Fun With Rick and Jade (4 page)

Jade rounded the table, plopped back down in her chair, and whipped out a breast. Coral latched on.

“Let’s all calm down and discuss this like adults,” Bob said without flinching or even blinking. He’d grown accustomed to exposed breasts. Nothing much fazed him anymore after he’d held the camera in the delivery room while Jade pushed a baby out and Candy had a meltdown over the sight of a little blood.

“How can we discuss anything rationally while she’s doing that?” Rick pointed at her chronic breastfeeding. “First of all, what if she did that in front of the guy? Second of all, who’d believe she’d marry me?”

“He’s got a good point,” Jade said, not taking their suggestion of marriage seriously. This wasn’t the Middle Ages. Single parenthood was hardly a shocking lifestyle. It was her former profession causing the problems and unless she had a time machine….

“You owe me, Rick,” Bob said.

Rick took on a rankled posture. “I what? Owe you? What the fuck for?”

“Language,” Jade warned him. She did not want Coral’s first word to be
fuck
.

“High school.” Bob said. “You. Your buddy Carl and the Dickhead’s Corvette. Remember? Is it coming back to you?”

Jade glanced between the two brothers, her curiosity up. Way up. There was a story here. An interesting story she wanted to hear. She eyed Rick. He looked a little more interesting, as well.

“I thought we agreed never to talk about that,” he said. Actually, he almost whispered it.

“I thought you said you owed me big,” his brother shot back. “I remember something about the possibility of getting a kidney in the future, or your first-born.”

“It was a prank.”

“It was a felony,” Bob said. “I made it go away. I’m the reason you got into college instead of jail. And best of all, you can keep your first-born.”

Rick glared. “This is blackmail.”

“I think it’s extortion,” Candy said.

“I think it’s bribery.” Bob pointed at Jade. “I mean, look at what you’d be getting.”

“Thank you, Bob.” Jade smiled demurely. “But don’t I have something to say about this?”

Bob turned his attention to her, probably deciding his brother wasn’t rational. The red face and wild eyes gave him away. “It’ll look great in court if you have a loving husband and father figure standing by your side. Look at him.” Bob waved his hand in Rick’s direction. “Clean-cut, college graduate. Never been convicted of a crime. Never been married. Good credit. A guy with his own business. We could even try to make it look like a successful business. On paper, anyhow.”

“Hey!”

She hated when Bob was right. Especially about this, but couldn’t see herself marrying
him
with a straight face. She tried to look at Rick through fresh eyes. Desperate eyes. Oh sure, he was cute in an adorkable puppy sort of way. Nice enough body. She’d dated worse and by dated, she meant dated for money. Her real boyfriends were nothing less than super-hot. And temporary. Like the marriage would be.

“Court!” he exclaimed, the word and the implication finally reaching his brain. He spun and headed for the door. “I’ve heard enough.”

“Rick!” Bob stood. “You’ve got one shot at this money guy. Don’t be a loser and blow this deal, or you’ll be back to working in the home electronics department at Circuit City.”

“That will never happen, Bob.” He stopped and turned. His ears had transitioned from crimson to fuchsia, matching his face. “Not in a million years.”

“What makes you so sure?”

Candy pivoted her head back and forth as if watching a tennis match.

“They went out of business,” Jade mentioned conversationally. Glancing at Rick, she asked, “That’s the reason, right?”

He shrugged, looking a little beat down and defeated. “Maybe.” Poor guy dragged his hand down the length of his face. “Listen. Jade, I’m sure you’re a great gal, but I’m not going to marry you. Not now. Not ever.”

“Like I’d marry you.” She rolled her eyes.

Turning, he headed for the door in a huff. “Good night, all!”

“Do you want to keep your baby?” Bob asked her across the expanse of the dining table. “Or would you like to get a Christmas card in the mail every year with the smiling faces of Ewan and Colleen McShane and their beautiful daughter? They might even change her name.”

“Stop him!” Jade blurted out.

Bob and Candy had the house decked out similar to their own wedding, which they’d held in the back yard a couple years earlier. Same decorations, silk flowers, and colors—violet and yellow.

How did I let myself get talked into this?

Rick should have kept walking that night—right out the front door.
Yes, sir
. What had stopped him? Tearful brown eyes he could get lost in. Hypnotic red lips quivering and pouting, appealing to the hero buried deep down inside him. Breasts. Jade had great breasts. He wanted to see more of them. Her fatherless baby stopped him from leaving. She had big, brown eyes and quivering lips, too. Well, not a fatherless baby, but rather a baby in need of a father. A temporary father.

Her story had reeled him in and tugged at his heart. When Bob had said “court,” Rick’s mind had gone right to criminal court, not family court. From everything he’d seen, she was an excellent mother.

He easily could have and should have no-showed at the courthouse. Instead, curiosity navigated his way at the appointed time, if for no other reason than to double-check if Jade was as beautiful under fluorescent lighting as he’d remembered her to be under flattering track lighting. She was. He could tell that the court clerk who issued the marriage certificate wanted to call for a psychiatric exam or a drug test, wondering why Jade would consent to marry the likes of him.

Afterward, Bob and Candy insisted they all grab a celebratory lunch at a quaint bistro near the courthouse, where pictures were taken for a scrapbook. Jade had stirred a cup of chowder and checked her watch frequently while the trio ate. Rick didn’t feel like he knew her any better after lunch than he had the night he’d met her. She was aloof and shallow, yet intense and complicated. He suspected that plenty of thought went on behind her vacant eyes.

Bob straightened Rick’s tuxedo tie, bringing him back to the present.

“Why couldn’t we get married at the courthouse by a kindly old judge, Bob?”
Why the fanfare?

“I need a real husband for Jade. Not a quickie marriage. They’ll see right through that. I need photos,” Bob said. “You are the perfect groom, the epitome of a law-abiding citizen.”

Rick waited for him to mention the Corvette incident of his youth.

He didn’t. Instead, he said, “Wouldn’t surprise me if your picture is in the dictionary under the word dependable.” Bob slapped some paperwork in front of him. “Did you read over the pre-nup?”

“Yes.”

He thrust a pen at him. “Did you sign it?”

“Yes!” He’d signed the marriage license application despite Bob’s reluctant admission that Rick’s bride-to-be was indeed a former call girl. The pre-nup he’d signed especially because she was a former call girl.

“It’s for your own protection, as well as hers.”

“I don’t think for one second you give a rat’s ass about my protection,” Rick whisper-screamed. “You care about Jade. Did you sleep with her?”

“What? No!”

“Good.” He spun around. “I don’t want your sloppy seconds.”

“Watch your mouth, honey.” Jade sauntered in and circled him like prey. “I don’t take Candy’s sloppy seconds, either. No offense, Bob.”

“Whatever,” Bob mumbled.

Still circling Rick, scrutinizing him through narrowed eyes, she said, “It’s true. Everything looks better in a tux.”

“Everyone!”

“I stand corrected.” She shot him an icy stare. More like a glare.

“Isn’t it bad luck for the groom to see the bride before the wedding?” he asked.

It’s also cruel
. He wanted to rip the virginal white gown off her body, throw her down on the floor, and show her who was boss. They both knew who the boss was. Her. The one person she answered to was a crying baby, who happened to be quiet somewhere in the house at that moment. A rarity.

Jade stroked his cheek with her knuckles, making the hair on the back of his neck stand at attention, among other things. “Call me psychic, darling,” she said, “but I sense this marriage is doomed.”

“Speaking of doomed marriages.” Bob cleared his throat and pointed. “Sign the pre-nup.”

She strutted over to the table. The lace hem of her gown, which he thought might also be Candy’s gown, swayed with each step. Jade appeared so innocent in the delicate dress with the off-the-shoulder cap sleeves. Her hair was twisted up in one of those French knots, except for the spiral tendrils strategically spilling out to tempt him into thinking she was a blushing bride. She bent and scribbled her name in two loopty-loops.

He’d had his own lawyer, a friend from college who owed him from a computer-related favor, take a look at the document. Not that Rick didn’t trust his brother. But he didn’t trust his brother. Not about this. He had nothing to lose now, but his prospects could radically change. That was the plan.

Jade strolled over and eyeballed him. “Shall we?”

He could think of a dozen handy reasons not to. “Thank you for not wearing your high heels,” he said, instead of listing all the reasons they shouldn’t go through with the wedding.

That was all he needed, her towering over him, making him feel smaller and less significant than he already did. Not that he was short. At five-feet-eleven he stood above average. A full inch taller than Bob. But he’d guess Jade’s height at about five-feet-eight or nine. Put her in three- or four-inch heels and she’d be looking down on him. Literally as well as figuratively.

“Oh my good God, son!” his mom wailed from the open doorway. “Don’t tell me you’re going to marry a whore, too.”

Jade promenaded across the room. “He sure is, Mom. But I prefer to think of it as professional dating rather than whoring.” She breezed by his mother. When Jade walked out, she took the air with her. Or at least he felt short of breath in the aftermath.

Rick fumed in Bob’s direction and pointed at their mother. “What’s she doing here?”
And how did she know Jade was a whore?

The ultimate betrayal. Their mother had never been in the running for mother of the year. Being supportive was not her strong suit. She couldn’t fathom why neither son had ascended to greatness under her child-rearing, or as Rick and Bob referred to it, years of neglect and verbal abuse.

He shrugged. “It’ll look good in the wedding photos.”

“What’ll look good? Mom scowling? Jade giving her the finger?” He dragged his hands down his face. “Go home, Mom.”

“I’m going to go have a drink.” She turned and stormed away. “You’re both a huge disappointment to me!”

“Thanks, Mom!” He punched at the air. “We’re both a tribute to your fine parenting.”

“Be a man,” Bob said. “I’m so tired of Rick this and Rick that.” He did a really lame impression of their mother, scowl included. Bob loved to complain how Rick was the favorite, but even being favorite son was no prize. “She wouldn’t even attend my wedding.” Leaning in, he whispered, “And I love Candy.”

“Yeah, Bob, it’s the greatest love story ever told.”
Love at first boink. I should be so lucky
. His own marriage would probably be boinkless, the biggest regret of all. He stabbed his finger in his brother’s direction. “You will
never
get my kidney.”

Smiling, probably because he knew he’d won, Bob took a boxing stance and punched him hard in the arm. “Let’s get this done already.”

Rick rubbed his new bruise. “Have I thanked you yet for dragging me into this clusterfuck, Bob?”

His brother proceeded to recount all the many things he’d done for him in Rick’s short and uneventful life, starting with all the times he’d wanted to kill his little brother, from infancy to adulthood, but never acted on his impulse.
I’ll send a thank you card, Bob
. The list came to an end with hooking him up with Jade, which didn’t really feel like a favor at the moment. In the middle was Bob’s homage to himself for being such a great lawyer, saving Rick from jail way back in high school. Then he dove into a speech about how ungrateful his brother was, and always had been. Before he knew it, Rick stood sweating in front of a bunch of people he didn’t know, waiting to marry a woman he didn’t know.

All of Jade’s hooker friends and their dates, who might be johns or pimps for all he knew, gathered around. The minister, looking like he’d be more comfortable at a Grateful Dead concert than a wedding, began his soliloquy about love and marriage, devotion and commitment.
Who was it that likened love to a grave mental disorder? Plato
. His mind wandered when he should have been paying close attention to what he was agreeing to.

His gaze glanced to his arm when Jade butted up against him, quite by accident, he guessed. Her warmth seared his skin through the tux, branding him with a sizzle of desire. He pulled at the collar of his shirt with his index finger and regretted not having a pre-wedding drink. Or three.

“Rick,” his brother whispered.

Jade elbowed him.

“What? Oh. I will.”
I will live to regret this
. “I do.”
I do feel like throwing up
.

The baby fussed and both he and Jade turned toward the soft cries. Jade took a step back and held out her hands. Candy passed Coral to her. She calmed right down in her mother’s arms.

“Go on,” she said to the minister.

“Jade Li, do you take Richard Jette to be—”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “Do you think you could use my real name?”

The minister sputtered, paused, and waited.

“Jillian.” Rick cleared his throat. “Horowitz.”

She glared at him.

“What? It was on the pre-nup,” he whispered.

She rolled her eyes and swayed the baby in her arms. The minister droned on. Rick stopped listening again. Coral reached for a corkscrew curl trailing down her mother’s cheek. Her little hand missed the target, making him smile in spite of his grave concerns.