His eyes met mine. “Does he play poker?”
“What?”
“Does he play poker? Chess? The stock market?”
“He was the reigning chess champion of his fraternity,” I conceded.
He smirked. “Then trust me. He’s up to something.”
I sipped a bit of my own wine. “You know, they say that people who can’t trust can’t be trusted.”
He scoffed again. “Ten days into marital bless and my loving wife is already questioning my judgment.”
“Maybe because ten days into marital bliss, your wife doesn’t really know who the hell you are.”
The hardness of my tone gave him pause. “You know me, Coralie,” he assured.
“Really? Then where did you go to college?”
His jaw clenched. “What’s this about?”
“Answer the question,” I demanded.
“I already did,” he gritted between clenched teeth. “The first night we met, if I remember correctly.”
I thought back to that first night. Technically he was right, he had answered the question. “But you made me think it was part of some made-up story,” I reminded.
“That’s what you preferred to believe,” he shot back. “It’s not my fault you are some elitist who thinks that Stanford would be out of reach for a guy like me.”
“That’s not it,” I insisted hotly.
“Then what is it?” he snapped back. “You really think you were the first person who treated me like I didn’t deserve to be there? I worked my ass off for years, taking fewer classes so I could juggle two jobs to pay for my expenses, because I didn’t have a rich daddy at home doing it for me.” He tossed his napkin on the table before he stormed off to the living room.
I was after him like a shot. “How dare you accuse me of any such thing? I’ve never treated you differently!”
He swung around to face me. “Then why did you need anything more than my word that I had gone there?”
I sputtered for a second or two. “I thought… I thought we were pretending… that you were fitting yourself to me to explain how we knew each other. It was a misunderstanding that you could have corrected at any point if you had simply told me the truth. Even when we asked you where you learned to play the piano,” I started but he shook his head.
He walked closer, which nearly backed me against the wall. “Really? I could have told you that I pursued a master’s degree at Stanford and you would have believed me? Funny, since you didn’t believe me when I told Lucy I was a liberal arts major at that very university.”
“I thought that was part of the lie!”
“Just admit it, Coralie! You didn’t think I could get into a school like Stanford.”
“Fine!” I snapped. “Stanford is a university with a six percent acceptance rate, one of the most prestigious institutions the world over, with a price tag to match. You’re the one who told me you grew up with nothing, Devlin. How was I supposed to put those pieces together?”
“You could have trusted me,” he pointed out.
“Ditto,” I grated.
He scoffed again before he plopped on the couch. “How could I trust you when you were like all the others? It really didn’t matter where I went to school, what I had learned or things I had done, as long as I fucked like a soldier at the end of the night.”
“How can you say that to me, Devlin?”
“Because it was true,” he answered simply. “My job was to be whatever you needed me to be, and you needed the bad boy from the wrong side of the tracks, who knew how to make you feel like you’ve always dreamed you could feel. Face it. My credentials were an inconvenient truth.”
I shook my head. “That’s bullshit and you know it. You could have brought them up when we were discussing about what kinds of jobs you could do instead of escorting.” Which reminded me… “You also failed to mention that you ran your own company around that time also.”
Realization dawned on his face. “So I take it your Father’s snooping paid off.”
“Why didn’t you tell me, Devlin? I have been freaked out for days, thinking that Father would uncover your escort work, and you never bothered to tell me that you had already covered your own tracks.”
He chuckled humorlessly. “I told you then that I had it covered. See how much time we would have saved if you only trusted me?”
“How am I supposed to trust you?” I exploded. “I barely know you.”
“You know me,” he insisted again in a deadly low voice.
“Do I?” I challenged, putting one hand on my hip.
“I sure hope so,” he remarked. “Otherwise marrying me was a huge mistake.” I said nothing as I stared at him. The longer the silence stretched, the angrier he became. He rose to his feet. “Is that what you think?”
I sighed. “I don’t know what to think,” I finally said.
“I see,” he muttered before he retrieved his jacket from the back of the sofa.
“Where are you going?”
He swung around to face me. “I guess there’s no telling, is there?” He slammed out of the apartment without another word.
CHAPTER FIVE
The hours that followed Devlin’s departure were some of the longest I had experienced since the day we met. The only other instance that could compare was the day he stormed out of our Vegas hotel room, supposedly bringing our business association to an end. He finally came back a little over twelve hours later, and in that time he had gone out with and fucked someone else.
That made every second that passed stretch on forever as I stared at my uneaten dinner. The roses that he had brought home for me mocked me from the center of the table, where candles had already burned out. My phone sat on the table, but it didn’t ring. The silence was excruciating.
By ten o’clock, I finally cleared the table. I put away the food. I washed the dishes by hand. By twenty after ten there wasn’t anything left to do but wait. I restlessly prowled from room to room. Everything within the apartment reminded me of our argument. Despite how he had done it, this man had amassed a certain amount of wealth, and I had treated it like it was some kind of fluke, like he had no other alternative but to fuck his way to the top.
I had simply taken it for granted.
He had gone from the streets of Belfast to a luxury high rise in Los Angeles, and even managed to help out some people along the way. And here I had treated him like some mindless toy. No wonder he was so pissed.
Still, I had a right to be pissed too. Sure, I had made the mistake of assuming he couldn’t have possibly gone to Stanford, but I wasn’t a complete snob. If he had truly confided his past with me, I would have believed him. In fact I would have admired him even more than I already did. I wanted to see him as a three-dimensional person instead of a fuck-toy, but he denied me that opportunity repeatedly. He had misjudged me every bit as much as I had misjudged him, which led to misunderstandings on both our parts.
Worse, I knew that he would never understand that. He’d go on, playing his cards close to the vest, and feel perfectly entitled doing so. It was entirely possible that I’d never know who Devlin Masters really was.
And here I was. Married to him. For life.
Not necessarily, the angel on my shoulder whispered. Of all the differences that Devlin and I might have, this would certainly qualify as the most irreconcilable. Ours wouldn’t be the first marriage to fail as a result.
But I didn’t want my marriage to fail. As nutty as it was to tie the knot with someone I barely knew, I knew that I would have paid any price to be with the man I loved. Without reason, perhaps, but I loved him all the same.
Every minute he stayed away felt like a lifetime. It was like my heart was missing from my aching, hollow chest. When my phone finally rang, I pounced all over it. My stomach fell when Lucy’s cheerful voice greeted my ear. “So? How’d it go?”
“He left,” I managed to say without bursting into tears. But it was close.
“Left? L
eft where?”
“I don’t know.” And that was the bitch of it. I really didn’t know. Devlin Masters was a blank slate beyond what few things I had managed to pull out of him. How he spent his time, or the friends he might have spent it with, remained a mystery. He had assimilated into my life without revealing much of anything about his.
“Oh, Ceece. I’m sorry.”
“Stop,” I warned her. “If you treat this like it’s a huge deal, I’ll fall apart. I swear to God.
“Okay. Let’s approach it logically. What did he say, exactly?” she asked.
I took a deep breath before I spilled the details of our argument. She, like me, had assumed he was just fabricating a connection to explain our relationship beyond that of an escort and client.
“He thinks that I think he’s beneath us. Nothing could be further from the truth. I never felt that way. I never would have slept with him otherwise. You know that.” I may not have had a long list of lovers, but I had been fairly discriminating. Most had been in my social class. If I fucked Devlin, it was because I thought he belonged there.
Why didn’t he know that?
“Maybe he doesn’t know you either,” she suggested. “This is what happens when you marry someone after a week. Most of the stuff you find out when you’re dating happens after you say I do.”
My voice was soft. “Do you think I made a mistake, Luce?”
“You know me, girl. I worry more about regrets than mistakes. I’d rather go for the gold and lose than sit in the audience as some safe old spectator. ‘What if’ has always scared me more than saying ‘I failed.’ You can’t throw that Hail Mary pass if your hands aren’t on the ball.”
I nodded. I knew that no matter what, I’d much rather be here, living on the edge with Devlin, than safe at home in Bel Air, waiting for the next big life event to cross off my list.
“Part of me wishes that I could just pull the bandage right off. Just uncover everything all at once, lay it all on the table and force him to deal with it.”
She chuckled. “Yeah. That should go over really well.”
“What other choice do I have, Lucy?”
“You could trust him.”
“Why? He doesn’t trust me.”
“Then don’t you think it’s time at least one of you starts?” She let that hang in the air for a bit before she continued. “Let me give you a tip, one wife to another. If you want to be trusted, you have to extend that trust. Yes, that means you’re going to have to work through your shit. Yes, that means you’re going to have to wade through his. And yes, sometimes that’s extremely unfair. But the fact is that Devlin Masters doesn’t trust anyone, which is why all these weirdo rules are in place to begin with. You can either roll with these weirdo rules and gain his trust, like you have been doing, or you can bulldoze your way all over his trust issues. But I guarantee if you do so, it will prove to him you’re no different than anyone else. Then he’ll leave and you’ll figure out that fair has jack shit to do with love.”
“I know,” I mumbled as I rubbed my eyes. It was what scared me the most.
“You can either be right in this situation, or you can be happy. It’s up to you to decide, Ceece.”
Thanks to Lucy, I didn’t raid Devlin’s personal files in his office, though midnight came and went without his returning home. I took a long shower and then I crawled into bed. I tried to read a book on my tablet, but I couldn’t concentrate. All I could think about was how long he had been gone.
A lot could happen in four hours.
Our very first date took four hours almost to the minute. Four hours was all it took to teach me what an orgasm was, and he walked away eight hundred dollars richer.
“My business is a numbers game, baby. I have bills to pay.”
My eyes swept the room of his luxury high-rise apartment. He paid over six thousand dollars a month for this place, which was a steep bill indeed. He drove a car worth over forty-thousand dollars. Designer suits stuffed his closet. Expensive imported champagne filled his wine cellar. He had maintained it all because he was gunning for the most elite, discerning clientele, and I was absolutely certain that he had collected a rather impressive list. My little eight hundred dollars had been a drop in the pan.
Had he gone out with another client that first day we met? Had he fucked her? Had he gone out with several clients that day? Had he fucked them all? There were twenty-four hours in a day, and I had only taken up four of them.
Four hundred dollars an hour. He needed fifteen hours alone just to maintain his apartment.
Fifteen hours. Fifteen different beds. Fifteen different women. Fifteen different stories. Fifteen different fantasies.
“I provide the fantasy. That’s what I do. And I’m damned good at it. I have clients all over the country, women who can’t wait for me to blow into town for a weekend or a week, to give them exactly what they want, exactly how they want it.”
God help me, I couldn’t help but wonder how they wanted it. How did my chameleon conform to their fantasies? Did he drop truth bombs without their even knowing, because it was just easier for them to treat him like a paper doll they could dress and pose at will?
I supposed I’d never know. I didn’t know any of his former clients, though it was clear they ran in my crowd, people that my father liked and respected, like Suzanne Everhart.
That idea was a little bit harder to swallow.
I sighed, closed my eyes and tried to sleep. No matter what time he got home, I still had to go to work in the morning. If I was lucky, he’d make it home tonight and we could at least talk it through. I could handle work sleep-deprived as long as the issue was resolved. I decided to nap while I could, just in case.
Unfortunately, the troubling day just played in an annoying, frustrating loop in my head. My brain had recorded everything, from a visual snapshot of his transcript to the look in his eyes when he stormed out of our apartment.
God, I really blew it. Finally I reached for my phone. Fuck pride. I just wanted him home.
Before I could pull up his number, I heard the bedroom door open. Devlin wrestled out of his jacket as he stumbled into the room. I could practically smell the bourbon from twenty feet away. I placed my phone onto the nightstand before I settled back against the pillows and waited. Every question I wanted to ask, such as “Where’ve you been?” “Who were you with?” “Did you fuck around on me again?” would have only pushed him right back out the door for another four hours.
A lot can happen in four hours…
He peeled his shirt from his body, tossing it in the hamper across the room. He kicked off his shoes and then stepped out of his pants. Even in the low light he was so strong and beautiful that it took my breath away.
I still didn’t say anything as he shuffled to the adjoining bedroom. I heard the shower kick on, which didn’t do anything to reassure me.
“Don’t be silly,” the devil on my shoulder assuaged. He always showers before he leaves his clients.
My gut twisted even more.
I practically held my breath the entire fifteen minutes it took him to shower, brush his teeth and return to bed. He hadn’t acknowledged me. He hadn’t even looked at me. He simply fell into bed with a deep sigh, closed his eyes and started snoring almost immediately.
I gaped at him for long minutes afterwards. It was if I hadn’t been in the apartment at all. I wanted to smack the hell out of him, waking him up so we could resolve our issues enough that I could sleep as fucking peacefully as he was. Lucy’s voice whispered in my ear.
“You can either roll with these weirdo rules and gain his trust, like you have been doing, or you can bulldoze your way all over his trust issues. But I guarantee if you do so, it will prove to him you’re no different than anyone else.”
I took a deep breath and scooted down between the covers and tried to fight for sleep before morning. I turned my back on him, though. He didn’t deserve to see how difficult the process was for me.
Th
e alarm rang an hour and a half after I went to sleep. I turned onto my back, checking the other side of the bed. It was already empty. I pulled myself into a sitting position. My lack of sleep made every muscle groan in protest.
They protested more when I turned on the shower as cold as I could stand it, just to wake myself up. I sucked in a breath as the spray hit me with full force right on my chest. My teeth were chattering by the time I managed to speed wash my hair and loofah all the important bits.
I wrapped myself in a towel and headed into the large walk-in closet, where I picked out my clothes for the day. I didn’t care about looking good at this point. People would be lucky if the clothes I picked matched.
I was a virtual zombie as I drove to the open mall in Century City where Cabot’s was located. I honestly didn’t wake up until I walked into my office, where I found Oliver sitting behind my desk, and Devlin sitting in the chair across from him.
“As you can see, the benefits package is quite generous, with stock options and a 401k that we match up to six percent of what you contribute.”
As I got closer, I could see that Devlin was reading a copy of the offer of employment that was still folded away in my purse. Somehow we hadn’t gotten around to discussing that the night before. “What’s going on?” I asked.
To my dismay, Oliver was the only one to answer. “I called Devlin in early so we could discuss his new position with the company.”
I looked down at Devlin, but he didn’t spare me a glance. Instead he studied the letter in his hand. “I see,” I said as I placed my purse on my desk.
Oliver watched the interaction with interest. He turned back to Devlin. “Damian will be able to start training you immediately. If you’d like, I can walk you to his office and introduce you.”
Devlin stood. “Sounds good,” he stated simply, still without looking at me. I thought he might have followed Oliver right out the door without saying one word, but as he passed me he grabbed my arm and delivered a hard kiss on my mouth as he squeezed my arm. Neither were the signs of affection he probably hoped to demonstrate to Oliver. In fact, his softly spoken, “Talk to you later,” sounded a lot more like a threat than a promise.
Masters for Life Page 6