that he’d been sick. It just never came up. He and Mel knew each other, especially in the biblical sense, but they didn’t really know each other.

  He’d been so sure that was the way he’d wanted it, so jaded by his marriage, he never considered that he might want more. Not until it was too late.

  Four

  Melody had this look, like the playground bully had just stolen her candy. “Wow. It sounds like I had a pretty lousy childhood.”r />
  Ash felt a jab of guilt for painting such a grim picture.

  “I’m sure there were good things,” he told her. “You just never talked about it much.”

  “How did we meet?”

  The memory brought a smile to his face. Now, this was something he remembered. “A company party. At Maddox Communications.”

  “That’s where you work, right?”

  He nodded. “You were there with some cocky junior rep. Brent somebody. A real jerk. But the instant I saw you standing by the bar, wearing this slinky little black number, I couldn’t look away. Hell, every man in the room had their eye on you. He was droning on, probably thinking he was hot shit because he was with the sexiest woman at the party, and you had this look like you were counting the minutes until you could send him and his overinflated ego packing. You looked over and saw me watching you. You gave me a thorough once-over, then flashed me this sexy smile.”

  Her eyes went wide. “I did that?”

  Her surprise made him laugh. “Yeah. At that point I had no choice but to rescue you. So I walked over and asked you to dance.”

  “How did my date feel about that?”

  Ash grinned, recalling the shocked look on the kid’s face, the indignant glare as Ash led Mel onto the dance floor and pulled her into his arms. “He didn’t look very happy.”

  “What did he do?”

  “What could he do? I was CFO, he was a lowly junior rep. I could have squashed him. Although, if memory serves, someone else eventually did. I don’t think he lasted long with the firm.”

  “So we danced?” she said, a dreamy look on her face.

  “All night.” Ash had been the envy of every man at the party. At the time he’d still been reeling from his divorce and the ego boost was a welcome one. It wasn’t until later that he realized just how thorough of a boost she intended to give him.

  “Then what happened?” she asked.

  “You asked if you could see my office, so I took you there. The instant the door closed we were all over each other.”

  She swallowed hard, looking as scandalized as she was intrigued. And maybe a little turned on, too. “Then what?”

  “You really have to ask?”

  “We had sex in your office?” she asked in a hushed voice, as if she worried someone would overhear. “Right after we met?”

  This from the woman who had never hesitated to tell him exactly what she wanted, when she wanted it, in the bluntest of sexual terms. Language that would make a lot of women blush. Or blanch.

  He grinned and nodded. “On the desk, on the sofa, in my chair. Up against the plate-glass window overlooking the bay.”

  Her cheeks flushed bright pink. “We did it against a window?”

  “You’ve always had voyeuristic tendencies.” He’d never met a woman more confident, more comfortable in her own skin, than Melody. Though he would never admit it aloud, her brazen nature could be the slightest bit intimidating at times.

  But obviously now something had changed. There was a vulnerability in her eyes that he’d never seen before. A hesitance she had never shown. Truth be told, he kind of liked it. And maybe it softened him up just a little. He may have supported Mel for the past three years, but he would never make the mistake of thinking that she depended on him. Had she not met him, she would have managed just fine on her own.

  He’d forgotten what it felt like to have someone need him.

  “I can’t believe I slept with you on the first date,” she said. “I can’t imagine what you must have thought of me.”

  “Actually, with my divorce barely final, it was exactly what I needed.”

  “You were married before?”

  “For seven years.”

  “Why did you split up?”

  “I guess you could say it was due to a total lack of appreciation.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She didn’t appreciate the hours I worked, and I didn’t appreciate her screwing her personal trainer in my bed.”

  She sucked in a surprised breath, clearly outraged on his behalf. “She cheated on you?”

  “For quite some time as I understand it.” He wondered how Melody would feel if she knew she had done the same thing? Although, as far as he knew, never in his bed. But that was just geography. Cheating was cheating.

  Melody tightened her grip on his hand. He hadn’t even realized she was holding it. It occurred to him suddenly how cozy this little scenario had become. Too cozy for his liking.

  He pulled his hand free and looked at his watch. “It’s late. I should let you get some sleep.”

  “Did I say something wrong?” she asked, looking troubled. “Because if it bothers you to talk about your ex, we can talk about something else.”

  Frankly, he was all talked out. He wasn’t sure what else to say to her. And he wished she would stop being so…nice. Not that she hadn’t been nice before, but she’d always had an edge. A sharp wit and a razor-edged tongue. Now she was being so sweet and understanding, she was making it tough for him to hold on to his anger. To be objective.

  “You didn’t say anything wrong. It’s just, well, it’s been a really long day. Maybe I’m the one who’s tired.”

  “I’m sorry, I’m being selfish,” she said, looking truly apologetic. “I didn’t even take into consideration how hard this has been for you.”

  “It has been a long couple of weeks not knowing where you were,” he said, which only made her look more guilty. “I’m sure I’ll feel better after a good night’s sleep.”

  “Go,” she said, making a shooing gesture. “Get some sleep.”

  “Are you sure? I can stay longer if you want me to.”

  “No. I’m tired anyway. I’ll probably watch a few minutes of television then fall asleep.”

  He had the distinct feeling she was lying, because honestly, she didn’t look the least bit tired. But he wasn’t going to argue.

  “I’ll be back first thing tomorrow,” he assured her, rising from the edge of the bed.

  “Thank you,” she said, her expression earnest.

  “For what?”

  “Telling me those things about myself. It makes me feel a little less…lost. Even if it wasn’t quite what I expected.”

  “You’re welcome,” he said, and leaned down to brush a kiss across her forehead. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  As he walked from the room he heard the television click on. He couldn’t help feeling the slightest bit guilty for leaving her alone, but he had a charade to plan.

  It turned out that Ash didn’t need the help of the tech guys at Maddox Communications to hack into Melody’s computer. After only five or six tries, he figured the password out all by himself. His birthday. The fact that it was something so simple surprised him a little, but he was grateful.

  His first task was to remove evidence of Melody’s affair from her computer, only she must have been very careful because he found nothing, not even a phone number or an entry in her calendar, that suggested she was sneaking around.

  As for the baby, there were a few doctor appointments listed on her calendar, and the history in her Internet browser showed visits to several children’s furniture store sites and a site called Mom-to-be.com, where it appeared she had been tracking her pregnancy—she was fourteen weeks and four days on the day of the accident—and blogging on a page for single mothers.

  Apparently she had every intention of doing this alone. Was it possible that the father of the baby was nothing more than a one-night stand? A glorified sperm donor?

  He skimmed the entries she had written, hoping to find a clue as to who the man was, or the circumstances surrounding their relationship. But after more than an hour of reading, all he’d learned was that the baby’s father was, in her words, not involved. He noted that some of the earlier posts dated back to the weeks before she left him. It was also clear, by the tone of her posts, that she was very excited to be a mother, which surprised him.

  She had always been
so independent and career focused, he didn’t think she even wanted a family. Of course, that was never something they talked about. Maybe because she knew that if she wanted children, she wouldn’t be having them with him. Not naturally anyway. Knowing that he couldn’t father a child of his own, he’d resigned himself to the idea of not having them at all.

  What he found even more disturbing than the information about the baby was a file folder with electronic copies of her report cards. They dated back the past four semesters. Whenever Ash asked her about school, which admittedly wasn’t very often, Mel claimed things were going great. Which was hard to believe now that he saw that she had been clinging to a low C average, when he knew for a fact that in her first year she’d never scored anything lower than an A minus.

  It was as if she had lost her interest in the law. But if that was the case, why hadn’t she said anything? It was true that they didn’t normally talk about those kinds of things, but going to school for a career she no longer wanted seemed worth mentioning. Especially when he was shelling out the money for her tuition.

  The more Ash looked through her files and read her e-mails, the more he began to realize that after three years together, he barely knew Melody. She lived a life that, outside the bedroom, had little to do with him. And though that was the way he’d always wanted it, he couldn’t help but feel…indignant. And maybe a little angry with himself for not taking the time to get to know her better.

  He may have been there for her financially, but even he had to admit that emotionally, he’d been pretty much vacant.

  Which was exactly what they had agreed to going into this relationship, so he had no absolutely no reason to feel as though he had wronged her somehow.

  If that was true, why did he feel like such a jerk?

  Maybe his ex was right. Maybe he’d been too cold and distant. Maybe he used work as an escape from dealing with the ups and downs of his personal relationships. And maybe, like his ex-wife, Melody had grown tired of the distance. Tired of being alone.