What to wear had become an issue lately. Even though it was still early, her waist had thickened somewhat. The bump itself was small and barely visible to most but she felt the difference in her pants and tailored skirts, and had begun digging through her closet, prioritizing her viscose dresses, and pieces with the stretchy waistbands. She was going to have to do some maternity-wear shopping, and soon. What should have been exciting, was tempered by a tinge of sadness. The idea that this baby—and she—might be unwanted, was still difficult to come to terms with. But even worse was the limbo.
He was shocked. Of course he was shocked. They’d only been sleeping together for three and a half months, and had only just begun to truly learn about each other and in begin to think of themselves as being together. Robyn was beginning to see what she thought were tiny signs that Chris was beginning to open up a little more, maybe even trust a little, but now this. Now she had mysteriously wound up pregnant by a man she barely knew, but who—oh so conveniently—had more than the means to support her and her baby for the rest of their lives.
Still, Robyn thought as she pulled out onto the main road and into the light, morning traffic, she couldn’t make herself regret that she was pregnant. Nothing could make her feel that. If Chris didn’t want this baby, she still did. Desperately. Every spare moment she spent poring over pregnancy sites on the internet, looking at books and glancing through magazines geared toward expectant and new mothers. Not too long ago, she would have avoided those aisles like the plague, thinking only that they would never have any relevance in her life whatsoever. And even if Chris hadn’t embraced the news, Tracy and Riley had; becoming her biggest coaches and supporters. Watching them enjoy motherhood wasn’t the dagger in the heart it had been. Now, the joy she’d always felt for them was unequivocal and she could hold and coo over baby Layla, and kiss Cassidy with as much enthusiasm as everyone else.
The only thing that marred her own joy was the memory of Chris’ voice when she delivered the news. He’d transformed into the man he was in the office, in the boardroom; the man he’d been when he was negotiating terms for partial ownership of Pouvoir Noir Records. It was the same voice he had when he asked her about the unauthorized commitment she made to contribute to Save the Music. The sound of his voice told her everything she needed to know about the emotions beneath. But the words themselves were fairly damning as well.
How did that happen? he asked. Were you careless?
Resisting the urge to argue that they had been careless not just her, Robyn instead told him the one thing she’d not shared with another living soul except for her mother, and then more recently, Tracy: she thought she was infertile and that babies would never be a possibility for her. But Chris was too thorough to let that pass.
Why’d you think that?
Because Curtis and I tried and couldn’t. Because my doctor said so.
And then Robyn relayed the entire tale—that though she hadn’t been personally tested, she assumed when Curtis got Natalie pregnant that the fault must lie with her. She had to be the reason they hadn’t gotten pregnant because evidently, his sperm worked just fine.
Chris’ silence in response was an indictment. And a justifiable one at that. What responsible, adult woman wouldn’t have investigated further about something as precious as her ability to bear children? Would any woman have assumed such a thing? Why hadn’t she asked her doctor for tests? Tried to find out the precise nature of her problem? Tried to correct it?
All I can say is that I already felt like a failure because of the loss of my marriage. It made perfect sense that I was a failure as a woman as well. I almost didn’t want to know the details . . .
And so instead you got a tattoo? he asked bitterly.
She didn’t answer him, but the answer, stupid as it sounded was ‘yes’.
After she’d delivered the news, he said nothing more, but still drove them to his apartment in the city. Chris’ place was on West 73rd, a block away from one of the most famous landmarks in New York. Housed at the top of one of those old brownstones constructed in the 1890s, his apartment was two levels and only about a thousand square feet, but it had all the attendant trappings of luxury city living. Only the tension between them stopped Robyn from asking him for a tour. And the only reason she could think about touring his apartment at a moment like that was because she hadn’t imagined it would get quite as bad as it got later.
The silence between them persisted, even as he led her into the kitchen, opened the refrigerator and made them sandwiches, sliding her a bottled water. Chris making a meal was something she’d never seen him do before, something she might under normal circumstances have teased him about. But he wasn’t in the teasing frame of mind, and could barely look at her. They ate without speaking as well, and it was only once they were done that he told her she should go to the bedroom, make herself comfortable. Even then, she thought—foolishly—that he might just be processing the news and would want to talk to her about it some more.
Robyn had stripped herself of the expensive gown, washed her face, brushed her teeth with a brand new still-packaged toothbrush she found, and gotten under the covers of the bed. Black sheets. Bachelor sheets. Chris’ apartment décor was that of a man who intended not to have a woman in his life on a permanent basis. The brand-new toothbrush suggested that he often had unexpected overnight guests. Guests who could visit, but should not expect to live there. The bed was low to the ground, like a futon, and all the furniture was sleek and stylish, all modern Roche Bobois pieces suitable for a showroom someplace, but not at all homey or inviting.
She was lying in the dark, tense and uncomfortable when Chris came in. He went to the bathroom, she listened to the water. And then he joined her in bed, getting in behind her, his hand stealing around to her abdomen. She was naked, and pretending to herself that it was necessity, because she had no clothes at the apartment. But really, it was because she hoped that Chris would do precisely what he’d done next. His hand fell lower, between her legs. She moved them apart for him, arching her pelvis slightly forward and sighing as he stroked her. Soon she was ready, and he was too, nudging her between the legs. Robyn arched backward, and with some maneuvering, he was inside her. She meant it as an apology, an acknowledgment that whatever he needed her to do to reassure him that this changed nothing, she would do.
But things had already changed.
He didn’t kiss her, not even one time, not even on the back of her neck. For the first time, it felt like he was taking without giving any part of himself. When he was done, he got out of bed and left her alone and feeling empty. Robyn didn’t know where he went, and did not go after him. Instead she stayed in bed and cried. Before long, she’d fallen asleep.
Pulling into the train station now, Robyn thought about how he’d been already dressed and ready to leave when she woke up the next morning, how he waited patiently as she showered and dressed and even politely held the door for her as they left the apartment. Her departure felt final.
Outside her mother’s townhouse, when he stopped the car, he did not shut off the engine.
What do you want to do? he asked, not looking at her.
And Robyn knew he was asking the question by rote, cynically, as though he knew full well what she was going to say, and why. But she still had to tell him the truth, whether he wanted to hear it or not.
I want to keep it.
To that there was no response. He just sat there until she got out when he normally would have gotten out first, just to open her door. And the minute she stepped away from the vehicle and shut it, he sped off, leaving her standing there at the curb.
Robyn hadn’t seen him since. When she tried to get an appointment at work in the following two days to do final prep for the Paris trip, she’d been told he didn’t have the time. Stephen was, by the way, a terrible liar. And when she tried to walk into his office unannounced, Lisa had stopped her with a claim that he had someone in with him and couldn’t be disturbed.
/> Resorting to email, Robyn received a terse response that he had everything he needed but would let her know if he had questions. He didn’t. And shortly after that, he was gone.
He’d been in Paris for two weeks now, and Robyn hadn’t heard a word from him. Nor did she expect she would.
In her time in entertainment law, recording contracts and clients’ assorted criminal scrapes weren’t the only thing she’d been exposed to. She’d also encountered a very unique breed of woman, who actively preyed on the Chris Scaifes of the world, seeking them out and tagging them like hunters tracking their quarry; learning their habits, their haunts, their preferences and finally moving in for the kill. One night was all these women needed. Just one. They would take a lifetime if it were offered, but they never expected that, really. At heart most of them had low self-esteem and didn’t believe they could keep a man like that, so few of them even tried. But they could get him for at least a single night.
And when they did, it was all for a very singular purpose. To get pregnant.
Often they did. And when they did, they appeared in Doug Scanlon’s office, lawyers in tow, asking for what they believed they were due. Usually what they thought they were due was cash in the high six figures, and it was then that these women unmasked their true nature. Robyn was not unaccustomed to yelling and screaming and one or two of these women had even tried to physically attack her, or her clients.
If that was what Chris had seen in his years in the business as well, it should be no wonder that he wouldn’t want to see her. The big lie was that gold-diggers were always streetwise, ‘round-the-way chicks or hood-rats. But that was untrue. They came in all types. Robyn even remembered one Manhattan socialite. A strawberry-blonde young woman, wealthy in her own right, who had spent summers on Martha’s Vineyard and gone to Dalton School and Vassar. She smiled as she sat across the conference room table in Doug’s office, coolly demanding ten million for dollars her and her child with a chart-topping gangsta rapper. Being wealthy didn’t stop some people from asking for more.
That was what she was up against, that ugly reality.
Robyn parked her car and found a seat at the window when her train arrived. She rested her head against the cool glass, shut her eyes and slept all the way to Manhattan, hoping to catch up on at least some small measure of the rest she hadn’t gotten the night before.
___________________
Scanning the spreadsheet on the monitor in front of him, Chris matched them to the back-up documentation and double-checked the figures. Every month, his financial managers sent him an encrypted file that gave him all the proposed deposits and disbursements related to his various financial interests. A complex document, it had dozens of pages, each tab representing accounts associated with his companies, and his personal accounts. Under each tab was listed the checks, electronic funds transfers and interest accruals that came in—the deposits—and the funds that they told him needed to go out—the disbursements.
The process of checking each item and confirming that they were adequately explained with backup (bills, or other obligations) was a several hours’ long enterprise, but one that he conducted painstakingly and with an eye for detail. Far too many were the cases where people in his business had sloppily entrusted their wealth to someone on no more than the strength of the letters CPA after their name, or a recommendation from their cousin. Everyone knew the results. They were public and disastrous—bankruptcy, disgrace and even jail for fraud or tax evasion. So Chris made sure he knew exactly where his money was going and to whom, and where it was coming from. The D&D spreadsheets were his window into his net worth so that on any given month, he had personal knowledge, almost to the dollar, of how much he money he had, and how much he owed.
Being in France didn’t change that. It only meant he had to watch his dollars in a different time zone. But now, looking at the D&D tab for one of his personal accounts, a name jumped out at him. According to the spreadsheet, there was a deposit of a check in the amount of two-thousand one hundred dollars even, and the signer of the check was Robyn Crandall. Picking up his cell phone, without stopping to consider the time difference, Chris dialed a number.
“Chris,” the voice on the other end said, sounding surprised.
“Yeah. It’s me. Taylor I see something here on the D&D. Maybe you can explain it to me?”
There was the sound of computer keys in the background and then his financial manager returned.
“Okay? What page are we looking at?”
“My Chase personal account, item number six-five-two-one.”
“Yeah. What about it?” Taylor asked.
It sounded like her mouth was full. Chris glanced at the time. New York was five hours earlier, so she was having a very late lunch or early dinner since it was nine p.m. Paris time.
“What’s it for?”
“I don’t know,” Taylor said. It’s one of those you might have to code yourself. But if you want we can look at the check. It should be scanned and in the backup file.”
With a few clicks, Chris found and opened the file and after scrolling through several pages found the scanned image of the check. Written in an even, feminine hand, it was a check drawn on a Bank of America account, signed by Robyn in the amount of twenty-one hundred dollars, just as reflected on the D&D. And in the memo section of the check she had written the words, Hervé Léger dress. Staring at it for long moments, Chris swallowed and clicked away from the page, returning his attention to the D&D.
“Hello? Chris?”
“Yeah,” he said. “I got it. Thanks.”
“Well? Is it in the right place?” Taylor asked, still chewing. “It came over in the batch from your office that Chastity sent. Should it have been deposited into a different account?”
“No,” Chris said. His voice sounded short so he took a deep breath and tried again. “No. It’s fine where it is. Thanks.”
He hung up before Taylor could ask him anything else. Putting down his cell phone, he clicked back to the image of the check, as though it could tell him something other than the fact that Robyn had paid him back for a dress.
Chris shoved the laptop aside and took a deep breath, making a circle with his neck. “Shake it off,” he said to himself aloud.
So she’d paid for the dress. So what? He’d given her lots of other gifts. It wasn’t like she’d given those back. She probably wore that damn Birkin every damn day, unless . . .
He grabbed his phone again and called his housekeeper, hoping he hadn’t gotten the days mixed up. She might be out, or it could be her day off. But after three rings, Mrs. Lawson answered, sounding as unflappable as usual.
“Did any packages come for me there?” Chris asked her. “Anyone drop anything off?”
“No. Were you expecting something?” she asked. “I imagine, Vernon or Gavin would have it if something came.”
Yeah, that was right. He didn’t have things come directly to the house. His security guys got it first.
“Okay, thanks,” he said, frustrated.
“Is there som . . .”
“No, nothing,” he said. “You take care. ‘Bye.”
Hanging up, Chris considered calling his security team to check. But if they hadn’t gotten anything and Robyn wanted to return his gifts, she might also have simply given them to Chastity or Stephen, in which case he should probably call them, too.
But fuck it, what difference did it make? What was he trying to prove anyway? That if she’d paid for the Hervé Léger but not returned the expensive bags, she was definitely a gold-digger and opportunist?
What he knew for sure, regardless of what she was, he didn’t need, nor did he even want another kid. The ones he had, and their mothers perplexed him enough as it was. And all of them needed something, wanted something from him. He’d been lulling himself into believing that what he had going on with Robyn was different. And as for the gifts? She didn’t seem to give a shit about that stuff. They made her smile, but Chris had always got
ten the sense that he could just as soon have given her a single red rose and she would have been equally pleased. But now, he wasn’t so sure. Maybe it had all been . . . fake.
Anyway, fuck it. He had three more weeks in Paris and when he got back he would have his personal attorney contact her and hash out some terms. She and her baby would be well taken care of, like Sheryl and Deuce were; like Karen, Jasmin and Kaden were. And at work, he’d make sure Frank understood that he didn’t want to work with her, didn’t want her in meetings with him. He would tell him that despite that, Robyn was to be treated like any other lawyer on the team. Last thing he needed was a sexual harassment or wrongful discharge lawsuit on top of everything else.
A lawsuit. He shook his head. Robyn would never do anything like that. Not the woman he woke up with just weeks ago.
woman
Chris remembered he’d pulled the sheet back and took a closer look at the tattoo, shaking his head. Robyn was asleep on her stomach, hugging the pillow beneath her. They’d gotten two rounds in before she swatted him away and said she needed to sleep for a little while more.
You’re a caveman, she said, shoving his hand from between her legs, a drowsy smile on her face. Leave me alone.
Usually post-sex was the danger zone. Afterwards. The moment when he looked over at a woman who, maybe a mere hour earlier, had looked like the best thing since pussy was invented, and wanted to nothing more than to get the hell away from her as quickly as possible. Solitude after sex was his preference. But not with her. With her what he wanted even more was to know whenever he wanted her, Robyn would still be there.
Outside, that morning had been a little bleak, the sky turning a dark, ominous gray, and with the windows open, Chris felt that the air had taken on a weighty feeling of an impending downpour. If it rained, he would fall asleep once again as well, because he liked the sound of the drops as they collided with the stone balcony just outside his bedroom.
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