“Has Patrick given you the papers yet?”
“Papers?” She frowned before remembering with a jolt what he had to be talking about. She inhaled sharply. “Peter, I … I don’t want to be rude, but I think that is something between Patrick and me.”
“Sure, yeah.” He raised both hands defensively. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to meddle, but the legal department called me again today. That’s why I ask.”
Now she was utterly confused. “The legal department? What do they have to do with Patrick’s bank account or my health insurance?”
His face betrayed that he had just made a huge mistake. “Fuck … my, uh, my mistake. Forget I said anything.”
“No.” She shook her head. “What are you talking about?”
Peter groaned. “It’s nothing, really. If Patrick doesn’t want to give you the agreement, it’s his own business. I’m not telling him what to do.”
“What agreement?” As this conversation wore on, she understood less and less.
“The post-nup. Post-nuptial agreement?” He pursed his lips apologetically. “Don’t take it personally. It’s not about you, it’s standard procedure—for families like the Ashcrofts.”
Amy felt alienated, and a huge lump was forming in her throat. Why was Patrick’s friend speaking to her about a post-nuptial agreement when her own husband had never mentioned one?
Of course, she would sign such a thing if that was necessary, even though it made her feel queasy, the thought of signing a piece of paper with only one purpose: to regulate what happened if they divorced. Still, she would sign it. What was really getting to her was the fact that Patrick hadn’t broached the topic with her, but instead a perfect stranger, whom she had met for the first time that night, had brought it up.
She didn’t want to lose face before Peter, so she swallowed her hurt and gave him a shaky smile. “I … I’ll tell Patrick I’ll sign the post-nup, sure.”
He rolled his eyes. “I should have kept my big mouth shut! He’s going to strangle me—”
“It’s okay, Peter,” she cut him off. “I’ll talk to him about it.”
She didn’t want to spend another second in this room, so she hurried to the narrow hall that led to the guest bedroom, where Sarah had deposited her guests’ coats earlier.
But before she reached the bedroom door, Amy heard Patrick’s voice, which sounded anything but calm or casual.
“Goddammit, Cynthia, what are you doing at Sarah’s party? I’m positive she did not invite you!”
“I came with Owen,” a sly female voice said. “I just had to see who has taken my place. What are you doing with such a hillbilly, dear? Did you get her pregnant?”
Amy flinched, feeling her face redden. She stood frozen by the door, unable to move her legs. She knew she should have walked away, for it was clear she would only hear unpleasant things here.
“I advise you to keep your cruel mouth shut.” Patrick sounded livid.
The woman chuckled huskily. “But she is so not your style, Patrick. Where on earth did you find her? At a Salvation Army?”
“If you insult Amy one more time—”
“What is wrong with you, marrying a thing like that?”
“Get out of the way!” Patrick hissed. “Leave me and my wife alone, do you understand?”
There was another husky laugh, and then the woman spat, “You’re making a fool of yourself, being with her.”
“The only one making a fool of herself is you, Cynthia. You’re acting like a jealous, spoiled bitch, but that shouldn’t surprise me anymore.”
“I hope you have fun with your hick from the boondocks,” she spit back. Then she let out a cry. “Let go of my arm, Patrick!” she screeched. “You’re hurting me!”
Amy’s heart beat like a locomotive as she strained to hear against her better judgment.
“Should I ever hear from anyone that you’re talking shit about my wife,” Patrick growled in a voice that gave Amy goosebumps, “you’re in for a nasty surprise.”
“Are you threatening me?”
“Take it any way you want.”
Before Amy could step aside, Patrick stepped out of the room, their coats over his arm. When he saw her, he blanched.
“Amy …”
She was trembling, feeling beyond hurt, as she looked up at him. “Can we go now? Like, right now?”
Chapter 14
Patrick clutched the steering wheel harder and ground his teeth. “He did what?” He couldn’t help letting it the swear out. “For fuck’s sake!”
“Why didn’t you tell me about this marriage agreement?” Amy’s voice sounded as if she might burst into tears any moment. “Did you think I wouldn’t understand? Why did it have to be your friend who broached the subject at a party?”
“I’m going to kill him,” Patrick vowed, his entire body tensing. “It’s not his business to approach you about that at all! Why would he think it is?”
“That’s what I’m asking you!”
“Damn it, Amy!” He had to restrain himself from yelling. He breathed in and out a few times instead. “I don’t want a nuptial agreement at all! I’ve told Peter already, because he kept going on about it.”
“But he told me it’s standard procedure.”
“He has no business meddling in our marriage whatsoever!” The anger was making Patrick sweat, so he turned up the air conditioner.
He saw red when he thought about Peter’s nerve, cornering Amy at Sarah’s party, only to tell her about the alleged necessity of a nuptial agreement. Whatever his friend might have thought he was doing, it was a disgrace! Patrick had told him repeatedly that he could shove the idea where the sun didn’t shine. That was nobody’s business but his own, and nobody had the right to interfere!
And now Amy thought they really needed such a contract. She wouldn’t leave the subject alone now, and it was beginning to give him a headache.
The whole day had been a disaster.
First, he’d had a disappointing call with Hanson, during which he found out the old fox had actually found a different investor, just as Peter had warned. That meant the shit would hit the fan any day now, unless Patrick found a way to salvage the deal despite this new development.
Then, he’d gotten a call from his mom, who’d heard from a gossiping acquaintance that he was married and hadn’t told her. It had taken a lot of persuasion to prevent her from getting the next flight home to meet her daughter-in-law.
After that, he’d spent hours sitting in a series of meetings, and on the way home, he’d been stuck in traffic for what felt like forever. At the house, he’d had to convince Amy that all of her misgivings were groundless before getting into an argument about a damned credit card.
And, as if that wasn’t enough, his ex-girlfriend Cynthia had shown up at the party and made a scene, and Amy had overheard every word of it. Together with Peter’s unbelievable gall, that had been the icing on the mud pie of this godawful day.
Now he was sitting in the car with his unhappy wife, barely able to concentrate on the slow-going traffic on the highway to Stamford and realizing that he hadn’t been this furious in a very long time.
“I want to sign this agreement,” she sniffled. “You know I don’t want your money, Patrick.”
“Of course I know that!” He stepped on the gas angrily, and the BMW shot off, but he came to his senses and eased off again. Amy didn’t seem to have noticed. He glanced at her, only to get even angrier with Peter. Amy had averted her face and was staring out the side window, her arms wrapped around herself.
Damn it! Damn it all to hell! He felt like hitting the innocent steering wheel in frustration.
When they had left for Sarah’s party, he’d looked at Amy and called himself a lucky bastard. She’d looked preternaturally beautiful to him. Only a few hours later, she was close to a tearful breakdown, shaken by Peter’s post-nup bullshit and the overheard insults from Cynthia, the stuck-up cow whose brain had probably been suffocated by too
much hair spray.
He didn’t want his wife unhappy and despondent like this. Because he didn’t want her to start doubting their marriage.
“Darling.” His body was tense, but he forced himself to appear collected. “We love each other, and we don’t need a post-nup.”
“But—”
“Amy,” he cut her off firmly. He was going to get an ulcer if he had to continue seeing her with a drained face and glassy eyes. “By foregoing a marriage agreement, I want to show you that I trust you.”
“But what about your family and friends and acquaintances? What will they think? I’ll tell you what they’ll think—that I only married you because I’m a calculating gold digger.”
Her sobs were too much for him. “That’s nobody’s business but our own!” he said louder than he’d meant to.
“I want your family and friends to like me.” Now she was crying in earnest, and Patrick was at a loss of what he should do. With a slow truck behind them and no emergency shoulder, he could hardly pull over now. Glancing at her nervously, he noticed with mounting panic that her shoulders were shaking, and he cursed himself for mentioning any of this at the airport when they’d just arrived from Rome.
“Jesus, Amy!” he whined. “Please stop crying, baby. I can’t bear to see you like this.”
“I … I can’t,” she sobbed, hiccupping. “That woman … What she said about me …”
He cursed Cynthia again. If she’d crossed their path right then, he’d have strangled her.
“Please don’t take any of that to heart, love. It was pure, stupid jealousy speaking—”
“You two were a couple!”
He prayed this wouldn’t turn into a major scene but fully expected the worst. “She didn’t mean anything to me,” he explained, faking calm. “Amy, we just went on a few dates, and then I called it off. She can be such a monster, as you just saw.”
“A monster that insulted me,” she corrected.
“A stupid monster,” he specified.
“She asked you if I was pregnant!”
He closed his eyes for a beat too long before concentrating on the road again. “Cynthia is a greedy and jealous person. She only said what she said to hurt me, and I’m infinitely sorry you had to overhear it. Please don’t let her words get under your skin, even though it may be hard.”
But Amy didn’t seem capable of calming down. “Didn’t I tell you I look like a country bumpkin next to your people?”
Patrick gritted his teeth. “You do not look like a country bumpkin, goddammit!”
“People must think I’m pregnant, or else you wouldn’t have married me. And they all think I’m a tasteless hick and … and wonder what you see in me!”
“What people are you talking about now?” He was beginning to lose his patience, and that wasn’t a good sign. He didn’t want to see her crying, but he was growing weary. He didn’t know what else he could say to make her drop that fixed idea she had of what people thought of her. “So far, you’ve only met Barbara, Stuart, and now a few of my friends. And apart from that bitch Cynthia, nobody said a word, Amy.”
Of course, he decided not to mention the call he’d received from his sister, since she had also asked him whether Amy was pregnant. He’d learned from that one mistake of saying too much, so he wouldn’t tell his wife about the call, not even under duress.
“Didn’t you notice the looks people were giving me all evening?” she wailed.
“What looks? I mean, of course people were curious, but they would have been curious about any new person in their circle.”
Amy shook her head wildly. “That wasn’t just curiosity,” she whispered brokenly. “I saw quite clearly what they thought when they saw me at your side.”
Even though Amy was a very sober person, extremely sensible in most situations, Patrick was getting the feeling that she was obsessing over something that wasn’t real. It was so unlike her, getting all worked up about such a small thing.
“Don’t you think you might have gotten the wrong idea?” he probed cautiously but firmly.
“What?”
“Yes, love,” he sighed heavily. “It seems like you’re obsessing over this more than it warrants.”
“Patrick,” she answered in a trembling voice, “I felt like an inadequate outsider, someone who can never live up to those other women, and they were giving me condescending looks.”
He hit the turn signal and pulled into the family estate as the gate opened. “Then please tell me what I can say or do so you don’t feel like that anymore.”
“There’s one thing,” she whispered. “Let’s sign this agreement—”
“No, no,” he cut her off gruffly, barreling down the private road that led to the house. “We’re not going to that just because Cynthia is a scheming bitch and Peter stuck his nose where it doesn’t belong!”
She burst into fresh tears. “But I don’t want you to think badly of me!”
Her logic was so twisted that he thought he was beginning to understand what his father had meant when he referenced “female hysteria.” Nevertheless, he wanted to be an understanding husband, someone who took his wife and her worries seriously. So he parked the car right in front of the steps, pulled the hand brake, and turned off the engine, then he leaned toward her and pulled her close. Thanks to the stupid center console, this position was anything but comfortable, but he held her close to his chest and murmured soothing words into her ear. “I’d never think badly of you, Amy. And most of all, I’d never suspect you of having ulterior motives. Okay? Can we please forget this whole thing?”
Her reply was barely audible. “You don’t … don’t know how much I want your … family to like me. They … They mustn’t think badly of me.”
“They don’t.” He took a deep breath. “And people like Cynthia can go to hell, for all I care.”
“What she said … it hurt,” she confessed haltingly.
“I totally understand, but that’s what she wanted to achieve. She’s mean and cruel, and you can’t allow her to get under your skin. That’s all she wants.”
Amy nodded weakly.
Very slowly, the corners of Patrick’s mouth curved into a smile. “And do you know how we can get back at her and any other malicious witches out there?”
Amy hiccupped. “How?”
“Just by being happy. So much happier than they are. I know that would drive them mad.”
Chapter 15
Amy was in bed when Patrick came home.
She didn’t stir as he snuck into the room, though she could hear the rustling of his clothes in the dark. He seemed to assume she was sleeping soundly, for he didn’t turn on any lights and was careful not to make a noise. That was very considerate, and she was grateful, but she was also still utterly depressed that he’d stood her up tonight.
Tonight of all nights.
A month ago today, they’d been married in Rome. She had marked the occasion by surprising him with a home-cooked meal and planning a romantic, candle-lit evening. She had spent the whole day in the kitchen, preparing a typical Italian dinner with several courses, which she knew Patrick would love. The charmed cook had stood by, watching with delight. Amy had even made fresh pasta.
But now the food was in the garbage. He hadn’t been home by eight as he’d promised, and she hadn’t been able to reach him. The candles had already burned down halfway when she’d finally received a text saying he had a conference call with Japan and would be late.
Late had turned out to be two a.m.
She didn’t want to complain, for she knew he worked hard. And she also knew an important deal had floundered while he was in Rome—with her. She felt indirectly responsible for his company’s loss.
To compensate for the missed deal, Patrick had promised to do everything he could to reel in new business partners. And he was. He worked like a dog, even on the weekends, and came home late most days.
Witnessing his efforts, Amy had vowed one thing to herself: She wo
uld not be one of those whining wives who made their husbands feel guilty for working long and hard. She realized that success didn’t fall from the sky. She would encourage Patrick in whatever it was he had to do, not complain and make him miserable.
He had also assured her that it was only a busy phase that would settle back to normal once things were smooth again. Soon, he said, he would have more time for her again, with no need to set up camp in his office. She was certain of that, because he’d said so. There were stressful times in every job, and there would be time when it wasn’t like this. He couldn’t work day and night on a permanent basis after all.
She reassured herself with this thought, but after a disappointment such as tonight, it wasn’t exactly easy to remain optimistic. Still, she turned over on her back and looked into his exhausted face after he slipped into bed beside her.
“Hi,” she whispered.
“Hi,” he echoed contritely. “I’m so sorry—”
“Shh,” she cut him off with a forced smile, raising a hand to his stubbly cheek. “You look terrible.”
“I feel terrible.”
Amy scooted a little higher and sat up, leaning against her pillow. “Do you want me to fetch you something to eat? You must be starving.”
“No, I’m fine,” he whispered, his voice rough as sandpaper. “We had burgers and fries at midnight, and it feels like I swallowed a ton of bricks.”
She made a commiserative sound and put a hand on his shoulder while he found a comfortable position and pulled the covers up high.
“God, I could sleep for an entire week.”
“Poor baby,” she whispered and smiled at the way his dark hair was all mussed up and wild. “You certainly deserve a quiet week.”
He mumbled an affirmative.
She sighed and scooted down again, until she lay right next to him, then she raked her fingers through his hair in soothing motions. Her heart still beat like a drum every time she looked at him, touched him, or simply lay next to him. She loved him with all her heart and was sure the feeling would never pass.
But when she looked at the dark circles under his eyes, worry made its way into her. She licked her lips, feeling a strong urge to take care of him, feed and pamper him. She just wanted him to be okay.
Just one kiss (The Ashcrofts Book 1) Page 14
