Legal Ease (Sutton Capital Series) (17 page)

“Well, I guess that shouldn’t be a surprise since she’s moved in with us. She does seem to be taking this pretty far.”

“She did
what
?” Chad’s eyebrows were practically off his head now.

Jack laughed. “She didn’t tell you? I was going to ask you the night you offered her a lift home from the party. She’s been with us almost from the wedding. She made up some excuse about fixing up her kitchen and not being able to stay in her townhouse or with you because you had a friend visiting. She’s been living with us for over three weeks. I just figured I’d let her get it out of her system and then she’d give up.”

Chad started to laugh. “Sorry, Jack, I know it’s not funny, only, it kind of is. No wonder she said she didn’t need a ride home from the party the other night. I wondered how she was getting home but didn’t press it. I guess she was home!”

Chad sobered then. “Oh God, Jack. Kelly must think our family is nuts. What did she have to say about all of this?”

Jack joined Chad and laughed at the situation that now resembled a sitcom. How had his life become like this?

“Kelly’s been great about it. She barely batted an eye when your mom showed up. She didn’t even object when she had to move into my room.” Jack froze, realizing one second too late that he had let that little bit of information slip out.

Damn, there was a time when I was on top of every fact, every angle of a deal and I never would have let a detail like that slip. This thing with Kelly has me a hell of a lot more tied up in knots than I thought.

“Wait…. What?” Chad wasn’t laughing anymore either. He stared at his cousin. “Jack?”

“Oh, shit,” said Jack and he stood and moved to the front of his desk and leaned against it, legs crossed in front of him. “All right, listen. If I tell you the truth will you promise not to tell your mom yet? I need some time to convince Kelly to stay with me.”

“Oh, this I have to hear,” said Chad and he moved to Jack’s couch and sat back with his feet up and his arms behind his head, ready for a good story.

Jack sighed and began. “Well, the day you guys met Kelly when she came to my office?” Chad nodded and Jack went on. “That was the first time I met her, too.”

“You met her that day!” Chad said, and laughed at the look on his cousin’s face. He could see that Jack was miserable having to admit this and he loved every minute that his cousin squirmed.

Jack shook his head. “That minute. When she walked in and introduced herself to you guys? That was the first time I saw her,” Jack said and he looked more than a little sheepish.

Chad was now holding his stomach, he was laughing so hard. He sat up on the couch with his arms around his stomach, doubled over from the hilarity of Jack’s situation. He seemed completely unable to talk and there were tears running down his face.

“I know, I know,” Jack said. “Laugh it up. She’s had me completely wrapped around her little finger since then.”

Andrew poked his head in the door. “What’s all the noise?”

For some reason, Andrew’s presence only made Chad laugh harder so Jack had to answer. “I’m telling Chad how Kelly and I met,” he said wryly.

“Uh, the real story?” Andrew asked and he glanced over his shoulder to be sure no one had heard him and then came in and shut the door behind him.

“The whole nasty story,” Jack said with a shake of his head.

“So, he told you he thought maybe she was a call girl I hired for him? Or some random girl I picked up off the street?” Andrew said to Chad as he poured each of them two fingers of scotch from the small bar in Jack’s office.

“Oh, well, I guess not all of it,” Jack said wryly as Chad fell off the couch, laughing on the way down.

It took about ten minutes while Jack and Andrew drank and watched him, all the while grinning, but Chad finally got himself together enough to talk.

“So, what is she getting out of this?” Chad asked as he wiped tears off his face. Jack explained how she had found out about the will from his temp assistant and then about their trade: Three years of law school tuition for one year of marriage.

“That’s all she asked you for? Man, she could have taken you to the cleaners. Would have if she was anything like those vultures you usually date.”

Jack nodded and laughed to himself. “I gave her my credit card and told her she could use it for anything. I looked at the statement the other day. You wanna’ know what she’s bought in all this time?” He paused before he answered his own question. “A dress for the cocktail party and shoes to go with it. No jewelry to match. Not two or three dresses just in case she changed her mind the day of the party. Just what she needed and nothing more. Hell, I gave her a BMW today and she was pissed.”

Andrew and Chad shook their heads. They had enough money themselves to understand where Jack was coming from. Women often preyed upon them for their money, their positions, their power – and were really interested in nothing more.
Andrew had learned that lesson in a particularly painful way several years ago so Jack knew that Andrew, most of all of them, understood how important it was that Kelly didn’t care about Jack’s money. Most women would have taken the credit card and run up a huge tab with no concern for the fact that it wasn’t their money to spend.

“I still can’t believe you got beat at your own game, Jack,” Chad said as he shook his head. “You always have all the dirt on your opponents so you can win any negotiation. That’s pretty amazing that she turned the tables on you like that.” He stopped and looked at his drink for a minute, then shook his head with a grin. “And that she had the guts to walk in here and pull that off. Man, that is one classy lady.”

“I know,” Jack said. “Now I need to convince her to stay with me.”

“Damn, she wants to leave you already? What happened to the deal?” Andrew asked.

“No, I don’t mean that. She’s staying for the year,” Jack said, “but I want more. I want the real thing, the marriage, kids, her. For the rest of my life. The whole thing.”

“Holy shit,” Chad said as he stared at Jack. “You love her.”

Jack looked down at his drink and nodded slowly. “Yeah. I couldn’t even admit it to myself at first, but I think I might have fallen in love with her that first day she walked in here and it just keeps growing every time I’m with her. Hell, it grows when I’m away from her too. The only problem is she has plans…you know? Things she wants to do and I don’t know if marriage fits in there. She has three years of law school and that means going off for clerkships and internships and then long hours when she graduates to make her mark and build her own career. I don’t know if there’s room in there for me.”

They all grew quiet for a very long moment, staring down at the amber liquid in their glasses and then quietly, Andrew chuckled. “Oh, how the mighty have fallen,” he said in a low voice.

Chad drove straight to Jack’s house after leaving Andrew and Jack at the office. He pulled his Range Rover to the edge of the driveway and stepped out.
Mrs. Poole answered when he rang the bell.

“Hey, Mrs. Poole,” Chad said as he dropped a peck on her cheek. She had been a fixture at Jack’s for so long that both he and Jack had begun to treat her like an aunt more than an employee. “I’m here to see my Mom.”

“Hi, dear. I’m not sure where she is. Would you like me to find her for you?” Mrs. Poole responded.

“No, I’ll find her, thanks.”

He wandered through the rooms looking for his mom and found her sitting in Jack’s living room reading the paper and drinking tea by the window. She spotted him and silently put down her teacup. She set the paper aside before looking up at him.

Her expression was like that of an insolent little child who knew she was about to be scolded but she laid her hands in her lap and greeted her son, “Hello, Chad. What brings you here in the middle of the day?”

Chad shook his head at her. He was afraid to open his mouth for a moment. Not because he was afraid of what she might say or of what she might think, but because he was afraid he wouldn’t be able to control himself. He had been holding back with his mom for so long, to try to protect her, that there was so much built up in him he was afraid it might all come spewing out in one fell swoop.

Chad stood with his jaw clenched and his arms crossed as he waited for his mother to say something. Unfortunately for his mother, his patience had been honed in his years in the marines. There was no question who would win this standoff.

Mabry broke quickly. “Don’t look at me like that. This marriage isn’t real and you know it. I don’t know where the hell he got her from but Kelly is just a fake trophy wife to get Jack past the terms of the will. I need to show the board that….”

“Stop it, mother,” Chad spit out through clenched teeth, cutting her off mid sentence. He’d finally had enough of his mother’s hate and anger affecting all of their lives. “What you’re doing is disgusting. It’s embarrassing and hurtful and cruel. Did you know Jack has been protecting you this whole time? He stands up for you. He made sure that I didn’t come in and intervene between him and you because he thought that would hurt you too much and he didn’t want to see you hurt. His parents always stood up for you too but you’ve just lashed out at all of them, over and over.”

Now that Chad had started, he couldn’t stop. “For God’s sake, Mom. Jack’s dad was your brother and for the last years of his life and the last years of his wife’s life, you treated them like enemies.”

Mabry had sat with a stunned look on the face for most of his tirade, but now she stood and lashed back. “You don’t know,” she said slicing her hand through the air in front of her son as if to strike out at the words he had thrown between them. “How dare you judge me? You don’t know how it feels to have the person you love to just walk away as if you meant nothing. As if you were nothing. And then to have to watch
them
. To have to see how happy and perfect their family was.”

Chad couldn’t believe what he was hearing. He knew she was sick, but she was acting as if Jack’s parents, or even Jack himself, had something to do with his dad leaving his mom.

“Mom, stop! He left you. And that sucks. I wish to God he’d never hurt you. But you’ve let this turn you into this hateful person. It’s turned you into a person I don’t want to know anymore.”

Chad saw his mom begin to falter but he couldn’t stop.

Frustrated, Chad rubbed a hand over his face. “You need to stop this, Mom. Jack loves Kelly. They’re married. It’s over. But more importantly, you
have
to listen to me. I don’t want to be the CEO of the company. I love you but I also love what I do for a living. I need you to hear that, Mom. I need you to respect it. Respect me.”

His mother’s face fell.

“I love you Mom, but I don’t love what you’ve been doing lately and I don’t love the person you’ve become. You can’t do this anymore, Mom. If you can’t stop, you’re going to lose me. I know you’ve been angry since Dad left and you took that anger out on Jack’s parents, and lately on Jack. It needs to stop.” Chad walked out, leaving Mabry alone again.

***

Mabry sank back into the armchair and sat quietly for a long time. She tried to feel indignant. Or angry. Or righteous. But she suddenly couldn’t feel any of those things. As she replayed her son’s words in her head she knew he was right. Chad was right.
When did I become this person
? The changes in her had started when her husband walked out on her.

As she sat there and thought about what Chad had said, Mabry realized she didn’t like herself much
either. Ten years later and she was still allowing him to hurt all of them, through her.
Oh, God, what power I gave him. I let him do so much more damage than he deserved to be able to inflict.

It was as if Mabry was waking up from a deep sleep and was finally able to see what was truly happening around her. The tears began to fall and Mabry cried for a long time before pulling herself together.

Mabry was ashamed as she sat in Jack and Kelly’s living room thinking about what she had been doing. But she also knew she needed to go make it right. With a sigh, she pulled herself up and went up to her room. She packed up her bag and then drove the half hour to Jack’s office to do just that.

***

Jack’s intercom buzzed and his secretary announced that his Aunt Mabry wanted to see him. Jack groaned, wondering what on earth she had up her sleeve now. He didn’t know how much more of her intrusion he could take and he sure didn’t want her to chase Kelly off.

“Send her in,” he told his secretary as he closed the file he had been reading.

Mabry didn’t come sweeping through the door with the grand presence she usually cultivated. Instead, she walked in like any normal person would. Jack looked at her for a minute and realized that at that moment, she looked more like the aunt he remembered from his childhood. He had missed the way she used to be.

“Is everything okay, Aunt Mabry?” Jack asked as he eyed her warily from behind his desk.

“No, Jack. I’m afraid it’s not. I owe you and Kelly an apology,” she said and she let out a whoosh of breath with the confession. She looked down at her hands as she twisted them in her lap and Jack saw tears welling up in her eyes.