“Is there a word stronger than hate?”
“Love?”
A snort from him. “Wrong direction, babe.”
“Oh. Not sure. I’ve never had feelings that strong for anyone before.”
He sighs. “Don’t start psychoanalyzing me, Makayla. It’s really not complicated—we grew up together, everyone expected we’d get married and have the perfect life together, and I thought so too, until she betrayed me in the most public and humiliating and painful way possible, and so yes, I absolutely hate her with every particle of my being, and I will absolutely take the consequences of not marrying her if that’s the only option.” His eyes lock on mine. “That being said, I’m going to explore all other possible options before I accept being cut out of the will and family trust, simply for not being willing to sell my soul.”
I frown. “Seems to me your family takes a pretty loose view of marriage, so how dearly would you really be selling your soul settling for a sham marriage? I’m not saying her, but one of your hookers.”
He growls, takes a big swallow of scotch. “If I have your opinion of me pinned down with any accuracy, I’m not sure you’d believe my answer to that.”
I can’t stop my hand from reaching for my glass of whisky, because it’s the most expensive thing I’ve ever tasted, and probably ever will taste. “Can’t say you’re wrong, but also can’t hurt to try, right?”
He takes another careful sip, moving the mouthful around before swallowing. “They’re not my hookers.”
I snort. “Yeah, you were right.”
“That snort of yours—you sure do manage to pack a lot of expression into it.” He narrows his eyes. “Did you see anyone in my bed with me?”
“Snorting is a family trait. You should hear my mom snort. It could take your hide straight off.” I frown, tilting my head. “And as far as having a bed partner, I figured you just kicked her out when you were done.”
“No. I don’t even pay for them. My friends do. I just allow them at the parties.”
“Why?”
He shrugs. “Honestly, I’m not sure.”
“So you’re telling me you don’t…partake, shall we say?”
He lifts a shoulder. “Can’t truthfully say I never have, but it’s not my scene.”
“What is your scene?”
He sips, licks his lips after swallowing, and sets his glass down. “I wasn’t joking before, Makayla. There is a rhyme and reason to asking you in particular to marry me.”
I groan and laugh all at the same time. “This again?” I shake my head, still laughing. “Let me put it in simple, easily understandable terms, Paxton: No. There’s no rhyme or reason you could possibly give that would convince me to marry you.”
He sighs, rubs his jaw. “Can you at least pretend to have an open mind?”
I cackle. “It would be pretending, Paxton. Not gonna lie to you.”
He runs a fingertip around the trace work design in the wrought iron of the table, eyes now flitting from me to the table, from me to the water, and then finally finds whatever is necessary to keep his gaze locked on mine. “I’m not accustomed to asking for things, or being at someone’s mercy, or having to explain myself. And you’re not making this easy on me. But I’ll try to explain my thinking as clearly as I can and, in return, all I ask is that you truly, honestly listen to me and promise, at the very least, to give it a single moment of consideration.”
I hold his gaze. “This is serious for you.”
He nods. “If my mom cuts me off because I won’t play along with her stupid political games, I can’t see myself being able to face her.” He drops his eyes. “If she’s willing to cut me off for not getting married when I’m not ready…” He shakes his head, leaving the rest unsaid.
“She said she wouldn’t disown you in an emotional sense,” I point out.
“But I would, though. And it’s not about the money,” he says, finding my eyes again. “I swear it’s not.”
“I’ll hear you out, but that’s all I can promise.”
A seagull screeches in the distance, and a thin shroud of clouds briefly occludes the sun. I’m chilled, the sweat now dry, and I feel more aware than ever that I’m more than a little undressed in front of a man I don’t know at all. Dressed like this, working out in the gym, I have my headphones on and I’m in the zone, totally focused; there’s no one else around, and if they’re looking I don’t really give a shit. This is different, somehow.
He nods. “That’s all I can ask for, I suppose. I know it sounds crazy.”
I laugh, nodding. “I wouldn’t even call our first interaction a meeting. The second time I lay eyes on you, you ask me to marry you. Even knowing the backstory of what your mom is expecting of you, it’s still crazy.”
He nods. “There are a lot of issues to this. A lot of angles. So I’m not entirely certain where to start.”
“How about with why me?” I suggest, and take a tiny sip of scotch, to fortify my nerves.
“Nothing about this is simple. It’s really not. You’d have to understand the expectations behind what a marriage means to my parents—to my mom, really, because, as I said, my dad doesn’t give a shit about much of anything but his company and his work and his cars. For Mom, everything is about appearances. Everything. Every outfit, every purse, every stitch of makeup, every appearance, every article in every magazine, every TV appearance, she takes it all into consideration. Not just herself, but me, Dad, my aunt and uncle, her brother and sister-in-law, my dad’s sister and brother-in-law—which would be Evelyn who has the purses, and Nicholas who owns some of the cars in the garage. My cousins, my grandparents, all of us, the entire deBraun clan—everything we do and say is scrutinized under a magnifying glass. We’re not just your average family, we’re the deBrauns. Dad owns MagnaCom, as I’m sure you’re aware—the third-largest telecommunications corporation in the world. I guess I probably don’t have to list my family’s various enterprises, as it’s fairly common knowledge at this point.”
I wave a hand. “You guys own football teams, basketball teams, telecom companies, hospitals…”
“My brother-in-law is president of a university, my grandparents founded the deBraun family of hotels, blah blah blah. It’s all boring. Point is, here, that we’re high profile. And no one takes that more seriously than Mom. She’s obsessed with relevance, and spin, and how things look for the family.” His annoyance, as he emphasizes these words, is a physical force. “Sara, my sister, was engaged to Lyle Burnett, as in the eldest son of the guy who owns one of the biggest pharmaceutical research companies in the world, but Mom forced her to end it because Lyle wasn’t ‘the right look’”—and here he uses air quotes and heavy emphasis—"for the family. So, Sara, being the dutiful daughter she is, broke it off with Lyle, who by the way was a pretty cool guy, real stand-up sort of dude.”
“And now she’s married to Miller Frances Conroy, right?” I say, racking my brain for deBraun family facts, as learned from Buzzfeed and People magazine. “As you said, president of Calbright College, and his family are all bigwigs too, I think.”
“Yeah, his dad is CEO of a security firm, and his brother is a high-profile venture capitalist.” He waves a hand. “You want a family tree, I can draw you one some time. Our family net worth isn’t relevant. It’s about the fact that Sara really did love Lyle, and he loved her. It was the real deal. But Mom said no dice, so Sara broke it off, because losing the connections and support of our combined family is a big deal, and she knew Mom was as good as her word—she plays hardball, and she plays for keeps.”
“And then there’s you,” I say.
He scrapes out a slow breath. “Yeah, then there’s me. The bad boy of the family. Kicked out of Yates Academy for, and I quote, ‘routine and excess delinquency.’ Barely made it through military school. Mom bought me a slot at Princeton despite my somewhat less-than-impressive educational record, and I managed to find a niche in the political science program. I liked the scheming, the deb
ates, the research, the art of compromising in a way that still benefits you more than the other person…it let me put my personality quirks to good use. At Yates, I was always working deals with people, putting groups together for various reasons. Like the kid who always has a pet cause, except my causes were always somewhat more nefarious than civic-minded. I learned to toe the line enough to survive in military school, and the value of keeping quiet and listening when necessary, and I guess that helped me more than anything.” He laughs. “Listen to me, yammering on like a tool. You don’t want a personal history. You want to know why the hell I thought asking you to marry me was a good idea.”
I wasn’t about to admit this to him, but I was curious—his personal, private history was something he kept under wraps. You knew the name Paxton deBraun, you knew he had a seat in Congress, and that he had a reputation as a player, a party boy, that he was photographed leaving the hottest clubs around the country with the most glamorous and gorgeous and most exclusive and unavailable women, and that somehow despite this reputation, he was considered a shoe-in for a second term in the House.
I kept quiet and let Paxton talk.
“God, I really don’t know how to make sense of this. I had it straight in my head, but putting it into words is a hell of a lot harder.” His golden eyes skim my skin, land on my eyes. “Another thing I suppose you should know is that a lot of my family is…I wouldn’t say racist per se, but definitely classicist, and subtly, quietly not approving of dalliances outside the accepted…zone. Which is something that’s never put into words, but is just somehow made clear.”
I chew on what he’s saying, and put it in context of what I know from the media—Lyle Burnett, for example, isn’t white; his father is, but his mother is from some Caribbean island, as I understand it. She’s exotically beautiful, and was a very successful model in her day.
“So when your mom shot down your sister’s engagement to Lyle Burnett…” I prompt.
“It’s not appropriate, was Mom’s verbiage,” Paxton says. “His skin color was never brought up, and she’d throw a hairy conniption if you were to suggest such a thing, but more because being racist is more passé at this point than any kind of actual conviction. She made some kind of excuses about his laundry list of exes, his lack of formal education, how he’s just not polished enough for the deBraun family.”
I laugh outright at that. “Not polished enough? Isn’t Lyle the lead singer of a wildly successful rock band?”
Paxton nods. “Yes, he is. Vein. They have, like, eight or ten number one hits and three platinum albums. Rich on his own terms, successful, and like I said, just a good, solid dude. Not a rock star in the traditional sense of the word. I liked him.”
I let the silence breathe as I consider what he’s saying. “So she made it about his…god, I don’t know, not pedigree, because his parents are both wealthy and successful.” I hunt for the right word. “The appearance, I guess. Like, a rock star isn’t right for this family,” I say, affecting a snooty, hoity-toity tone of voice.
Paxton jabs a finger at me. “Exactly! It’s never one thing, never anything you can take exception to, except for the snobbery of it.”
“But what you’re saying is, his skin color was definitely a factor, just not a spoken one.”
He shrugs. “I have no hard evidence for that, but I was on the receiving end of it myself, more than once.”
I tilt my head. “Oh?”
He hisses a slow breath, scratching at his scalp. “I dated Monique Thompson for a few months.”
Supermodel, actress, climate change activist, and black.
I nod. “I remember the tabloid coverage.”
“Well, most of that’s bullshit, you know. I really liked her. I wouldn’t say there was a chance of it being anything permanent, because neither of us were in a place where we were thinking of it, but we had a good time together and there was real affection between us.” He pauses. “Mom shot it down, hard.”
I frown. “What could she possibly have against someone like Monique? Beautiful, classy, successful, and doesn’t she have an Ivy League degree in humanity or something?”
Paxton laughs, but it’s bitter. “Yeah. She has a BA in anthropology from Columbia. Smart as hell; just fell into modeling sort of by accident. And you said it, she’s classy, a really elegant sort of girl. But Mom made her usual excuses. Not the right angle for the family, you know you’re not pursuing anything serious so why drag it out, your lives are taking vastly different trajectories so you may as well end it before either of you get hurt. That kind of thing. She made it seem like she wasn’t opposed to Monique as a person, but…there was this underlying sense of disapproval.” He hesitates. “I overheard her talking to a friend on the phone later, and she said something like, ‘that girl was entirely too ethnic for my son.’”
I draw back, disgusted. “She said that?”
He nods, shrugs. “Yeah.”
I’m struggling with how to react, how to feel. “I can’t say I’m shocked, but…still. What the fuck?”
“Right. That was my thought. And that’s what I said to her. I made it clear I heard her and that I was pissed about it.”
“But you didn’t get back together with Monique.”
“No, but she was ready to move on anyway, and Mom was right in that it wasn’t going to be anything serious, so we just let it lie. I never told Monique about Mom’s comment, but I sure as hell haven’t forgotten.” He waves a hand. “I also dated Vera Collins for a while, and Mom pulled the same card, but was much more careful in her reasoning, but I knew full well why she disapproved. I broke that one off myself, though, but only because Vera’s schedule was too crazy for us to ever be together, and her career was her priority.”
Vera Collins—musician, aspiring actress, and daughter of a famous musician-turned-actor, and also black.
I stare Paxton down. “So I’m a ‘fuck you’ to your mother.”
He shrugs. “That’s an element, yes.”
I snort. “Are you sure I’m ethnic enough to really insult her, though?”
Paxton laughs. “I know nothing about you other than what you look like and your name, so I don’t know the answer to that.”
“Well, you said yourself it’s all about appearances, and I do look like my mother, just with slightly lighter skin.”
He nods, tracing a line down my forearm with a fingertip. “There’s more to it than skin color, though.”
“Such as?”
“The racial thing is mostly my mom. The rest of my family is openly classicist, though.”
“And I’m poor—a maid in your mom’s hotel, barely making ends meet.”
He nods. “Dad, my sister, all of them—you’re not allowed past the front door if you’re not someone. Sara collects famous friends, Uncle Nicholas plays golf with A-list celebrities, Dad is always flying to Germany and Italy to get all smarmy with the heads of the VW Group and Ferrari and Lamborghini and guys like that, Mom is heavy into the political scene in DC…we don’t do nobodies.”
I cock an eyebrow. “I know you said the tabloids are mostly bullshit, but it seems like you’re guilty of that too.”
He nods. “Sure. It’s part of the gig. I grew up around rich, famous people, grew up with my parents’ rich, famous friends’ kids. And it’s just easier to stick with people who…I dunno, get it, I guess.”
“Who also know what it’s like to grow up rich and famous, you mean?”
He nods again. “Yeah. It’s got its tricky aspects, and those are things you can’t understand if you didn’t grow up with it.”
“Poor you,” I say, droll.
He snorts. “Not my point, Makayla. I can’t help who I was born to any more than you can, and I can no more pretend to understand your circumstances than you can mine.”
“Fair enough.” I’m scared of the fact that there’s a certain part of me that’s not just hearing him out, but actually listening, and…considering. “Go on.”
He shrug
s. “You’re the last thing Mom would expect, on every level there is. Not just Mom, but everyone. They’re all complicit—they all play the game, to one degree or another, and I’m fucking sick of it. Sara dumped a really good guy who had real feelings for her on my mom’s say-so, and she didn’t back me up when I fought with Mom over Monique. I was pissed about that, and it was a big, big fight. Uncle Nicholas got pulled into it, and that Christmas was a pretty damned tense affair, I’ll tell you. I expected Sara to have my back, considering, but she took Mom’s side. Acted all disapproving, and like I should know better and shit.”
I spend a few seconds thinking. “So, I get why me, now—a poor, biracial nobody brown chick who works in your mom’s hotel—the most objectionable possible choice for what is essentially a forced marriage. The real question, then, is why in the hell would I agree to it? Why would I marry you, knowing your mom won’t approve, and neither will the rest of your family. She’ll say she doesn’t care who you marry, as long as she plays the game—but do I know how to the play game, Paxton? If all I’d have to do is look pretty on your arm, I could probably pull it off, assuming you even think I’m anything but very pretty.” I put venom into those words, because it still rankles. “But something tells me there’s more to it than just being arm candy. And I’ll tell you one thing for free about me, Paxton—I’m not an arm candy kind of girl. I don’t like wearing heels, I hate heavy jewelry, I don’t like parties, and I don’t dance except for at the club with my friends.”
Paxton opens his mouth, but I’m not done.
“I’m not arm candy. I don’t look the part, for one thing. And I’m not getting plastic surgery to look the part, either. You’d take me as I am, or not at all.” I can’t believe these words coming out of my mouth—it almost sounds as if I’m considering his crazy-ass plan. “I don’t know shit about your world, about how to behave at the events I’m sure you’d drag me to. I don’t have it in me to play pretend for very long, if at all, so the whole fake marriage, knowing you’re cheating on me thing? That don’t fly with this chick, Paxton.” I gesture with a hand. “So…what makes you think I’m a good choice for your little game? And more to the point? What’s in it for me?”
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