Worth Any Cost: (Adam & Mia #4) (Gaming The System Book 6)

by Brenna Aubrey

“You feeling okay?” she asked. “Do you need me to refill your water bottle?”

  “I need you to come over here and talk to me for a little while.”

  She smiled. “Okay.”

  She plopped down on the bed and took my hand. I told her about the weird visit from Heath, and she asked me questions. She resolved to check in with him and also speak to Kat. But she said that he’d gone into a similar depression when he broke up with his previous boyfriend, years ago.

  We were quiet for a long stretch, each lost in our own thoughts. She stared up at ceiling, her fingers fiddling with mine. But she seemed to be very careful about not touching me in any other way.

  I didn’t feel much like it these days.

  I didn’t feel much like anything. It was too exhausting to even feel.

  “You okay?” Her soft question broke the silence.

  I gave a slight shrug.

  “You seem down. I know that getting sick and incapacitated can be extremely hard on a person like you, so…just checking.”

  “A person like me?”

  She smiled. “Yeah, the ones that are always going constantly and never resting. The ones with too much purpose and not enough time.”

  “‘Too much purpose’? Is that my problem?”

  “I’m starting to come to the conclusion that your addiction isn’t to work. It’s to achievement—you’re addicted to accomplishing the next big thing.”

  I didn’t like that word—addiction. It had too many painful associations for me. But she wasn’t wrong, either. Problem was I had no idea what that next big accomplishment would be, and with all this struggles with the company, I was beginning to question my direction there, as well.

  “Sometimes I feel like…I’m standing at a crossroads. Like something big is about to change what I need to focus on.”

  She turned and looked at me for a long time. My eyelids began to feel weighted down. “I’ve been wondering when you’d get the itch to start finding the next big thing to work on.”

  My eyebrow twitched. She wasn’t even surprised by this news. Why did I get the feeling that, in so many ways, Emilia knew me better than I knew myself? I gently brought her hand to my lips and kissed it.

  She got ready for bed soon after that and fell asleep in minutes. And even though I was practically smothered in a layer of exhaustion myself, I couldn’t sleep. I lay in the darkness staring up at the ceiling, feeling more helplessly enraged over the powerlessness of my health, my company, my future. I was hanging on a precipice, all right. In more ways than one. And that only brought on another headache.

  Fuck. My. Life.

  Chapter 12

  Mia

  In a stroke of the worst luck ever, Adam’s waltz with the Epstein-Barr virus led to me showing up alone at a neighborhood dinner party. The good news? I only had to walk a few hundred yards to the other side of Bay Island in my heels in order to attend. The bad news? The company. They were nice people, our neighbors, but…so not my crowd.

  There’s fish out of water and then there’s…human visiting an alien planet. I was Spock, the only Vulcan in Starfleet. Beam me up, Scotty. There’s no intelligent life down here.

  I would have loved to cancel—citing Adam’s illness as the excuse, of course. But Adam and I had already backed out of previous dinners three times. I feared that our chance of offending the neighbors was reasonably high—even with the very legitimate excuse of his health. So here I was, taking one for the team. Hopefully, my teammate would be duly appreciative.

  These things were bad enough when I had Adam at my side. Then I had a captive audience to rain down all of my snark on—usually in the form of muttered comments only he could hear. He at least pretended to find them amusing.

  Here I was, in Newport Beach’s most exclusive neighborhood, where I now lived. And I was their neighbor, the future wife and future co-owner of a neighborhood home, of that “tech genius kid,” as I sometimes heard them refer to Adam. Indeed, Adam was, at the very least, a decade younger than any of them. And while some, like him, were self-made, most were from second- and third-generation wealth.

  “Mia, so good to see you,” Sonya, my hostess, greeted me at the door. She was one half of a power political couple. She touched her cheek to mine and kissed the air. “How is the sick fiancé? Probably playing it up, like men always do.”

  “Sonya, so glad to see you,” I said, handing her the bottle of wine along with some of Chef’s fresh gourmet butter, packaged in a fancy stoneware crock. Sonya remarked on it, saying she couldn’t wait to try some. I was relieved, almost letting out the breath I was holding. Hostess gifts were a source of half a week of stress for me. It was almost by accident—or the good fortune of having fantastic advisors like Adam’s chef or his assistant—that I made any of the right moves.

  I moved on to shake the hand of Sonya’s husband, Congressional Representative Alan Thurston, an attractive man at least a decade and a half older than her. “Thanks for the invitation, and Adam is so sorry he has to miss out.”

  In truth, Adam was at home playing DE in his pajamas, the fucker. He had cried exactly zero bitter tears that I was going without him. For the sake of his health, he’d refrained from teasing me about having to go alone. But I could tell that he’d been tempted to skirt dangerously close to that edge.

  There were six couples in all—correction, five couples and me and my phantom date who was cruel enough to update me every so often via text message about his progress on the wedding quest. He was probably snickering each time he hit send, goddamn it.

  If he wasn’t so sick, Adam Drake’s ass would be Alderaan and I’d be the Death Star. He’d be feeling a great disturbance in the Force, all right…

  Nevertheless, dinner was pleasant. The house, of course, was gorgeous, with a complete glass-encased dining room displaying an impressive view. I made small talk, and people asked about wedding plans and made the usual jokes about “entering into holy matrimony.” And I pretended to be amused, laughing my fake laugh.

  After dinner, however, shit got real. The men all sat at the table talking business and current events while the wives moved to the couch to sip coffee and gossip. Oh, the willpower I had to summon to keep from rolling my eyes at how little things had changed since the days of Downton Abbey.

  All the men needed were their cigars and smoking jackets to complete the image. Ladies, have we not come further in the past century? We’d gained the right to vote, to own land, and have our own bank accounts. Yet here we were, separating by gender and talking shop.

  “Mia, you are looking wonderful. You’ve got that pre-wedding, blushing-bride thing going on with your skin.” Sonya, our hostess, smiled as she raised her coffee cup—with more Baileys than coffee in it—to her lips.

  I raised a self-conscious hand to my warm cheek. “Oh, thank you.”

  “Maybe it’s her joy over not having to go to school anymore,” Susanna, the neighbor who lived in the house to our right, added cheerfully.

  I frowned at her. Not go to school? What on earth was she talking about? My obvious confusion brought her up short, and she did an almost comical double take.

  “Aren’t you quitting medical school? I’m sorry. I assumed you wouldn’t need attend to anymore.”

  Wouldn’t need to? What the hell? Why would she assume that? Was I only attending school and dedicating all that time, energy, and brainpower to pass the time until I snagged a wealthy husband? Perhaps her whole “career plan” was designed around catching a rich man. But mine wasn’t.

  Adam would be my ideal mate if he only had twenty dollars in his bank account. I was certain of it.

  When I replied, it was through lightly clenched teeth. “I’ve got almost a year and a half down…no reason to quit now.”

  Her smile stilled in her flawless face, her skin glowing bronze from a fake tan. “But it’s not only the four years of schooling, though. After all the school, there’s an internship and residency. And beyond that, a fellowship.”


  I kept forgetting that Susanna’s dad was a retired doctor—a renowned cosmetic surgeon. But she rarely let anyone forget it for long. She was still talking. “I can’t imagine doing all that while trying to set up household, maintain a marriage, and, of course, having babies.” She patted her own recently announced baby bump.

  I fought to keep my face from showing what I was thinking. Naturally, the subject of babies would come up when any woman was about to get married, but it was still a sore subject with me. And because of that, of course, I was reminded that Adam and I hadn’t even discussed it yet. I groaned inwardly. Yet another tense conversation to have on top of the issues with his working and the problems he was having with Jordan.

  So many conversations to have. And yet we hadn’t had them. We danced around them like pros instead.

  I took a deep breath and let it go. “Yes, I’m aware it’s a big life commitment, but I’m still really excited to be a doctor someday.”

  “And Adam is on board with that plan?” asked Trish, a flawless blonde who, for most of the night, had been quiet. Trish was the closest to me in age, and yet she’d grown up a socialite and was now on her second husband, wealthy media magnate James Sinclair.

  “Of course,” I replied, sipping at my coffee and looking around for something—anything—to catch my eye so that I could change the subject. “Oh, that painting above the mantel is gorgeous. Is that Corona del Mar?”

  I knew it wasn’t. I didn’t give a shit. Sonya quickly corrected me. Subject changed.

  Things diverted to a safe subject for a few minutes then circled back around to me. And this time, it was marital advice. Just great.

  I was so going to make the fiancé pay for this.

  “Don’t ever refuse him,” advised Audra, the oldest of the group, in her early fifties. She’d been married the longest amongst us—though she was her husband’s second wife. It was heavily rumored that she’d been the home wrecker responsible for the demise of his first marriage.

  I frowned. “Uh, you mean don’t disagree?” Because I’d fail that one instantly. No wonder she was still married to her hubby. Why get rid of the perfect “yes” woman?

  “No, I’m talking about sex.” I almost spat out my coffee. “He’ll come home late from work or a long trip and want some. You might be tired or you might not be in the mood, whatever. But don’t ever reject him. If he doesn’t get it at home—and if it isn’t spicy and exciting—he’ll find it elsewhere. And easily. Too easily.”

  I almost swallowed my tongue. There was a lot I could say to that. Like what about when I wanted it and he was too tired or not in the mood or jet-lagged or whatever? Equal opportunity sexual demands.

  “That’s the key,” Trish inserted. “Finding the way to make him happy, keep him happy, and minimize conflict. It’s a balancing act.”

  Not even fifteen minutes into this post-dinner girls’ chat and my cell phone was burning a hole in my pocket as I willed it to ring. Please, goddamn it. Please. If I could send a Jedi-like mind message to Kat the way Luke did to Leia at the end of Empire, her head would be ringing off her shoulders right now. With no small despair, I realized that the prearranged time wasn’t for another hour yet. Shit. One more hour of this.

  “How old are you again? Twenty-four?” Sonya asked, refilling her coffee cup. “You have a few years yet. But definitely before you hit thirty, you should start. Don’t you think, Julia?”

  “Botox?” The redhead, whom I’d just met, perked up. “Oh God, yes. I started at twenty-five. Best decision ever.” She smoothed a finger from the corner of her eye down across her cheek, as if to show off how much her muscles could not function of their own accord. She turned to me, stone-faced. “If you want a referral to my dermatologist, I’d be glad to pass along her number.”

  Botox? WTF? They couldn’t possibly be serious…and I was sure my disbelief was all over my face, because Audra, who sat right beside me, patted my knee. “You don’t have to start that young. You have perfect skin, but there’s a lot to be said for preventative measures. You have to plan ahead, because otherwise, you’ll be thirty-something and his eye will stray.” Nods all around, except Julia, who sipped demurely from her cup. “Because it’s everywhere. All the time. In their faces. It’s really hard for them, you know. They constantly have to say no to what is openly offered to them, you know what I mean?”

  Just nod, Mia. Nod. But no…I frowned, completely baffled as to what she was talking about. “No.”

  “Sex, Mia. Women,” Trish supplied. “Women are all around, circling like vultures who can smell the death of a marriage from miles away. And sometimes—many times—they don’t wait till the demise of the marriage to close in.” Everyone avoided glancing at Audra during this speech.

  “He’ll get attention, that’s for sure.” Sonya nodded with a smile hovering on her lips.

  “He already does,” Trish cut in before cheerfully turning to me. “Your future hubby is very easy on the eyes.” I gulped, suddenly feeling nauseated. “You know it’s already happening, don’t you? When he’s gone on trips or whatever, he’s getting sex offered to him on a silver platter every day.”

  At my stricken expression, she smiled. “You have nothing to worry about now. He’s desperately in love. Make sure to keep it that way. Average guys cheat all the time. It happens even when they aren’t constantly offered the golden opportunities that ours are.”

  Julia chimed in. “But sometimes giving a pass to a brief indiscretion is the easiest way to handle it when it does happen. Instead of blowing it all out of proportion.”

  Now I could barely swallow. Adam and I weren’t even married yet, and already they had him cheating on me and me forgiving him for it. I was this close to barfing up my dinner.

  “Unless you’ve got a cheating clause in the prenup, of course,” added Audra, laughing. “Then you can take him to the cleaners.” The women erupted into laughter, and that caught the attention of the men, who wandered over to join us. Naturally, the conversation shifted to a safer subject. Thank the Maker.

  But I was left to stew on their words…on things I hadn’t really thought of before. Like Adam being offered sex at every turn by dozens, scores of beautiful women with model-shaped bodies and perfectly maintained hair and skin. None of them would come home to him in baggy hospital greens and fall asleep exhausted before he could even strike up a conversation.

  Adam had already had a semi-crazy stalker from work. Cari, an intern, had gone from crushing on him to harboring a whacko obsession. It had grown to a point where Adam had had to fire her for doing some horrible, cruel things. Things that had been motivated by her jealousy of me.

  But to think that there were dozens or more where Cari had come from…and some not so crazy. And probably a lot smarter. Most of them wouldn’t give a shit about his workaholic tendencies. They would like what they saw beyond even his monstrous net worth. It didn’t help that Adam had movie-star good looks.

  He really was the perfect package, and up until this moment, I’d had no problems gloating to myself that he was all mine.

  Doubts, insidious with their quiet whispers, began to raise their voices. He was determined to get us married now. Why? I was completely on board with that plan. But what if, someday, I wasn’t enough for him? What if, in a moment of weakness, he gave in to just one of those many, many temptations? No man was perfect, after all…

  Thankfully, not long after that, Katya’s phone call interrupted my mental stewing and allowed me to make quick excuses to my hostess. I told them I had to go home to check on Adam. One of the husbands joked that I should wear a naughty nurse’s costume to cheer him up as I tended to him. None of them knew that Adam was at risk of a spleen rupture, so I laughed it off instead of sharing that personal tidbit about our imposed sex blackout.

  I trudged back to our house, lost in thought. Pressing my thumb to the biometric lock, I entered, quietly shut the door behind me, and climbed the stairs. In our room, Adam was lying in bed, still
playing on his laptop.

  I was so agitated that I stalked straight into the bathroom to collect myself. As I removed my earrings and other jewelry, I stopped before wiping off my makeup. Frozen, I stared at the troubled brown eyes in the mirror.

  Should I let him see me with the makeup on before I took it off? It still looked good. He mostly saw me barefaced around the house. What if he thought I was plain and shabby because of how I dressed?

  A lump formed in my throat, hard to swallow, difficult to breathe through. My mouth went dry. I’d been unwanted before…knew what it felt like. My own father hadn’t wanted me, and all that emotion had been dragged up fresh via my correspondence with Glen.

  My stomach twisted, roiling with nausea.

  Would Adam eventually reject me? I remembered the feeling again, from a time when he had rejected me. Weeks after I’d recovered from cancer, he’d sent me away to my mom’s. We’d lived apart for months without communicating. It had helped us heal, but I’d been despondent. If he left me after we were married, it would feel like that multiplied times a thousand. Oh God.

  And what would happen when he wanted a child? What if I couldn’t give him one? Would he find a woman who could? I hadn’t had a real period since the chemo had ended. Sometimes, I had a light flow or spotting, but nothing that indicated my fertility might return. There was a good chance it was gone forever.

  In ten years, when he was pushing forty, he’d want a baby. And he could find some beautiful young thing who’d give him one.

  And I’d be on the sidelines, standing by, watching him with his new family. Would I be the mature ex-wife, refusing to write a tell-all book about him or do interviews with the press? Would I be stoic while the world was watching, speculating on my humiliation as I suffered in silence?

  Oh, God. I doubled over the sink, yanking on the faucet, feeling every single failure acutely, real and imagined, historical or present. In spite of earlier fears, I splashed cold water on my face. But it did nothing but make my mascara run. How could I face—

  “Did you have a good time?” Adam interrupted when he poked his head into the bathroom. I stood there gaping at myself like a fool in the mirror, the water still running. Blinking, I switched off the faucet.