As soon as he stepped inside, Avery closed the door behind him and rushed to him. She put her hands on his face and brought him to her to kiss, but he pulled away.
“What’s wrong?” she asked. “Nina won’t—”
“Stop it,” Carter said as he held her hands away. He wanted so badly to kiss her just one last time, but he knew if he did, all his resolve would be obliterated. “I didn’t come here for that.”
Avery could tell from the tone of his voice that he was anxious. It was easy to detect in a man known for his cool and calm. Setting aside her desire, Avery looked at his face and saw he was distressed.
“Oh, my God,” she said with a gasp. “Evan? Is he…”
“No.” Carter imposed an iron control of himself, knowing it would be a constant struggle to maintain it. “I came here to tell you that I’m not going to see you anymore.”
“How many times have you said that to me?” she asked.
This wasn’t going as she’d hoped. Avery knew that Carter still harbored anger toward her, but she felt that as time progressed, he would let go of that hate and even if they couldn’t be together the way they both wanted, he wouldn’t feel the need to be mean to her anymore.
“This is the last time,” he answered, feeling sick with the struggle going on inside of him right now. “It was stupid for us to start this up again. It was understandable because of everything going on, but it makes no sense anymore.”
“Don’t you think I know that?” Avery asked. “I have tried my whole life to make good choices, to be logical and do the right thing. It didn’t work. This may not make sense, but it still feels right.”
“It doesn’t,” Carter answered, stepping back to avoid her attempt to touch him. “I mean it, Avery. Julia knows and—”
“Is she threatening you?” she asked. “Threatening to leave you if—”
“No,” he said. “She just cried. I seem to make all my fiancées cry, but this is the last time. Not just for Julia, because I admit I don’t love her, but also for myself. Our being together only hurts people, most of all me.”
Now it was Avery’s turn to feel anxious. A quick and disturbing thought—that he really meant this—flashed through her mind. But he couldn’t.
“Carter…” She wanted to protest, to say something that would prove him wrong or counteract his point, but he was right. She just didn’t care. “This is wrong, I know, but I love you and you—”
“Stop saying that!” Carter yelled, his voice ringing with command to mask his uncertainty. “Stop saying you love me. You never loved me.”
“How can you say that?” Avery’s chest felt like it was going to cave in from his reaction. “I loved you completely. I can’t help what happened.”
“That’s a lie,” Carter said. “You ran away and married someone you didn’t love so you could avoid dealing with me. Love doesn’t run away. It stays and fights.”
“Stays and fights what?” Avery retorted angrily. “The level of deceit you brought to our relationship prevented me from even understanding what I could fight.”
Carter took a deep breath, feeling he was about to boil over. It had taken all the strength he had, and a glass of gin, to build up the courage to walk in here and do this. If he didn’t leave now, he would take it all back. Seeing her cry and hearing the pain in her voice was just too much for him.
“You’ll hurt me again,” he said. “Something, anything, will happen and you’ll hurt me again. You hurt me every day you go home to that man.”
“I tried to be with you!”
“No,” Carter said. “You tried to make it okay to be with me. And when you couldn’t, you gave up and you went to him.”
“You know I don’t love him,” Avery said. “I love you and I wish that I could be with you.”
“That does nothing for me, Avery. I hurt you and you just run away. But when you hurt me, my life stops. I can’t let that happen again. I won’t!”
“Baby, please.” She reached out to him, but he yanked away. She felt panic setting in. “I know we can work something out.”
“We have.” Carter opened the door, unable to look her in the face. “And it’s this. Good-bye.”
Avery stood in the back room for several minutes, trying to pull herself together, but it wasn’t working. The more she thought about what Carter had said, the more devastated she felt. She finally gave in and fell into a chair, sobbing. She had no right to sob; she knew that. The idea that they could carry on this eternal affair was a joke and a farce. She could hope the day would come when Anthony wouldn’t need her anymore and she could be free, but what then? Carter would be married to Julia. The most she could be was his mistress. That wouldn’t work. Just as he had wanted all of her the last time, this time, she wanted all of him.
Maybe deep down inside, she just wanted him to stop hating her, and she hadn’t even accomplished that. This was hopeless, and Connor was already suffering. Avery was afraid her desire to seek joy for herself may have made it worse for her baby.
Leigh knew she was frustrating Bem by walking in front of him, but she didn’t like it his way. She felt like a child following him and still did not believe he was necessary. Today, as they got out of the private car, she jumped in front of him and ignored him as he called after her.
She was already running late for the team’s scheduled get-together. After she kissed Max the night before, Leigh pulled away and made an excuse to leave for her hotel. She wasn’t sure what she was going to do the next time she saw Max, but despite chickening out the night before, she knew she was looking forward to being with him. It had been a long time since she’d felt excited to see a man. She thought she should feel guilty, lying in her bed touching her lips with her fingers while Evan was still sick and everyone here was working so hard. But she felt hopeful.
While Leigh was nervous about seeing him this morning, she felt the presence of the entire group would alleviate some of the tension. After all their hard work, the last day in Kenya was supposed to be fun. They were to gather in the meeting rooms at eight in the morning and spend the day at the Nairobi Zoo before they had to leave tomorrow. But when Leigh showed up, it was 8:10 and no one was there.
“No,” she said, thinking everyone had left without her. “Ten minutes? Do I have the wrong time?”
“No, you don’t.”
Max seemed to come out of nowhere. Leigh’s eyes lit up with surprise. “Where is everyone? You said to meet here at eight, right?”
“I told you to meet everyone here at eight.” He stopped in front of her with an indefinable confidence. His expression was a mixture of childish anticipation and determination. “I told everyone else to meet at nine.”
“What are you up to?” Leigh asked, not sure if she should be angry or excited.
“Trickery,” he answered. “I wanted you to meet me here at eight, because I have a different last day planned for you and me.”
“Bem will be here any second,” she said.
“I’ve taken care of that. He’s going to be distracted for another two minutes, so we should get going.”
“No zoo?” Leigh asked, feeling charged with excitement.
He shook his head. “Have you ever heard of Giraffe Manor?”
“You’re not having fun,” Peter said as his wife sighed loud enough to be heard by the other customers at the luxury outlet mall in Long Beach, California. “Not that I could tell anyway,” he added after getting no response.
Haley wasn’t sure what he’d expected. It was his idea to go slumming in Long Beach and have a real outlet mall experience. Why he wanted to come this far from Los Angeles, where they were basically on the border of Orange County, she would never know. He had finally gotten his fill, and that, plus her constant nagging, made him want to call it a day. They were on their way to the hotel where they had valet parked, just across the street from the mall’s largest garage.
“Look,” Haley said, peering at the time on her phone. “I’m going out
with my girls tonight, so I need to get going. I’m taking the Jag. You can get a driver or—”
“Come on,” he urged as he followed her across the street. “I don’t have any friends here, Haley. I’m tired of following you around like a little puppy doing what you want with who you want.”
“No one asked you to even come here,” Haley argued. “I’m not adjusting my life for you. Since our marriage became public, my parents have been all over me. I’m supposed to act like I love you, and I can’t even date. You want to hang out, then hang out. You don’t need me. Throw that Aussie charm on these…whatever they’re called.”
“People,” he said bluntly. “You can be an incredible bitch sometimes, you know that?”
“I’ve always known that,” she answered. “Glad to see you’ve caught up.”
Haley could tell from his expression that she upset him. He was so different from when she’d first met him. He was fun and didn’t give a shit. He loved to party and spend his family’s money. Like her, he wasn’t sensitive or sentimental, which was why she was so certain this marriage of convenience would work.
“I want to go home,” Peter said, sounding like a ten-year-old boy who had wandered too far from his mommy. “My life and my friends…everything is in Sydney. You need to come with me.”
“I can’t do that.” She stopped and turned to him. His homesickness was really starting to irk her and worry her a little. And for Haley to be worried about anything was saying a lot. “My nephew is in a coma! He could die!”
He rolled his eyes, seeming bored with her excuses. “Whatever. I’m tired of sleeping in a guest house and getting evil stares from your father.”
“God,” she said, looking around the front of the hotel for the valet, who was nowhere to be seen. “I thought I was impatient. We don’t have much longer to go. Where is that damn valet? This is what happens when you try to valet in the slums. Chaos!”
“So it shouldn’t be a problem,” he said. “If there isn’t much time, you can stand to come to Sydney. You have to or my uncle won’t believe…”
He noticed that Haley was no longer listening to him, and she was no longer looking for her red Jaguar. Something had caught her eye, and she rushed to the corner to get a closer look.
“What is it?” he asked, following her.
Haley thought she was seeing things, but she wasn’t. A wicked little smile formed at the edges of her lips as she took it all in. Her first thought was wondering if she was seeing right. Her second thought was how she could use this to her advantage. There were so many possibilities.
“Who is that?” Peter asked. “Who is that person you’re looking at?”
“No one you need to be worried about,” she said as she reached into her purse for her phone. She quickly got frustrated when she couldn’t find it, because she was running out of time.
“Give me that,” she said as she snatched Peter’s phone from him. “How does this camera work?”
“Just”—he reached for it—“let me show you.”
“There isn’t time!” Seeing the camera icon, she reached up and took a picture as best she could before the chance was lost.
She only hoped she got what she needed. This could be a gold mine.
The Interfaith Meditation Room and Chapel on the first floor of the hospital was open twenty-four hours a day, but this was the first time Kimberly had come down there since Evan was admitted. Now that she was there, she wasn’t sure what to do. She was alone except for an elderly woman lighting a candle at a nondescript granite table on the other side of the room.
Kimberly had stopped praying when she was young. After the abuse she experienced at home and the way she was treated as a teenaged prostitute in Detroit, she felt certain that God either didn’t exist or he didn’t care about her. She felt justified in giving up on him, because he had already given up on her. Then she met Michael and after their one-night stand, she found out she was pregnant. She was a model at the time, and all her model friends urged her to have an abortion. But she had already done that, and it had taken a piece of her away. She vowed to never do it again. She was deathly afraid that Michael would dump her when he found out, believing that she had planned this to trap him. So, for the first time in a long time, Kimberly prayed.
The next night, she told him and God blessed her with Michael, love, and understanding. She prayed a lot over the next six years, because she was so blessed. But in the last couple of years, her prayers weren’t prayers of thanks. They were prayers about abandonment and begging for some solution to her nightmare.
Now, she was here to pray for mercy, but she didn’t know exactly how to do it, and it was too important to mess up.
“God,” she whispered as she knelt down. “In the Bible, you say that your grace is sufficient. I’m placing all my trust in your word for my baby. They say it is a sin to bargain with you, but I’m offering my own soul and a promise to get rid of all my hatred and my quest for vengeance. If you give me my baby back, I will be who I should have always been—grateful for your mercy and grace. Please, give me a sign that you believe me.”
Kimberly opened her eyes as she felt someone was near her. She was hoping to feel a spirit but was surprised to see her ex-husband, the man she had recently made love to after having promised herself she would never do it again just days before. How could he be her sign?
“Are you trying to hide from me?” Michael asked as he sat next to her. He could see the serenity she had on her face disappear as soon as she opened her eyes.
“You’re the one who left,” Kimberly said.
After they’d had sex the other day, neither of them had said anything. It was as if they pretended it didn’t happen. Michael asked her if she wanted to come to the hospital with him and she refused, saying she would go with Daniel once he got home from school. And that was that. He left.
“I asked you to come….” Michael sighed. He wasn’t going to argue with her. “I didn’t want to leave. I felt like we should have said something or talked about it.”
“It’s okay.” She turned to him and forced a smile.
Despite all that happened between them, she knew just from looking at his tender gaze that there would always be a soft spot in her heart for him. She would always love him, and there was no point in denying it.
Michael felt confused by the way she was looking at him. After being married for almost eight years, he had come to know every look, expression, and movement, but that was changing. In these last eight months, she had completely separated from him and was becoming a woman he couldn’t so readily understand. He hated it.
“I know what that was—us making love. We share something so pure in those boys and the joy and pain…. I’m not making any assumptions, Kimberly.”
The truth was, he had left because he was afraid Kimberly would tell him what had happened meant nothing.
Kimberly’s eyes widened, as she was somewhat stunned by such a humble statement from the usually cocky, dismissive man. It reminded her of the old Michael, the one who loved her and talked to her with respect for her intelligence and with sensitivity to her feelings.
Kimberly got off her knees and joined him on the bench.
“I j-just…,” Michael stuttered nervously. This was new. “I just thought you’d want to know that. Maybe acknowledging that would make it okay for you to talk to me again—that is, if you have anything you’d want to say.”
A light turned on in Kimberly’s mind, bringing all her senses to life. How could this have been set up easier? She had to do this. She had made a promise, and Evan’s life was depending on her following through on it. This was her sign. God was giving her a chance to prove herself true, and Michael had just opened the door.
“Michael.” She said his name before swallowing hard. “I need to tell you something, and I hope you can understand and forgive me, but I need to let this go. All of it.”
The suggestion that he’d need to forgive her told Michael that this
was not going to be good, but he wasn’t going to get angry, at least not yet. “Is this about Evan?”
She shook her head. “It’s about your father and Chase Beauty.”
Michael’s entire body tensed at those words. One thing was clear: This definitely wasn’t going to be good.
Kimberly told him how she had been curious to find out more about Elisha, his mistress, and about the broker of a purchasing deal for Chase Beauty. Elisha had given her reason to believe that she was more than just another mistress, and Kimberly wanted to see if that was true. She broke into Elisha’s bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel and found out much more than she expected.
Michael was shocked into silence as she told him that Elisha was using him and was a tool of Steven’s estranged brother, Keenan. Michael didn’t want to believe this, because it sounded insane. He and Carter had vetted Elisha and dug into her background extensively.
Kimberly explained how she found out that Keenan was holding off on revealing an investigation into the publishing company they wanted to buy so that Chase Beauty would purchase it and thus become responsible for the millions in fines and countless civil lawsuits certain to come from violations that had happened over the previous ten years.
“Michael?” Kimberly asked after his silence lasted a little too long. He was looking ahead, almost blankly. “Are you okay?”
Michael slowly turned his head to her, feeling like a brick had landed in his stomach. “How can you be sure of this?”
“I have proof.” She told him about the documents she had stolen from Elisha’s hotel room and how she had hired a private investigator. “I still have it. I can show it to you.”
“So what you’re saying is”—Michael tried to wrap his head around this—“I could have completely destroyed Chase Beauty with that deal. Carter didn’t like her and Dad had doubts, but he trusted me. This was the way I was going to get…”
“Back into his good graces after what I’d done,” she said, finishing what he seemed unable to say.
Gone Too Far Page 14
