Commitment (82 page)

Chapter Eighteen

He was already up and
in the kitchen
on the phone
when she
got
up the next morning.
He was
talking to Doug
and
sounded
more like himself – taking charge and
throwing
out ideas.
But from his responses to whatever Doug was telling him, it seemed like his lawyer was having a hard time convincing him that this was one situation over which he had absolutely no control.

“You need to talk to Mike,” Shawn was saying
forcefully
.
“He was the one who told
me
she was planning this.”
He paused and listened for a moment then sighed exas
peratedly.
“Yeah, I get that
. . .
yeah
. . .
I know.”

He listened for a moment then sighed impatiently once again.
When
the call ended Shawn
came back into the bedroom, bare-chested and barefooted.
Riley
rolled over onto her stomach and searched his face, trying to guess at his mood.

“You feel like taking a trip?”
And when she raised her eye
brows, he laughed.
“To Jersey.
To Chris’ house.”

“Oh.
Sure.”

“What did you think I meant?”

“I wasn’t sure,” she admitted.

“The court has my passport,”
he said over his shoulder,
as he headed for the bathroom.
“So escaping to
Argentina
just
ain’t
in the cards.”

At least his sense of humor was
intact
.

When after a moment she heard the shower,
Riley
followed him in.
She watched him for a moment through the gla
ss.
Just when shou
ld she start preparing herself?
When would it be wise to start thinking about the possibility that he might go to
prison?
She shed her nightshirt and got in with him, wrapping her arms
around his waist from behind.
H
e leaned backward
an
d into her embrace.
At first he didn’t speak, and when he did, it was as though he’d read her mind.

“I was talking to Doug about
contingency planning
,” he began carefully.

When she tensed, he turned to face her, gently pushing her backward so that they were no longer standing
under
the stream of water. 

“W
e don’t know what might happen.
He
doesn’t know what might happen.
I need to make sure you’ll be okay.”

Before he finished, she was already shaking her head, but he refused to release her, holding her face gently but firmly, so she would look at him.

“You
already
put this off once.
We can’t avoid
talking about
it forever.”

“Not forever,”
Riley
said.
“Just let’s not right now.”

“When?”

And when she couldn’t answer, he
pressed his lips to her
forehead and held them there for a moment.

“Let’s get out of the shower at least,” she murmured.

Later, as she sat in the kitchen in her bathrobe drinking her coffee,
Riley
’s eyes opened wide when
Shawn finally joined her with an impressive
stack
of papers in
his
hands. 

“What have you done?”
she asked, gripping the edge of the counter.

“Baby,” Shawn reached across the break
fast bar and touched her hand.
“Relax.”

“What is that?”

“
Information you should
have
.
Or at least know how to find.”

Riley
said nothing.

“Y
ou already know
we’re
rich,” Shawn began. He was obvio
usly trying to lighten the mood
but
Riley
didn’t smile, so he continued.
“But y
ou don’t know exactly how much.
And where.”

She shook her
head.
No.
She didn’t know and h
ad avoided knowing, in fact.
Once, when she and Shawn were still just
casually hooking up
, Tracy had tried to force her to look
it up
online
, but she’d refused.

“So K
Smooth
’s net worth, as of January 1 . . .”

“Stop that,”
Riley
said, touching her forehead and looking down.

“What?” Shawn sounded confused.

“Referring to
yourself in the third person.
This
is
your money, not some fictional charact
er’s money.
Even if you say ‘K
Smooth
’ it doesn’t make me feel like it isn’t real.
It doesn’t make this whole
messed
up situation not real.
”

He stopped and stared at her for a moment, searching her face.

“Don’t pretend you’re
only half-assed taking this seriou
sly,” she went on.
“Like we aren’t talking about the possibility that you might be . .
.
in prison.”

“C’mere,” Shawn said, shoving the papers aside.

Riley
felt the tears come, as though out of nowhere and then
she was sobbing uncontrollably.
She hadn’t cried about this be
fore.
There hadn’t been time
.

“C’mere,” he said again.
When she didn’t move, he reached for her, pullin
g her around and onto his lap.
He buried his face into the back of her neck. 

“
If you cry,” he said.
“If you’re not okay, I won’t be able to do
this;
you know what I’m sayin’?
I need to stand up like a man
and take whatever comes to me.
And I can do that.
But if I
know I’m hurting
you
like this, then shit . . . that’s more than I could . . .”
H
e stopped. 

Riley
wiped her eyes with t
he back of her hands and turned
so
she was
sitting
a
stride him.
She nodded. 

“Okay,
”
she said quietly.

“It’s not fair.
I know it’s not,” he said
.
“After all the
crap I already put you through.
To ask you not to cry.”

“
It’s okay,” Riley said.
“
It was
a moment.
It’s passed. Let’s talk about how rich you are.”
She tried to smile, but what surfaced had to have been a poor substitute.

“Nah.
Let’s just head out to Jersey,” Shawn said, rea
ding her face.  “You’re right.
We can talk about this later.”

Chris’ house in Short Hills was
not at all what she expected.
Instead of something ostentatious like Cameron Cole’s it was a very sensibl
y
sized
colonial
at the end of a long pebble driveway and shield
ed from the road by tall
ferns.
The only hint about its occupant c
ame from the three Bentleys and
Mercedes parked out front.

They
called in from the gate and
Chris was waiting for them at the
door when they pulled up.
He was wearing a dramatic all-wh
ite sweat
suit and a white
baseball cap turned backward.
He smiled when he spotted
Riley
and came toward her, arms outstretched.

“How you
doin
’?” he asked hugging her.

“Good,”
she
squeezed
him back,
and turned
once again
to Shawn who for the first time ever seemed surprisingly cool with her and Chris being so
chummy
.

The décor was also a surprise
; u
nderstated
and elegant with
warm
tones
throughout the foyer
.
Chris led them to a terrace where
breakfast was already laid out;
fruit and pastry with coffee, tea and juice.

“If you want something else, eggs or something, let me know,” he said as they sat.

“
No, this is fine,” Shawn said.

He seemed impatient to get down to business and all but ignored the food.
Too hungry to do the same,
Riley
reached for a beignet and poured a cup of coffee.

“Brendan’s on his way out,” Ch
ris said.
“And you called Doug as well, right?”

“Yeah, he’s bringin
g someone else from his office.
He thinks we need a female lawyer on this too,” Shawn said.

Riley
trie
d not to register her surprise.
She had no idea that this was g
oing to be a strategy meeting.
Of course, there was no way it
could have been
purely a social visit given
the circumstances
, but
she wished it were.
Maybe her body language registered her tension, because Shawn’s hand fell to her
leg and he gently squeezed it.
She smiled at him, pretending to
be
more at ease than she
was
.

“I got all the contact informa
tion he asked for,” Chris said.
He reached beneath his chair and placed a manila folder on th
e table between him and Shawn.
“Every dancer
on the tour from the beginning.
B h
as everything else.
The bars you were at, all that.”

“If somebody asked me where we were at that night, I don’t know  . . .”

“Well, you better resurr
ect that memory,” Chris warned.
“Saying you don’t remember what happened ain’t gon’ fly.”

“Doug said I won’t have to say anything.”

“Maybe not in court. I’m thinking about after.
No matter what happens in court, you have to be able t
o explain this to your public.
Especially because . . .” Chris nodded in
Riley
’s direction.  “. . . you just got married.”

Shawn said nothing, his eyes meeting
Riley
’s for a pained moment. He looked down,
his hand falling from her leg.
Riley
reached out and held it.
Her need to have him feel shame for having cheated on her with Kei
sha seemed to have disappeared.
Whatever he’d done to her—
to
them—
he didn’t deserve this.
To think that he
might actually go to prison.
Her vision abruptly blurred and she blinked rapid
ly, willing herself not to cry.

Chris met her gaze and held a hand across the table.

“Lemme show you the house,” he said.

Shawn’s hand slid from hers as he let her go.

“I’ll make some calls,” he said.

Riley
took her coffee with her, allowing Chris to lead her back into the house, to a sunroom that looked as though it had been transplanted from an English country cottage.

“A woman decorated this,” she said smiling.

“Yeah, of course,” Chris said.
“I w
as in Germany when it happened.
You think I would’ve gone for all these flowers and shit?”