Another Woman's Man

by Shelly Ellis

  “Did you get my voicemails?” he asked, cutting her off. “Any of my texts?”

  “Your texts?” She started at him blankly. “Oh! You mean the messages about Herb!” She waved her hands. “Of course we did, darling! We’re heading to the hospital as soon as we finish unpacking. I told Connie if we put off unpacking until tomorrow, the house would be in complete chaos. Once that’s done, we’ll go straight to the hospital.” She patted his shoulder. “Don’t worry.”

  Herb was on his deathbed, yet Raquel thought unloading two hundred pounds of clothes and tourist keepsakes was more important? Now Xavier knew where Constance got it from.

  “Connie’s upstairs in her bedroom, by the way,” Raquel said, flicking her fingers toward the stairwell. She glanced at the door where the two burly drivers stood waiting. “If you’ll excuse me, Xavier, I have to tip these gentlemen.”

  She then sashayed away with her high heels clicking.

  Xavier climbed the stairs to the east wing and found Constance’s bedroom door halfway open. He pushed it open farther and saw her standing in the center of the spacious, bright bubblegum-pink room, unloading one of her Louis Vuitton suitcases. He gently knocked and she turned toward her doorway. When she saw him, she dropped the shirt she had been holding and ran across the room with arms outstretched.

  “Pumpkin!” She wrapped him in her embrace. “I’m so happy to see you! You didn’t tell me you were on your way here!”

  “I wasn’t sure if you guys had gotten back already.” He sighed. “Look, Constance, we need to talk. I—”

  She raised a finger and pressed it to his lips, silencing him and raising his frustration.

  “No, I know what you want to talk about. You want to talk about our argument before I left for St. Thomas.” She lowered her finger and nodded. “I’ve had some time to think about it, and I want you to know that as far as I’m concerned, it didn’t happen. I know you’ve been busy at work. You’re probably under a lot of pressure with your job and the wedding preparations. That’s probably why you acted that way.” She tilted her head. “But I forgive you, pumpkin.”

  Xavier frowned. She forgives me? He wasn’t aware that he needed to be forgiven, at least not for that.

  “Let’s just go back to the way things were.” Constance scratched his chin. “Speaking of the way things were . . . Pumpkin, what’s with the beard? I hope you’re not planning to wear that to the wedding! What about our pictures? You can’t . . .”

  Her voice drifted off when he tugged her arm from around his neck, her hand from his face, and took a step back from her.

  She stared up at him. “What’s wrong?”

  He stepped around her and walked farther inside her bedroom, wondering where to start.

  “Pumpkin, what’s wrong?” she asked again. “You’re . . . you’re starting to scare me.”

  “We can’t get married,” he blurted out.

  There. I said it. I finally said it!

  Constance stared at him. “Wha-what?”

  “We can’t get married, Constance. I have to call it off.”

  “Please, tell me you’re joking,” she whispered.

  He slowly shook his head. “It’s not a joke.”

  “It has to be a joke! This is . . . this is just . . . Is this about our argument? Because I told you that I—”

  “This has nothing to do with that. Our issues are bigger than that! It wouldn’t be right for us to go ahead with the wedding.”

  The dumbfounded expression didn’t leave her face as she stood silent, staring at him. “Who are you?” she asked, sounding dazed. “I swear I don’t know you anymore! Because the Xavier Hughes I know wouldn’t do this to me. He wouldn’t tell me seven weeks before I’m supposed to walk down the aisle with him that he’s breaking up with me! Not after we sent out invitations to three hundred people and booked florists and a band and . . . He wouldn’t humiliate me like that!”

  “I’m sorry. I’m not trying to humiliate you. I’m only trying to—”

  “You’re sorry?” she shrieked. Tears started to spill onto her cheeks. “You’re sorry? Well, that’s just great!” She clenched her fists at her sides. “I knew it! I knew something was going on with you! It’s not just work, is it? You’ve been acting strange for months now! But I had no idea it was this bad! What happened? Why are you doing this to me?”

  “I’ve been feeling this way for a while. I just didn’t know how to tell you.”

  “Is there someone else?” she asked, searching his face.

  He clenched his jaw. He hadn’t planned to tell her the part about Dawn—at least not this early. He knew Constance would find out about his relationship with her sister soon enough, but he didn’t want to deliver that blow today. She was still staggering from the emotional punch he had already dealt her.

  “There is someone else, isn’t there?” she persisted when he didn’t answer her. “Xavier, are you . . . are you cheating on me?”

  I may be a cheater, he told himself again. But I’m not going to be a liar too.

  He had to tell her.

  Xavier sighed. “Constance, please understand that neither of us meant for this to happen. I didn’t want to hurt you. But yes, I’m in love with someone else.”

  Her eyes went wide. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes, unable to look at her stricken face anymore.

  “I’ve fallen in love with—”

  “Oh, my God!” Raquel shouted. “Oh, my God!”

  Xavier opened his eyes. He turned at the sound of Raquel’s racing footsteps as she climbed the stairs to the second floor two at a time. She skidded to a halt in front of Constance’s bedroom door, almost slipping in her high heels on the marble floors.

  She hadn’t heard them all the way downstairs, had she?

  “Oh, my God!” Raquel pointed frantically at the cell phone in her hand. “It’s the hospital! Herb is . . . Herb is dead. Oh, my God, my husband is dead! They tried . . .” She paused and sniffed. “They tried to resuscitate him. He went into cardiac arrest but . . .” Her voice trailed off as she broke into tears.

  Constance rushed toward her mother and the women fell into each other’s arms. Constance sobbed uncontrollably.

  Xavier stood and watched them, not knowing what to do next. The blood drained from his head. He felt absolutely numb. Herb is dead? His mentor, his surrogate father, had died.

  Chapter 26

  “Dawn, are you OK, honey?” Lauren asked.

  Dawn blinked her reddened eyes and turned to look at her youngest sister. “Huh?”

  The skies were a gloomy gray and the air was thick with a cold mist that made Dawn shudder and pull her black wool coat more tightly around her. The graveyard looked just as bleak with its leafless trees; mud-laden earth; shallow, murky puddles; and granite headstones and crypts. Inside, Dawn felt as dull and dark as her surroundings. She’d never felt sadness and grief this bad in her life.

  “I said, ‘Are you OK?’ The burial is about to start. Do you think you can make it?” Lauren shut her car door and gazed at her worriedly.

  “Yes, I can make it. Of course.”

  Despite her assurances, the worried expression didn’t leave her little sister’s face. “Well, why don’t you take my hand anyway,” Lauren said, linking her fingers through Dawn’s. “We’ll walk there together.”

  “We all will,” Cynthia said before shutting the door behind her, stepping forward, walking up to Dawn’s other side, and looping her arm around Dawn’s shoulder.

  The trio trudged up the grassy hill toward the burial site, following the stream of mourners who had all come to pay their last respects to Herbert Allen.

  Dawn was glad that she had her sisters to lean on today. Stephanie couldn’t make it because she was past her due date and didn’t want to chance going into labor at a funeral, but Lauren and Cynthia had come to show their support.

  Though Dawn had tried to remain stoic throughout the funeral and the car ride to the burial site, there were severa
l times when she had broken down weeping. Her sisters had held her while she cried and shielded her from the conspicuous stares and whispers of the other mourners. It seemed that second only to Herbert Allen himself, Herbert Allen’s illegitimate daughter was the person of interest for all those who attended the funeral. Word had obviously gotten around about who Dawn was.

  She didn’t want to bring any drama. Dawn had tried to stay in the background and not bring attention to herself, though Cynthia had argued during the funeral that she should take her rightful place up front in the first pew with Raquel and Constance—and not in the far back near the sanctuary doors.

  “Hell, you’re just as much family as they are!” Cynthia had whispered fiercely.

  But Dawn had shaken her head and raised her finger to her lips to silence her eldest sister’s angry mutterings as the eulogy began. She didn’t want to make a scene. She would sit there only if she had been explicitly invited, but that never happened. Not only had her stepmother and sister not invited her, they seemed to make a concerted effort to ignore her. She soon figured out it wasn’t her imagination. Cynthia pointed out repeatedly how they were slighting her.

  “I don’t see your name in here,” Cynthia had whispered as the reverend began his sermon. She had flipped open the funeral program. “You’re nowhere in here!”

  “Shh!” Lauren had said while glowering at Cynthia. “Not here, not now,” she had mouthed silently.

  Cynthia had ignored her and pointed down at one of the program’s pages. “ ‘Herbert Allen is survived by his darling wife, Raquel Allen,’ ” she read with a roll of the eyes, “ ‘and his beautiful daughter, Constance Marie Allen.’ I mean . . . Where the hell is Dawn in here?” She had made a big production of flipping the pages again, even turning the program upside down before slapping it onto her lap. “Hell, even the florist got a shout out! They couldn’t remember to include his other daughter? That little detail escaped them?”

  “Quiet down!” Lauren had snapped.

  Instead, Cynthia had crossed her arms over her chest. “Hell no! This is bullshit, some straight-up bullshit and you know it, Laurie!”

  Listening to her sisters argue, Dawn had to agree with Cynthia. She was sure the omission of her name from the program and from the glowing obits that had appeared in several of the local papers wasn’t an accident. She knew it wasn’t because of her affair with Xavier. He said he hadn’t had the chance to tell Constance the truth. Whatever hostility her sister and stepmother had toward her was rooted in something else, but she didn’t have the heart to work up any anger at the Allen family today. Whatever sting she felt from their dismissal was nothing compared to the pain she felt seeing her father in that casket, knowing that she had been there when he took his last breath and had watched, paralyzed, as the nurses and doctors tried valiantly to save him but failed.

  The only thing that she hadn’t been able to block out today was how Xavier was behaving. Anyone at the funeral would be hard-pressed to believe she and Xavier were lovers. He had only nodded to her politely when he and Constance entered the church and then quickly escorted his former fiancée toward their pew. Constance had literally leaned on him as they walked toward the front of the church.

  “Is that Xavier?” Cynthia had whispered as he and Constance walked down the center aisle.

  Dawn had nodded in reply.

  “The sexy lawyer you’ve got a thing for?” Cynthia had pressed. “Well, by the looks of it, you didn’t work the Gibbons charm on him. That woman is practically glued to him!”

  Lauren slapped her sister’s thigh in admonishment.

  Dawn had been too annoyed with her sister to explain the real status of her relationship with Xavier. He claimed that he was only playing a role that Constance had asked him to play. He said Constance was angry that he was leaving her, but it was more important to her to save face and pretend they were still a couple. She hadn’t even broken the news to her mother yet for fear of devastating Raquel further. The widow was already shaken by the loss of her husband, Xavier had explained. Constance and Xavier agreed they wouldn’t make the announcement that their engagement was off until after the funeral. The exact date of when that would happen was still up in the air.

  But even with this explanation, Dawn didn’t feel right. With Xavier and Constance continuing to pretend to be the happy couple, that put Dawn firmly in the role of “the other woman.” She had taken on that role before in her life, but didn’t think she would be doing it again under these circumstances. And though she was trying diligently not to be fazed by the whole farce, watching Xavier walk arm-in-arm with Constance while he ignored her truly hurt.

  In fact, Constance and Xavier were playing the part so well, Dawn wondered if the love he claimed he no longer felt for Constance had really disappeared. Had he really intended to tell Constance the truth about their affair? What would stop Constance and Xavier from getting back together in the end?

  “It’s your own fault,” a voice in her head admonished as she watched the couple. “You broke the family rules by sleeping with your sister’s man. Now look where it got you!”

  As the mourners reached the crest of the hill in the cemetery, the three Gibbons girls took their place among the throng who surrounded the casket. They stood on the outskirts of the black tent as a light rain began to fall. Dawn lifted the netting over the brim of her hat. She spotted Raquel, Constance, and Xavier toward the front, closest to the casket and the wide array of sumptuous funeral flowers. Leslie Ann, Xavier’s mother, stood on the other side of Xavier, weeping quietly and wiping her nose with a tissue.

  When the reverend began to read his final prayer, Xavier raised his bowed head. Dawn watched as he scanned the crowd. When his eyes reached her, their gazes locked. She saw something in those gray irises that made her momentarily forget about her grief and disappointment. The familiar feeling of love and yearning swept over her, sending a surge of warmth through her chest, but the feeling abruptly ended when he suddenly broke their mutual gaze to attend to Constance. His ex-fiancée dropped her head onto his shoulder again and burst into tears as the casket was slowly lowered. Xavier wrapped an arm around her and held her close. He whispered something into her ear. Seeing them being so intimate, Dawn had to look away.

  “Let’s go,” she said to her sisters as Raquel stepped forward and tossed a red rose onto the descending casket.

  “You sure?” Lauren whispered.

  Dawn nodded, giving one last forlorn glance at Xavier, then at her father’s casket. “I’m sure. I’ve paid my respects. Let’s go.” She then turned around and stepped from under the tent into the drizzle. Her sisters exchanged a look then followed her.

  Soon after, a stream of people began making their way from the funeral site back to their cars. The walk downhill over the wet grass and mud was slippery, so Dawn, Lauren, and Cynthia walked slowly, holding one another’s hands for steady footing.

  “Dawn? Dawn!”

  Dawn stopped and turned to find Xavier striding toward her.

  “Dawn, wait up!”

  She was half tempted to turn back around and keep walking, but instead she pasted on a bland expression. “Yes?”

  He stopped in front of her and glanced at her sisters. He extended his hand for a shake. “Hi, I’m Xavier Hughes. I’m engaged to—”

  “Oh, we know who you are,” Cynthia said dryly. “I’m Cynthia, Dawn’s big sister, and this is our little sister, Lauren.”

  Lauren stepped forward and shook his hand. “Pleased to meet you.”

  “And you.” He then focused on Dawn again. “Can I speak with you . . . privately?”

  Dawn shook her head. “We were just leaving. I don’t—”

  “Please? It’ll only take a few minutes.”

  There was desperation not only in his voice, but in the expression on his face. She didn’t know why he was doing this now, especially since they were supposed to be pretending that nothing was going on between them.

  She pursed h
er lips and turned to her sisters. “Can you give us a sec?”

  “Sure. We’ll be waiting for you at the car,” Lauren said. She took Cynthia’s hand, tugging their nosy sister away none too subtly. That didn’t stop Cynthia from giving one last glance at Xavier.

  He started to walk toward a deserted spot of the cemetery and motioned for Dawn with a tilt of his head to follow him. Dawn rolled her eyes and trailed after him, though it was hard since her heels kept sinking into the mushy turf and she kept sliding. Xavier noticed her distress and instantly reached for her. She waved his hand away.

  “I’ve got it,” she muttered irritably. She didn’t want his help and she certainly didn’t want his hands on her—not with the way he could make her feel.

  “How are you doing?” he asked softly seconds later. “I didn’t get the chance to talk to you today.”

  “How do you think I’m doing, Xavier? I just watched my father being put in the ground.”

  He grimaced. “You’re right. That was a stupid question. I’m sorry. I knew today would be painful for you. I wish . . . I wish I could be more supportive . . . you know, standing there beside you.”

  “Well, you have a role to play.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “You warned me how this would go down. Wouldn’t want you to break character, now would we?” she mumbled sarcastically.

  “Maybe I could come to your place later, after I make sure Constance and Raquel are OK.”

  Of course, Dawn thought bitterly. Roll around in the sheets with me before you head back to your girlfriend.

  “I’ll stop by and—”

  “That isn’t necessary.”

  “I know it’s not necessary.” He looked and sounded frustrated. “I’m not doing it because it’s necessary. I’m doing it because I want to be with you!”

  He said that, but did he mean it? She wasn’t so sure anymore. She wanted his companionship. She wanted nothing more than to be wrapped in his arms and to lie naked in bed beside him, but it seemed every time she dealt with Xavier, she was the one left feeling heartbroken and empty in the end.