by K. M. Scott
Nuzzling her neck, I nodded. “Always. Remember, we’re having a team. That ought to make her happy.”
Olivia forced a smile and pushed the front door open, and I was sure as I followed her in that my mother must have said something to upset her when I wasn’t around. Probably something about the seating arrangements, which she’d disrupted about a dozen times already as she insisted on inviting more friends.
My mother sat waiting for us in the living room surrounded by papers I had a feeling would mean she either wanted to add more guests to the list or she planned to use our visit to pick my brain about some investment she wanted to make against the advice of her financial planners. She stood as she saw us come into the house, her brown eyes wide with excitement at seeing us for the third time this week.
“Come in, come in! How is the soon-to-be married couple today?”
Olivia just smiled, so I filled in the empty space. “We’re great, Mom. Excited and exhausted, but great.”
Offering us a seat on the couch, she sat down across from us in her favorite Queen Anne chair. “It’s going to be beautiful. Samantha and I are in constant contact, and we’re ready here. The caterers tell me they’ll be coming bright and early Saturday morning, so you have nothing to worry about there. It’s going to be the most beautiful wedding ever!”
My mother’s enthusiasm didn’t seem to be something Olivia shared, if the almost pained look on her face was any indication. Nudging her, I winked in her direction and hoped she knew that my offer to bail on this entire enterprise was open. I loved my mother, but all it would take would be one word and I’d happily run away with Olivia to any place she desired.
“I’m sure you and Samantha have it under control, Mom. We can’t thank you enough for letting us have the ceremony and reception here. Right, honey?”
Olivia nodded and pressed a smile onto her lips. “Yes, thank you, Alexandria. It’s going to be a lovely wedding, and you’ve helped so much.”
My mother reached over and squeezed her arm. “Of course, dear. My home is your home. It’s only right to have the wedding here since you had the engagement party here. That seems like a million years ago, doesn’t it?”
It did. So much had happened since then with all of us.
“How is Abbi doing?” Olivia asked, obviously hoping to direct my mother to a non-wedding topic of conversation.
My mother’s face grew dark, and shaking her head, she said sadly, “Oh, I’ll tell you all about that in a little while. That whole Abbi and Kane situation has me beside myself, Olivia. But first, I have other things to discuss with the two of you.”
I felt Olivia tense up next to me and gently took her hand in mine to give it a supportive squeeze to let her know whatever my mother had up her sleeve, it would be okay. I hoped she understood my unspoken meaning that in the end, it was just her and me. Just the two of us, and that’s all that mattered in this circus our wedding had become.
“What’s up, Mom?” I asked, truly wishing she would want investment help.
She gathered up the papers from the table in front of her and tapped them into a neat pile. “Well, I thought with your wedding right around the corner that I should take care of some details that have been on my mind for a long time. So I met with my lawyer and wanted to show you what I did.”
I knew what she was referring to. My mother looked on money how other people thought of air or food. To her, it was a necessity one should never take for granted. That Stefan and I had made more than enough to live comfortably for a long time seemed to escape her attention, but I’d always chalked that up to her still really thinking of us as boys instead of grown men capable of making our own money.
“Mom…”
She held up her hand to cut me off before I could begin to say once again that she didn’t have to do anything like that. “Cassian March, I’m not going to live forever. A will is absolutely necessary, and you know it. I can’t bear the thought of my sons fighting over my money in front of a judge, likely one I know well. It would mortify me from the grave.”
The idea of her being embarrassed by us fighting over her money after she was dead although she never had even the tiniest problem with the kind of club we ran for years amused me. This was my mother. Sex and what people did between themselves even in a fantasy club she didn’t give a damn about. Her children quarreling over money surrounded by lawyers in a courtroom? That mortified her.
“Okay, Mom. We’re all ears.”
She handed Olivia a copy of the will and began to explain why she’d left us what she did. “I know you’ve made good money and the two of you are financially independent, but this is March money that came from your father’s hard work and that I’ve taken care of since he died. He always meant for you boys to be comfortable so you could live the life he spent most of his time working toward.”
Olivia turned toward me with a look of confusion on her face. “Didn’t your father leave you money in his will? The thing with the three of you having to work together to make something successful in order to receive any of it?”
“Yeah, and when the club became a success, we were given the money he left us.”
“Exactly, but Cassian, he left me a sizeable amount I need to make sure goes to the ones I love. That includes you two. Now that you’re getting married, I don’t want Olivia to be dependent on anyone. Not that you’re not going to be blissfully happy, but somewhere down the road she may want to invest money in a business or a cause near and dear to her heart and I don’t want her to have to ask anyone for permission to do that.”
“Alexandria, that’s so generous of you. You didn’t have to do that,” Olivia said in a stunned voice.
My mother leaned forward toward her and smiled. “Yes, I did. You are every bit a member of this family already, and I wanted you to see that. Plus, your fiancé doesn’t understand what it’s like to be the wife of a successful man, but you will and I want to make sure you have as many choices as he does. I’m not saying you two won’t be together forever. I was married to Cassian until the day he died, but I won’t lie. It would have been nice to have some money of my own when he was alive.”
I heard the pain from those days in my mother’s voice now and understood why she wanted to make sure Olivia was taken care of. Maybe if she’d had a way to support herself like my father took care of her when he was alive, she would have made different choices when she found out about his infidelities and the children of those affairs.
But I wasn’t my father.
“Mom, I know what you’re saying, but Olivia doesn’t have to worry.”
Her warm brown eyes looked into mine and she nodded. “I know you’re nothing like your father, Cassian. I know. But it can’t hurt to have a little money on the side. My mother used to call it pin money, so think of it that way. It’s just me giving Olivia some pin money after I’m gone.”
A little over a million dollars of pin money. I saw Olivia’s eyes grow wide as she saw the amount.
“Alexandria, this is too much. I feel awkward about this.”
“Then think of it as money you can spend when all those children you and Cassian have are driving you crazy,” my mother said with a smile.
Once again, Olivia tensed up next to me, so I quickly moved to change the subject from our future children to Abbi and her current situation.
“So how is Abbi, Mom? Is she still at the Anna Maria Island house?”
Leaning back in her chair, she shook her head. “Oh, that poor thing! She really is so sweet, and I know Kane thinks he’s doing the right thing by keeping himself from her. I do. God knows that awful mother of his brainwashed him into thinking the worst of himself. For that, I hope she’s rotting in hell right now. But Abbi is devastated that he doesn’t want to be with her. The poor thing cries and cries, and then she spends the rest of the day in bed. My heart breaks for her.”
“I’m sure Kane is devastated too,” Olivia said in my brother’s defense. “I know he was so thrilled when
I told him about the baby. You should have seen the look on his face. First he was shocked and then he looked happier than I’d ever seen him before.”
“Oh, I know, honey,” my mother said with a nod. “He’s a good person deep down, but all that damage that mother of his did has taken its toll. I still to this day can’t figure out what your father saw in that woman, Cassian. If only she’d agreed to let him bring Kane to live with us when he asked, he’d be so different now. But we can’t change what she did. All we can hope is that he’ll see his way back to Abbi soon. I don’t know what will happen if he doesn’t.”
“I think Kane just has to work some things out,” I said quietly, not really understanding what his issues truly were as I’d only just in the last few months found out about his past. “Just give him some time.”
“Have you seen him? Stefan said he’s back living in those rooms at the club.”
I shook my head. “No, I haven’t. I’ve been so busy with the wedding plans that I haven’t even had a chance to go to see him.”
“Is he still going to be a groomsman?”
Olivia and I looked at each other for the answer, but neither of us had one. I’d asked Kane to be in the wedding, but with all that had happened, I wasn’t sure he was up to it.
“I don’t know, Mom.”
The three of us sat in silence for a moment, each no doubt thinking of the misery Kane must have been going through. Here we were planning this elaborate wedding, complete with ice sculptures, champagne towers, and a cake that could feed a Third World country for a month, and just miles away he sat alone in those rooms in the empty building that used to be our club. I’d tried to talk to him right after he sent Abbi away, but in his drunken state he’d wanted nothing to do with me or my help.
“Well, we better get going, Mom,” I said abruptly, suddenly needing to be alone with my soon-to-be wife and away from wedding plans and all of Kane’s problems.
A look of surprise and then confusion crossed my mother’s face. “So soon? I was hoping we could visit for a little bit before the wedding, which is just a few days away.”
As if we were reading one another’s minds, Olivia and I stood in unison. “I wish we could, Mom, but we have a million things to do before Saturday. Once all this wedding business is finished and we get back from our honeymoon, I promise we’ll come visit.”
She smiled up at us and with a twinkle in her eye said, “I’m hoping that you’ll come back with news for me about a grandchild, you two. You’re taking an extended honeymoon, so you’ll have more than enough time to work on a family. Have you begun to look for a house since you’ll have to leave that condo with a new baby?”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Olivia’s face contort into a look of terror. She graciously begged off answering the question of a baby and basically racing through our honeymoon to get home to be pregnant, but I saw as clear as day that my mother’s suggestion of us starting a family had rankled Olivia.
“Bye, Mom,” I said nicely as we moved to leave, uncomfortable with how quickly she had us trading in our newlywed bliss for diaper duty and sleepless nights.
*
Quiet since returning from visiting my mother, Olivia stood in the doorway to our bedroom as I checked our reservations for the trip. Hoping to find out what was wrong without directly asking her, I said casually, “My mother seems to have really taken to Abbi, almost like a daughter. I always thought she wanted at least one girl after Stefan.”
“Your mother seems obsessed with Abbi and that baby. Letting her live out at the Anna Maria Island house and basically taking her under her wing,” she said sharply as she turned to head into the bedroom.
Something was definitely wrong. Olivia had always loved my mother. Never before had she said anything even the slightest bit negative about her. Closing my laptop, I followed her into the room and found her already in bed. I crawled under the covers next to her and wrapped my arms around her shoulders.
“Everything okay? You seemed on edge at my mother’s today,” I whispered into her ear as I squeezed her to me.
As she had out at the house, she tensed up. “I’m fine. Just worn out with all this wedding stuff.”
I snuggled next to her and buried my face in her long red hair, loving its vanilla and flowers scent. “It will all be over soon and then we’ll have nothing but time alone on our honeymoon. I can’t wait.”
“Yeah, me too, Cash,” she said flatly. “I think I just need to get some sleep. I’m sure I’ll be better in the morning.” Turning over, she kissed me quickly on the lips and rolled away from me. “Night.”
Clearly, she wasn’t feeling in the mood to talk about whatever was wrong, and she wasn’t interested in subtly letting me know either. I didn’t blame her, though. Between dealing with the wedding planner and all this talk of children we were supposed to have, it was no wonder Olivia felt more pressure than I did. For me, all getting married really involved was having the right tux and making sure Stefan had the ring when we got to our places at the altar. For Olivia, it meant everything from repeated fittings for her gown, dealing with seating charts and irritating relatives who didn’t seem to understand this was our day and not theirs, and every other little thing that came with this wedding.
Kissing her softly on the shoulder, I whispered, “I love you” and rolled onto my back, my mind traveling back to a day long ago, a day with my father I’d never forgotten.
His blue eyes stared down into mine with a look that told me he meant business. “Cassian, you stay in the car and I’ll be out in a little while. Don’t get out of this car. Do you understand me?”
I nodded as he locked all the doors around me and closed his driver’s side door. That my father trusted me and all of my ten years to stay alone in the car meant the world to me, and as I watched him walk up the sidewalk into a house that was less than half the size of our house, I was proud that he believed in me.
For a half hour, I sat there in the front seat—the seat of honor, as far as I was concerned—watching the front door to that tiny house and waiting to see my father. Children played in the yards to the left and right of the house, but no one played in the yard in front of me. When he finally opened the door to come back out, his face was even more serious than usual, and I wondered what could have happened to make that happen.
By the time he sat beside me again in the driver’s seat, his frown had changed back to the smile I was used to seeing and he turned to face me. “Cassian, I don’t want you to tell your mother where we went today. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
“It would hurt her if she knew, and the last thing I want to do is hurt her.”
He stared intently at me, as if he wanted me to believe him, and I nodded. “Okay, Dad. I won’t tell her.”
As we drove back toward our house, he said quietly, “Cassian, I hope someday you find a woman as wonderful as your mother.” He stopped and then added, “And I hope you’re smart enough to see how wonderful she is.”
I stared up at the ceiling as that day when my father took me to one of his mistress’s houses replayed in my mind. I didn’t really understand at that time what he meant, but years later just before he died he said those words once more. I wasn’t sure I even understood what he meant then either.
But I understood now.
My father lay in his bed, a shell of his former self. The man I’d always known as so full of life now looked defeated by the cancer that had ravaged his body. His blue eyes still sparkled, though, as he looked up at me. Alone with me for one of the few times that last day, he seemed to want to speak to me about something.
“Cassian, do you remember that day I took you for a drive and we stopped at that house?” he asked in a raspy voice barely above a whisper.
“Yeah, Dad. I was about ten.”
“Do you remember what I said to you when we drove away from there?”
I thought about it and shaking my head, I lied. “No. I’m sorry.”
He took a deep breath in, and wincing, exhaled slowly before he said, “I told you that I hoped someday you’d find someone as wonderful as your mother and that you’d be smart enough to see how wonderful she is. I’m not going to be around to see you with that person, but I want you to always remember what I’m saying here. Find someone as wonderful as your mother and don’t make the mistakes I’ve made because if she has any sense she’ll leave you if you do what I did.”
“Okay, Dad.”
“Don’t be like me, Cassian. You’ll miss too much along the way.”
I turned to listen to Olivia lightly snore next to me and hoped wherever my father was that he saw I hadn’t made the mistakes he’d made. I looked like him and carried his name, but I’d learned the lesson he’d wanted me to and found someone as wonderful as my mother.
And in just a few days I was going to make her my wife.
Chapter Three
Kane
Rolling over, I buried my head in the pillow as the floor pushed hard against my ribs. Still drunk from the night before, I felt my stomach churn from all the alcohol I’d sent down my throat and for a moment I worried I might puke right there in my makeshift bed. I took a deep breath and let it out slowly, then I took another, hoping to put off getting sick.
This was my life now. Not that I didn’t deserve it. Fuck yeah I deserved it. Nobody was arguing with that. I deserved to spend my nights laid out on a beat up wood floor that made my back feel like shit.
Fuck, I deserved to be in jail, so having to spend time in my shitty rooms at the club was way more than I should have.
This was how I spent my time when I wasn’t so fucked up that I blacked out. Well, that wasn’t altogether true. When my eyes were open, I either beat up on myself or missed Abbi so much my chest hurt like someone was carving out my heart with a dull-edged knife.
God, why did I ever think I should have someone so gentle and sweet in my life?
I rolled over onto my back and covered my eyes with my arm. I had no idea what time it was or even if it was day or night. And I didn’t care. Nothing mattered anymore.
