Accidental Soulmates: A Vegas Accidental Marriage Romance
Page 7
Without another word, she moved back into the apartment and left me to shower.
I hadn’t brought a change of clothes with me to her apartment. I hadn’t known what I’d find, after all, but after I battled the shower from hell with its low pressure and scalding periods, I wished I’d packed heavier.
I redressed in the same clothes I’d arrived in and joined Kennedy in the kitchen where she’d laid out the leftovers on her rickety kitchen table. I sat in one of the mismatched chairs and was momentarily taken aback by the way she had presented the meal. The food was neatly put onto an eclectic compilation of cheap dishes, serving spoons ready. Two plates with cutlery had been set next to a paper towel and I swallowed a smile because I didn’t want her to think I was mocking her. The truth was, I was impressed with her desire to make it look nice, even though she did not own a single item of value.
“Pizza’s there,” she informed me, gesturing at one of the plates. It wasn’t really necessary for her to point it out but I think she was grasping at something to keep the conversation light and away from what we really needed to discuss—us.
“Everything looks great,” I told her. “Thank you.”
“You’re the one who bought everything,” she replied. “So, thank you.”
I peered at her and placed the pizza in my hand onto a plate.
“Kennedy, you don’t have to thank me for anything,” I told her softly. “I know me showing up here like this caused you some anxiety but that was the last thing on my mind.”
“You didn’t cause me anxiety,” she told me and I detected some truth to her words. “I have enough anxiety for everyone already.”
I grinned at her and reached for the food again, taking a comical bite. To my relief, she smiled back and her face registered some relief.
“Not that I have much experience with the super-rich,” she said slowly. “But you’re not entirely what I expected. I mean, you are, but you’re not.”
“Money doesn’t make a person,” I replied almost automatically. It was a rote response.
“People say that but is it really true?”
I studied her face pensively.
“Is that existential? Rhetorical? I’m confused.”
“Well, what does make a person?” she asked enigmatically. “I suppose you’re going to tell me that material goods don’t.”
I nodded in agreement, my mind whirling to catch up with her thought process but she had lost me already.
“I don’t think they do.”
“Would you say that people can’t thrive fully unless they are well fed?”
Again, I was perplexed but I nodded.
“Of course.”
“Sheltered?”
“I think the basic necessities of life are crucial to establishing a personality.”
“Would you say that someone struggling to eat or pay rent can’t really be all that they can be?”
Finally, I got what she was saying and I felt slightly defensive.
“Yes, I suppose you’re right,” I conceded.
“So, in effect, money does make a person. The more money they have, the more established their personality becomes.”
I grunted but at the same time I was impressed with her reasoning. I guessed she’d thought about it a lot, given her lack of finances.
That’s going to change. I’ll make sure she’s taken care of no matter what happens between us.
“What is going to happen between us?” I decided to ask and she gaped at me, apparently not expecting the question. There was a plaintive yearning in her eyes but she shot her gaze away before answering.
“I don’t know, Julian.”
“What do you want to happen with us?” I insisted. I needed to know where she stood, what she thought. Kennedy’s mouth became a firm line and I realized I had pushed her too far too fast.
Shit, I’d ruined what was proving to be a perfectly pleasant morning.
“Never mind,” I said quickly, wishing I could recant the question. “Forget I asked. We’ll take this slow.”
She looked up at me and the sadness had escalated. Something was weighing heavily on her mind but I could see that pressing her wouldn’t give me the answers I wanted.
“Hey, so what’s there to do around here?” I asked brightly. “Is there a mall or—”
“I think you should go back home to Miami,” she said softly. The words filled with a slight dread but I didn’t really think she was dismissing me altogether.
“If that’s what you want, Kennedy, I’ll go,” I told her. I tried to keep the bitterness out of my tone and I thought of the divorce papers sitting in the rental car downstairs.
“I don’t want you to go,” she told me. “But I think you should.”
The statement didn’t need any clarification. I knew what she was saying and I couldn’t deny that she was right.
It was all too much, too soon.
Stiffly, I rose from the teetering chair and nodded.
“All right,” I agreed. “But this isn’t over.”
She pursed her lips together and shook her head.
“I hope not.”
We stared at one another for a long, aching moment, both of us unsure of what to say. All I knew for certain was that the trip to Cedarside had clarified everything for me—the feelings I had for Kennedy were not imagined. The question was, what were we going to do next?
9
Julian
I hadn’t wanted to leave but I knew Kennedy needed some time to sort things out. I couldn’t fault her for that but on my plane home, I resisted the urge to have the pilot turn around and go back for her.
I wasn’t feeling particularly confident in how we’d walked away, like there was something deeper on Kennedy’s mind than she’d let on.
Of course, how was I to know how someone would react to such bizarre news? In all my travels, in the charmed life I’d led, I’d never known anyone who ever married someone drunk in Vegas. It was an urban legend, something that college kids did or made up to warn one another about the dangers of binge drinking.
Apparently not, I mused.
In my head, I knew that Kennedy and I would have to go through with the annulment. She had brought it up first anyway so I could see she was on the same page but at the same time, I wondered what that would mean for us.
If there was an “us”.
Could we get an annulment and see if our relationship would progress from there? It seemed so backward and logically, it didn’t make any sense to me.
I thought about her crappy apartment in the seedy area of a small town. She had so little and she’d just been fired from her job.
Embarrassed, I realized I hadn’t even asked her what she did for a living.
I envisioned her working some menial job which stifled her specialness. Maybe a fast food worker or a waitress? The idea bothered me more than I already was.
No wife of mine should be working in such a place anyway, I thought and while it was meant to be tongue-in-cheek, it made me groan to myself.
What were we going to do?
The best I could expect now was to give Kennedy a couple days to process and we’d go from there.
I could still smell her on me and I closed my eyes as the jet zoomed back toward Florida, reliving the hours we’d spent together in her apartment.
I wondered if she was having the same problems with our situation as I was, if she was considering staying married to me, even though it was not reasonable…was it?
There I was again, going back and forth with the idea but I couldn’t help myself. Our bond was unlike anything I’d ever known with any woman. I was electrified by her touch, motivated by the look in her eyes.
Even as I sat in the clouds, I felt myself growing hard at the thought of her writhing beneath me.
It wasn’t going to be easy to let her go, even if I wanted to.
Even if she demanded it of me.
* * *
I tried to avoid everyone when
I landed on Bryant Island but that was easier said than done. Terry caught up with me in my suite.
“Did you see her?” he demanded and I sighed. The man evidently thought he was my father.
“I just got in, Terry. Can you give me a minute?” I asked but I knew the question had fallen on deaf ears as it left my mouth.
“What did she say? Is she asking for money?”
I was instantly annoyed.
“Why do you always assume the worst in people?” I snapped and instant relief crossed over the attorney’s face.
“Oh good. So she signed.”
I hesitated, unsure of how much I wanted to tell him.
“No,” I replied. “She hasn’t signed the papers because I didn’t give them to her.”
“Why the hell not?” he screeched. “This is the company we’re talking about, Julian! This isn’t some teenaged game you can play.”
I bristled.
“It is my company,” I agreed sharply. “Not yours, not Eloise’s. I wish you people would remember that. I was the one who singlehandedly built this company from a handful of buildings into a multi-billion-dollar empire. Don’t tell me about Bryant Land Holdings. I know what’s at stake. I also know how to manage my personal life. Your job is not to tell me how to do my job.”
A look of hurt crossed over the older man’s face and I realized I may have gone too far but I didn’t care. Terry didn’t know anything about Kennedy. He didn’t see her beauty, her fight. He hadn’t been in the shitty apartment in Indiana where she proudly tried to refuse food, even though she was clearly hungry.
I’d be damned if I would walk away from someone like her because Terry was worried about an image problem.
“Julian, ever since your father died, I have made it my duty to look out for you,” Terry mumbled, shooting his eyes downward. “My intention is not to get on your case or tell you how to live your life.”
“Great. Then stop.”
Terry seemed to sense that the conversation was over and he turned away, leaving me alone in the sitting room.
Maybe I’d been too harsh but just like Eloise and Maddy, Terry didn’t seem to realize I wasn’t a puppet for them to control.
That wasn’t fair—Terry was nothing like my step-family. He genuinely did care about me. I was just tired and defensive, unsure about my next move. I wasn’t used to feeling this helpless.
My phone rang and hope sprung into my heart as I snatched it off the coffee table where I’d dropped it. I was sure it was Kennedy calling, saying she’d decided what to do about our marriage.
I didn’t want to be the one to decide either way, another strange concept for me. I had never been one to question myself. Choices were easy for me—it was what made me such a good businessman. I didn’t need to waffle one way or another.
But this wasn’t a business arrangement.
It was Eloise.
That woman did not know when to give up.
“Eloise, this is a bad time,” I growled, ready to hang up.
“You got married?”
Her voice was almost a whisper and it took me a minute to realize what she’d said. I’d never heard her so furious. When the words finally registered, I tensed.
“Who told you that?” I demanded, knowing that only Terry knew about it. I couldn’t imagine the attorney betraying my confidence like that but if he thought I had gone off my rocker, he might have taken desperate measures to make me follow through with the divorce.
“Are you fucking stupid?” my step-sister hissed. “You married some poor trash from Indiana when you could have had Genevieve Brulle? I can’t believe dad left the company to you.”
There was something sinister in Eloise’s tone but that wasn’t unusual. However, she seemed to be giving me a hidden message which made no sense to me whatsoever.
“I think I made my sentiments on Genevieve clear,” I answered evenly, although my blood was boiling at the classification of Kennedy. “And once again, Ellie, I don’t recall asking for your opinion on my life.”
I chose to ignore the comment about the company for the moment. Sometimes I thought Eloise thought she had been cheated out of Bryant because she was a girl, not because she wasn’t related to my father by blood. There was never a question that I stood to inherit it all but try explaining that to Eloise.
“You are making a huge mistake, brother,” she continued and I wondered if she had heard my side of the conversation at all. “Get your annulment and forget this ever happened.”
I snorted.
“This is the last time I’m going to say it, Ellie. Mind your own damned business.”
I disconnected the call before she could make any further comment but when I replaced the phone on the table, I saw that my hands were shaking.
She had upset me more than I cared to admit.
Screw Eloise, I thought angrily, spinning toward the bedroom. And screw Terry for calling her. I should fire his ass for breach of trust.
I knew I wouldn’t but that didn’t stop the thought from entering my mind. I flopped down on the bed, willing myself to calm down.
How quickly the heady feeling I’d had with Kennedy had dissipated in the wake of returning home.
This is why I can’t have nice things.
More concerns flooded me at that point. What if we did try to make a go of it, Kennedy and me? Would I bring her here where everyone was hellbent on misery and destruction? What would that do to someone like her?
Again, I was getting ahead of myself. I had no idea which way this would go. I knew what I desired and that was to cling to the feeling I had with Kennedy, to entrench myself in her scent and never leave the confines of a bedroom with her but there was a real world in which we both belonged and it was realms apart.
Rags to riches stories only work out when there are no evil step-siblings in the picture.
I closed my eyes, the emotional exhaustion of the past twenty-four hours enveloping me. Maybe all I needed was a good sleep and when I woke, things would be clearer.
That was the hope, anyway.
10
Kennedy
I was supposed to work at the bar that night but I couldn’t imagine anything worse than being around other people after Julian left. The linger of his kiss touched my lips in as if he was still pressed to me and I couldn’t get him off my mind, no matter how hard I tried to focus.
I also couldn’t afford another day off and as the morning dragged on, I tried to decide what to do.
Perhaps I was caught up in a fantasy that Julian would return, knock on my door and say, “I’m not taking no for an answer! You’re coming home with me!”
It was stupid, I know. It was fanciful, childish and embarrassing that I wanted it but it was a fairy tale dream, wasn’t it? Since we were children and they read us those knight in shining armor stories where no matter how bad things got, no matter how knocked up and desolate you were, someone would rescue you from your external prison and set you free.
What a crock.
I didn’t know what Julian wanted when he left. Maybe he didn’t either. I mean, no billionaire could ever be happy with knowing he’d fallen into an accidental marriage, especially not with some piss poor girl from Indiana.
A part of me wondered if he thought about keeping me on as a side chick after he got his annulment but I reminded myself that he wasn’t the one who brought up the subject of the divorce—that had been me. If I hadn’t known better, I would have sworn he was disappointed by the idea that I had wanted to end it.
I didn’t have morning sickness that day and I was again curious if that had something to do with his presence. Did the baby feel his father nearby? Did it feel my new sense of happiness, no matter how fleeting it might be?
I placed my hands against my still-flat stomach and wondered what was going to happen with him, with us. Was Julian going to be a part of our lives?
At that moment, I knew I wanted nothing more than for that to be a reality. Something had brought
us together, after all and I didn’t believe for a second that it was the intoxicants. His presence the previous night had proven that our attraction, our connection, went deeper than two inebriated adults having a good time. And I didn’t think that my feelings were one-sided.
Why had I let him go? My baby deserved better and so did I.
“Whatever happens,” I promised my child. “You will grow up happy and healthy. I’ll make sure you never see suffering like I did. No one will find you wandering around a flophouse.”
I cringed at my words. Surely I shouldn’t be saying things like that aloud, even to a fetus. I had a lot to learn about mothering. I’d never had one, after all. I didn’t really know where to start.
I saw my phone on the floor and I considered calling Julian. He’d programmed his number into my phone to call when I was ready. I didn’t know what that meant. Ready to give him his annulment? Ready to beg him to come back for me? Ready to tell him about our baby?
I might never be ready for any of those things. I decided not to touch the cell, lest I make the call and say something I’d regret later—even though resisting the urge took every fiber of my being.
I needed to get my head in order and I couldn’t do that sitting in the pigsty that was my apartment.
I rose from the futon and began to clean up the mess which had accumulated over the past few days. I wasn’t really a messy housekeeper but things had gotten away from me since I’d been sick.
I needed to put in a load of laundry and get the apartment disinfected although the latter made me feel a little sad. I could still catch whiffs of Julian’s aftershave in the tiny space and I wanted to hold onto it as much as I could.
I shook my head firmly. I wouldn’t get out of the funk I was falling into by sitting around.
My cell chimed and I saw it was a text message from Christine. My neck stiffened.