Business as Usual (16 page)

I also made an
appearance in court to extend the restraining order I had against Danny. I won
a default temporary order after he missed his court appearance while he was in
the hospital. Thankfully he didn’t contest it.

The elevator came to a halt a few stories down,
the motion of the abrupt stop making me dizzy. I closed my eyes and took a deep
breath as a man dressed in dark clothing and a hat climbed in. The elevator
started moving again, when he suddenly pressed a button causing it to stop. I
looked up, ready to rip his head off.

“Are you out of your
freaking mind? What in the hell do you think you’re doing?”

Elevators made me
nervous.

The man lifted the brim
of his hat from over his face and looked up.

“I figure this was the
only way I could get you to talk to me,” he said.

I took a deep breath
and pressed a button, starting the elevator again. I glared at the numbers
blinking overhead while Ethan stared at the side of my face, as the elevator
swiftly carried us to the bottom floor. Seeing him again hurt so much. Why
couldn’t he stay away?

 
“I miss
you,” he said, as I strolled out of the building into noisy Manhattan traffic
without so much as a look back.

I hailed the first cab
I saw and jumped in, praying he wouldn’t follow me. It had taken months to get
over what happened between us. And now he was back. Obviously I hadn’t been
punished enough. Ethan called my cell phone, but I refused to take his calls.
He even left voice messages… but I deleted them unheard and had my number changed.
I even had my cat Roger moved from the beach house to my apartment in New York,
shortly after putting the house up for sale.
Despite the shaky economy, the house
sold after only a few weeks on the market.
I’d been a ghost for
months. How did he find me?

The cab
parked in front of the two story brownstone I lived in fifteen minutes later,
to my relief. I had to use the bathroom. The baby, I was told, had found a
place on my bladder. He was probably using it as a pillow.

I hurried up the stairs of my apartment
building and stuck my key in the door, eager to get inside to use the bathroom.
That’s when I heard a vehicle parking in front of the house as the cab sped
away. I looked over my shoulder at the dark blue Maybach and cursed. I opened
the door to my loft apartment and rushed inside, slamming the door behind me.
The doorbell rang a few minutes later.

I opened the door to
find Ethan standing on my porch. I tried not to notice how good he looked.

 
“You
found me. Happy now? Have your lawyer serve my divorce papers here, and not at
my office, thank you. As you may well already know, I prefer to keep my private
life, private.”

“How could I forget?” he answered, eyeballing
my perfectly made up face.

I folded both of my arms across my chest and
glared.

“How did you find me?”

Ethan gave me an
envelope and gestured for me to open it. My heart thundered in my chest as I
slowly peeked inside, expecting divorce papers. Instead, I found a check for an
obscene amount of money.

“What is this?” I
demanded.

“A check for the beach
house. That’s how I found you. I got your address from your real estate agent.”

“
You’re
the buyer?”

“I bought it for us.”

I took the check out
and ripped it, scraps of paper falling between us to the floor.

“You can’t buy your way
out of this one, Ethan.”

“I wouldn’t try.”

“Good. Now please
leave.”

He pressed a hand
against the door as I tried to close it.

“How’s the baby?” he asked, voice taking a
serious tone.

“The baby’s fine,” I replied, giving him no
more than that.

“Have you had an ultrasound?”

“Yes.”

“What are we having?”

I rolled my eyes.

“As I stated before, I prefer to keep my
private life private. And that includes my pregnancy.”

“I have a right to know,” Ethan pressed,
stepping into the frame of my door.

“You’re not the father,
remember
?”

Ethan’s smile was faint. “I was hoping you
would let that one slide.”

“Not even if your life depended on it.”

“Fair enough... What if I asked you to take me
back? I miss you, Elizabeth. I wish we could get past what happened between
us.”

“You
kicked
me out of your country.”

“Admittedly, I was wrong for that.”

“You left me at an airport, alone and
pregnant.”

“I have no excuse,” he said, looking down.

“You hurt me.”

“I will never do it again.”

“I’m sorry, but that’s not enough. Why come
back? Don’t you realize how much you’re hurting me just being here? I finally
got my life in order and you can’t stand it.”

“I miss you, is that so wrong?”

“Right, because your feelings are the only ones
that matter.”

“After I saw the
pictures of you and Daniel I flew into a jealous rage. I saw my naked wife with
another man. There was no reasoning with me. As far as I was concerned, you
were having an affair. I now know I was wrong.”

 
“Is that supposed to make me feel better?” I
answered coldly.

“No. In fact, it only
makes me feel worse. Especially after seeing the video, the way he treated
you…when you told him you loved me.”

You allowed him to
humiliate you, in order to protect me… I don’t need your protection, Elizabeth.
I’m your husband, I’m supposed to take care of you...”

I tried to keep my
tears in check as memories of that horrible night came flooding back.

 
“I’m sorry for rehashing the story. But you
deserve to know the truth.”

 
“There’s
more?”

Ethan nodded. “The idiot actually kept the
footage, thinking he could blackmail you again. We paid him a visit a few days
after you left. I wanted to deal with him personally.”

“What did you do to him?” I asked, surprised by
the revelation.

“We gave him a haircut.
Needless to say, your ex-boyfriend had to spend some time in the hospital when
I was done with him. We also confiscated the material, including the videotape,
to keep him from using it against you. When I saw the footage, what you tried
to do for me and your father, I tried to find you, I tried to apologize, but it
was too late.”

“I accept your apology, but unfortunately, it’s
not enough.”

I moved to close the door in his face, but he
stuck his foot inside.

“I’ll prove how much I love you,” Ethan
declared, stripping out of his jacket.

He rolled up the sleeves of his button-down
shirt then ran downstairs to the Maybach, where his bodyguards stood waiting
for him. He then took his watch off and gave it to Chan before walking down the
middle of the street until he was so far, we could barely see him.  

“What is he doing?” I asked the guys.

Chan and Michael stared down the road in awe,
as Ethan dropped to his knees.

“Kowtowing,” Chan answered.

“Why?”
I asked, completely
confused.

Michael shrugged. “He’s humiliating himself to
earn your forgiveness. Some guys do it when their wives are mad at them.
Usually when they cheat.”

“Face is very important in Chinese culture,”
Chan continued. “This could be very embarrassing for him.”

I shook my head, watching in horror as Ethan
bowed all the way up the street, his forehead tapping the pavement, as he
crawled forward.

I climbed down the stairs, and walked as fast
as my belly allowed, as I hurried down the road to stop him. When he looked up,
the middle of his forehead was bruised, his arms strong as they pushed against
the pavement. I couldn’t’ bear to see him like this.

“What on earth do you think you’re doing?”I
shrieked.

“Begging your forgiveness,” he said, tapping
his head on the ground again. “I humiliated you, so why shouldn’t I be
humiliated? If I have to make a fool of myself to prove my love, then so be it.
A man should never wrong his wife.”

“Please stop…” I begged, covering my mouth with
a hand.

“No.”
Ethan bowed and continued down the road again until speckles of blood were left
behind him on the pavement. Unfortunately, he was not only hurting himself, but
he was embarrassing me. People came out onto the sidewalk and yelled for Ethan
to get off the road before he injured himself, as cars swerved around him. Some
of the bystanders even held cell phones and cameras, no doubt to upload video
footage online of the fool kowtowing in the middle of the street!

“If you don’t stop, I’ll not only, never speak
to you again, but I won’t allow you to see the baby.”

Ethan stopped dead in his tracks, but stayed on
his knees.

“What are we having?” he asked.

“A boy.”

“I was hoping for a girl,” Ethan said. “So I
can show her mother, how much I love them both.”

“A healthy happy baby is good enough,” I
answered.

“Hopefully he won’t end up in the middle of the
street on his knees like his worthless father.”

My heart softened, a
little.

“You’re not worthless, Ethan. You made a
mistake and you hurt me in the process.”

Ethan finally stood, turning to face me with
blood on his bruised forehead. I winced as he drew toward me. .

“Thank you, for getting off of the ground,” I
said.  

He was still handsome,
even with a big purple splotch on his face.

“I’ll never leave you
again,” Ethan said, drawing me into his arms, his eyes capturing mine.

He reached down, caressing my belly for the
first time, the palm of his hand encompassing it as the baby kicked and
fluttered. Then he finally kissed me on the lips.

“You still love me?” he asked, eyes swelling
with tears.

“Love, is what got me in trouble in the first
place,” I answered.

Then I realized, he’d never actually heard me
say it to
him
. It was no wonder why Ethan
couldn’t bring himself to trust me. Or for that matter, how I could trust him,
after all of the deception and lies between us.

“I
do
love you,” I confirmed. “Even
against my better judgment, I want to take care of our family together. But I’m
scared.”

“I’ll never hurt you again,” he pleaded,
desperately. “I love you, Elizabeth.”

Ethan reached into his pocket, revealing the
pink diamond wedding ring I left on his desk when he kicked me out of his
office. He tried to slip it on my finger but I made a fist, preventing him from
putting it on my hand. I wasn’t letting him off easy. I didn’t need another
Eugene on my hands.

“We’ll take it one step
at a time,” I answered, opening my palm against his chest.

Ethan tilted his face
forward and kissed me.

“Now, let’s put some
ice on that stubborn head of yours,” I said.

Ethan grabbed my hand
and led me back to the apartment, and with a wave, the guys climbed back into
the Maybach, driving away as we walked inside, leaving past hurt, lies, and
betrayals outside on the doorstep.

The End
.

 The following excerpt is from the book,
Disappear,
Love
by E. Hughes.

CHAPTER ONE

 **********

“Why
on earth would you cut your hair? You are a hot mess! Sometimes I don’t know
what to do with you...”

I
looked at mother and rolled my eyes. She was at it again… complaining about the
way I looked. When I was little I used to wear a Brewers baseball cap to ballet
class… Mother would
squint
her eyes, pout her lips
disapprovingly, and tell me to pull my pink tutu over my flat butt… “Can’t
catch a bee without a stinger,” she’d say in that sugar coated voice of hers.
Mother was a perfectionist, which is probably why I’m so messed up.

She
stood in my bedroom, hands parked on her slender hips as she examined the
condition of my room. She wore her perfectly coiffed dark hair swept into the
neatest bun I’d ever seen. She was the perfect housewife… like Mrs. Cleaver, or
better, Claire
Huxtable
but without the legal
pedigree.  

“Victoria…
Are you listening to me?”