Accidentally Married To The Billionaire - Part 3 (The Billionaire's Touch) Page 9

  “I—sure. I can be ready in—let’s see, I look like shit, so give me twenty minutes.”

  “Fine. I’ll be in my car downstairs.”

  “I’ll be down there.”

  “You just need a mimosa or two, and your defenses will be back in place. Don’t worry, child. I’ve been there myself a time or two. It’s rotten being married a man you love so much, who loves his company so much more.”

  “You said a mouthful there,” Marj mused ruefully.

  She hung up and then scrubbed her face. She used depuffing serum and a citrus toner. Then she slathered on tinted moisturizer and tried to line her swollen eyes in such a way that all the crying wouldn’t be horribly obvious. She used about half the contents of her Yves St. Laurent flash pen to create some highlights where there were only blotches and shadows. She mustered a high ponytail, reminiscent of Britt’s perennial style only without the optimistic open-heartedness that kept the ponytail from veering into irony. She dressed to kill in one of her sleekest sheaths, her highest heels.

  She put on the diamond pendant she’d discarded the night before. When she slid into the chauffeured Town Car beside the impeccable Lena, Marj felt conspicuous and blowsy. Lena may not have been to the manner born—a former intern or employee of the senior Cates—but she had spent decades honing a flawless style. She reposed against leather seats in a cream colored cashmere shell, a pencil skirt just a shade darker caramel and a designer leather moto jacket that was yet a shade darker than the skirt. It was chic and stylish and a bit edgy, not at all matronly yet totally respectable. Marj wanted to bow down but her skintight cherry red dress wouldn’t allow much in the way of bowing.

  “Good morning,” Lena said, “awake all night?”

  “Most of it.”

  “You look well despite that.”

  “Sephora has an absolute goldmine,” Marj mused.

  “Truly they do. I prefer La Prairie myself. The spa as well as the skin care regime.”

  “I’ve never tried it.”

  “I’ll send you some round later. Their skin caviar is divine.”

  “I hope caviar is just a name. I don’t like the idea of rubbing fish eggs on my face.”

  “They’re not eggs as such. Roe.”

  “Is it real caviar? Or just shaped like it?”

  “Proteins…ah, I’m not sure if it’s derived from the sturgeon or not. You’ll have to read the label, I suppose, if you’re that concerned. It firms the skin tone.”

  “I could use that. My jaw looks a little saggy.”

  “Only wait until you’re my age,” Lena said with a sniff.

  “Where shall we eat? Is any place even open?”

  “For us? Of course there are places open.”

  “The Cates insomniacs?” Marj tried a joke.

  “The corporate widows.

  “But my husband is not dead.”

  “But it’s like he is. He’s not around much.”

  Marj sighed.

  The car stopped before a luxury hotel restaurant, and the doors swung open to receive them into the empty and silent dining room. Menus were brought, bound in leather and the byword in understated elegance…not a single price was listed. Marj felt her mouth water as she read the descriptions of breakfast delicacies. Remembering her waistline with regret, she ordered an egg-white omelet with shallots, tomato, and mushrooms to accompany her Bellini. She wanted the sweetness of peach with her champagne, to counter the bitterness that was welling in her.

  “Has he cheated on you?” Lena asked frankly, as soon as she had ordered her breakfast. Marj had felt a pang of envy at the other woman’s order—omelet with Gruyere cheese and onion, yogurt with honey and granola, turkey bacon. A seeming abundance compared to what she allowed herself—cheese, sugar, sodium….visions of it danced in her mind.

  “No. And that’s hardly your concern.”

  “Is that a ‘not yet’?”

  “He hasn’t cheated on me, nor have I cheated on him. I love him.”

  “That much is plain, but it’s not much to the purpose, now is it? It never mattered to his father and the apple doesn’t fall far in this case.”

  “I thought he stopped that after he married you.”

  “Well, that’s what he told everyone, including golden boy, Brandon.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “When I married him, I thought my husband was an enigma, a tragic widower struggling to raise a son while growing his business. In fact, he was none of that. He didn’t struggle. He hired people to deal with anything inconvenient, and that included Brandon. He hadn’t any room in his heart for me at all. I had romanticized our affair, and I was more than willing to marry him. I didn’t care that he explained his proposal as a matter of keeping up appearances once our liaison had leaked to the press. It had to be a grand romance, otherwise, he was only another dirty old man chasing after the help, and that wouldn’t do for Power Regions. He didn’t love me. He professed to, of course, the way men will,” she shrugged meaningfully.

  “I’m sorry that your relationship didn’t turn out the way you wanted it to, but that doesn’t have much to do with me and Brandon.”

  “Brandon and me. Goodness, hasn’t the boy hired anyone to work on your diction? It has a great deal of bearing on your situation because you, like myself, were a necessary bride. A hanger-on acquired to meet a corporate need,” Lena persisted.

  “Untrue. We’re in love, Lena. I know it sounds unlikely, and it probably burns you because you weren’t lucky enough to have that with his dad, but Brandon loves me.”

  “Brandon has no more love for you than his father had for me,” Lena said grimly. Despite the apparent malice of the remark, she showed no rancor, nothing but a rather tired sadness.

  “Brandon didn’t lose his first wife to illness. I’m his first wife. First and only. He’s not still hung up on some old love.”

  “You’re right about one thing. Brandon isn’t in love with anyone else. His father never got over his first love and neither will the son.”

  “I know his mother’s death made a huge impact on him, and on his father, too, I expect, but—”

  “He wasn’t still in love with Brandon’s mother. It was that company. Power Regions was his first and only bride. Nothing will ever take the place of the corporation in his heart. It’s all he ever had from his father.”

  “Then why would you want to take that away from him?” Marj challenged.

  “To destroy it. Why do you think I want Power Regions? To keep it for myself and run the company? Perish the thought. I want to dismantle it, so I can finally have some peace.”

  Marj gasped in shock. “You want to tear it apart? Just—disembowel his legacy like that? Take away everything they’ve both worked for?”

  “Yes. I hate that infernal machine, that monstrous business that took my husband away at night and on weekends and kept him ever from having a fully engaged conversation with me or remembering anything about us without consulting a secretary. Because all of his preoccupation, all his time belonged to the company. It was his wife, his mistress, his child. And I will raise a glass of the best single malt in this city to toast its demise when I triumph.”

  “I don’t understand. You’re just still jealous of his company? Didn’t he pass away about five years ago?”

  “You see. People thought I was a gold-digger. But I wasn’t. I truly loved my husband with all my heart. He was my world, and I gave him all my love, but it wasn’t enough. It feels like yesterday. It was a moment of such despair for me. I had no more chances to get his attention, his approval, to secure his regard. I would never be able to get him to love me. I had stood by for years, making his home a showplace, cutting a fashionable figure on his arm at corporate events. I was never more than an accessory to him. I didn’t have a child. Indeed, I never wanted any. But I have this small bit of wisdom to impart, and I’ll give it to you as if you were my own. Don’t waste decades trying to get the attention of a man who only loves his jo
b.”

  Those words hit home with Marj. She quickly pondered them.

  “I’ll keep that in mind. Ah, this omelet looks lovely,” Marj said with forced calmness. In fact, it didn’t look lovely so much as it looked pale and she swigged her Bellini too fast. It was sugary and sparked on her tongue with the bubbles. “Champagne with breakfast is brilliant. I’m so glad you invited me.”

  “The mimosas were an incentive for you to listen to reason. I take it you’re no more moved by my warnings than I would have been at the time. Another Bellini then?”

  “Indeed.”

  “There’s a good answer. If you’re to continue with this farce, as I did before you, you’ll need a few stock replies. Indeed is one, as you say—that’s another. It’s a backhanded acquiescence. Implies that you’ll concede a point even though you recognize baldly that the other person is utterly mistaken.”

  “As you say,” Marj tried it out with a sly smile, “I like that very much. Thanks. You’ve been…surprisingly helpful.”

  “I suppose my stepson has told you I’m a harpy. I’ve no doubt he thinks so, and I have done little in my time to disabuse him of the notion. I wanted his father’s undying love and undivided attention. I couldn’t get either, and I admit to resenting what little passing interest he took in his only child.”

  “Did you hate that he left the business to Brandon?”

  “I wasn’t surprised. It was the only string he had to pull, and he wanted Brandon to follow in his footsteps. Choose someone suitable—as if I had been suitable when I was supposed to be his grand passion,” Lena said bitterly, draining her champagne flute and motioning for another. “Lead the life of a traditional executive. Workaholic with a neglected wife and, if possible, some prep school kids.”

  “Sounds like a divine fate to wish on one’s only child.”

  “Indeed,” Lena said with a mischievous smile.

  “That one does work well, indeed,” Marj said, “so you knew he’d try to manipulate his son with the will?”

  “Just as I know your husband is trying to manipulate you with the appallingly large diamond pendant you’re sporting. Goodness, I could rebuild Versailles with the jewelry that man bought me!” she huffed in contempt.

  “I thought, all along, that you wanted the fortune, that you wanted Power Regions to get the real money…”

  “As you say,” Lena said provokingly.

  “You don’t need the money?”

  “Not a bit. With what my husband left me, as well as ownership of the house, the retirement accounts and the art and jewels, I have enough for five lifetimes,” she said.

  “So why don’t you take a cruise, go on a trip?”

  “Because to vacation would be to relax my vigil and allow that company to claim more lives like it took my husband’s and mine.”

  “Are you trying to tell me that you’ve been trying to protect Brandon? All this time?”

  “Yes. Not that he’d want or appreciate my form of protection. I’m sure he sees it as interference, an outsider trying to lay claim to his father’s life’s work. But I’m trying to keep him from giving it all up—his youth and his chance at happiness—at the altar of that infernal corporation.”

  “Don’t people work executive jobs all the time without, like, having their souls sucked out? And losing all their relationships?”

  “I’ve never known one.”

  “My parents have been married for over thirty years.”

  “That’s an achievement. I would venture to say that one or the other of them is uncommonly tolerant.”

  “I suppose that’s necessary in any relationship.”

  “Trust me when I say that being the tolerant one is a sure formula for resentment.”

  “Are you implying that my parents resent one another?”

  “I have no personal acquaintance with your parents but knowing what I do of human nature I can virtually guarantee it.”

  “You’re rather cynical.”

  “I find that a singular statement from one such as yourself, although you seem to boast a distressingly naïve streak when it comes to my stepson. So much the better for him, I should imagine. If you were too clear-sighted, you’d never last six months with such a man.”

  As soon as Lena said six months, Marj straightened in her seat and reminded herself to be on her guard. For all that Lena seemed to be an older and wiser veteran of the very battle Marj was losing, Lena was also their enemy, the opponent who made their union necessary. If it were up to Lena, surely Marj would leave Brandon this very day, and she’d have Power Regions in her clutches by nightfall. Except the woman across the starched linen tablecloth from her, nibbling a crisp slice of turkey bacon didn’t seem like she had clutches. She bore no passing resemblance to Maleficent or any other fairy tale villain. She looked like a woman, a remarkably attractive one with the benefit of some very costly cosmetic treatments and injectables, who happened to be lonely. In a sense, Marj was looking at her future self. If her future self were blonder, more poised and infinitely more tired of the game she had chosen to play.

  Marj sipped at her third Bellini, pushed a few crumbs around on her plate. Her omelet had been served with seven-grain toast and she was trying to resist it. More to the point she was trying to resist slathering it with butter and marmalade and stuffing it in her face. She was startled by the sound of her phone. Fishing it from her tiny, expensive handbag, she saw Brandon’s number. Instinctively, she answered it.

  “Hello?”

  “Hello? I’ve been texting you for an hour. I called the house at five and you weren’t here. I was worried.”

  “I’m with Lena. We’re having brunch.”

  “Please tell me that brunch isn’t a euphemism for Botox.”

  “That’s hardly a laughing matter. By brunch, I mean an omelet. Egg whites only,” explaining herself to him seemed especially tiring just now.

  “We have eggs at home. Are you sure you’re all right?”

  “Indeed,” she said automatically, and then winced because she knew Lena had taken note of her response.

  “I thought we could Skype. I have a few minutes now…”

  “I’m just finishing up brunch. I’ll call you when I get home.”

  “I don’t like disappointing you. And I don’t like being in Dubai without you, Marj. Don’t think this is my choice.”

  “As you say,” she couldn’t help replying. Lena smirked at her knowingly.

  “And that would be the concerned call because you’re not where he left you, I presume,” Lena said, phrasing it as a question when the answer was obvious. “Shall we get you home so you can talk?”

  “That isn’t necessary. If we’re finished here, however, I wouldn’t mind a chance to speak with him.”

  “Indeed,” Lena said with a half-smile, and paid the check. They rode back to the townhouse in silence, and as she got out of the car, Marj squeezed Lena’s hand.

  “I do appreciate what you tried to do, to help me. But my situation isn’t like yours. It’s different.”

  “It always is, when it’s yourself. How many women have told themselves the same lie? I’ve often wondered that.”

  When she got back, Maria was waiting for her.

  “Maria, hello,” Marj said hugging her.

  “I’ve missed you.”

  “Well, come inside and let me get you some tea or coffee.”

  “Thank you for all the help you’ve sent my way. They wouldn’t even take money for the groceries! And your husband paid my rent for the next year. I was flabbergasted.”

  Marj smiled. “I didn’t know that. He’s very generous.”

  “Yes, he is. I’m sending you both a thank you card.”

  They talked about everything and Maria got Marj all caught up to speed.

  “So no more internet dating?” Marj asked.

  “Nope. I’ve found the man of my dreams.”

  Marj smiled. “I’m glad it worked out. You deserve to be happy.”

&nb
sp; “And so do you, dear.”

  Chapter 11

  Marj went up to the bedroom and called Brandon on Facetime.

  “So how was consorting with the enemy?” he greeted her.

  “We had breakfast together. She’s lonely,” Marj said by way of excuse.

  “Probably because she’s evil. I guarantee that woman has a designer voodoo doll with a scrap of my hair glued to it somewhere in that mansion.”

  “I’m not so sure about that,” she said.

  “Don’t tell me she’s taken you in, too. Please don’t tell her the circumstances of our marriage.”

  “I haven’t told her a thing. And I have to admit, she kinda of blackmailed me into going. But I saved two people’s jobs. So I guess it was worth it.”

  “Was it the women you roomed with in Vegas?”

  “Yes.”

  “Honey, they were caught stealing.”

  “Or the Wicked Queen framed them. I don’t know. But I know they didn’t do it. So give them their jobs back.”

  “If Lena said she was helping them, then I’m sure she went above my head and pulled strings. Now, what went on in the queen’s evil lair?”

  “It was breakfast. And not in a dark lair. She did a lot of speculation and she commiserated a little.”

  “Commiserated as in you’re miserable?”

  “Commiserated as in she was once married to a Cates workaholic, and so am I,” she said bitterly.

  “There’s nothing to be miserable about. Your husband has a job that could give you anything you so desire.”

  “Money is not everything,” she said. “There’s so much more to life than that. And I just want you to see you’re missing out on what makes life truly worth living.”

  “I’m extremely driven,” he said.

  “The best parts of life aren’t found in the boardroom. When you look back on your life, will you really be happy you spent more time at work and less time with the people you love? Not likely.”

  “You never dreamed about being swept away by a dashing billionaire,” he teased.

  “What girl doesn’t? But it’s not all it’s cracked up to be.”