Chapter 9
Brandon Cates had never needed much sleep. He got by on less of everything, so he downed a bottle of water and sat down with his laptop and vowed not to waste time thinking about his wife.
It sounded ugly and selfish when he put it that way, but she was, in fact, his rather unexpected wife. Sure, he’d figured out he was going to have to nail down a bride within the next few days or he’d lose his inheritance, but he hadn’t figured on picking one up in a bar in Las Vegas. An employee, no less.
His father was no doubt laughing his smug ass off in the afterlife even now. Because Brandon had spoken with his dad, had pulled him aside before the wedding with Lena, and asked if it was really appropriate for him to marry someone who worked for him. His father had laughed in a knowing way and suggested that his teenaged son mind his own damn business. Brandon had felt somehow wronged by that, as if his opinion, his righteous and somewhat inflexible adolescent moral compass, had been discounted when his father, in fact, should have kept it in his pants and stayed away from the employees and interns instead of treating them like his personal candy store.
And now, a decade and more on, Brandon was doing the same thing, screwing a woman who worked for Power Regions, Ltd. and expecting everyone to overlook the fact that his position of authority made it seem smarmy and exploitative. A fairytale was what he planned to spin it as in the press. Of course, most fairytales are fairly patriarchal, he mused.
He would get some work done. He’d already sent a photo of his marriage license to the legal team. Now he set to work on the restructuring plan for Simpatico Paper, where his bride worked. If he combined the PR and marketing divisions, he could eliminate some redundancies and reassign those employees to keep from pink-slipping them. He wanted to preserve the existing team as far as possible for the sake of morale, but there were some inefficient methods at work that he needed to remedy.
And if this girl he’d picked up in a bar—the one with the pretty eyes and the smart mouth and the killer ass—if she had looked at him and listened to him like he was really something, well, he wasn’t about to let that cloud his judgment. She was a necessary investment, the kind that protected his interests by her very existence. He would have the papers drawn up so that she would be subject to a gag order with punitive damages far in excess of her net worth if she ever violated it. He would make sure a proviso in their post-nuptial paperwork entitled her to ten million if she lasted a year as his wife, fifteen if they were together for longer than that.
He’d even try to make it look legitimate by throwing in a live birth clause entitling her to an additional million for each Cates offspring she bore. Those were some safe millions, he knew, considering he wasn’t about to take that risk. He didn’t want to be tied to her after the necessity of their union was over. Custody and visitation and child support and all those other complications were things he wanted to avoid.
If she had seemed disappointed when he’d insisted on a condom, if he’d said it more as a power play than out of any true protective instinct, that was beside the point. She may or may not have had an IUD or a tubal ligation for all he knew. He was still using backup birth control when they slept together. He’d be a faithful husband, if only to spite his father’s gloating spirit. Still, the explosive coupling on the sofa—that had been unexpected. He’d intended on a cursory consummation on the king-sized bed in the hotel suite. He hadn’t intended on getting all hot and bothered watching her eat the damn cake.
There was no time to be wistful about cake or women. He was about to snatch his father’s empire (the word, her use of it, made him smile) away from Lena, who had done nothing but make everyone miserable since the day she had married his dad. Lena had been young, and obviously his dad had taken advantage of her. He hesitated to use the phrase ‘preyed upon her’ because, from his experience, Lena had exploited Dane Cates as much as he had exploited her. She noticed everything and, by extension, needed to put her stamp on everything. Suddenly, seemingly all of the household linens, including the curtains, boasted a swirly embroidered monogram of D-C-L.
He’d always assumed it was so anyone who entered the home knew at once that it was hers, that Dane Cates was hers (despite her infidelities). For the holidays, instead of a nice check from his dad, Brandon opened a tailor’s box with a navy blazer inside, monogrammed at the breast pocket like a prep school boy’s uniform. He had done his best to seem appreciative, but it was appalling. For his birthday, monogrammed pajamas (again, no check, no tickets for a ski trip), and the following Christmas, cufflinks.
It wasn’t her impersonal gifts, her seeming obsession with monogramming anything that stood still long enough for unnecessary stitchery. It was her overpowering sense of tangible entitlement. Even if she hadn’t been practically peeing in the corners to mark her territory, it would have been obvious. Not one stick of furniture remained in his father’s mansion from the time when he was married to the first wife. It had all been donated so things could be refurbished. Including the blue chintz armchair that his mother used to love. It had sat by the window in her bedroom, and she used to sit there to read to Brandon when he was a child before she got sick. When he’d found out the chair was gone, that she’d never thought to ask him if he wanted anything that had been his mother’s, he had broken things. Things newly purchased and displayed, and made by Lalique and Wedgwood.
He had hated Lena from that day on. Even though she wasn’t that much older than him, even though she should have been less secure about her position than he, Lena had slapped his face. When he broke the crystal swan, she cracked him right across the mouth with her palm. Brandon, who had never been hit outside of the occasional schoolyard scuffle, had stopped immediately, horrified that he’d been struck in the face.
She had to have known that he wasn’t the sort to hit her back, to tell his father what she had done and why he was angry. He knew his father would have been annoyed with them both for it, and Brandon would have taken a petty enjoyment from making her partake in his father’s displeasure, but he hadn’t tattled. At sixteen, he hadn’t wanted to admit he’d lost his temper or that he’d been smacked. So he’d put up with the punishment of having to mow the lawn—and the lawn at the Cates Manor was substantial—and help the gardeners to earn back the cost of the china and crystal figures he broke ‘by accident.’
It had been the second shittiest summer of his life. First was obviously the one when he was nine and his mom had died. His sixteenth, though, was spent in that house, knocking his elbows on unfamiliar furniture that seemed to be rearranged constantly, trying to stay out of her way. Feeling like a stranger in his own home and missing his mother so much it ached.
If he had managed to hold on to family feeling after his mother’s passing, if he had held on to an attachment to his distant workaholic father, Lena had managed to sever that. He’d stayed at school and took extra classes during the summer after that. He’d gone on school-sponsored trips to Switzerland and Spain and once to South Africa. Brandon had managed to avoid going home—or what he used to consider his home—over holidays.
When he’d graduated, his father had insisted he come home. Brandon had asked, he had practically begged his dad to take him skiing or boating or anything rather than back to that house. He hadn’t mentioned Lena at the time. He hadn’t wanted to make trouble, but he’d known his father suspected there was discord between them. He’d also known his father had done fuck all to make sure he saw his one and only son despite her. It was only when he’d turned eighteen that his dad had made an effort, and by ‘effort’ that meant he’d issued a command. Brandon had gone, had stayed out of the house as much as possible—catching up with old friends, he had said by way of excuse.
And yet, apart from a ‘family dinner’ the night Brandon arrived, his dad had made little attempt to see him. It had been another in a litany of disappointments. After college, Brandon had joined the family business at his father’s invitation, but they’d never grown closer. Seeing each other at the office and at occasional dinner meetings with other executives had made up the bulk of their contact. No birthday celebrations, no holidays. At Christmas, Lena liked to go to ‘their’ home in St. Barth’s and invite friends. He had never been, nor was he likely to become, one of Lena Cates’s friends.
So here he was, marrying a complete stranger to cut Lena out. It seemed immature, vindictive. She had gotten rid of all his mother’s things and slapped him; therefore, he would commit fraud to keep her from getting his dad’s business. He had the education and impressive resume to get a job anywhere in the world, and the trust fund to make sure he didn’t have to work if he didn’t like it. And yet, he was beating his head against the wall, had been for the last four years, to block the terms of his father’s will so he could keep Power Regions.
Brandon rubbed his hands over his face and shook his head. Everything felt thorny, too complicated, too fraught. He didn’t want to examine why exactly he needed to lay claim to his dad’s company, didn’t want to sit on a therapist’s couch and discuss his issues with his parents. He just wanted to forget. Since he couldn’t usually drink alcohol or numb out with drugs, there was no oblivion for him there. He paced the length of the sunken living room in his suite, restless.
When she appeared in the doorway of the bedroom wrapped in the white sheets, he wondered what in hell he’d done...and why he hadn’t done it sooner. She advanced toward him and dropped her sheet. Brandon opened his arms.