by Amy Faye
“So? Where do I come into this?”
“I need to ferret away some assets. Of course, if I start transferring assets to any third party, then the IRS is going to be all over that. Embezzlement is a big deal, and they’ve got a lot of people looking for it. In a business empire like mine, they’re looking hard, and constantly.”
“I’m still not following.”
“But if you transfer money from your left hand to your right hand, is that a crime?”
“No? I feel like there’s a trick to this question.”
“You’re exactly right. No crime in that. How about from my left pocket to my right pocket?”
“No problem, I guess.”
“So what if I transferred some money from my savings to my checking account?”
“I get it, I guess. Make your point.”
“So what if I transferred money from my account, to an account that is still technically mine?”
“Like what? Like a trust fund?”
“What if, for example, my wife and I had separate accounts? Our household still has the money. I’m the head of household. Her money is, fundamentally, my money. Right?”
Rose paused. “I’m not sure if I’m following.”
“If my wife and I make money, and it all goes into a shared account, is she spending my money?”
“I guess not.”
“So if we had separate accounts, but she put her checks into my bank, and I gave her an allowance?”
“Her money, I guess.”
“But in a very real way, it’s my money, too, right?”
“Right. What are you getting at?”
“What I’m getting at is, if I transfer assets to my wife, it’s hardly a change at all.”
“So that’s why you need a woman?”
He turned to the empty room in a theatrical gesture. “Someone get this woman a medal.”
“I’m not sure I understand.”
“Your relationship. It’s complicated, you said. Not exactly what a woman would say about a husband that she adored and wanted around for the rest of her life.”
“I don’t hate Duncan. He’s a good man.”
“But not husband material, normally. You’re concerned about those girls.”
That was correct. “Supposing that’s true, what are you proposing?”
“You know what I’m proposing. You leave him, you come to me.”
“And what about my girls? Where do they fit into this? And where do I sleep?”
“You sleep at my place, of course.”
“So this would be a real marriage?”
“Nobody has a real marriage any more, Rose. Marriage is a dated idea. Whether you like it or not, whether you agree with it or not, marriage was dead long before the Republicans finally lost their gay marriage fight. Over sixty percent of marriages end in divorce.”
“Okay?”
“So I’m suggesting that you come to me, and we have an understanding from the beginning. We resolve our little complications. And you come, and you live with me.”
“What’s in it for me? You get to hide all this stuff, and I get… what, a different bed?”
“You get what you want. You get security for your little girls.”
“Not if you’re planning on divorcing me any minute.”
He laughed. “That’s not going to happen.”
“No?”
“Of course not.” He settled down into his chair. “If I did, then that would be even more suspicious. They’d be looking so hard at my finances, I’d never get out from under the IRS. And of course, they’d have a newly-estranged wife to turn to, and I can’t imagine that you would be terribly hard to turn.”
“You’d imagine right.”
“No. If we did this, it would be long-term. A business partnership. I’m not promising to love you or honor you—but I can promise until death do us part, in sickness and in health.”
Her pulse kicked hard in her neck. This was too much.
“How long do I have?”
“Twenty-four hours. After that, I start going to the bench. Not many women would turn this down. I don’t think it takes a day to find someone willing to do what needed to be done for the kind of money I’m offering.”
Seven
Rose looked at him with a cocked eyebrow. There was a lot to think about. And yet, as she worked her way through it in her head, as quickly as possible, she wasn’t sure that there was anything that she hadn’t already thought through. After all, she’d already gotten Duncan’s blessing. Which seemed strange to think about. But it was true, she knew. It was a strange position to be in, and yet… she found that she didn’t mind it all that much after all.
“So let’s say I agreed.”
“So quick?” Bryce shrugged his shoulders. “Okay. Well, what’s the question.”
“What about my wifely duties?”
“You mean sex?”
“Of course I mean sex.”
“What about it?”
“You don’t think there’s a conversation to be had there?”
“A conversation? Sure.”
“I don’t want to be regarded as some kind of ice queen. Not by you, and not by the general public, if I’m going to suddenly be Mrs. Bryce Kilpatrick. Which means that you’re going to have to slow down on the women.”
“Slow down, huh?”
“Slow down to stopped, I mean.”
“That’s quite a demand.”
“And yet, you’re going to go for it.”
“Is that right?”
“It’s exactly right.”
“Alright. So? What’s your angle.”
“I’ll step in for them.”
He ground his jaw left to right. He looked annoyed, maybe even angry. And at the same time, it was impossibly sexy.
“You think that’s even possible?”
“I think you’ll agree to it.”
“Do you?”
“I think exactly that.”
“You’re not necessarily wrong, but I’m interested in what makes you so certain.”
“I’m willing to do whatever it takes,” Rose said.
“Oh?”
“That’s right. Whatever it takes.”
He smiled at her across the desk. The implication was impossible to miss, even for him.
“You’re an interesting woman, Miss Sewell.”
“I wasn’t raised no fool. And besides. I don’t intend to raise my girls in some kind of dysfunctional home. You don’t have to love me, but you have to put up appearances.”
“I could always pass on you.”
“Could you? How many women do you approach with this story before someone talks?”
He nodded to himself. Rose put up a finger.
“Just one.”
“You mean you?”
“I mean me. You pass on me, and the new Mrs. Kilpatrick is immediately outed for a stooge, before you even approached her with the offer.”
“It seems like you’ve thought this through.”
“I know what my options are, and they’re not good. Not unless I can force myself into this.”
“You’re right.”
“Maybe I’m not as smart as you, and maybe I haven’t thought it all the way through. I’m sure there’s some kind of trouble in it for me. But I’ll tell you this, I’m not going to go down unless it’s fighting.”
“No?”
“Or on you,” Rose said, making a suggestive face.
“Oh yeah?”
“I don’t mind that. Not one bit. As long as you don’t try to screw me.”
“I wasn’t going to.”
“Good. That’s what I like to hear.”
“What do we do, shake on it?”
“Not as if there’s any sort of contract I can draw up. I could have a pre-nup.”
“What, you think I want to be paraded around as a tramp by divorcing you?”
“I think that you’re willing to accept that shame if it meant getting half my
assets.”
“Or I could have all of them.”
“How’s that?”
“Not divorcing you.”
He smiled. “I like the way you’re thinking. I’m glad I picked you.”
“I’m glad you’re glad.” Rose took a step toward him. The office wasn’t large. It was never intended to be well-used. Bob didn’t plan on sticking around much on a day-to-day basis. And very likely, neither did Bryce.
“What’s this?”
“Call it a signing bonus.”
“For who?” Rose slid into his lap. He smelled like a man. His beard scratched as she brushed a kiss across his jaw.
“Who knows?”
Her lips pressed into his. He took a moment to decide how he wanted to respond. Then he seemed to decide that he was going to go with it after all, and kissed her back. His hand found the curve of her ass, and she pressed herself back into it.
“Now that we’ve settled this,” she said softly, “There’s something I should tell you.”
He bit into her throat. There was a big part of her that she wasn’t sure about telling him. A very, very big part. He seemed to get something out of forcing her into this. If he were to get a whiff that she were chasing after him, what were the odds that he would let that pass?
“Oh?”
Her heart pounded hard. She shifted until she was straddling him in the office chair. It was cramped. The only position that she could find that was halfway comfortable pressed her mound hard into his hardness.
“I love your cock.”
She hated herself for pulling back. Her daughters weren’t supposed to be a big secret. It was just something that she hadn’t told him because he was nobody at all. Some guy she met.
But now, at the brink, it was a little bit too big to tell someone. Sufficiently big, she knew, that it would require a certain amount of thinking about it. What he was planning to do, how he would respond.
It would be better to wait until they were married, she told herself. Then he could find out about the girls, and their father. He could find out that things had worked out better than intended.
But only after. She ground her hips forward, his hips rising to meet her, pressing his erection against her. It was better that way. Now she just had to convince herself that was the truth. And for now, she had to forget about them completely. Bryce’s hands cupped her breasts.
There were more pressing matters at hand. His other hand undid the buttons on her blouse, and she forgot all about the lies she’d told. She had other things to think about at the moment. Then he pinched a sensitive nipple, and there wasn’t any thinking going on anyways.
Eight
The wedding ceremony was as beautiful as she wanted. It was smaller than she wanted. But then again, big wasn’t a requirement. And at least this way, she got something out of the relationship, right?
The money was a little better, but that didn’t matter as much as the sex. Living like brother and sister wasn’t part of Rose’s plan for her life. The idea of being married to a man who was always going to be at arm’s length was something she was willing to deal with.
But if the opportunity was going to arise that allowed her to avoid that, then she was going to make sure that she did it as well as she could manage. And she could manage it, in spite of appearances.
The press was there, too. And the next day, her name had been in the paper. For the first time in her life, Rose Sewell—no, Rose Kilpatrick, she reminded herself—was somebody. Somebody worth talking about.
And of course, that was talk around the office, too. Maybe that should have been a problem. It wasn’t. Somebody was going to figure it out for her, she knew. And in the end, it didn’t matter what was really happening. It just mattered what people thought was happening. And that didn’t matter much. It was just how people were going to take it. There was no changing it, and if there was no changing it then she was better off not worrying about any of it.
Rose let out a long, low breath.
“You look tired,” Duncan said. Rose had been careful that he didn’t meet Kilpatrick until after the wedding. There seemed to be some part of Bryce who wanted to be stealing her away from Duncan. To find out that he was as gay as a three dollar bill might have taken something away from his little cuckolding experience.
“Duncan, I’ve been tired since I got knocked up.”
“Speaking of which…”
He looked around. The house was large, and that meant it was easy to have someone just outside of earshot.
“What?”
“Have you… you know. Told him?”
“Told him… you mean about Vi and Sarah?”
“That he’s their…”
She let out a breath. She’d been busy. There were too many things going on to really find the right time. Taking over Michigan Chemical wasn’t what she had in mind for the rest of her life. She was supposed to be doing housework and stuff. Making herself useful for her new husband. Making her life here.
Instead, she was going through ten years of books kept by a man who patently refused to pay anyone else to do it for him, and at the same time, had no special interest in doing it himself.
The finances were precarious at best, and she wasn’t going to hand it off to someone else until she knew enough to know she wasn’t getting swindled hand over fist.
“No,” she said. Having to admit it took the wind out of her sails. Whatever wind had been in her sails in the first place, which wasn’t much in the first place.
“No? What? Are you crazy?”
“I’ll tell him. Once, you know.”
“Once what?”
“Once things have settled down.”
“You should have told him the first day!”
“He’d have tried to get rid of me.”
“Says who?”
“Says me. I’m not an idiot, Duncan. I know who he is.”
“You were more familiar with his cock than his name almost a year, and now you’re claiming to be an expert on the man?”
“Shut up.”
“I’m just saying. Maybe you’d be better off trying to actually approach him with this stuff.”
“Maybe you’d be better off not trying to tell me how to run my life.”
He shrugged. “Okay. Well, there’s one thing I can tell you.”
“What’s that?”
“I’m going to take advantage of this bar. You might be nursing, honey, but I’m not.”
Then Duncan pushed himself up from the sofa and walked over to the bar, and poured himself a heavy glass of honey-yellow alcohol that Rose could smell from across the room. Thanks, pregnancy hormones. One day, they’d work their way out of her system. At least, she hoped so.
Her phone rang in her pocket. She pulled it out and jabbed the button to turn the screen on. It was a call. She didn’t know Richie that well, but if she was going to hand the finances off to anyone, it was him. After all, he already handled so many other parts of her finances.
“Hello?”
Duncan turned, taking a drink from the glass with a finely-manicured eyebrow cocked. He was a strange-looking figure, with his eyebrows the way they were. Finely-kept, but at the same time, they were as thick as any she’d ever seen.
The voice on the other end of the line was one that she was careful never to let Duncan hear. He sounded hot. He was hot. And like Duncan, he was as homosexual a man as she’d ever met. She guessed that if she let them meet, it would be a struggle to keep his attention on the work. And she needed some kind of company, with Bryce out of the house so often.
“We’ve got a problem.”
“A problem?”
“Someone’s buying up stocks.”
“What’s your point?”
“Someone’s buying them, hand over fist. And it’s only a matter of time—minutes—before you’ll be calling him sir and I don’t think you can marry them both.”
“No, probably not,” Rose growled. “Is there anything we can do?�
�
“Sure. But I need to call you before I allow that kind of expenditure of company funds.”
“Call it okayed then.”
She let out a breath. A sale could be smart. But she wasn’t going to allow a hostile takeover. Not twice in a month, at least. She hoped that would be good enough.
“Something wrong?”
“Same shit,” she said, letting out a long breath. “Different day.”
“Yeah?”
“Someone’s about to buy my company out from under me, and I’ve barely had it four days.”
Duncan nodded, and took a deep drink from his alcohol. It went straight to his head, like it always did. “That doesn’t sound great.”
“No,” Rose agreed. “It doesn’t. But then again, I’ve got an expert on speed-dial.”
Nine
Sarah and Violet were crawling around when Bryce got home. They scooted around pushing little wooden blocks like cars around, and making the sort of noises that babies tended to make. Rose had long since stopped wondering whether or not there was any particular meaning to the cooing noises.
Duncan had left hours ago. There might have been a thousand reasons for it, but Rose had told him to go, which was certainly one of them. Bryce came into the room, his tie loosened around his neck and his shirt spread a little at the neck.
“How are the girls?”
“They’re doing fine.”
“And the business?”
Rose took a long breath. “I don’t know.”
“Don’t know?”
Rose’s head hurt. It felt as if it hadn’t stopped hurting since she got pregnant, except for the few, brief periods where she managed to sleep through the night. That wasn’t nearly as much help as it should have been, though.
“Someone’s trying to buy it up.”
“Oh.”
“What am I supposed to do? This isn’t my area of expertise.”
Bryce shrugged. “You’ll figure it out.”
No, Rose thought, frustrated. I won’t. “I just don’t know what I’m doing here. You can’t just expect me to suddenly become a businessman overnight.”
“Everyone stumbles once or twice.”
“You’re a real charmer, Bryce Kilpatrick. Just help me, will you?”
He let out a long, low breath. “You want to know what I’d do?”