Loving Ashe

by Madrid, Liz

  Riley frowned. “Is that what Paige told you? That this is just about two sisters who are not getting along? Something petty, like fighting over a favorite toy?”

  “It doesn’t matter what Paige told me. We’re here because of the boys. What goes on between you and Paige is between you and Paige. What goes on between Paige and me is between us,” he said, taking a sip from his glass. “I don’t understand why you women have to hold onto grudges for as long as you do. No wonder nothing ever gets done if a woman is in charge.”

  Riley felt her anger rise. How dare he insinuate that nothing got done if a woman was in charge? How the hell did the Library Cafe get managed in the first place if it weren’t for her? With Allen constantly upstate to spend more time with his grandchildren, she did most of the heavy lifting as far as running the place. As she pulled herself back to the present, she wondered if Clint really knew what Paige had done.

  “Do you honestly think that all this is just me holding on to grudges?” Riley asked. “Do you mean to tell me that all these years, you never knew what she did?”

  “Whatever she’s done is something Paige and I need to handle on our own, if we haven’t handled it already. Like I said, whatever grudge you hold against your sister, you take care of it with your sister,” he said, and Riley wondered how he could remain so calm. It was as if he were in the middle of a boardroom meeting. So diplomatic, Riley thought, so businesslike. Clint’s face betrayed no emotion, nothing to tell Riley that he knew what had happened either five years ago, or a few weeks ago.

  “She hurt me,” Riley said. “Does that even matter to you?”

  “Of course it does,” Clint said. “Your happiness and safety have always been important to me. And to Paige. This hurts her, too, this estrangement. But there’s nothing I can do about how you feel without taking your side. And I can’t do that, not as Paige’s husband.”

  “She didn’t just hurt me,” Riley said. “She hurt you too. Doesn’t that matter to you?”

  Clint set his glass on the side table and leaned towards her, resting his elbows on his lap, his hands clasped together. “One of the things people learn in marriage is that, while things might look black and white to others, there lie a lot of grays, too. And it’s in those gray areas that relationships are either strengthened or broken. Some people do something wrong and for them there’s no going back. From that moment on, the bond they once had, no matter how good, is gone. Others manage to see beyond the grays and learn to forgive, even if it means a compromise has to be made. The way I see it now, it’s just a grudge for you, Riley. Maybe even jealousy. You’ve always been envious of your sister.”

  “How can I be the one who’s jealous? I wasn’t the one who slept with-”

  “Riley! That’s as much as I’m going to allow you to say under my roof,” Clint said angrily, raising his hand up and stopping her from saying any more. “Whatever happened, and whoever with, I’ve forgiven Paige for it. It was unfortunate that it had to happen with someone we both know, but it’s done and there’s nothing we can do about it now.”

  Riley stared at him incredulously. She’d heard Gareth say exactly the same thing, she thought.

  Whatever you think you saw, it’s done, and neither you nor anyone else can undo it.

  “You knew? All this time you knew what she did? Doesn’t it even matter to you that it happened again?”

  “Riley!” Clint’s warning tone chilled her, and this time, Riley shut up. She breathed deeply, wishing Ashe were standing next to her. If he had been, though, what did she expect him to do? Fight her fights for her, the way Gareth always had till one day he stopped and simply left her? Maybe Gareth had grown sick and tired of being her knight in shining armor. Maybe that’s what he had meant when he told her that she wouldn’t be able to handle LA. He couldn’t fight for her anymore, not when he had to fight his way to the top of his game.

  Riley clenched her fists, forcing herself to push all thoughts of Gareth from her mind. Sooner or later, she had to learn how to fight her own battles. But realizing that Clint had already known what had happened between Paige and Gareth left her confused. Who else knew then?

  Clint got up from his armchair. Slipping his hands inside his trouser pockets, he paced the floor in front of her.

  “I promised myself that we wouldn’t discuss what Paige did, because whatever happened five years ago — ”

  “She slept with Gareth! Doesn’t that even bother you?”

  ” — We’ve worked it out as a couple,” Clint said slowly, choosing his words carefully, undeterred by her interruption.

  “All this time, you knew what had happened between Paige and Gareth and yet none of you bothered to tell me,” Riley said, standing up from the couch.

  “What do you expect me to do, Riley? Commiserate with you?” asked Clint, annoyance on his face. “Paige told me what happened right after it happened, and she lives with the guilt of it every single day. The fact that neither Gareth nor Paige told you is a matter beyond my control. But it’s been five years. Granted, you just learned about it a few weeks ago, but why do you insist on living in the past? Why do you want to rehash that moment again and again? Can you just push aside your jealousy over your sister for one minute-”

  “Push aside my jealousy? This has nothing to do with jealousy, Clint, and do you know why? Because it happened again!” Riley exclaimed. “They were together again! Doesn’t that matter to you? Don’t you care that your wife was fucking another man in your own house?”

  Clint’s eyes narrowed and Riley took a step back. Her breath caught in her throat as she saw Clint’s face harden. She’d stepped over the line. She’d told Clint something it wasn’t her place to do, just as Ashe had warned her not to.

  “I’m…I’m sorry,” she stammered. She felt like a petulant child — which was exactly how she was acting — and she was ashamed of herself.

  “What do you want me to do, Riley?” Clint asked coldly. “Do you want me to divorce her?”

  “No,” she whispered.

  “Would it make you happy if I kicked her out on the street with no penny to her name but whatever pittance she makes from her blogging empire?”

  “No!”

  “Would you like to be the one to announce to the world that you saw my wife fucking Gareth Roman? Will that make you happy? Because I know the local papers would just love to see that juicy tidbit in their gossip columns. Blogging Queen of Manhattan Caught In the Act with Hollywood Bad Boy!” Clint’s arm shot up in the air as if he were putting up the words on a billboard. “Would that make you happy, Riley?”

  “No,” she croaked, tears streaming down her face. She was angry with Paige but she wasn’t that angry, though at that moment, Riley was scared more than anything.

  Clint took a step towards her and Riley moved back till the back of her calves hit the couch. Though the coffee table stood between them, it might as well not have been there, since Clint seemed to tower over her, glaring.

  He sighed, his face softening. “You have to start growing up, Riley. You need to understand that sometimes a compromise isn’t failure. It’s just an opportunity for two parties to meet halfway, and it’s also a part of growing up.”

  “Settling for second-best, you mean?”

  Clint’s jaw tensed and his lips set into a straight line. “I never settle for second-best, Riley, and neither should you.”

  “I don’t intend to,” Riley said, finally gathering herself together. Why did she feel that she was losing the fight against Clint? She didn’t know how she’d got into a fight to begin with. She’d come here to discuss the triplets. Why did she have to get so carried away by her emotions?

  “I love my wife dearly, and I’d like to believe that she loves me. She’s not perfect and neither am I. But together we have three beautiful boys whom we both love more than anything in this world,” he said and this time, Riley felt his anger finally peak beneath his calm demeanor.

  “Three gorgeous healthy boys f
or whom I will do anything to make them happy, even if it means I have to listen to the spoiled rantings of a woman who hasn’t moved away from under the shadow of her sister, who still thinks she’s nothing because her father thinks she is nothing — because she was too little, too weak to save her mother from a fire,” he paused as Riley brought her hand to her mouth, stifling the sob from her lips.

  “I know those things, Riley, just as I know now that there’s nothing Paige or I can do to make you grow up any faster without having to let you go.”

  “Let me go? What the hell do you mean by that?”

  “Just as I said – I need to let you go, if it means it’s the only way you’re going to grow up,” Clint said and Riley saw the sadness in his eyes. “But this time, it’s on your own accord. I made the mistake the first time three years ago when I had someone take care of things for me, but I won’t make the same mistake again. You told Paige you didn’t want to have a sister, or even nephews, and I can see now that even though I’ve asked you here so we can discuss only the boys, yet you insist on talking about everything else but the boys. And maybe Paige was right. Maybe in doing it your way — leaving you alone — you are growing up in your own way. And this time, I won’t stand in your way.”

  “Wait,” Riley said, raising her hand. “What do you mean by three years ago? What happened three years ago?”

  Clint’s eyes were cold as he gazed at her. “You know what happened three years ago, Riley. Unfortunately, instead of moving to Hollywood with Gareth like you were supposed to, you squandered all that money I gave you on drugs and almost killed yourself over a boy.”

  30

  Check Mate

  “It was you?”

  “Of course it was me!” Clint exclaimed. “If it weren’t for me, nothing would ever get done — and done right. You, with your apartment. Allen, with his cafe of which you now own half. And Gareth. Have you ever wondered how Gareth went from nobody to somebody in three years, Riley? How he didn’t have to be some director’s pet, and get his ass branded with some guy’s initials just to get his first role in that war movie-”

  “Hell’s Kingdom. It was a mini-series on cable,” Riley whispered, remembering the news reports, the articles that talked about Gareth’s rise to fame — a quick one that involved being at the right place at the right time. “He nailed that audition.”

  “Nailed that audition, my ass. You need to grow up, Riley, and know how things really work in show business — any business for that matter,” Clint chuckled. “You’ve got to make it through the door first in any town before you can nail anything. It’s who you know — not what you know that gets your foot through the door. He’d still be doing potato chip commercials if it weren’t for me. He’d still be waiting tables at the Ivy if it weren’t for me. Do you think Collette Williams would have handled him if I hadn’t paid her to handle his non-existent career? She wouldn’t even touch him with a ten-foot pole then. But of course now, she salivates at his every movie for that ten percent.”

  “But I don’t understand,” Riley stammered. “Why would you do that? Why did you want Gareth and I out of New York so badly-”

  “You don’t get it, do you? You absolutely don’t get it.” Then he stared at her, his face turning pale. “Oh my God, you don’t know. You really have no idea.”

  “Know what?” Riley was too overwhelmed to think straight, and she felt stupid for not getting what Clint expected her to get. But what could he possibly mean?

  “She’d had four miscarriages. You remember every one, Riley, because she cried on your shoulder every time, and every time you told her everything was going to be alright, that we were going to get pregnant, that it was going to happen, that the IVF would be successful the next time — or whatever it is sisters say to each other,” Clint said, the expression on his face changing from anger to sadness, his eyes growing distant, though Riley saw frustration on his face, too.

  “If there’s one thing that can reduce a man to nothing, Riley, no matter how much he has, no matter how powerful he thinks he is, it’s knowing he can’t father any children — not after prostate cancer, no matter how successful the treatments were,” Clint said, shaking his head. “What was I thinking? Believing I could beat the odds even when the best possible doctors told me that success rates for even implantation of a fertilized egg was still less than 50 percent?”

  It took Riley a few seconds to understand the meaning of Clint’s words. Of course, she’d been there for every miscarriage, almost every pregnancy test that said she wasn’t pregnant, and every time, Paige had cried.

  “So you thought that Gareth would make the perfect donor? Did he even know?” Riley felt the tears burning down her face. She was losing this round. She’d lost it a long time ago. “Was that Paige’s idea? Or yours?”

  “Neither. It just happened,” Clint said. “After the last IVF results came back negative, she went to see you — like she always did. Only you weren’t home, you were working late. But Gareth was home, and I guess they started drinking and talking. And…and things happened. That’s all I know.”

  Riley shut her eyes, not wanting to see Paige and Gareth together, but it was hard, for she’d already seen them together.

  “She never went back to your apartment ever since,” Clint whispered, and Riley knew he was right. Paige used to have no problems being in the same room with Gareth, they’d always gotten along, joked and teased each other but never anything beyond friends. But that all changed, Riley remembered it now. Both of them changed. When Paige started making excuses, asking Riley to come to their brownstone instead — alone – Riley had always thought it was because of her pregnancy.

  It had been a difficult one for she was carrying quadruplets and had to be on full bed rest from her second trimester on. When the quadruplets were born prematurely, the fourth one, Timothy, didn’t make it. The babies stayed in the hospital for almost three months, and Riley now remembered how it took a lot of prodding just to get Gareth to visit with her the day of the delivery. She’d always thought it was because he didn’t want children — at least not yet.

  Then she remembered how she caught him visiting the triplets on his own two months later, watching from the window as the nurses fed and changed them. He wasn’t family so he wasn’t allowed to hold them. Riley realized he never got to hold them at all, even after they left the hospital.

  What are you doing here? She had asked him then.

  Research, he had replied. I’m auditioning for this role of a father. So I thought I’d see how babies are cared for. I may not get it, but I figured I might as well try.

  She had laughed then. You could have asked me to tell the nurses you’re family. Because you are.

  She remembered now how his face turned pale. But he forced a smile and shook his head. You know me, Ri, ever the visual learner. But they’re beautiful, aren’t they? Do you think they’ll take after their mother? After you, too, even?

  Would you like to hold them? I’m sure the nurses won’t mind.

  No, looking is fine, he said, too quickly.

  Gareth had turned distant then. He’d stopped making love to her, at least the way he used to. This time, it was rougher, angrier, and she’d always felt empty when it was over. When the triplets turned one, he didn’t come to the birthday party. She found him at their apartment, drunk and saying he had to go Hollywood and try his luck there and he was going to take her with him. But Riley told him she’d just follow him afterwards. She was working those two jobs then, and they had bills to pay.

  How did I ever get so lucky with you, Riley?

  You didn’t get lucky, Gareth. I did. Since I was seven. You were always there for me, especially after mom died.

  Well, Gareth shrugged then, looking down as he always did when he had to pick the right words to say. I’m never one to let go of a good thing once I’ve got it.

  But in the end Gareth ended up letting her go anyway. After he promised to send for her once he got settled in L
A, Gareth canceled her airline ticket, saying it wasn’t the right time for her to come. He had a movie producer to see and he needed to be on the ball for this one, that it was his only chance to impress the man. But Riley had come anyway, purchasing the ticket herself, ending up at the producer’s party anyway when she ran into his fellow roommates at the apartment and they agreed to take her with them.

  Seeing Gareth then — on top of his game in charming the ladies — had set her off. He was in his element. The West Coast vibe suited him. His face shone, his smile was wider and Riley felt cheated, for she wanted nothing more but the old Gareth back. He didn’t even see her at the party. He’d been so busy kissing two girls in the Jacuzzi, talking in his New York accent one moment and then a Boston accent the next, listening to them giggle and swoon.

  Then she stumbled upon the guests doing lines of cocaine in the game room as others were shooting up in the corner, splayed out on the couch and high. One hit wouldn’t hurt, she thought then. Then another. And another.

  When Gareth found her, she was about to get it on with some line producer who told her how beautiful she was, and that he knew how to make her forget any man. Gareth was livid. He made up a story that she was some fan of his from New York, that she’d followed him all the way to LA, stalking him. That was enough to get her kicked out of the party, though Gareth left with her, carrying her in his arms and driving her to the nearest motel and staying with her till she sobered up a day later. She remembered the car he drove. It was a Bentley. He told her it belonged to a guest at the party, an older woman, a French perfumer. But she was just a friend, he said. She would later on find out that they were all just friends.

  You’ve just proven to me that you can’t handle it here, he had told her. Not yet. I’ll come for you. I promise. For now, let me work.

  You call that work? Kissing girls in a Jacuzzi and doing lines of coke?

  I may drink, but I never do drugs, Riley. But the owner of that house is a big-shot producer I need to impress. Someone gave him my name and he’s willing to let me do an audition tomorrow. He said he’d give me one chance. So don’t ruin it for me, Ri. I can’t be waiting tables anymore. If I don’t make it tomorrow, I’m going home. I promise.