LIAM
When I got the letter from Mel that morning, Stephen and Larry were the first two people I called. Melanie’s demands had really put a dampener on my day, and I needed my team around me. I might have been successful at navigating my way through the complicated world of business for the past ten years, four of them alone, but this was a whole new ballgame.
What sort of rights did a father have? Movies and the media seem to indicate that the mother always has priority, but didn’t it count for something that Mel had left Lizzie with me? Didn’t that mean that she forfeited her entitlement as primary caregiver?
I put these questions to Larry and Stephen, but neither of them could give me a straight answer. I guess it wasn’t their fault; Stephen was a PR expert, the one who controlled the way the media perceived me, the one who got me interviews for the Wall Street Journal and Inside Trader. He didn’t know the ins and outs of custody battles of babies. I thought he might know a little though. He was paying alimony for an ex-wife and two children of his own, after all.
Larry was a corporate lawyer. His expertise was in fighting in my corner when it came to deals and agreements. He got me the best contracts and helped steer me in the right path from a legal perspective. He had plenty of PR skills, too, and there wasn’t a single time I tried to call and he refused to pick up the phone, no matter what time it was.
But there was someone missing that morning, someone who could look past the public image, the media appearance, the bottom line. Someone who I trusted to have my best interests at heart. So, when I asked Eddie to go and fetch Elle for me, I knew that I was making the right choice.
I got the impression that Larry wasn’t a fan of Elle. He saw her as nothing more than an air-headed beauty who didn’t know what she was doing outside of the world of fashion. He hadn’t known her before, and he didn’t know her now. He didn’t know that she was intelligent, honest, and loyal.
When she corrected him in front of me, he was ready to burst, and I had to conceal a smile. Watching her defend me so passionately and seeing her so ready to fight for me made me realize things that I’d been trying to hide. Being with her again made me feel like I was part of a team, a team that had each other’s best interests at heart, every step of the way.
It shouldn’t have surprised me to see that she was so adamant that Lizzie not be taken from me. After all, Elle was the one up first in the morning, before Helena. She was the one to ensure that Lizzie was clean and fed before she drank a single drop of coffee or ate a single slice of toast. She didn’t have to do any of it, but she did it because she loved her.
When we were together in bed, I felt a different kind of love from her, too. The love between a man and a woman, the kind that just happens and transcends mere physical attraction. When I lie on top of her, looking down at her, I felt it. But I also felt it in the mornings, when we were both half asleep, and I slid an arm over her and pulled her close to me. I’d never felt this with any other woman.
Dammit, I wanted to kick myself. I’d underestimated just how easy it would be to have Elle back in my life. Or perhaps I’d known all along, and that’s why I went ahead with the plan in the first place. I didn’t know which one was more accurate, but I wasn’t about to spend too much time feeling guilty about anything. All that mattered was that she was here with me now.
Every night, when it was time for bed, I thought about how I should have been going into my own room, at least if the official arrangement was anything to go by. But I didn’t want to. I wanted to feel her with me, feel her body on mine, her breasts in my hands, my mouth. I wanted to be inside her, to watch her orgasm, to feel her spasming with pleasure, holding me so tightly I could barely breathe.
After Larry and Stephen left, Elle stayed with me in the study, and she came around to my side of the desk and held me to her, kissing my head. “We won’t let her get away with this,” she whispered to me. “I’m with you every step of the way.”
I stood up, and this time it was my turn to wrap my arms around her. “I don’t know what I’d do without you,” I said. I stroked her cheek. “Let’s go out for dinner. We can get out of here for the night. I want you all to myself.”
“All right,” she said, a soft blush flushing her cheeks.
That evening, after we came home from our meal, we walked upstairs and went into our respective bedrooms. But, like always, I couldn’t bear to be apart from her, and my bedroom now seemed so cold and empty. Wearing nothing but my underwear, I padded down the hallway and let myself into her room.
She was waiting for me, this time wearing a sexy lace basque, complete with suspenders. Within seconds, I was on the bed, my mouth watering. I kissed her thighs, unpinning the suspenders and rolling her stockings down her smooth, slim legs. She grinned and pulled me up to her, and I was hard, and desperate to claim her.
But we both heard a noise that made us pause; down the hall, in the nursery, Lizzie was bellowing loudly. I looked down at Elle. “Helena will have it covered,” I said. “Now, where were we?”
But Lizzie didn’t seem to want to settle at all that night, and despite Helena’s valiant efforts, nothing was going to quiet my daughter down that easily. We groaned and got off the bed, and Elle pulled her robe around her. “Let me go get her,” she said, and she slipped out of the bedroom.
She returned with Lizzie, who was wide-awake, completely oblivious to the drama she’d inadvertently caused that day. It felt good to have her close, and neither Elle nor I minded that we’d been disturbed at a time when we’d rather have had some space.
As she had in the morning when we’d woken up, Lizzie now lay between us, having stopped her crying since coming into the bedroom.
“Do you ever get the feeling you’re being totally played by a three-month-old baby?” I asked, stroking Lizzie’s belly as she reached for my finger in her strong fist and held it firmly. She was gazing up at me and I looked at her beautiful eyes. Born with the brightest of blue orbs, they’d now developed into a stunning hazel, with swirls of green and brown.
I looked from Lizzie to Elle, saying nothing but thinking about how good it felt, all of us together, and how much I wished that Lizzie could have been Elle’s and mine from the very beginning so that we could have avoided all this nonsense.
27
________
ELLE
When I was thirteen, my friends and I went camping in the woods behind our house. Our yard backed onto the forest, or what, to us, looked and felt like a forest. In reality, it was probably little more than a group of trees that local town planning hadn’t bulldozed yet. Still, when you’re thirteen, sitting in a tent with your girlfriends, shining flashlights in each other’s faces and telling ghost stories to one another, it feels like camping.
That summer, when we were building dens and making small fires on which we roasted marshmallows and tried – unsuccessfully - to cook potatoes, we came across a lady’s purse. The black leather sat incongruently in the grass and I was the one who picked it up and examined it. It was empty, but I could tell it was a designer purse. The stitching was so neat and the weight of the bag, plus the smell of the leather, told me it was expensive.
“Whoever’s thrown this away doesn’t realize that the bag’s probably worth more than whatever was inside,” I said. Even though my three friends and I were intrepid explorers who’d hiked thousands of miles through prehistoric jungle on our time-traveling mission to discover lost dinosaurs, we returned to the present day and I hopped over the fence to take the purse to my mom.
She called the police, and it turned out that indeed, the bag was expensive, and had recently been snatched in a home burglary. The purse was worth three thousand dollars, and on returning it to its owner, my friends and I received a hundred bucks each. Not only did we also get free ice-cream from the parlor in town, but we were also featured on the ninth page of the local Albany Herald. I still have a weathered copy: I’m standing with Stacey, Kayleigh, and Dina next to our tent, and we
all have proud grins on our faces.
That was the first time I’d ever been in the paper, and it was for a good cause. Besides, tucked away on the ninth page, nobody but my old friends and I would have even remembered anything about our serendipitous discovery.
Now, fifteen years later, I’d graduated from the ninth page to the very front, but instead of feeling proud, I simply felt sick. My bowl of Apple Crunch remained untouched, my coffee cup halfway to my lips, poised there, as my fingers trembled.
“She Stole My Baby!” screamed the obnoxious headline. At first glance, I hadn’t even paid it any attention, until I saw a picture of myself, the one taken as I parked the car in the city just after the engagement was announced. I was tucking a strand of hair behind my ear, the ring on my finger capturing the viewer’s attention.
Standing in the main picture, placed deliberately under the words, was a beautiful woman, with long, dark hair. She had her arms folded and was looking at the camera with an angry, defiant spark in her eyes. I didn’t have to look at the caption underneath to see that she was Melanie, Lizzie’s mother.
It sounds strange, but the first thing that crossed my mind was that this woman had had sex with Liam. Jealous rage coursed through me, and while I know that it was ridiculous, I couldn’t help but imagine the two of them in bed together. Was she good? Liam must have enjoyed it. She was certainly stunning, and as a personal trainer, she had a toned, sculptured body.
Since Liam and I sat as eighteen-year-olds in a beautiful hotel on the lake, the night of our graduation, neither of us had been saints. Like Liam had pressed upon me, college was a time to spread our wings, to be free and not be tied down by a relationship that would never work when we were so many thousands of miles apart. I had boyfriends in college. I had sex in college. I had sex after college, too, although not as much as I thought I would have been having as an adult.
Liam, too, had had his share of women. I couldn’t be jealous of them. Like my ex-boyfriends, they were all ancient history. But she was different.
Melanie. She’d given him Lizzie, and now it was painfully clear that rather than being ancient history, she was very much part of the present. And if the headline was anything to go by, she wasn’t going away without a fight.
I tried to be convinced by what Liam had told me: that Melanie was simply trying to hurt him, whether it was by hitting his pocket, or by threatening to take his daughter away. But this was something else, surely. I had no idea why she’d come after me.
He was already at work, and I didn’t know if he’d even seen the papers. I was pretty sure that by now, either Stephen or Larry would have told him, but although I checked my phone, there was no sign of him having tried to call me. I felt very alone and open to attack. Against my better judgement, I read the article.
According to either Melanie herself or some newly-appointed publicist she’d hired, Liam had known about her pregnancy and had talked to her about trying to buy the baby from her before she was even born. Melanie had refused. After her birth, Melanie had been blackmailed into handing over Lizzie against her will. I had threatened her to stay away and had stolen Liam and her child out from under her nose, leaving her bereft of a life she thought she was going to have.
It was all so ludicrous and untrue that, if it hadn’t been an attack on me, then I probably would have laughed at the nonsense of it all. But it felt so unfair, to know that thousands of people were reading lies about me. And I wanted to scream and shout that it was all bullshit, but there was nobody around to hear me.
Lizzie was upstairs with Helena, and I wondered if I should go upstairs, say goodbye, and get the hell out of there. But suddenly I heard the front door slam, and Liam called out my name. I hurried out of the kitchen, where I sat at the counter having breakfast, and I went out to find him.
He saw me and let out a sigh of relief. “Thank God you’re here,” he said, and he came over, opened his arms and pulled me into them. I had no idea how he was able to manage it, but he never failed to immediately make me feel better just by being in his embrace. I felt safe, as though nothing could ever harm me.
“Where else would I be?” I murmured into his shirt. He smelled so good. I loved his cologne.
“I’m guessing you’ve seen the papers this morning?” he asked, and I nodded. “What a fucking bitch she is. All those lies and nobody bothered to fact-check any of it before making it front-page news.”
“Why has she done this?” I asked.
“Because I’ve refused to pay her a penny and I’ve sent a letter to her lawyer to say that she isn’t getting custody of Lizzie,” Liam said. “She’s now taking on a different tack because she thinks that’ll work. She clearly doesn’t know me.”
He held me away from him to look at me, and his face was filled with intense concern. “As much as I’ve loved having you here, I know it was selfish of me,” he said. “And I can’t tell you how sorry I am that you’ve been slandered like this when you’ve done nothing wrong.”
“How can it be selfish when you’ve done so much for me?” I asked, incredulous. “You’ve given my family their lives back. You’ve given me my life back. You’ve opened your home and lavished me with everything I could ever ask for, and even after all that, you come into my bed, and you, well, you…”
He grinned and stroked my face. “Given you the time of your life?”
I blushed and shrugged. “Yes.”
Closing his eyes, he took a deep breath. “I promise you owe me nothing. And I understand if you want to leave. I’d never stop you.”
“Do you want me to go? Is it creating more trouble for you if I’m here?”
“No. Not for a second. But it’s not fair to have you go through this. I’m going to fix it, I promise. But in the meantime, I’ll get Costas to drive you home right now.”
I thought about this. Thought about how best to tell him how I felt, realizing that the only time Liam and I have ever communicated best is when we’ve been completely honest. So, I told him the truth.
“I don’t want to leave you,” I said. “I’m happy here. It’s weird, I grant you, but I’d be unhappy if I left now. If I left you, and if I left Lizzie. To be honest, I can’t just walk away and watch her win. Because that’s exactly what Melanie wants.”
He smiled and kissed me. “I was hoping that’s what you’d say. And in the meantime, I have somewhere I have to be and something I have to do. But I’ve asked for someone to come over and cheer you up.”
“Oh?”
“He’s outside, in the car.”
“He?”
“Yeah, he peed on the back seat, which isn’t ideal, but I’ll get it cleaned up. Hold on a second, I’ll go get him.”
A few moments later, he came walking through the front door, empty handed, but behind him was Colin, and in Colin’s arms was Cat. I squealed and ran over to them, taking Cat from Colin’s arms and showering him with kisses. “My little boy!” I cried, snuggling my face into his fur.
“Sheesh! And here I was, thinking you were excited to see me,” Colin said.
I looked over at him and frowned with mock seriousness. “Did you pee on the back seat?” I asked.
Colin held up his hands. “Guilty,” he said. “I was just so excited to see you, I couldn’t keep it in.” We all burst out laughing.
Liam kissed my cheek. “I have to get back to work and straighten everything out. I asked Colin to come over and spend the day.”
“Thank you,” I said. “It’s amazing.”
He left, and I gave Colin a tour of the house. “Damn,” he whistled. “Why couldn’t I have had a billionaire fall in love with me and want to give me everything I’ve ever wanted.”
“Don’t be silly,” I said. “He’s not in love with me. We both know where we stand with this arrangement.”
Colin rolled his eyes. “Sure,” he said. “The ‘arrangement’.”
He punctuated his words with air quotes and I didn’t say anything. I didn’t want to jinx it,
but I had dared to wonder whether my best friend might be right. What if Liam really was in love with me? The way he held me, kissed me and thought only about my happiness must have meant something, and I’d have been lying to myself if I said that I wasn’t falling back in love with him, too.
I wondered what he was going to do to fix the whole mess with Melanie. In the meantime, it was amazing to have my best friend back with me again. I missed him so much as we barely saw each other, Colin being away on tour for most of the time since I’d moved in with Liam.
As soon as Liam left, Colin stripped off to a pair of swimming shorts he had on underneath his jeans and ran through the back of the house towards the pool, where he jumped in with a high-pitched yell.
“How did you even know you’d be coming here today?” I asked as he resurfaced. He swam on his back and called out to me.
“Liam called me first thing this morning,” he said. “Told me to get Cat ready and come over because you were going to need me. And, of course, my only thought was for you, but I also knew that no guy this rich and gorgeous would have a house without a pool.”
“There’s one in the basement, too,” I said. “And a gym. And a movie theater.”
“Let a man swim,” Colin said. “And then we’ll make popcorn and watch movies. Forget the gym, though. I worked long and hard on this keg of mine, and it’s not going anywhere soon. Besides, I came here for you, not to work out.”
I wasn’t quite sure what it was that Colin was there to do but all I knew was that it had worked. And to know that Liam knew what would make me feel better, only made me love him even more.
28
________
LIAM
I’ve never liked having to sit in a chair while someone applies makeup to my face. It makes my skin itch and seems to collect in my beard like powdered sugar on a donut. But I said nothing as the young girl patted around and tested different lights to check that she had full coverage. Today, I didn’t mind it. Because it was necessary in order for me to do what I needed.
FIRST LOVE_A Single Dad Second Chance Romance Page 17
