Page 40 of Fractured (Not Quite a Billionaire)
“I do,” Hemi said. “Legal advice. I wouldn’t say matrimonial advice is your strong suit. And I’m guessing Hope’s not impressed, either.”
He hung up, then sat a minute, and I waited until finally, I couldn’t stand it any longer. “Good thing I wasn’t ever expecting to get half of what you’d already made, I guess,” I said. “Fifty percent here, fifty percent there? Before you know it, you’re talking real money.”
It was supposed to be a joke, but Hemi turned on me with a frown. “You think I can’t take care of you and Karen after all? You having second thoughts?”
“What?” I laughed, and he didn’t. “Of course I’m not. You know what my apartment looks like. You were eating rice and eggs? What do you think I was doing until I met you?”
“Ah. I knew it. You think Ican’tdo this. You think it’s half gone already. Anika’s not much of a Buddhist, and she’ll be trying hard, no worries. And you’re afraid I’m going to lose. Maybe you should be. Most of what I have isn’t liquid. It’s tied up in property, in stock. It would be a disaster, you’re right about that.”
“Uh-huh,” I said. “You’re not liquid? Well, that’s it, then.” I stood up. “I’m out of here.”
He rose himself, his face darkening. “It is not a joke.”
I turned to him and said, “All right, then. Maybe it’s an insult. I don’t know how to wave this semaphore flag hard enough, so I’m going to tell you. I am not with you for what you have. Or rather, I am. I’m with you for all the things you haveinside.Say you did have to give her half of what you made. So what?”
“Sowhat?he said. “So bloodywhat?”
“Yes. So what? What would you do? Things must have happened before.Everythingcan’t have worked out. What did you do when something went wrong?”
Most men would have fidgeted. Hemi didn’t. He stood there, and I could all but see the mechanism ticking away in his brain.
“I started again,” he finally said.
I smiled at him, and then I couldn’t help myself. As fierce as he looked, and even though we were standing in the middle of sidewalk in the freezing cold on a downtown street with a steady stream of tourists passing in both directions, I pulled his head down and kissed him gently on the lips.
“Yes,” I said, still holding his face between my palms, rubbing my thumbs over his freshly shaved skin. “You started again. I know I’m supposed to say here that I’ll love you for better or worse, and I will. I’d love you if you were poor. But if I love all of you? Then I have to admit that I also love the part of you that pushes for the top and gets there. I believe in that man, and I always will. If you had to sell off everything you owned, what would you do? You’d start again. If all we had left was my bracelet, we’d sell it to give you a stake, and you’d be on your way. You’d get to the top again, too, because that’s who you are. Smart, and strong, and ruthless. You go for the win, and you get it. And Anika had better watch out, because she’s not going to know what hit her. She’s going to lose, because you’re going to win.”
He was picking me up off my feet again, turning me in a circle, squeezing me tight. And then he put me down and said, “We are not selling your bracelet. Ever.”
“But I would,” I said. “You bet I would. You’re the best investment I could ever make.” I smiled at him, even though it was a little wobbly. “And if that isn’t true love, what is?”
After that, how could Inotmove in with Hemi? Not doing it would be telling him that I didn’t trust him to get free, to keep his word and marry me, or take care of Karen, or get that win over his ex-wife—I mean, wife. I’d have been telling him that he still had to prove himself to me.
I just wasn’t expecting it all to be so hard.
Hope
On a Saturday morning two days later, I was eating another breakfast with Karen and Hemi. This time, though, Hemi and I had cooked it, and we weren’t in a cozy New Zealand café. Instead, we were sitting at a black marble breakfast bar that bore a distinct resemblance to a sarcophagus, as if the Mummy of Inferior Taste were buried inside.
I’d been in Hemi’s apartment at least twice a week for the past six months, but let’s just say that I was most familiar with his bedroom and bathroom, although the living-room couch had come into play a time or two, and, all right, maybe the foyer, too. When Hemi had talked about pulling me through the door and doing me against the wall, he hadn’t been joking. But despite our nocturnal adventures, I’d only slept over on the rare occasions when Karen was staying with a friend. Like Cinderella, when the clock had struck midnight, I’d been in the Mercedes and headed home.
Old-fashioned, you’re thinking, for a woman who’d spent the past nine months losing all her inhibitions and every bit of her innocence to the most demanding Maori CEO in the world? Maybe. But I’d never been able to take my guardianship of Karen casually. Maybe because I hadn’t worked my way into it over the years the way a mother would have, and maybe because I’d started out so terrified that the Child Welfare people would take her away. Which was why Karen hadneverslept here, not until last night.
First, though, we’d taken a first-class flight home from New Zealand that had featured welcome-aboard champagne, steaming-hot hand towels dispensed with tongs, china and glass tableware, after-dinner cognac, and fold-flat beds. When we’d landed, we’d been met by Charles with the Mercedes, driven into Manhattan, and deposited into the world of elegance that was Hemi’s penthouse apartment in the historic building on Central Park West.
In other words, we’d taken another step through the looking glass, and I was contemplating closing the door behind us, looking down the barrel of forever.
Now, Karen reached across the top of the sarcophagus for another piece of toast, grabbed her knife to scoop more ultra-gourmet strawberry jam, presumably made from special strawberries not available to just anybody, and said, “If we move, what do I do about getting to school in September?”
Hemi said, “You change schools, or Charles drives you. And use the spoon for the jam, please.”
Karen said, “Huh?” just as I said, “Wait.”
Hemi gestured to the jar. “The spoon. So it’s clean. Put the jam onto your plate, and then onto your toast.”
“Oh.” Karen pulled her knife out of the jar and picked up the tiny spoon resting on the plate holding the jam jar. The surface of the sarcophagus was apparently a No-Jar Zone. “That’s kind of inefficient.”
“No,” Hemi said, “it’s hygienic.”
