Masters for Life

by Ginger Voight

  “There was more benefit in my knowing the information than letting you know that I knew it. Women tend to get creeped out if they think they’re being stalked or played. They find it far more romantic if a man instinctively anticipates what they need, but in order to do that, one has to take the time to figure it out. Since I don’t have the luxury of ‘dating,’ I had to find a more efficient way to do that. It’s the same game, just a different delivery. I can be prepared and you can be pleasantly surprised.”

  I gulped hard as I realized how masterfully he had played the game. But it was what he said next that really took me by surprise.

  “More importantly I wanted to see how you felt about your size, so I’d know which piece of clothing would make you feel the most beautiful.”

  The way he said ‘your size,’ hit me like a brick to the face. “Two for two,” I gritted between clenched teeth before I turned away. He grabbed me by the arm and pulled me back.

  “This is why I don’t talk about my job, Coralie. It doesn’t matter how we got there.”

  “It does to me,” I snapped. “I don’t want a relationship built with smoke and mirrors.”

  He released my arm. “Then don’t marry your gigolo.”

  I threw the top on the box and spun on my heel to leave the closet, but he closed the distance between us in a heartbeat. He wrapped one strong arm around my waist, lifted me up off the ground and into the unrelenting vice of his embrace. “Let me go!”

  “Never,” he said softly. My eyes sought his. Resistance beyond that was futile and I knew it. “I don’t apologize for anything that brought us together, Coralie. Not one damned thing. I love you. And that is worth everything.”

  I melted against him. I couldn’t help it. I couldn’t stay mad at him. I was pretty sure that wasn’t an accident either, especially when he kissed me so deep and so hard I could barely keep track of my own name, much less an argument.

  Besides, how could I be mad at him? Sure this was new information, but it fit neatly into everything he had told me before about his job. Why was I so surprised that he was actually every bit as good at it as he said he was? He was, after all, a master. One didn’t get this kind of apartment, his kind of car and all the expensive toys and playthings he had collected by accident.

  Elite, remember?

  “I’m sorry,” I finally apologized as he set me on my feet. “I guess I just needed to believe I was special.”

  He grabbed my left hand in his. My rings sparkled from the light overhead, casting rainbows throughout the closet. “Can’t get any more special than that, Mrs. Masters.”

  I trembled. He was absolutely right about that.

  “Now pick something pretty,” he said as he turned back to the box. “We’re late for work.”

  I finally settled on the yellow chiffon top to go along with a black skirt I found in this new box of goodies, both items fit so much better than the ones I had worn the previous day, an outfit I had purchased from our Women’s Plus line at Cabot’s. I planned to point that out to Father or Oliver if they dared ask me about it, which I knew that they would, despite the fact that I looked both pretty and professional as I followed my husband to his car waiting downstairs.

  We arrived at the store a little before nine o’clock. Devlin shadowed me with one arm draped possessively around my shoulders as I hurried down the hall to my office. Simon gave us a knowing wink. Devlin smirked in response, which I knew probably gave Simon a little bit of a thrill.

  I opened the door to yet more roses. “Devlin,” I protested at once.

  “Like I told you. Roses every day.”

  I shut the door behind us. “You can’t afford to keep doing that,” I said softly.

  He grinned as he strode to one of the chairs opposite my desk. “Then I guess you better put me to work, boss lady. Thanks to this,” he added as he flashed his wedding band, “I can’t go back to my old job.”

  “No, you can’t,” I agreed as I sat at my desk and powered on my computer.

  “It’s so cute when you get possessive,” he teased.

  I stuck out my tongue at him before I brought up the email for the director in charge of men’s apparel. I didn’t even bother running it past Father or Oliver. I was the head of marketing. I didn’t need their permission to hire a model for a clothing campaign. I did it routinely without ever concerning them with the process.

  So that was what I was going to do now. Within an hour, Troy Kierkegaard, our photographer, sat across from me, and we worked Devlin right into our fall catalog. I knew that the pay was minor in comparison to the money Dev used to make while escorting, but it was a start. In fact, he could get started right away and have steady work leading all the way to the end of the year.

  “An honest living,” he remarked later, after Troy left.

  I shrugged. We had discussed finances the night before, so I already knew how much he had brought in the previous year, which went a long way to explain his apartment, his car and his playthings. He had savings, but most of it was earmarked for his mother’s care, which cost him thousands upon thousands of dollars each month. Beyond that he had paid the mortgage for his sister’s townhome in Vegas, and maintained a life that made him attractive to an elite clientele.

  I wasn’t worried so much about the last part.

  “So we pare things down a bit. It won’t kill us.”

  “It won’t kill you,” he corrected. “No doubt you own your car outright. There are no huge, unpaid expenses looming over your head. You even have a big house to return to if you get tired of slumming it.”

  “Stop it,” I instructed at once. “I’m married to you. I’m staying with you. In fact, I was thinking maybe we could start looking for a place of our own.”

  His eyes met mine. “I take it you don’t like my apartment.”

  I sighed. “Not really, no.”

  He leaned forward towards the desk. “I told you I didn’t work there.”

  “But you have a history there,” I pointed out.

  “You have a history at your dad’s place. How many times did you fuck Oliver there?”

  “Six times,” a male voice intruded into our conversation. My eyes swung around to find Oliver standing in the doorway of my office, having opened the door and entered without knocking. I was relatively sure that wasn’t the reason that Devlin was pissed, but that was the reason that he gave him.

  “Ever heard of privacy, chief?” he barked as he hopped to his feet. I shot up out of my chair and rounded my desk to put my hand on Devlin’s arm, to keep him from doing anything stupid.

  “Excuse me, but I am the one who actually works here.”

  A slow smile slid across Devlin’s face. “What a coincidence. So do I.”

  Oliver glanced at me. I nodded to confirm. He began chuckling immediately, which only steamed Devlin even more. “Let me be the first, then, to welcome you to the family,” Oliver said with a fake smile as he held out a hand to shake. Devlin stared daggers at him but didn’t move a muscle. “Fine, then,” he said. “I am going to have to speak to CC alone, though.”

  “I don’t think so,” Devlin said. “Not after what happened yesterday.”

  Oliver’s smile broadened. “It was a congratulatory kiss for the happy bride.”

  Devlin started towards him, but I held him back. “That’s the last kiss you’re getting, boss.”

  I could tell Oliver enjoyed yanking Devlin around by the nose hairs, especially when he said, “Yeah, well, we’ll see about that.” He ignored the steam rising from Devlin’s ears to direct his attention back to me. “So. CC. A word?”

  I could feel Devlin’s glare burning a hole in my skin. I gulped hard as I turned to Oliver. “Whatever you want to say to me, you can say in front of my husband.”

  “Oh. Okay then. In that case, I just wanted to let you know that your father has hired a private investigator to dig into your new husband’s past, going over everything he’s ever done with a fine-tooth comb. If he finds anythi
ng at all, he’s got Sid on standby to file for annulment on the basis of fraud.” He glanced between us with an amused smirk. “How’s that?”

  I stole a glance at Devlin, who glared so hard at Oliver I thought it would slice him in two. “Search away,” he clipped before he wrapped an arm around me. “Nothing you find will come as a surprise to my wife.”

  The possessive way he said the words erased Oliver’s smug smile right from his face. “Then you have nothing to worry about, do you?” he shot back before he glanced back at me. “A more mature approach would be to actually talk to your father. Are you ever planning to go back to the house? Or are you going to make him come to the office to find you?”

  “Of course I’ll go see him,” I snapped. How dare he insinuate that I hadn’t been there for my father in every way that mattered for the last ten years?

  “Good. He’s worried about you. As are we all,” he added with a pointed glare before he left the office.

  Devlin turned to face me. “Please tell me you weren’t seriously thinking of settling with someone like him.”

  “I thought I didn’t have a choice, okay?” I finally admitted.

  “I told you from the beginning that you always have a choice.”

  My eyes met his. “Then I guess you saved me.”

  It was the only way to diffuse another argument. I couldn’t worry about Oliver and Devlin right now. I knew that my father wouldn’t stop looking for something to hang Devlin with until he found it. Unfortunately for all of us, Devlin’s past came with more than enough rope.

  “None of that is important right now. What are we going to do about this private investigator?”

  He shrugged. “Trust me. There’s very little I can’t talk myself out of. And they can’t force you to annul the marriage based on anything they find on the escort stuff anyway. You knew about it going in.”

  “Maybe,” I muttered dismissively. “Maybe if we go talk to him, we can make him understand.”

  “He’ll never understand, Coralie.”

  “Maybe not,” I conceded. “But he can’t be mad at me forever. I’m his only daughter, for God’s sake.”

  “I’ll do whatever you want me to do,” he assured. “But I think you’re wasting your time, babe.”

  I thought back to Darcy, and the hundred-grand I had invested into her startup company to make hip, fashionable clothes for people like me. One day very soon I was going to have to have that conversation with Father as well. I had to believe, somewhere deep down anyway, that there was hope that he could be reached. That he could be reasonable.

  “I’m not giving up, Devlin,” I told him.

  I still believed I could have it all.

  #ticktockgoestheclock…

  CHAPTER TWO

  We arrived at Father’s estate a little before seven o’clock that evening, after inching down Santa Monica Boulevard in rush hour traffic. It was a drive I had made many times over the years, commuting from our store in Century City to my home in Bel Air.

  Only it wasn’t my home anymore. It hadn’t been since Devlin slid a wedding ring on my finger. I was some weird, mutant hybrid now who was virtually homeless–even though I had a pretty nice place to stay. I hadn’t been able to feel comfortable there, and thanks to Father’s blowup at the news of my marriage, I didn’t feel welcome with him either.

  I truly did want to see my father, to try and reach out to him, to make inroads so that we could repair our relationship and start anew. But I also made peace with the idea that if I couldn’t reach him, I would pack up my things and move into Devlin’s apartment. My dad was going to have to choose. He could accept me married and happy, or he could accept that he forced the estrangement.

  Needless to say I was hoping for a happy ending.

  I still wore the yellow top and black skirt, since my clothing options were already so limited. I knew it would piss him off, but I couldn’t help it. I could only hope he wouldn’t see it as completely antagonistic.

  Margot and Aubrey were seated at the dining room table eating their dinner as we entered the house. Both of them looked me up and down like I had grown a second head. And both looked at Devlin like the freshest piece of meat in the deli.

  Perhaps they thought someone as hot as my husband was wasted on someone as plain as me. And maybe they were right. But the rings were on my finger, and that meant something.

  “Aunt Margot, Aubrey,” I greeted. “Has Father already eaten?”

  “He’s taken dinner in his room the last couple of nights,” Margot answered. The way her icy blue eyes scoped me up and down, I knew immediately that she thought that was my fault.

  Again, she was probably right.

  “I should go see him,” I announced, and Devlin nodded.

  “I’ll stay here and get acquainted with the family.”

  I didn’t much like the sound of that, nor the grin he wore when he said it, but there was no way to avoid it. I certainly couldn’t take Devlin upstairs to Father’s room.

  Instead I made that lonely trek up the spiral staircase by myself, my knees knocking the closer I crept to his master suite at the far end of the hall. My hand faltered as I reached for the bronze doorknob. Devlin was right. This was a complete waste of time. There was nothing I could say to Father to make him understand that even though it didn’t seem like it, I knew what I was doing.

  I took a deep breath, gathered all my courage and I opened the door.

  Father’s suite hadn’t changed much since my Mother’s death ten years before. His king-sized bed still sat atop an elevated platform, with gauzy curtains hanging from the ceiling around the four-poster bed. The walls were covered in a darker green material, decorated with dainty flowers, just like the meadows near our chateau in France.

  Expensive art hung on the wall, another of Mother’s indelible touches. She had been a painter when she was younger, though she wasn’t particularly good at it. She always had way more heart than talent. She might have ended up a starving artist had she not had the good fortune of selling one of her pieces to a distinguished man named Charles Cabot at her very first show, where he fell in love with the blue-eyed beauty at first sight. He’d bought that painting to have a reason to talk to her. The next week he bought another, when they met for tea at her Paris apartment. The next week he bought yet another, when he finally stole his first kiss.

  Desperate to get closer to her, he commissioned a piece done of Chateau du Cabot, which meant she would have to spend an entire summer at our sixteenth century chateau just to complete it. By the end of the summer the painting was no more finished than the first day she arrived, but she had a ring on her finger and a baby in her belly.

  Now that I knew what it meant to fall into a crazy, epic, once-in-a-lifetime kind of love that changes your whole life in the blink of an eye, I felt renewed empathy for Father’s loss. I couldn’t imagine what it would be like to find that kind of magic, only to lose it so tragically fourteen years later, which had to pass like fourteen minutes, considering they were so blissfully happy. Now the years stretched long without her.

  No wonder he was so bitter.

  “Father?” I asked as I rounded one of the bed posts.

  The closer I got, the worse I felt. Father looked shrunken, old and feeble tucked in the middle of that massive bed. He wore pajamas, rather than clothes, which made it impossible not to notice how his body had been subtly shrinking for years.

  Why hadn’t I noticed that before?

  “CC,” I heard him say. I propped up on the side of the bed.

  “Hi, Dad.”

  I could tell by the way his eyes drooped that he was on heavy medication. More sedatives, no doubt. “Are you home, CC?” he murmured, his speech slightly slurred from the medication.

  I reached for his hand. “I came to see you so that we could talk about that.”

  He shook his head, instantly dismissive. “There’s nothing to talk about,” he muttered as he pulled his hand from my grip.

 
; “Father, please,” I started but again he shook his head.

  “How can you bring a perfect stranger into my home, Coralie?” he asked, likely using my given name so I could understand the importance of my error.

  “He’s not a stranger to me, Dad,” I said softly. “He’s my husband. And I love him.”

  He instantly scoffed. “He is a swindler that bamboozled you. There’s no way a man like that could legitimately fall in love with you over a week, CC. Be honest with yourself.”

  My gut twisted in a knot. Is that really what he thought? “Why isn’t it possible, Dad? Because I’m not tall and beautiful like my mother?”

  “Don’t twist my words around,” he snapped.

  “I’m not twisting anything around,” I said. “You said what you said and you meant what you said. A guy like that could never fall for a girl like me. Thanks for the vote of confidence.”

  Much like Oliver, he simply rolled his eyes and refused to take it seriously. “Stop being so sensitive. I’m only trying to protect you.”

  “I don’t need your protection. I’m a grown woman.”

  He scoffed again. “If that were true, you wouldn’t have married some playboy after only one week.”

  Frankly I was tired of the criticism, especially from a man who always claimed to believe in love at first sight. I decided to fall back on the fake history Devlin and I had created, to explain our association without having to tell the truth: that I had solicited his sexual services online through an escort service. “It was more than a week, remember? We went to school together.”

  Instantly I panicked, remembering once again about the private investigator now digging in Devlin’s past. They might demand a college transcript from Stanford, and then we’d all be screwed. I had just painted myself into a corner with my own stupid lie.

  Clearly I wasn’t very good at it.

  Fortunately Father merely grunted and looked away. “You should come home, CC. You belong here.”

  “I belong with my husband,” I corrected. “Is Devlin welcome here?”