British Bedmate (A Series of Standalone Novels)

by Penelope Ward

  -Your luv,

  Bridget

  P.S. Yes, I am.

  Yes, I am? She’d folded the note in half and sealed it with a lipstick kiss along the crease—she’d been wearing the red lipstick. Fuck. My head and heart were in pain, but apparently my cock was chipper this morning. I was growing stiff from a fucking note while I was miserable inside. I blew out a frustrated breath and grabbed for the brown paper bag.

  The minute I opened it, the smell of fresh-baked, banana nut bread permeated my nose even though it was wrapped in tin foil. I lifted it from the bag to see what was underneath and found it still warm. She baked me fresh bread. The bag also had an orange juice, coffee, and what I initially thought was some wadded up napkins. But upon closer inspection, I realized that wasn’t what was at the bottom of the sack—it was a pair of Bridget’s knickers.

  I pulled them out. Wednesday. Since that was today, the first thought that ran through my mind was Is she walking around commando? It dawned on me that she’d already answered my question. P.S. Yes, I am. The woman knew me so well, that she answered my questions before I even asked them. How the hell was I going to lie to a woman who could do that? She’d see right through my bullshit. I hated the thought of lying to her even if I could get away with it. But I hated the thought of hurting her just as much, if not more.

  After getting over the initial shock of finding out that the woman who was suing me was my girlfriend’s dead husband’s mistress, I went into a period of denial. It had to be a coincidence. There could’ve been two Ben Valentines that died in a car accident a couple of years ago. It was a long shot, but I had nothing else to cling to. When the deposition was over, I asked my lawyer some follow-up questions regarding the driver of the car. Of course, sleazy Arnie Schwartz was happy to tell me whatever dirty shit they’d dug up on the plaintiff.

  The hospital had hired an investigator to surveil Gina Delmonico in an effort to catch her doing things that a person with a bulging disc shouldn’t be able to do. They’d also done a full background investigation on her, including her relationship with the driver. My heart sank when Arnie mentioned that the driver’s wife was also an employee of the hospital—a nurse, and the two of them had a child together. But I felt sick thinking about the last half of the conversation we had.

  “Birth records list the father of Gina’s child as unknown. Doubt the kid will ever know she probably has a brother,” he said.

  “A brother?” I was confused, or perhaps it was willful ignorance.

  “Wife has a son, girlfriend has a daughter—chances are they share DNA. Hope the two don’t unknowingly meet in college and hit it off.”

  I couldn’t face her. I also couldn’t break Bridget’s heart by telling her that the man she had been married to wasn’t the man she thought he was. I’d be opening up old wounds that would never get a chance to heal. But how could I not tell her? Brendan could possibly have a sister.

  My head was spinning so fast after the deposition that I needed to take some time to think things through. In hindsight, it might not have been the best idea to spend that time thinking in a pub. Nothing was any clearer with my brain marinated in alcohol. I was a bigger mess now than I’d been earlier in the evening. Hence, the reason the alarm was going off at nearly four in the morning, and I was trying to climb in through the living room window. In my drunken haze, I couldn’t remember the code to punch in.

  Nigel came to the front door carrying a bat and found me wedged half in, half out of the living room window.

  “What the hell, Simon? You could have gotten your head bashed in.”

  I lost my balance and fell face first through the window and yet somehow landed on my very drunken arse. “Good thing you didn’t lock the window.”

  Nigel walked to the keypad and punched a code in. “Yes. We could have kept out an intruder. We wouldn’t have wanted that, now, would we?”

  I stumbled attempting to get up just as Calliope walked into the living room to join us. She pulled her bathrobe shut and squinted. “What the hell, Simon?”

  “That’s exactly what your better half said.” For some reason, I found that hysterical and started to laugh.

  “Are you drunk?” Calliope asked

  “Are you?” I responded, still laughing.

  Nigel sighed, “I’ll put some coffee on. You two have fun.”

  I managed to get myself to the couch and plopped down on it.

  “What’s going on, Simon? What are you doing here in the middle of the night climbing through our window?”

  “You changed the alarm combination?”

  “We didn’t change the combination, Simon.”

  “Well, then it must be broken.”

  “Sure, it’s broken. But why aren’t you at Bridget’s? Did you two have a fight or something?”

  “Nope. Everything is brilliant.”

  “If that’s the case, then why are you here?”

  “Ah.” I held up my pointer finger. “Because incest is bad. They could have a two-headed baby. I went to medical school. I know these things.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  Suddenly feeling like the room was spinning and a giant weight was crushing my chest, I leaned my head back on the couch and shut my eyes. “I love her, you know.”

  “Who are we talking about? Bridget or the two-headed baby?”

  “I’d love the shit out of a two-headed baby if it was Bridget’s.”

  “Okay, Simon. It’s four in the morning and you’re talking in drunk circles. Why don’t we go into the kitchen and have some coffee. Whatever is going on, we’ll figure it out.”

  The following morning, Bridget was already dressed in her maroon scrubs, getting ready for work when I walked in the door. I’d texted her last night before heading to Calliope’s, explaining that I was too wankered to drive. Thankfully, Calliope’s house was only a half-mile walk from the pub.

  Leading Bridget to believe that it was simply the deposition that had me stressed, I knew she was probably confused as to why I’d chosen to drown my sorrows alone in a bar instead of coming home and relieving my stress inside of her. That was uncharacteristic of me, for damn sure.

  I placed my hand around her cheek and kissed her forehead. “Brendan’s at school?”

  “Yes. I just got back from dropping him off.” Bridget seemed oddly sympathetic when I had expected her to be more pissed at me for not coming home. “How are you feeling? Want some coffee?”

  “Sick. I nearly honked on their couch. No coffee, thanks.”

  “Honked?”

  “Vomited. I was stupid to drink so much.”

  “Well, you were stressed. We all deserve an escape once in a while. As long as you don’t do it all of the time.”

  “Believe me, I don’t intend to, my luv. I’m fucking miserable away from you at night. Thank you for being so understanding.”

  Her warm lips covered my stale mouth. “I missed you.”

  Anticipating what was to come, my heart was breaking as I whispered, “I missed you, too.”

  I longed to return to the days before this mess came about.

  She frowned. “I wish I had more time to spend with you this morning, but I’m already late for work. I just stuck around long enough to say hello. You’re off today, right?”

  “Yeah. I don’t have to go in until tonight. We’re going to just miss each other’s shifts by like an hour, I think.”

  “You can catch up on rest today then, stay hydrated.”

  “I intend to.”

  God, I hated this façade.

  After she left for the hospital, my mind was racing. Calliope had warned me I could probably get in trouble for contacting Gina Delmonico directly because I was a party to her lawsuit. I’d watched enough Law & Order reruns to think she was right—but I needed to talk to her privately before telling Bridget anything at all. That way I could go into that inevitable conversation armed with information. As much as it made sense, I dreaded calling the woma
n. I just wished all of this were a bad dream.

  Wandering around the quiet house aimlessly, I stopped into Brendan’s room. There was a framed picture of his father atop the chest of drawers. It was in a baseball-themed frame.

  I lifted it and spoke to him. “What the fuck were you thinking…messing with that broad when you had Bridget? If you weren’t already dead, I’d fucking kill you, you know that?”

  This situation was causing me to completely lose my marbles; now I was talking to a dead man and threatening his life.

  “Alright, maybe I don’t mean that, because you’re Brendan’s dad. But I’d definitely rough you up a bit, maybe make you watch while I fucked your wife nice and good right in front of you. Although, maybe you’ve been seeing us from where you are. If so, then you’ve already bore witness to that. Serves you right.”

  I looked up at the ceiling before talking to the photo again.

  “Thanks a lot for leaving me to clean up your mess, mate. You’d better hope this little girl’s not yours. Get to work…talk to some people up there and bloody fix this.”

  Gina agreed to meet me at a coffee shop on the East Side of Providence. Bouncing my knees up and down and surrounded by Brown University students and their MacBooks, I sipped my coffee and anxiously awaited her arrival. The only thing pleasant about this was the smell of cinnamon wafting from the baked goods shelf.

  I hadn’t told Gina the exact reason for my wanting to speak with her. All I’d said was that I had some information that she might be interested in, making it seem like meeting me would provide some benefit in regards to her case against the hospital. I feared she might not have come if she knew the real reason I needed to confront her.

  When she appeared, I waved to her from my seat in the middle of the packed café. She lifted her index finger then pointed to the counter to signal that she was going to order something before joining me.

  Five minutes later, Gina placed her coffee down on the table and sat across from me. Her chair skidded.

  “What did you want to see me about, Dr. Hogue?”

  Needing to cut to the chase, I came right out with it. “My girlfriend is Bridget Valentine—Ben’s wife.”

  Gina froze in the middle of sipping her coffee. Her expression turned to one of fear. She slowly nodded but said nothing as I continued.

  “I was dragged into the deposition because I happened to be on shift in the ER the night of your accident. I didn’t know Bridget then. We’ve only gotten together over the past several months. The fact that the driver turned out to be Ben was a very unwelcome surprise.”

  She blew out a long breath. “I can imagine.” Gina was nervous, looking around and fidgeting in her seat.

  “Look, I’m not here to judge you. But I can’t keep this information from Bridget. I have to let her know what I’ve discovered. But before I say anything, I need to make sure that I’m not misrepresenting the facts. This is going to gut her no matter how I present it.”

  She was wearing bright red lipstick, similar to the shade I loved on Bridget. On Gina, it just seemed dirty and unappealing.

  “What do you want to know?” she asked.

  I figured I’d tread lightly rather than skipping right to the most important piece. I needed her to feel comfortable opening up to me so that she didn’t feel the need to hide anything.

  In the least abrasive tone I could conjure up, I said, “You indicated you carried on an affair with Ben for about a year…”

  “Yes. We never meant to hurt anyone. I had a boyfriend at the time, too. But Ben and I…we just connected. It started as an innocent flirtation at work, just emails and text messages and what not. Then we ended up on the same business trip once and well, you know…”

  “Unfortunately, I do know, yes.” My blood was boiling. “Did he ever…talk about why he was cheating?”

  She shrugged her shoulders. “He loved his wife. There was never any doubt in my mind about that. He never spoke negatively about her. They’d just been together for so long, and I think their relationship lacked excitement in certain areas.”

  “Did he say that exactly?”

  “Well, he’d tell me that he didn’t feel comfortable exploring…certain things sexually with her. He didn’t feel right because she was the mother of his child.”

  If that wasn’t the sorriest excuse I’d ever heard.

  Gritting my teeth to hide my anger, I said, “Right. He’d make love to her and he’d fuck you.”

  “If you want to put it that way…yes.”

  “Did he ever talk about leaving Bridget?”

  “No. I knew he would never consider that because of his son, and I would have never asked him to. But honestly, we didn’t talk a lot about his home life when we’d spend time together. That wasn’t the point of our affair. We enjoyed the carefree nature of our relationship. The few times he opened up, he did mention that even though he loved his wife, that things between him and Bridget were strained at times. He didn’t think Bridget was happy anymore. Ben was with me for an escape, and I was escaping a bad relationship at the time myself. We really didn’t set out to hurt anyone. We never wanted anyone to find out about us, certainly never intended it to come out this way.”

  He wanted to escape his home life.

  I looked up at the ceiling and silently continued my conversation with him from earlier.

  Bridget wasn’t happy? Go fuck yourself, Ben. Maybe if you’d given your wife the same energy you’d given your whore…things would have been different.

  I continued, “So, your philosophy is…what people don’t know won’t hurt them?”

  “Basically, yes. I mean, we weren’t really thinking about anyone else. It was selfish, but we couldn’t help our connection. Once you cross the line the first time, that’s it. You can’t really go back, nor do you really want to.”

  I needed to get to the crux of the matter before I lost it on her and flipped this table.

  “You have a daughter…”

  “Yes.”

  “I think you probably can guess what I’m going to ask next.”

  “Olivia is not Ben’s,” she insisted.

  Squinting my eyes skeptically, I asked, “How old is she again?”

  “Three.”

  “Technically, it’s possible, then. How can you be sure she’s not Ben’s?”

  “I’m ninety-nine percent sure.”

  My eyes stretched open. “Ninety-nine. Not a hundred…”

  “Like I said, it’s nearly impossible.”

  I leaned in. “How is that the case if you were having regular sex with him?”

  “Ben was religious about using condoms. He didn’t want to take even the smallest risk of getting me pregnant.”

  “And this other man you were with…you had unprotected sex with him?”

  “Yes. He was my long-term boyfriend. We’d been together almost ten years when I met Ben. Brian and I aren’t together anymore.”

  I checked my phone and realized it was time for me to head to work.

  “Look, Gina, I’m not going to push this issue or do anything to influence Bridget one way or the other, but if she ends up wanting a DNA test, would you be willing to have Olivia tested to match for a sibling against Brendan?”

  “Yeah. I mean, if it will put this to rest. My ex, Brian, knows about my affair with Ben. I ended up telling him after we broke up. But he’s taken responsibility for Olivia. He believes he’s her father.”

  “Alright…well, I appreciate your willingness to cooperate if it comes to that.” I stood up. “I have to be going now.”

  She stopped me. “Before you go…for what it’s worth, please tell Bridget I’m really sorry. I don’t think she’s gonna want to hear that. But it’s the truth. It was so hard not being able to go to Ben’s wake and funeral. Aside from my own injuries that prevented me from it, I couldn’t face her. Ben may not have been in love with me like he loved his wife, but I knew he cared about me. It wasn’t just sex, you know? We were friends
, too. I’ll never get over what happened to him. But I certainly wish that this whole thing hadn’t come out. Nothing good can come from this now.”

  “I wish I’d never found out about it, to be honest. Now, I’m faced with having to ruin her memory of him. But I can’t not tell her.”

  “I understand. You’re in a difficult position.”

  “Thank you for taking the time to speak with me.”

  “No problem.” She smiled, her eyes landing on my torso before returning upward. “Bridget’s a lucky woman.”

  I walked away, refusing to acknowledge her last comment, which didn’t sit right with me at all. It made me feel like she’d do it all over again if given the opportunity. Once a cheater, always a cheater. It was amazing how easy it was for her to justify her actions. They had a connection, my arse. Fuck that. He was married to someone who believed in him and who thought their marriage was sacred.

  Driving to the hospital, I didn’t know how I was going to make it through my long shift. I wouldn’t have the opportunity to address any of this with Bridget until our mutual day off this weekend. While the time apart would allow me to gather my thoughts, I wasn’t sure there was any way to do this without shattering her world.

  Brendan had tomorrow off because of a professional day at school, so I dropped him off at his grandmother’s house for a sleepover. I planned to pick him up on Saturday afternoon.

  Driving back from Ben’s mother’s place, I found myself dreading returning home to an empty house. Even though I had loads of laundry to do and plenty of housework to occupy my time, I was really missing Simon tonight. I hated when we ended up on opposite shifts like this. He’d be working all through the night.

  It was a bizarre week to say the least with his unexpectedly getting called into the deposition and then his drunken night away. Simon never lost control like that, and I guess it was a matter of time before stress caught up with him.

  Making matters worse, he hadn’t nailed down a permanent position here yet, so he was facing unemployment on top of everything. He had some discussions with the management at Memorial about their taking him on permanently, but no one had been able to give him any guarantees yet.