Page 16 of Tempted

“Relax, I don’t plan on firing you…yet. I just want to make you aware of some things.”

She held up her hand. “No, you don’t have to tell me. It’s none of my business.”

Victor lifted a brow. “But you had no problem getting into it earlier. Look, the truth of the matter is, Adam and I don’t get along as father and son should. Not many people know this, but before my wife died, she and I were separated.”

“Oh.”

“Just to provide a little background, my family was very prominent back in the early part of the century, but over the years, their fortune was squandered by lousy investments and excess spending. By the time my father died shortly after I turned sixteen, my mother and I had little money to support ourselves, but in some circles, the Meade name still meant something.” He paused for a moment to gather his thoughts, raking his fingers though his hair.

Jasmine watched him with an intent expression. Did she realize her robe had opened enough to reveal her cleavage?

Victor shook his head to rid it of any carnal thoughts. Dragging his eyes away from the tempting display, he continued his story.

“When we first met, I was just a poor law student trying to pay my way through college. My mom had dragged me to a dinner party of an old friend and it’s there where I first laid eyes on Carolyn. She was everything I could have wanted in a woman at that time. The attraction was mutual. As it turned out, her father was one of the partners in a law firm I was interning for. He didn’t really approve of me because I couldn’t provide the life style she was accustomed to. I’d like to think he saw my ambition but at the end of the day he relented because I had an old family name. I think in his mind it gave him some kind of clout.”

Dredging up old memories hurt like hell. It was probably why he didn’t indulge in them that often. “Carolyn learned she was pregnant shortly after our engagement, and I was determined to provide for her and the baby the best way I knew how. We got married in an elaborate ceremony, her wishes, and then shortly afterward, I graduated law school and took a job at my father-in-law’s firm. Things were fine in the beginning, but Carolyn soon grew dissatisfied with her life as a homemaker. She became impatient with me because I was working my ass off to give her the things she wanted. Nothing I did seemed to satisfy her.”

“Eventually she started running to her father when she wanted something. Do you have any idea how embarrassing it is, to come home and find a new car in your driveway, and another addition being added on to your house, because your wife ran to Daddy?”

Jasmine shot him a sympathetic look of understanding. “I don’t know, but I can imagine.”

“It was emasculating. It only got worse when Adam came along. I’d come home and my father-in-law would be there. If I told my son to do something, he’d override my authority, and Carolyn would sit there and let him. I realized then the only way I could salvage this marriage was if I left his law firm and start my own. I forbade my wife to go to her father for matters that dealt with our household, but it didn’t stop her. It would lead to arguments and fights of proportions you wouldn’t believe. I never laid a hand on her, but she had no problem striking me. Whenever it got to that point, I’d simply walk out of the house, not realizing at the time how she was starting to turn my own son against me.”

“How?” Jasmine asked gently.

“He was a very clever little boy and I’m sure he’d hear us arguing. Whenever I’d walk out the house. I can only guess that’s when she’d tell him how mean I was to her. I’d come home and my son wouldn’t even look at me. To have the hatred of your own child is deeper than anyone can know. I spent more time in the office, trying to build up my practice, and less time with my wife and son. One day I came home, and Carolyn was gone. She’d left Adam with a sitter and expected me to deal with the mess she’d left behind.”

“Did she go live with her father?”

Victor released a bitter laugh when he thought of that son of a bitch. “No. But he funded her trip around the world. Adam of course blamed me for her leaving. Her last gift to me was to tell him that she would have stayed, but ‘Daddy made her go away.’ ”

Jasmine gasped. “She didn’t.”

“My wife was very spoiled and self-centered woman but I’d loved her and had overlooked a lot of her flaws. After all, I wasn’t perfect either. Anyway, it took over a year to get a somewhat normal relationship with Adam. We were just starting to get along, when Carolyn came trouncing back into our lives, without so much as a word of where she’d been. I later learned her lover found someone richer to sponge off of, and she’d come back home to lick her wounds. I wanted to send her away, but Adam was so happy to see her I didn’t have the heart. She begged me to give our marriage another chance, and fool that I was, I agreed.”

“A year later Tyler was born, but then the same patterns began all over again; the fights, Carolyn running to her father, him getting in the middle. Despite this, I wanted to hang on to our marriage for the boys. Our one last try at reconciliation resulted in Chelsea. Carolyn stayed around for the first few months after she was born and then left. She came back a couple months later, but at this point I didn’t care, as long as it made the kids happy. Over the span of the next three and a half years, she’d come and go at the drop of a hat, but there came a time when I’d had enough. The last time I was determined not to take her back, but it didn’t matter anyway, because she died in a car accident with her father.”

“Adam blamed you?”

“Yes. That pretty much shattered what little bit of respect he had for me. I should have got him counseling, but instead I put him in the care of nannies and sitters along with his brother and sister as I threw myself into my work. Then he started running away. I was at my wits end. The last time they brought him home, he screamed that he hated me, and he couldn’t wait to get his trust fundbecause he’d never come back.”

“He’s just a boy. He couldn’t have meant it.”

Victor shook his head. “I think one of the reasons Adam and I have always butted heads is because we’re both so damned stubborn. The comment about his trust fund was one of the legacies of our destructive marriage. My father-in-law had set up trust funds for them, and made no secret of it. He actually liked to brag about how he could give my children so much more than I could. I guess that was one of the things that drove me to be the workaholic I am today.”

“So to deal with your problems, you sent Adam to military school?”

“Don’t give me that look.”

“What look?”

“That disapproving one, where you try to look objective but instead you’re condemning me.”

“I think that’s all in your mind, Mr. Meade.”

“He was running away. I didn’t want the police to come to my door one day and say something happened to my son. I did what I thought best at the time, and he seems happy enough where he is. When he comes home from school the times he can be bothered to, it’s yes sir this and that, but at least he’s not openly hostile. I know I’ve made mistakes with him and I’m terrified of doing the same with Chelsea and Tyler.”

“But don’t you see? They need you. Things may not be great with Adam right now, but it would mean so much to Tyler and Chelsea if you spent a couple days out of the week with them. At the very least, share a meal with them. And as for Adam…it’s never too late to tell someone you care.”

---