It would’ve been so much easier if the sex weren’t so good. That was all I could think about, staring sightlessly at my computer screen, wondering how I’d found myself in this mess.
I didn’t even hear my phone vibrate during the first call. That’s how troubled I was after Peter’s escalating versions of trysts over the past couple of days. It wasn’t that I wasn’t having a good time. Office hookups and his dominant behavior were still incredibly sexy for me. But his tone in them had…changed. Perhaps it would’ve been nearly imperceptible if I hadn’t known him well. But unless I was completely mistaken, our little role playing sessions had taking on a mean-spirited tilt. Peter was being a jerk. I just didn’t know why.
My phone vibrated again, rattling across my desk and coming to rest against a cup of pens, magnifying the racket it was making. It was my mother, but I was in no mood to talk to her. I was afraid she would ask about how Peter and I were, and I didn’t think I could make a lie about what I really felt was going on float for her. I didn’t even know what I would lie about. I couldn’t be certain that things were on the rocks between us, and I certainly couldn’t tell her I suspected something was amiss because he’d spanked me harder than I thought he should have.
What had happened to me? Had I completely lost my ability to lie? It hadn’t ever been something I prided myself on before, but it had seen me through some dark times. No matter how many times I’d stepped in dog poop in my day job or been disparaged by customers during my night job, I was always able to feign a happy voice for my mother and spin tales of success at some imaginary office. Now that my happy reality at that office was beginning to wane, I didn’t have the heart to be false about it. Something was really wrong with Peter, and I had to get to the bottom of it.
It didn’t strike me that my mother might be having an emergency until the fourth consecutive call, a few coworkers glancing over at my endlessly vibrating phone. I grabbed the device and took it into the conference room, which still had maps of the hotels in the France acquisition. Had anyone even used this space since Peter had eaten me out in here after I signed the contract he'd given me without reading it? Maybe he’d lied to me — maybe the contract really was serious and binding and not a joke, like he’d said. Was that the reason he was being surly?
“What’s going on?” I asked quietly, answering the call. “I’m sorry it took me a while to answer, but we’re having a pretty busy day here.”
The other end of the line was quiet.
“Are you there?” I blocked my other ear with my hand, afraid my mother and I had a bad connection on the call. “Hello?”
A quiet noise grew and grew until I realized my mother had called me, weeping.
“Mom, what’s wrong?” I asked, my panic growing. “Are you all right? Tell me what’s happening.”
Our roles had been reversed, which was more than a little disquieting. I was the comforter, and she was the one in need of comforting.
“It’s Frank,” she finally managed to sob out.
“What’s wrong with Frank?” My eyes shot up to the closed office door, Peter just on the other side of it. Had something happened to his father? Was that why he was acting so strangely? No — he’d been off for days. If something serious had happened to Frank, I was sure my mother would’ve called me as soon as it had occurred.
“The — the wedding.” But she was crying too hard for me to understand her, her words becoming nonsensical syllables punctuating her tears.
“Mom, I can’t understand you,” I said, my heart breaking for her. I pressed my forehead against the cool glass of the windows in the conference room, trying to fight the rising tide of panic in my chest. What had gone wrong? Why was she so upset? “You have to try and calm down and tell me what’s wrong.”
“Frank,” she said again, hiccupping for air. “He says… He says the wedding’s off.”
Out of everything that could’ve happened, this was the last thing I would’ve thought to imagine. “What do you mean, the wedding’s off? What did he say?” My rising panic was swiftly replaced with anger. It was Frank who’d reduced my mother to this state. He was going to hear from me about this.
“He said… He said that we couldn’t get married anymore.” This elucidation brought on a fresh bout of crying, and I had to will myself to be patient.
“Did he say why, or did he just cut you out of his life just like that?” I asked slowly. “Tell me exactly what happened.”
“There was an investigation,” she said tearfully. “Something about his money that he didn’t like me doing. He thought I was trying to wrong him with it, but that wasn’t what I was doing, Gemma. Why would I choose money over someone I loved? I wasn’t trying to do anything.”
“How was there an investigation?” I asked, confused. “Were there police?”
“God, no. There was a private investigator who reported things to Peter.” I blinked swiftly, a dull roar in my ears. Peter was in on this? “About an account. And Frank said Peter told him he couldn’t trust me anymore. That we shouldn’t get married because I only cared about the money, and not him.” This released another torrent of tears, which was a blessing in disguise.
I didn’t know what to think, let alone say. How could I comfort my mother if I didn’t even understand what was going on? She was inconsolable, and I felt as if I only had half the picture of what was going on. How could Frank possibly think that my mother only loved him for his money? The idea was ludicrous. I’d seen the way she looked at him, seen the way loving him had transformed her completely. She had been so happy. It wasn’t fair for her happiness to be ripped away like this, so suddenly and strangely. My mother wasn’t the kind of person who would do this, and Frank didn’t seem like he would’ve initiated this without some kernel of prompting from someone.
That left Peter, and that point confused me most of all. Why would Peter insert himself into the wedding preparations? What reason did he have to ruin the relationship that our parents shared together?
“Gemma? Are you there?” My mother’s voice was so tenuous. She was so unsure of herself, and it broke me. I shored myself up and made my decision.
“Mom, I’m going to call you right back,” I said. “You stay near the phone, okay? I’m going to get this figured out for you.”
“Okay.” She sounded so lost, but I knew exactly where I was going, exactly where I had to go to get this all straightened out — or at least to extract the truth.
I marched out of the conference room and straight toward Peter’s office.
Chapter 12
“Explain something for me,” I said, none too politely, as I interrupted a conversation Peter was having in his office with another man, one I’d only seen in passing during my time working here.
Peter frowned apologetically at his colleague and looked at me, his brows drawn together. “Will you give me a moment to finish this up?”
“You need to address this immediately,” I informed him. “As in, right now.”
“I’m aware of what immediately means, thank you, Gemma,” Peter said tightly. “Would you excuse me?”
The man laughed and murmured something I was too angry to hear, and swept by me and out of the office. I didn’t even wait for the door to close to launch into him.
“The wedding’s off,” I all but shouted.
“What wedding?” Peter asked, but I rolled my eyes at him. He was so transparent.
“You know exactly which wedding I’m talking about. The one where my mother’s marrying your father.”
“Can we talk about this later?” he asked me, scrunching up his face. “This is rather a busy day for me.”
“Not too busy for us to have a little office hanky-panky earlier,” I reminded him, raising my eyebrow.
Peter was quiet for a long time. “What do you want me to say, Gemma?”
“I would like you to explain just where you get off meddling in my mother’s happiness,” I said, the force of my anger tinging my words in stee
l. I’d been puzzled and up in arms after ending the call with my mother, but now I realized just how enraged I was.
“What did she tell you?” It made me even angrier to see how calm Peter was.
“She called me, crying, mind you, to tell me that Frank told her it was off. Something about private investigators. Something about him being convinced that she was only marrying him for the money.”
My rage gradually built as I watched him consider this calmly.
“Is she not?” he asked finally, and I exploded.
“Of course she’s not, you asshole!” I yelled. “For some reason, she fell in love with Frank. He was all she talked about for months and months. You saw how happy she was with him at dinner — even when they very nearly caught us ‘working’ right here on top of your desk.”
Peter smirked at the memory, but it didn’t help how angry I still was at him.
“I would love for you to tell me just why you think this is so fucking funny.” I glared at him, and he leveled a look right back at me, apparently not impressed by my attempts to show him just how upset I was with curse words. I’d grown up around them when they were flung around dispassionately, heard the cooks and bartenders use them while I was a cocktail waitress, but it was always my experience that their weight was felt more completely when used sparingly.
“I don’t think it’s funny at all, actually,” Peter informed me. I usually loved his accent, but right now, I felt like it was one of our many differences, a sign that we were from two very different worlds and would never bridge that gap. It made him sound cold and distant, when it was usually so warm and inviting.
“Well, at least you understand that this isn’t a joke,” I said, my anger not slackening in the least. “Would you care to explain just what you were thinking? Just what in the hell put the idea in your head that my mother would be using your father for money?”
“Oh, that’s easy,” he said. “You did.”
I actually laughed at him. That’s how ludicrous that idea was. “And just what makes you think that?”
“The other day,” he said easily. “When we were so rudely interrupted in this very office by our parents. You mentioned that your mother was in it for the money. That she was a gold digger. Do I misremember?”
My mouth had fallen open. “Peter, that was a joke.”
“I thought so, too, at first,” he admitted. “But it bothered me and bothered me. My father…is not a handsome man. He’s been burned in love before for this very reason. Women half his age throwing themselves at him once they catch wind of just how much he’s worth, how much his estate is worth, how much this business is worth.”
“My mother isn’t half his age,” I spat. “And she didn’t throw herself at him. They met. At a dinner party. The attraction was mutual.”
“Then there was the text message from you,” Peter continued as if he hadn’t heard me. “Showing your mother in that ridiculous gown. Bragging that she’d asked for the most expensive dress in the entire store.”
I could not have been in more shock if I’d lost every drop in my body. How could a misunderstanding go so badly?
“That was also a joke,” I said slowly, as if over-pronouncing the words would help him understand where he’d gone wrong. “I made two jokes — perhaps in poor taste — and you have absolutely blown this entire thing out of proportion. You need to call your father immediately and set the record straight. My mother is beside herself.”
“The driver commented that the two of you were giddy about money.” Peter gave me his back and went to look out the window as if he were pulling his arguments out of the air just outside. “That you were giggling at the prospect of spending and spending for the wedding.”
“Because it’s a rush,” I said. “Because it is a lot of money. Because when I was a child, never in our wildest dreams would my mother and I have considered that one day we’d be chauffeured around New York City while planning her dream wedding to a man she loved so much. Because your father told her that money was no object and it made her uncomfortable. It frightened her, so we were trying to laugh it off. Because it is frightening to love someone who cares so little about something we once had so little of.”
I’d segued from talking about my mother to talking about the relationship I thought I’d shared with Peter. He was silent, giving away no emotions with that back, clad in a navy suit jacket. He never took his jacket off while working, not even when he was alone in his office. I used to think it was a testament to his professionalism, but now I just thought it made him look stiff, overly formal.
“You don’t understand what it is to want for money,” I told him. “We were so frugal when I grew up. I guess that was a good thing — I didn’t even know how to be extravagant when I moved here to try and find work. But I couldn’t save money, couldn’t pay my student loans, couldn’t even afford to feed myself half the time, had to go without a bathroom in my crappy apartment. And you were delighted when you set me up in the penthouse, delighted that I was shell-shocked by all of the finery and the card I was supposed to use to buy everything I’d never had before, your demand that I couldn’t feel weird about it.”
“You were also very eager to spend my family’s money,” Peter commented without turning around to address that notion to my face.
“Because you told me I should be,” I said. “If I knew you were going to throw it back in my face later, I would’ve never agreed to try this relationship out with you. Should I start saving up, Peter? Move back into my hovel so I can pinch pennies to pay you back for your misplaced generosity?”
He laughed mirthlessly. “You could never pay me back. Do you know how much that penthouse goes for each night?”
“Tell me,” I spat. “I’d love to know. I’m sure you’re very excited to rub my nose in it.”
But for some reason, he didn’t. I was relieved. I knew that place was expensive, but it was beautiful, and it had become my home — my refuge in the city. I could see all the things I loved about New York from that penthouse, and it made me feel like I was really living my dream.
Even if that dream was quickly shifting into a nightmare.
“This has been a huge mistake, hasn’t it?” I asked, mostly talking to myself at this point. “We’re from two different worlds, and yet we both care about money a little too much — me because I don’t have very much of my own, and you because you think my family is taking advantage of yours. I will tell you this. Say what you want about me, but you don’t get to label my mother. You have no idea what we…what she has been through. She deserves to be happy, and she was happy with your father — even if that came along with the baggage of having you and all your various hang-ups in the family. You have crushed her with these falsehoods, with these inventions, and I’m leaving to go and try to pick up the pieces.”
“You’re leaving?” This time, he did turn around, disbelief etched on his handsome face.
“Did you think I could just stay here, tucked away in the penthouse, while my mother suffered because of you?” I sneered at him. “Just how out of touch with normal human beings are you?”
Peter sighed, his shoulders slumping. “Gemma, I hired a private investigator who turned up some disturbing things about the way your mother’s been acting.”
This was even more of an affront. “You’ve had someone spying on my mother’s private life? Does your father know what you’ve done?”
“The private investigator discovered that my father gave your mother access to his money for her expenses and some improvements on her home, and she’s been funneling the funds into a savings account, one she only just opened, and one she hasn’t mentioned to my father.”
I was silent for a long time, wondering just how much I should reveal. No — Peter didn’t deserve that truth, and I wasn’t going to give it to him, no matter how compelled I was to be honest with him. He had stabbed me in the back, sabotaged our parents’ happiness, because he could never understand the finer points of des
peration. He’d never been desperate over something a single day of his life. He’d always gotten exactly what he wanted. I’d even pushed through my boundaries to give him the kinds of experiences that thrilled him. What had I gotten in return for continuing to feed into his entitlement?
That ended now.
“There are things that you will never understand about my family — the way my mother is, the way I can be,” I hissed at him. “Part of that is because you refuse to see. And the other part of that is because you are incapable of imagining suffering because the idea is so foreign to you. You think that no one has a hard time in this world because you’re coasting through it? We all come with baggage, Peter. Ours just doesn’t have dollar signs.”
How many times was I going to turn on my heel and march out of his office, eager to be rid of the man once and for all, to put this travesty behind me?
This was going to be my last.
Chapter 13
“We make a miserable pair, don’t we?” my mother tried to joke, looking over at me on the couch from her perch on the armchair. We were watching television, but neither of us seemed to be following the story of the program we’d settled on, something about love and torment and ultimate redemption.
“It’s not the first time the two of us have gone through a breakup,” I offered weakly. “It’ll get better.”
“God help us if it doesn’t,” my mother muttered, but I still heard her. She was sadder than I was. My mourning was tinged with anger and more than a little guilt.
I wished I didn’t, but the thing I missed most of all was the penthouse. It was a ridiculous thing to miss when I’d had the entire city at my beck and call, getting into nightspots that some celebrities couldn’t even get into simply because I’d been on the arm of one of the richest businessman in the Big Apple. But that penthouse had been so incredible. The view had been stunning, and one that not many people got of the city they lived in. It was beautiful day or night, the skyscrapers around the hotel gleaming in the sun or shining with thousands of stars of their own light, brightening the darkness.
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