Page 4 of Love Affair in London (Once Again #12)
He waved his fork in the air, droplets of gravy falling from his roast beef onto the damask tablecloth.
She didn’t say a word. But he did. “Don’t be ridiculous.
They might not love you yet the way I do.
But they don’t hate you. They’re just trying to protect their way of life. Can’t you understand that?”
Yes, from those girls, she could. “They prompted you to draw up a prenup which was completely in your favor. I mean, you —” She stabbed her index finger in the air. “—could have an affair and divorce me and then take half of everything I have. Do you really think that’s fair?”
He sighed, a long, suffering sigh. She didn’t think he ever used that sound with his daughters, at least not to their faces. “I told you I was going to change the prenup. It’ll say that what’s yours is yours and what’s mine is?—”
She cut him off. “And what’s yours is the girls.”
He tipped his head to look at her, almost a sideways glance. “Don’t you think that’s the way it should be? After all, you have your own business. You’ve always said you don’t need my money.”
“You’re right. I don’t want your money.” She had to take deep breaths so she didn’t scream at him. “But a prenup presumes we’re going to split up.”
“I’m not presuming it. I’m just saying people can change how they feel.”
She felt her nostrils flare. Maybe even her eyeballs looked like they might pop out of her head. “What about the part that says if you die first, I have to vacate the house immediately and turn it over to the girls? Basically, if you die, you’re throwing me out of our home.”
He shrugged, looked at his plate, and mumbled something she thought might be, “But you have your own townhouse. You don’t have to get rid of it, and you could just go back there.”
“That’s not the point.” She almost slammed her fist on the table, stopped just short of it, trying to keep some control.
“Then what is the point?” After a pause, he added, “I’ve already said I’m changing the prenup so if anything happens to our marriage or to me, what you brought into the marriage is what you leave with. It seems fair.”
“What about the money I earn after I come to the marriage?”
He thought for a minute, as if that had never occurred to him, despite his wording.
“Everything will remain separate. That’s what I’ll put in the prenup.
” He looked at her pleadingly, with eyes as sad as a puppy who’d just piddled on the floor.
“Come on, sweetheart. You have to understand. I have children. You don’t. It’s my duty to protect them.”
“From the cheating, gold-digging hussy?” she snapped.
He laughed one of his big belly laughs. And in that moment, she didn’t appreciate it at all. “That’s such old-fashioned language. I don’t think you’re a scheming, gold-digging hussy.” He waggled his eyebrows as if this were all a joke. “But you are a little hottie in the bedroom.”
She wanted to smack him. Sex had never been their problem. When she’d hit menopause, she’d actually wanted sex even more. Occasionally, Roger had to use a pill. But they were good in the bedroom. Really good.
It was out here, when they were talking about his daughters, that they were not good in any way, shape, or form.
She decided right then. Maybe it was rash. But she didn’t know any other way to get through to him. “I’m not signing a prenup.”
Roger gaped, all the humor leeching out of his features. “But?—”
She refused to let him finish. “Every time I think about that prenup, it shouts at me that money is more important to you than me.”
“Oh, come on, sweetheart, that’s not it at all. You know I have to placate the girls. They’re my world.”
“They’re part of your world. Now I’m another part of your world. So what about me?”
She didn’t care about the money. It wasn’t even about the prenup.
It was that the rest of her life was going to be spent fighting his daughters.
Last Christmas, she hadn’t even been invited to the celebration.
The girls had said that holidays were just for family.
Instead of standing up to them, Roger had told Piper that once they were married, she would be family, and then, of course, she’d be invited.
On the occasions Bethany had her father and sisters over for dinner and Roger brought Piper with him, Bethany actually had to add an extra place setting.
As if Piper hadn’t been part of the invitation.
It was all those little micro aggressions.
And Roger hadn’t even said, Of course she’s coming along. She’s my fiancée.
The girls continued their family-only theme even to birthday presents.
Though they’d accepted the ones she bought for them, they refused to buy her anything, citing a strict rule that they only gave out presents to family .
“Otherwise, we’d be giving a trillion presents to all our friends,” Bethany had said with a little moue, her hands spread in the air as if she simply couldn’t do anything differently.
Roger’s daughters had done everything they could to exclude her, while Roger defended them by saying it would all change once they were married on Saturday.
The wedding would change nothing.
“But sweetheart,” Roger cajoled, “how can we get married if there’s no prenup?”
She smiled. Maybe it was a little feral, but then she was feeling a lot feral. “We get married like normal people do. Without a prenup. Without expecting our marriage will dissolve.”
“But, but…” He hesitated a moment too long before he said, “What am I going to tell the girls?”
She could barely breathe as his words smacked her. Then she found her voice. “You don’t have to tell them anything. They don’t need to know what you and I talk about. It’s not their business.”
“But I promised I’d send them each a copy of the agreement once you’d signed.”
Her heart was still so long she was afraid it might never beat again. “You did what ?”
“I wanted to placate them, so I agreed to send it.” He spread his hands just like Bethany had when she said they only gave presents to family. “They were happy after that.”
Her nostrils flared as she shot out her breath, and her eyes stung. “Is this what our marriage is going to be like? Every time they want something and it conflicts with what I want, you’re going to choose them?”
He flapped his hands in the air like a fish flopping on a dock. “It’s not choosing between them and you.”
“Then what is it?”
She thought she’d have to wait forever for an answer, but finally he said, “It feels like you’re the one asking me to choose between you and my daughters.”
Was she? “I’m just asking you to make me an important part of your life.”
“More important than my daughters?”
There was the sticking point. The thing they might never get past.
After months of denial and self-delusion, the decision was right there in front of her. It had been brewing in the witch’s cauldron of her belly. But she’d been carried away with wedding preparations and silly Sound of Music fantasies.
She asked the only question that mattered right now. “If the girls say they don’t want me at their Christmas festivities because I’m just a stepmother and not their actual mother, what are you going to tell them?”
Roger was a good man. In his business, he was ethical. He didn’t screw over his customers. If an employee had a problem, he bent over backward to fix it. If the two of them had a quarrel, he always made it right before they went to sleep.
And now he didn’t lie. Instead, he avoided. “They’re never going to say you can’t come to Christmas.”
“But if they do?” she insisted.
He laid a placating hand over hers on the table. “Sweetheart, they’ll come to love you over time.”
“You’re not answering my question. When they say I’m not their real mother and I don’t have a place at their Christmas festivities, what are you going to do?”
He withdrew his hand. “That’s a very big if. I don’t think they’ll do that.”
She said again, “But when they do—” She bit down hard on that word, the bone of contention between them. When versus if . “What will you say?”
His lips stretched into a thin, phony smile. “As long as it takes, I promise I’ll get them to come around.”
“What if it takes five years?”
He shuddered, closed his eyes, and finally shrugged. “It won’t take five years,” he said, as if she were being ridiculous.
“What about this Christmas?” It was only six months away.
“Then we’ll host at our house.” He smiled as if he’d just thought up the perfect solution to every problem they’d ever have.
She didn’t even pause before she said, flatly, without an ounce of emotion, “I can’t marry you, Roger.”