by Shelly Ellis
“We better head inside,” Diane said quietly, knowing full well Leila’s secret. “I bet they’re waiting on us.”
Leila nodded before opening her car door. Her stomach was filled with butterflies. She was so nervous that she felt jittery. She was worried that Isabel and Evan wouldn’t click.
What if she doesn’t like him? Leila thought dismally as she, Diane, and Isabel climbed the limestone steps to the massive French doors. She glanced over her shoulder at Isabel, who was wearing a navy-blue taffeta dress and black patent leather shoes that Leila had chosen for the occasion. The little girl was holding Diane’s hand and hopping from step to step and giggling, blissfully unaware that she was about to have dinner with her future stepfather.
Could Leila really marry a man whom her daughter didn’t like?
After they rang the doorbell, one of the French doors opened. Leila was shocked to find Evan standing in the doorway instead of his housekeeper. When he saw the trio, he grinned.
“You’re here!” he exclaimed, pushing the door further open. He gestured for them all to step inside. “Come in! Come in! Welcome to my home!”
Diane nodded shyly and stepped through the doorway first. Isabel trailed in after her and stared around her in wonderment.
“Hey, I remember you now! You were the man who had a car like the president. Wow!” she shouted, looking up at the three-story ceiling of the center foyer. “Your friend is rich, Mommy! You live here all by yourself, Mr. Murdoch?”
“Izzy!” Leila exclaimed as she stood in the doorway, her cheeks warming with embarrassment.
Evan laughed. “Yes, I do, though I have a few people who stay here with me sometimes to help me take care of everything.”
“Take care of everything?” Isabel repeated, now squinting with puzzlement. “You mean like a pet sitter?”
“He means he has servants, baby,” Diane explained, rubbing the girl’s shoulders. “Mr. Murdoch has people who clean up his house and cook for him.”
“Like Mommy cleans up after people at the restaurant?”
“Umm, something like that,” Leila muttered before finally stepping through the doorway. She met Evan’s gaze, and her cheeks warmed again at the unrestrained heat and desire that lingered in his dark eyes. “Are . . . are we late?”
“No, you’re right on time.” He then leaned down to kiss her, but she suddenly turned her head so his lips landed on her cheek instead of her mouth. He pulled back from her, looking confused by her brush-off.
“Not in front of Izzy,” she mouthed before turning to her daughter. “You know, if you ask nicely Mr. Murdoch might give us a tour of his home.”
Evan glanced uneasily at Leila before turning his full attention to her family. He pasted on a smile again. “I’d be happy to give you a tour under one condition.” He held up his finger. “You all call me Evan, not Mr. Murdoch. Mr. Murdoch’s my dad and he’s long gone.”
For the next twenty minutes, Evan showed them from room to room, and both Diane and Isabel gawked at everything from the indoor basketball court to the lavish dining room that had been set up for Thanksgiving to the Olympic-sized swimming pool. When they toured the second floor of the east wing, Evan opened one of the doors, revealing a huge bedroom. It was painted a soft pink and decked out with everything a little girl’s heart could desire: a pearl-grey armoire and dressing table; a corner with a toy box overflowing with stuffed animals and a wardrobe filled with costumes; and glass shelves along the walls covered with ballet figurines, unicorns, and Faberge eggs. Isabel ran toward the queen-sized bed that was decorated with a white silk canopy and had a gold crown over the headboard. She twirled in a circle as she gazed around the room.
“Wow! Who lives in here?”
“You can,” Evan said as he casually leaned against the door frame, “whenever you and your mom move in.”
Isabel stopped twirling. Her elation faded a little.
“Move in?” she repeated, visibly perplexed. “You mean live here . . . with you?”
Leila rushed into the bedroom. “What Evan means is—”
“Sure, you can live here whenever you want,” he explained, oblivious to Leila’s growing panic. “Before or after your mom and I get married. It doesn’t matter to me.”
When Evan blurted out those words, Leila grimaced.
Oh, God, she thought as she watched her daughter’s face fall. Oh, God, Evan, why did you say that?
“You and . . . you and Mommy are getting married?” Isabel took a step back. She stared up at Leila with tears in her eyes. “But you’re married to Daddy! You can’t marry somebody else!”
“Honey, Daddy and I are divorced,” she began softly. “I told you that. Mommy and Daddy can marry other people now. Your daddy wants to marry his girlfriend and I . . .” She swallowed the lump that had formed in her throat. “I want to marry Evan.”
She watched as Isabel bit down hard on her bottom lip. Tears spilled onto Isabel’s plump, brown cheeks. The little girl then pushed past Leila and ran out of the room, shoving Evan out of the way as she did.
“Izzy!” Leila yelled after her. “Izzy, honey!”
“I’ll go get her,” Diane said before following Isabel down the hall.
As she heard her daughter’s sobs echo along the corridor, Leila closed her eyes. “Shit!” she shouted, stomping her foot on the plush rug. “Shit!”
“What?” Evan asked, striding toward her. “What did I say?”
“Why did you have to tell her we were getting married? I hadn’t told her yet!”
“Well, that would explain this,” he said, grabbing her left hand and showing an absent engagement ring.
She yanked her hand out of his grasp. “Don’t start.”
“Don’t start? Don’t start? Damn it, Lee, I gave you that ring to wear it! Not to hide it! And how was I supposed to know that you hadn’t told Isabel we were engaged? We’re supposed to get married next year! When the hell were you planning to tell her?”
“I don’t know! Eventually!”
“Eventually? I thought you wanted to get married.”
“I do, Ev.” She raised her hand to her forehead, where a pounding headache was starting. “Of course, I do. And I was . . . I was going to tell Isabel soon. But she’s a kid. I couldn’t just drop it on her. I had to do it . . . delicately.”
He sighed and ran his hand over his face. “Well, now it’s done.”
“I know,” she mumbled before walking out of the bedroom to find her mother and daughter. “I know.”
She found them a few minutes later, sitting on a bench in front of the floor-to-ceiling windows in the west wing. When they saw her approach, Diane looked up. She was cradling Isabel against her side. The little girl wasn’t sobbing anymore, but she was sniffing, her eyes were red, and her lashes were still damp.
“Izzy, honey,” Leila said, running a hand over the little girl’s head, “I’m sorry that I upset you.”
Isabel didn’t raise her eyes so Leila knelt in front of her. Isabel finally looked at Leila from the crook of her grandmother’s arm.
“I wanted to tell you sooner, but I didn’t because I thought you might react this way. I thought it might make you cry. But, honey, just because Evan and I are getting married doesn’t mean I love you any less. You’ll always be my baby, my little girl. I—”
“He’s not my daddy,” Isabel whispered fiercely. Her watery eyes narrowed.
“Of course, Evan isn’t! You have a daddy,” Leila insisted. “But I want you to be all right with this. I won’t . . .” She took a deep breath. “I won’t get married if it hurts you that much.”
Diane stared at her daughter with her brows knitted together, as if silently asking, “What are you saying?”
Leila looked away from her mother. What she had said, she meant. She didn’t want her romantic relationship or her happiness to put a wedge between her and Isabel. The little girl had already gone through so much upheaval. If Isabel couldn’t accept Evan, then Leila would brea
k off the engagement. It was as simple as that.
She waited on bended knee, with bated breath, for her daughter’s answer. Isabel finally loosened her grip around Diane’s waist. She slowly raised her head. “Okay,” she whispered.
“Okay, what?” Leila asked.
“Okay, you can get married and we can live here . . . only if Grandma can come with us too?”
“If she wants,” Leila assured, smiling genuinely for the first time that night.
“Oh, there’s no way I’d let y’all leave me behind! I want to live in a big mansion too, honey!”
Leila rose to her feet and held out her hand to her daughter. “Now let’s go downstairs and get something to eat.”
Chapter 30
PAULETTE
Paulette stood alone in her spacious bathroom, staring blankly at her reflection in the mirror. The water was running in the sink. She could hear the soft murmur of the sports channel on the other side of the bathroom door and Antonio opening and closing his bedroom closet as he finished getting dressed for tonight’s Thanksgiving dinner at the Murdoch mansion. It was a dinner where the entire family would celebrate the end of bad times and what they had to be thankful for. Charisse was doing her stint of court-mandated rehab. Dante was out of their lives and would no longer be able to play his mind games and wreak havoc. Evan and Leila had officially set their wedding date, barring any problems with Evan’s divorce. It was a time of renewal in the Murdoch family. The M&Ms were finally on the comeback! But Paulette didn’t feel a bit like celebrating.
Her eyes lowered to the monogrammed hand towel that sat on her bathroom counter. She shifted the towel aside, revealing a pregnancy test.
“Hey, baby!” Antonio shouted through the bathroom door, making her jump in alarm. “You almost ready? We’re already running late!”
“Yeah, I’m . . . I’m almost done,” she called back.
She then grimaced when she saw the smiley face and the words PREGNANT in the digital window. She covered the plastic stick with her hand towel again and closed her eyes, willing the test to disappear.
This was some kind of a joke, some cruel twist of fate. She had wanted for so long to get pregnant again. She had wanted for her and Antonio to finally make a baby. And now she was pregnant and couldn’t say for sure who the father was. She did the math in her head. She was seven, maybe eight weeks pregnant, and in that time she had slept with both Marques and her husband. At this point, figuring out the paternity would come down to a flip of a coin.
Heads, it’s Marques’s baby, Paulette thought gloomily. Tails, it’s Tony’s.
Paulette dropped her face into her hands, wondering how she would get out of this.
“You can get another abortion,” a voice in her head whispered.
But what if the baby was Antonio’s? She didn’t want to get rid of their baby, their little one.
“But what if it isn’t?” the voice countered.
Then she would be pregnant with another man’s baby and Antonio would be the cuckold forced to raise another man’s child.
Paulette slowly shook her head. She couldn’t do that to Antonio. She had betrayed him in so many ways in the past few months. There was no way she could do that to him too.
Just then, her phone rang. She was never without it nowadays, always keeping it within arm’s reach for fear of leaving it around and Antonio stumbling upon a text message from Marques. She grabbed it and glared down at the screen. She pressed the green button on the glass screen to answer.
“What do you want?” she asked.
“You coming over tonight?” Marques asked between munches.
“No, I . . . I can’t.” Paulette glanced over her shoulder at the closed door. She could hear Antonio laughing at something one of the sports commentators said on television. “I have something with my . . . my family tonight.”
Marques sucked his teeth. “You ain’t come over yesterday either! You always got some damn excuse!”
“I can’t, okay? I just can’t. Not tonight.”
“Yeah, well, your ass better come over tomorrow night.” He munched again. “I don’t wanna hear no shit either. You better wear something nice, something sexy, and have that pussy nice and wet and ready for me,” he growled, making her cringe, “or that man of yours is gonna get a call. Understand?”
Paulette hung up on him. She slammed her phone down on the counter, feeling tears sting her eyes. More threats . . . more blackmail . . . more bullshit. And now she was pregnant.
She finally realized she was postponing the inevitable. Eventually, Marques would get tired of threatening her and tell Antonio the truth. Or maybe Dante would tell Antonio to take out his revenge on her. She would always be looking over her shoulder, waiting for the day when all her secrets would get out.
This has to end, Paulette thought, gathering the pregnancy test, dumping it into a plastic bag and hiding it underneath the sink. I can’t do this anymore. This has to end. I’m telling Tony everything tonight. Everything!
She had made things right with her family. Now she had to make things right with Antonio too. Before she could second-guess herself, she swung the bathroom door open to find her husband sitting on the edge of the bed, peering up at their flat-screen television.
“Tony, I have something to tell you,” she said, catching him by surprise.
He turned to look up at her. He raised his brows. “Ooookay,” he said slowly and chuckled. “That doesn’t sound good.”
She took a deep breath, feeling her heart thud wildly in her chest and her stomach seize into knots. The rush of blood sang in her ears.
He narrowed his eyes at her. “What’s wrong, baby? You look sick.”
She had so much to tell Antonio about her history with Marques, his blackmailing her, the money, their affair, and finally the pregnancy. Where should she begin? What was the most gentle way to explain so many devastating things to the man she loved?
When Paulette didn’t answer him but instead continued to take deep breaths as she stood in the bathroom doorway, he rose from the bed.
“If you don’t feel well, we don’t have to go to the party, honey. We’ll just tell your brother we—”
“I cheated on you,” she blurted out, saying the words with an exhalation of breath.
There, she thought. It’s out. It’s finally done. I said it!
Antonio blinked at her in amazement. “What did you say?” He chuckled again. “I don’t think I heard you right because it . . . it sounded like . . . like you said you cheated.”
“You heard me right, Tony.” She swallowed and lowered her eyes. “I cheated on you.”
His handsome face crumbled. His mouth fell open.
“And I’m so . . . so sorry,” she said to the carpet, unable to meet his gaze. Her vision blurred with tears. “I never wanted to hurt you. I never wanted to have sex with him. I had no other choice!”
Antonio took several steps back until he bumped into the bed. He landed heavily on the mattress, like someone had shoved him back onto his butt. He grabbed the edge of the bed to stay upright.
“He blackmailed me, baby. He knew a . . . an old secret about me and blackmailed me into giving him money. I should have stopped it then. I should have told him to go fuck himself and . . . and let it end at that. But I was so ashamed, Tony! I thought giving him the money would make him go away, but . . . but it only made it worse! Then he blackmailed me into sleeping with him. He said he would tell you the truth, that he would tell you everything. He keeps calling me, Tony, and I can’t tell him no! But I’m tired of it. I’m so tired of being scared and—”
“Wait!” Antonio barked, making her jump and finally raise her eyes to look at him. His dazed expression had disappeared and was now replaced with fury. “Wait just one goddamn minute! Are you . . . are you telling me this shit wasn’t even a one-time deal! Are you still fucking this guy?”
Now Paulette was at a loss for words. That’s all Antonio was concerned about? Whether she was
still sleeping with Marques?
“No . . .” She paused and licked her lips. “Well, not really.”
“Not really? Not really?” He shot to his feet. “What the fuck does that mean?”
She raised her hands. “Tony, I’m trying to explain to you the circumstances behind—”
“I don’t give a shit about ‘circumstances’!” he bellowed, making her clap her hands over her ears. “I just care that my wife . . . the woman who I trusted is fucking some other guy behind my back!” He shook his head and pulled at the knot in his tie, yanking at it like it was a noose around his throat. He ripped off his tie and tossed it onto the bed. He began to pace in front of her. “How long? How long has this been going on? How long have you been fucking him?”
“Baby, none of that—”
“Just tell me how long!” he shouted.
Veins bulged along his temples. The cords stood out along his neck. His dark eyes looked wild and bright with rage. He was starting to scare her.
“Three months,” she said weakly, feeling fresh tears on her cheeks. She was starting to tremble. “Maybe four.”
“Four goddamn months.” He shook his head again. “That would explain all those late nights at the gym. I thought you were avoiding my mother or that you were trying to lose weight. That you had ‘body issues.’ But you were getting a workout, all right! Weren’t you, Paulette?”
She pursed her lips and didn’t respond to that jibe.
“Who is he? Is he your trainer . . . some guy you met at the gym? Do I know him?”
He was firing questions at her and still pacing, but all she wanted him to do was hold her and tell her that everything would be fine. She wanted him to tell her that the nightmare was over and that he forgave her, but it was obvious now that wasn’t going to happen.
“Damn it, answer me, Paulette!” Antonio ordered, making her cringe.
“Y-y-you don’t know him,” she whispered, shaking her head and wrapping her arms around herself. “He’s . . . he’s an old boyfriend.”