When the group finally murmured their agreement, I turned around and headed for Riley who was now standing with two formidable-looking men—Gilles and a big, hulking giant who reminded me of a mammoth in a sharp black suit. Even Gilles looked nearly cherubic next to this man.
“Charlotte!” Riley was beaming from ear to ear as he ran up to meet me, knocking the breath out of me a little at the force of the hug he slammed into me. “It’s so good to see you! Your house was so nice! Uncle Danny said with a little refurbishing, you could sell it for a lot more.”
I grinned and put an arm around him. The last time we saw each other was when we rescued him from that little boxing match he’d wrangled himself into almost two weeks ago. I’d talked to him on the phone a few times but he looked a hundred times happier right now, with his eyes twinkling in the bright mid-day sun.
“I’ll ask him about it next time I see him,” I promised the boy. “Are you guys still there? I didn’t even know Layla was back until I saw her with you half an hour ago.”
Riley nodded. “Yeah, we’re still staying there. She just arrived early this morning and told us that we’re going to move. We’ll have to stay there for another week or so until Mom finds another house where we can all stay together—a bigger and nicer one!” His expression clouded over and he sent me an apologetic look. “Not that your house wasn’t big or nice. I liked it there very much. But it would be nice if we have our own house and Mom could live in it too.”
I smiled at the boy gently. “Mom, huh? You don’t seem surprised.”
Riley scrunched up his nose for a bit before smiling back crookedly at me, his voice hushed in a conspiratorial tone. “I kinda knew. A year ago, when she thought I was already asleep, she called me her son. Even if it weren’t really true, I’ll still want her to be my Mom. When she finally told me today, when she finally stopped crying for about twenty minutes, it was just kind of a bonus.”
“She’s very happy to be your Mom, I can tell you that,” I told him with a quick ruffle of his hair. “And yes, I’m sure you’ll find a nice, big house where you can live together and your Mom doesn’t have to leave you again.”
“And that bad guy she married won’t hurt her anymore,” the boy added gravely, his eyes all too knowing when he lifted them up to meet mine.
I gave his shoulder a firm pat. “That’s right. He can’t hurt her anymore.”
Riley glanced over his shoulder to look at the giant man standing next to Gilles, watching us. “That’s Boris. Mom said he’s her bodyguard. He’ll beat up anyone who tries anything funny with her.”
Boris certainly looked capable and as though he could see me through the nearly black tint of his sunglasses, he nodded at me in acknowledgement.
Yeah, Don may be savage but even lions heeded the physical risks before going for an attack.
I could literally tear a strip off him but Boris would make crumbs out of his bones.
“You two. It’s time for lunch,” Layla said as she came over to us, her smile genuine and bright despite the exhaustion I could spy on her face. “Simone had a small feast prepared in the solarium.”
Riley’s face brightened but he paused just right before he was about to take off in a sprint. “Will they let me join in?”
Layla grinned. “Yes, as long as you eat with your cutlery, avoid stuffing your face swollen with food like you’re in a contest, finish chewing before you speak, and say please and thank you when appropriate.”
Riley scratched his head a little, contemplating his mother’s summary of good table manners, before nodding and running off to follow the group of ladies who headed inside the house in a more leisurely pace.
“I’m glad you told him,” I told Layla as we walked. “He’s over the moon.”
“I know,” Layla replied with a sniffle. “The thing was, he seemed to have known it all along anyway. He just smiled and opened his arms to hug me. I don’t deserve to have this so easy but I’m not going to complain.”
“We’ll take our victories where we can find them.” I glanced at her and saw her soft smile. “I’m assuming you’ve talked to your Dad and it went well.”
She sighed. “I did talk to my father. It wasn’t an easy conversation—he’d yelled at me for not telling him about getting pregnant all those years ago, then he cried when I told him about Riley, then he railed about Don so much I was worried for a second he was going to have a heart attack. But I found that once I started telling the truth, I just kept going. It was draining but I’m so glad to be done with all the pretense.”
“Have you confronted Don since you got back?”
“Not yet.” There was a steely edge in her voice. “I’m setting up my safety nets first before I face him, hopefully to lessen the collateral damage I know we’ll cause. My father wants to put a bullet through his heart but he’s agreed to let me call the shots on how I extricate my life completely from Don’s. It’ll be a few more days. I’m working with a new lawyer right now. I hope you don’t mind if Riley and Danny linger at your place for another week or so. Val, Boris’s partner, will be keeping an eye on the place in case Don has some funny business in mind.”
“Stay as long as you’d like,” I reassured her. “I don’t mind helping in any way I can.”
Layla stopped in her tracks all of a sudden and I had to back up a step.
“And you really don’t, do you, Charlotte?” she asked quietly. “You don’t mind helping, even if it’s someone who’d done all they could before to make you miserable. Whether it be me or Bessy.”
I bit my lip. “Bessy told you?”
She grimaced. “I stopped by at her parents’ place this morning to tell them about my separation with Don but they’re away on a world cruise. I was surprised to see her there. She pulled me aside and told me the truth—about her affair with Don, the baby, the abortion, how you’d helped her.”
I rubbed the space between my brows, finding my spot in all of this mighty awkward. “You have every right to be angry at her for carrying on with your husband behind your back, but I hope you understand what she’d gone through when he cast her out and forced her to get rid of the baby.”
A sad, ironic smile lifted one corner of her lips. “To be honest with you, I’m not angry with Bessy at all. Don can be deceptively wonderful and Bessy’s always been the kind of girl who would seek approval anywhere she could find it. It would’ve been so easy for him and I feel terrible for her. I’m angry at Don for what he tried to get her to do. I’m angry that he couldn’t even be man enough to face up to the ramifications of his actions but I really shouldn’t expect better.”
“Is she going to tell her parents?”
“She’ll have no choice once she starts to show but I don’t think she’ll tell them who the father is,” Layla said with a resigned shake of her head. “I don’t blame her for that. It’s ugly. They’re going to be furious with her but they’re not going to cast her out. She’s going to stay with her older sister in Florida for now until her parents return.”
I smiled. “I’m glad to know that things are somehow going to work out despite everything.”
And I meant it in my heart.
No matter the past, I was relieved that both Layla and Bessy could escape the man they made the mistake of trusting when he was ultimately just going to destroy them both.
I was just getting in my car hours later, being one of the last to leave after I did another walk through the house to finalize the decision of moving the masquerade party here, when I heard Simone call my name.
“Did I forget something?” I asked with a frown, patting the pockets of my jeans and my bomber jacket to see if anything was missing.
Simone smiled and handed me a small tin container. “No. I just thought I’d send you home with these raspberry tarts. You seemed especially fond of them earlier during dessert.”
I eyed the container she was holding out to me, trying to figure out what her gesture meant.
Since our last confron
tation during the Championette’s annual brunch, Simone and I had treated each other with distant civility for the sake of getting along enough for the Society. We rarely spoke to each other directly or have personal conversations.
I eyed her suspiciously.
She was resplendent, as usual, with her statuesque build, her remarkable beauty, her perfectly tailored clothes, and it was an effort on my part not to feel a bit inadequate especially since I was just in my scuffed black leather biker boots that barely added an inch to my height, well-worn jeans, a shirt and a bomber jacket, and a ponytail. The Championettes had grumbled about my casual style a few times but since I showed no signs of heeding their mutterings, they seemed to have dropped the subject.
Just because the ugly duckling realized she was actually a swan, doesn’t mean that she’s forgotten all the other swans in the lake and that they’re all beautiful too.
“Thank you,” I said politely as I took the tin box. “The tarts were heavenly. The pastry chef has my utmost respect and gratitude.”
“And you have mine, as much as it surprises me to say so.”
I froze for a second before I looked up to meet her gaze. “Pardon?”
“I tried my hardest not to like you—even from the very beginning,” she said bluntly. “Not when Brandon explained to me that you were just part of a scheme and I shouldn’t have anything to worry about. Not when I met you for the first time and you were actually decent to me, even though I was horrid to you. Not when you fought back that day Layla tried to get you banned from joining the Championettes. Not when you stood your ground despite all the terrible things Layla’s minions did to you at the brunch. Not when you tried to save her by keeping her as a co-chairperson when it was clear who everyone else wanted.”
I snorted. “That sounds like a lot of attempts. How many more do you need?”
“Oh, I thought I could keep trying forever,” she answered with a small smile. “I didn’t want to like you because that would lead me to admit that maybe Brandon was right about you after all. And that meant he and I were a lost cause, although I should’ve probably realized that the night of your engagement party, when he kept craning his head around as he danced with me, looking for you while trying to apologize to me for having been put in an awkward position.”
And to think I was bleeding my heart out that night, wondering why I thought I could mean more to Brandon other than the black-and-white contract we’d signed for our marriage of convenience.
“I realized today, after listening to Layla tell me everything, from the truth about Riley, to her abuse at Don’s hands, to Bessy’s situation, that trying to hate you is a useless exercise because nothing would come out of it.”
Her eyes were bright and direct as she stared right at me, that small smile she’d started with widening a little more. “It’s hard to hate someone who doesn’t care about your opinion of her. It’s also harder to hate someone who can’t help but be generous and kind, despite all the nasty things you did to her. It makes one feel like a total bitch.”
Well. What do you know?
“It’s hard not to retaliate and dish back exactly what you’ve been given,” I told her. “The thing is, if I went that way and did that for every bad thing ever done to me, I would’ve become a miserable and angry person. There would’ve been so much bad coming in and out that I would've become horrible as an end result. With my limited options, I chose to be happy, making do with what I got without letting it eat me up.”
I recalled something someone once told me—a great wise man with silver hair and sky blue eyes and many interesting stories about the good, the bad and the in-between.
Sometimes, we become capable of magnanimity because we know what it’s like to be without it.
“You are a good person, Charlotte, and none of your rough edges can really detract from it, no matter how much other people wished they did.” Simone’s smile now stretched broadly across her face, genuine and quite radiant, and while there might always be a gap between us, at least the ice bridge seemed to have thawed.
“Thank you,” was all I could say.
Her eyes grew sad, her smile dimming just a bit. “I regret not having been there for Layla but I’m glad that she at least had someone to help her through this.”
“I’m sure that she would’ve turned to you as well, if it came down to it,” I reassured her. “I just happened to have literally landed smack into the middle of it when I chased down Riley, thinking he was a thief. It kind of snow balled from there.”
Simone shook her head. “No. I know she wouldn’t have come to me and I don’t blame her for it. You see, I avoided topics about Don and I’m sure that Layla knew this. He’d hit on me a couple times before, years ago, and considering that it happened a lot with men, I dismissed it. He’d come on to me too strong, I’ll admit, but I’ve dealt with powerful men like Don before who thought themselves entitled to everything, like my ex-husband for example, so I didn’t think anything more of it. I just avoided him to prevent any awkwardness with my friendship with Layla. I suspected that they were having problems but nothing I could put a finger on because Layla hid her troubles well. If I’d looked a little bit more outside of myself, maybe I would’ve noticed. Maybe I could’ve done something for her sooner.”
I tentatively reached out and touched Simone’s arm. “The world is going to be full of opportunities where we could’ve done something differently. They will keep cropping up because just like the roll of a dice, there are so many possible outcomes from a singular moment. We can’t eliminate the what-ifs but we also shouldn’t torture ourselves with them.”
Simone nodded, looking a bit cheered. "You're absolutely right."
"Even if I'm not, it's sound advice for us who want to stay sane." I grinned and tipped my baseball cap at her. "I have to go home. Thanks for having us, Simone."
She took a step back and gave a little wave of her hand, still smiling. "No. Thank you for having us."
And with that, I left.
Chapter Thirty-Two: All That Is Shattered
When the Maxfields threw a party, they really threw a party.
The family's old but magnificent neo-classical mansion was already a highly coveted real-estate piece with its history and sheer size—a rare find in the bustling heart of downtown. In the muted dusk, the grand house seemed to glow and shimmer. To be admitted behind its gates alone was quite a privilege.
The fact that the celebration was for Martin Maxfield's birthday made the event a definite must in the calendar of anyone who was financially, politically and socially important in the city, if not the country.
For all his normally buoyant yet occasionally sly tendencies, Martin was a well-respected figure in the business world, having gained the favor of both the private and public sectors.
It was no surprise that all kinds of people turned out.
I expected businessmen, politicians, celebrities, socialites, and all kinds of important people.
What I didn't expect was... my mother.
Louisa Samuels in the flesh.
"Charlotte? Are you okay?"
The sound of Brandon's voice seemed warbled and dulled, as if he were somehow speaking to me through a bottle.
I blinked and glanced up at him, his handsome face, creased with concern, coming into focus.
"I need to... I need to leave." My voice was no better—it was raspy and broken and trembling at some parts.
I vaguely noticed Brandon's large, warm hand settle on my shoulder. "Babe, what's wrong?"
"She's here," I whispered, backing up a step only to be reminded by the cold, hard wall behind me that there was nowhere to go. I was trapped in a small, discreet alcove where I'd run for cover the moment I caught sight of her face in the crowd.
I was such a coward but what was I supposed to do?
My mother was so far removed from my reality that she may as well be literally a ghost from my past.
Except that ghosts blur with the smoky f
ringes of the other world. Your mother looks vividly real.
A sense of panic was surging up through me like a nasty acid reflex and I wrestled my shoulder away from Brandon’s firm grip, wanting nothing more but to get away—to dissolve into the wall if I had to.
He wouldn’t let go though. He kept staring at me as if I were a really complicated Math problem he was sure he’d solved before. He didn’t understand that I had to go.
“She’s here,” I hissed urgently, clamping a hand around Brandon’s wrist and wrenching his grip loose. “I don’t know how... I have to go.”
Scowling, he effectively blocked me from where I would’ve launched into a sprint, cradling me close to his side as he swept his gaze around the vast room full of guests.
“She’s here, Brand,” I choked out, squeezing my eyes shut and pressing my face against his black suit, not caring if my make up smudged all over it. “I can’t...”
And suddenly, Brandon’s arm tightened around me. I felt his body tense up as he gently extricated me from the tight clutch I had of him, his hand tipping up my face so I could look up to his.
His hazel eyes were sharp and bright—like the blinding glare of the sun in high noon.
“Your mother.”
I nodded and ran a shaky hand through my hair, uncaring of the moussed and teased mess it raked through.
I lifted my eyes to peek just past Brandon’s shoulder, knowing what I didn’t want to see but looking for it all the same.
“Yes.” I bit the inside of my bottom lip until I tasted the tang of blood, my attention zooming in on the lone figure that hovered just by the door, draped in a soft lilac evening gown, her head following the slow sweep of her eyes as she scanned the party.
Even from across the room, her face looked nearly exactly as I remembered it, and it wrenched painfully at something inside of me. The sunniness of her curly blond hair, the oval-shaped face rendered attractively by the neat features that composed it—apparently, the years didn’t cause her looks to deteriorate as much as they did whatever happy memories I had of her.
The Mischievous Mrs. Maxfield Page 88
