Page 2 of At His Wife's Behest

Kellan grabbed his flute and drained it in one swig.

“Another, Mr. Rhodes?”

“You know my name, Amanda,” Kellan quipped.

Amanda pursed her lips, an irate diatribe swirling in the angry sparkle of her eyes. “I was reminded yesterday where my true place was.Sir.”

Emma sighed, shaking her head.

Kellan rose to his feet, unwilling to argue. “I think I’ll take a nap. It was a long night.”

“Of course,” Amanda replied, stepping back, out of his way.

He backed away, half expecting her to plunge a knife into his spine if he didn’t keep an eye on her. He ambled to the back of the jet, casting one long glance before entering the small bedroom behind the door there. From what he spied, his wife was turning on the charm. Amanda leaned close, as if she was already falling under Emma’s spell.

Hiswife.

He scoffed inwardly, turning the handle and escaping into the bedroom alone. Once the door clicked, he was able to breatheeasier. He adored Emma, but the reality of what they’d done weighed on him.

Kellan had known he was gay since he was sixteen, sooner if he was truly honest with himself, but he’d hidden it for a decade.Hiddenwas a stretch, though, given the rumors swirling about his sexuality most of his adult life. The first couple of tabloid stories had been easy to wiggle his way out of. The last? Video of him coming out of an airport bathroom stall with another man had been harder to explain. The Senator, aka Dad, had torn him a new one, sure Kellan had ruined his re-election plans.

Emma’s parents had found her in bed one morning with another woman and threatened to disown her. As the sole heiress to a global chain of luxury retail stores and the Shelby family fortune, Emma had a lot to lose. So, she’d acquiesced to her parents’ demands: get married, settle down, and have kids. When she learned he’d found himself in similar trouble, their plot had been hatched.

Stay married for five years in order to quiet the rumors, shut their families up, and then move on with their lives as two childless, divorced best friends. The best friends part was already true. He and Emma had grown up together. Even attended private school together. Well, she was at the neighboring girls’ school right up the road where he’d seen her almost daily.

An all-boy’s campus was where he’d gotten his first raging hard-on for another guy—a teacher who looked like he’d stepped off the pages of GQ. He’d been the first of many.

Kellan slipped his hand into his pocket and pulled out the pack of Tums. After chewing a couple, he tossed the roll on the narrownightstand, kicked off his shoes, and slid across the surface of the bed.

What the hell have I done?

They had no business being married.

He closed his eyes and attempted to quiet the roaring of his mind, but it was difficult, considering. Just before he finally started to drift off, he heard what had to be Amanda moaning from the other side of the door.

Chuckling, he soon faded into the abyss.

1

Ten years later…

Kellan leaned into the cushioned seat in the front row of the massive megachurch, gripping his daughter’s hand and eyeing Emma seated next to her. His wife hid her red-rimmed eyes behind big, dark sunglasses, wringing a handkerchief between both gloved hands. She was a vision in black, her long, strawberry-blond hair coiled in an updo, giving her a regal appearance.

He scanned the packed church behind them, filled to the rafters. Emma’s father was ever the showman, going out on his own terms. He’d scripted every aspect of the service, from the style of casket to the type of flower. Who was invited. Who wasn’t. Leave it to the Marshall Emmett Shelby II to make one last spectacle. Thousands of mourners filled the auditorium.

The Shelby Family was infamous. Great-great-great-grandfather Shelby had been a ruthless and cruel robber baron, going frompenniless to amassing a huge fortune before he died at the wizened old age of one hundred. His eldest son had almost lost it all by gambling, drinking, and women. Had he not died and his younger brother stepped in, the legacy would’ve ended there. Later, Emma’s grandfather had added luxury retail to the list of other business ventures in their portfolio, targeting their merchandise to the uberwealthy with deep, deep pockets. Add in the collective rumors of backstabbing, affairs, illegitimate children, drug use, and mental illness and it was type of family drama the world had been enamored by for generations.

Marshall had stirred the interest higher by going to Hollywood in the late sixties, assuming his family’s wealth would buy him starring roles in big-budget productions. He hadn’t been completely wrong, but the roles hadn’t been as big as he’d expected. The epic partying, drug use, womanizing, and illegal racing he’d participated in had landed him in gossip magazines, though, particularly the last race where one man had died, and Marshall had come close to it himself. Lying in a hospital bed, Emma’s father had “found the Lord.” Once released, he’d come home and played the dutiful son, taking control of the family’s empire a decade later.

He'd had a better head for business than acting. Under his watch, the company had grown into a billion-dollar global phenomenon. Exclusivity turned rich people into idiots, and Marshall knew how to exploit that. He’d funneled a substantial chunk of that money into the PAC he created, helping to get ultraconservatives like Kellan’s father elected. His father had suckled off the Shelby teat for decades.

Emma had added her own bit of drama to the family history during her wild, party days, much to her father’s chagrin. She’d played the socialite in her teens and early twenties—and hadeven shown up in an episode or two ofKeeping Up With the Kardashians. She and Khloe had been frenemies, emphasis on theenemies, though Kellan still didn’t know exactly why.

All of that history and collective drama was enough to pack the ten-thousand seat church with friends, dignitaries, acquaintances, reporters, and probably a few enemies, too. Speaker after speaker made their way to the podium, proclaiming Marshall a saint amongst men. That wasn’t the man Kellan knew. Emma’s father had been a racist, homophobic, chunk of Southern-fried trash dressed up in a three-piece suit with a Bible always close at hand. His father-in-law hadn’t cared for him because Kellan was a bit too “light in the loafers,” as Marshall liked to put it.

His own father had agreed.

While Marshall had spoken so eloquently about loving one’s neighbor and treating others with kindness when in church or at public events, that love and kindness was reserved for those who were wealthy, straight, and/or white. Rich, white, straightmen, that was, because womenfolk were only there to make babies and tend to the man’s needs.

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