Chapter Nine

 

Gabriel

 

My father looked suspicious when he came into his office and I was sitting there waiting for him. It wasn't wholly unexpected. Monroe Reed wasn't known for being particularly flexible or immediately offering his trust to anyone. He was the poster child for the pendulum swinging in the opposite direction from one generation to the next. While my great-grandfather had been a hard worker, consumed by his career much like my father, my grandfather was adventurous and playful, and seen as outlandish in many ways. My father grew up seeing this, but even as a child, Monroe was known to be serious. Witnessing his father's antics had convinced him he didn't want to be anything like him.

"Hello, Gabriel," he said as he came into the office and immediately crossed to the bar.

A rousing endorsement.

"Dad. Good to see you."

"Can I say the same about you? I hope you haven't come to talk about taking over the company again."

"Actually, I have," I said.

"Gabriel," he said with a long-suffering sigh. "I thought I made myself very clear about this situation. Until you are able to prove to me that you take your responsibilities seriously and have settled down, I can't, at least not in good conscience, give you control of the company. I'm not going to have this discussion again, and I'm not going to change my mind."

"I'm not here to try to change your mind," I said.

"Oh, really?" he said. "Then can I assume you are here to admit that you aren't the right person for the position and throw in the towel?"

"No," I said. I was trying not to let his attitude bother me and take away the excitement of the announcement that I was actually there to make. "I'm here to tell you that you can start planning your retirement party. But if possible, I would avoid late February and the beginning of March, because that's when the baby is due."

It seemed to take a moment for what I had said to really sink in. Then the glass came away from his mouth and he looked at me, his expression changing.

"The baby?" he asked.

"Yes," I said. "I'm going to be a father."

Suddenly, I got a glimpse of the father I remembered from the summers of my childhood. Before the success had taken his seriousness to the extreme it reached later in life. I was reminded of the carefree days my family had spent together at our lake house. That place had always seemed magical to me. When we were there, it was like nothing else existed. Everything was always good there and nothing ever went wrong. My father was always the first one to jump into the water when we arrived. He would let out a laugh that seemed to come from the deepest part of him as he threw himself off the pier into the lake.

I got to hear that laugh again now as he put down his glass and crossed the office to me. I stood up and he gathered me into a tight hug.

"Congratulations! This is unbelievable. I'm so happy for you, son. How far along?"

"Three months," I said. "We wanted to wait to tell anyone until this point."

"That's understandable. You know, back when I was born, sometimes people would just wait until the baby was born. The mother would start wearing baggier dresses and then stop having company, and then they announced the birth. I think it was harder on the lady that way. No support." His eyes widened. "Speaking of the lady...who is she? Do I know her?"

I carefully considered my answer to that question. Part of me felt like it was too personal to talk about Cherry, especially given the circumstances. I could just create a relationship and then make up excuses as to why he never got to meet her. But that felt wrong. I couldn't disrespect her like that. My loyalty to her had only increased since finding out she was carrying my child and I didn't want to do anything that could hurt her, regardless of the actual nature of our relationship.

"Yes, actually," I said. "It's Cherry. Cherry Spencer. Brent's sister."

I saw a flash of emotion in my father’s eyes and I knew he was going through many of the same feelings I had. By the time Brent died, my father and I had become distant and strained, but I knew it was hard for him to see how much pain I went through after he passed. But now there was something to be happy about.

"That's amazing," he said. "It's like it was meant to be all along." He walked around the desk and settled into his chair. "So, tell me. When's the wedding?"

I was thankfully sitting down again because I felt my knees buckle out from under me. I leaned back in the chair and cleared my throat.

"What?" I asked.

"When's the wedding?" he asked, pulling his planner toward him. Though I had an assistant who kept track of everything for me, my father was insistent about keeping his calendar organized this way as well. It was the way he had always done it, and he wasn't about to stop. "I need to make sure I can get everything arranged in time. Unless, of course, her family wants to handle it."

"The wedding?" I asked, still back at that.

"Yes," he said, glancing at his planner again. "I assume we're going to be hosting it. I heard that her father died some time ago and it's just her mother now. I wouldn't want to put any pressure on her."

"I don't understand," I said.

My father looked at me quizzically.

"I mean...you are getting married, aren't you? Gabriel, when I said I wanted to see that you had grown and matured and insisted you have a child, I meant a family. I expected you to get married and have a child. It's alright to get it a little backwards, but that is what you're intending, right?"

I suddenly felt panicked. I couldn't believe I hadn't thought about this. He was staring at me with his pen poised over his calendar, and I did what any man would do.

I backpedaled like hell.

"Of course, we're getting married," I said. "I'm just not sure about the details yet."

My father let out a relieved breath.

"That's fine," he said. "These things can take some time. And with all the excitement you've already had, I'm sure it's been a bit harder to pull it together. But you'll want to hurry it along at least a little. Society will look away a little bit when a baby's birth shaves a few months from your first nine months of marriage, but we don't want your wedding pictures admired for how round the bride is."

I forced a chuckle and nodded.

"I'm sure that's not what she would want."

"Then leave the details to me. I'll make some calls. We'll have the best professionals put together something for next month."

"Great," I said, standing up. "Well, I wanted to stop by and give you the news. I should probably go check on Cherry."

"Give her my best," he said. "And let her know that I look forward to meeting her again."

"I will."

"Have a great day, Gabriel. And congratulations, again."

"Thanks. You, too."

The boost I had seen in my father had been exciting for a brief moment, but now I walked out of his office feeling like there was a heavy weight in the pit of my stomach. I had come in here thinking I had everything figured out. I already convinced her to have my baby. Now I had to convince her to marry me, too. Somehow, I felt like that was going to be a harder task.

 

"You need me to what?"

"It won't be a real marriage," I said. "Just one to convince my father we are a happy family and that everything will be good after the baby's born."

"Well that makes me feel so much better about it," Cherry said.

"Everything between us would stay the same as it is now. We will be married for an appropriate length of time, enough to satisfy my father, and then we will have an amicable divorce. A quiet and tasteful divorce looks much better than a bachelor in his late thirties and forties."

I wasn't entirely convinced of this myself, but I had to go with it. It really was my only option, especially now that she was already pregnant.

Cherry looked at me as if she was stunned. Finally, she spoke again.

“Anthony proposed to me by shaping sugar packets while we were eating breakfast in a nasty truck stop diner. He tried to convince me that he loved but I know now we were only at the farthest restaurant from humanity, so he could hide me from his real fiancée. I never would have thought that in my life I would be proposed to twice, and that the sugar packet ploy would be the better of them.”

"It's not a proposal," I said.

"Oh, good," she said. "I don't even get a proposal. I get a marriage command. Forget the story books, that's the real fairy tale."

"That's not what I meant," I said. "Look, I know that this is a lot…"

"Isn't that exactly what you told me about having the baby?" she asked. "Didn't you tell me the baby was all you needed and that was the only major decision I was going to have to make?"

"I didn't know he expected me to get married," I said.

"And why does it matter even if he does? Why are you so scared of your father?"

"I'm not scared of my father," I said.

"Well, you're certainly desperate to please him. So what if he says he thinks you should be married? You're an adult. Don't you think you should be able to make your own damn decisions? Why do you need to fall all over yourself to make a life choice just so he'll approve of you?"

"My family worked extremely hard to build that company," I said. "I don't want anyone else controlling it. If that means that I must convince him I'm a good family man and that I'll be able to leave it as a legacy for my children, then that's what I'm going to do."

"I feel like you're letting him push you around. Why don’t you stand up for yourself?"

I was starting to feel angry, but I also understood the questions she was asking. I would have asked them of anyone else as well.

"I did stand up for myself," I said. "I told him I was more than capable of taking over the company and that I expected to inherit it just as he had always intended. But he said that wanting to be able to control the company and make money wasn't enough, that I had embarrassed him, and the rest of the company and I needed to prove I was the type of person who deserved to be in that role."

"Who is he to decide what type of person you are?"

"He's the head of company I want to control," I said. "He's also my father."

I drew in a breath and tried to let it cool the flames of anger that had begun in me.

"You should have seen him, Cherry. He looked so happy. I haven't seen him look that happy as long as I can remember. He smiled in a way I haven't seen since my mother was alive. This isn't just about the company. I know I said it is but ignore that. Just think about him and what it would mean to him. This is his one chance to have a grandchild."

 

Cherry

 

"This wasn't part of the arrangement, Gabriel."

"I know. We can make changes to the contract and I will make sure that the eventual divorce agreement is very favorable towards you."

I felt tears burning in my eyes.

"This isn't what I imagined when I thought about my happily ever after," I said. "I wanted to be swept off my feet the next time I got engaged, not used as a bargaining chip."

"I know, Cherry. And you deserve that. Trust me, I believe that more than anyone. And someday you will have that. I just need you to do this for me now."

He sounded almost desperate, the emotion that he was feeling evident in his voice.

"And I'm going to be expected to just look the other way when you go out with other women?"

He looked at me quizzically.

"What do you mean?" he asked. "I haven't been seeing anyone."

"Don't lie to me, Gabriel. You can go ahead and lie to everyone else, but I'm the one whose life you're manipulating right now, so you need to be honest with me."

"Cherry, I am being honest with you. I haven't been out with any other women since you started working at the office."

"What about the museum gala?"

"What about it?"

"You didn't tell me you were going."

"I didn't feel like I needed to. It's just a boring benefit I have to go to every year."

"And all the women you sleep with while you're there?"

"Who told you that? Women in the office?"

"Yes."

"Those women don't know when to keep their damn mouths shut. They live off gossip. They are like the world's most miserable weeds. They thrive off gossip, sunlight, air, and coffee. And sometimes I think that air may even be optional."

"I'm not sure I like you talking about women like that."

"I'm not talking about women like that. I'm talking about those women like that. They love anything that sounds even the slightest bit salacious and they will spread it as fast as they can, embellishing as they go, if it will get them more attention."

"If they bother you so much, why do you keep them at the office? You could just fire them and then you wouldn't have to deal with them or their gossip anymore."

"Unfortunately, or fortunately depending on your philosophical leanings, they are good at what they do. They can frustrate the living hell out of me when they get together in the lounge, but their job performance is impeccable. If they were to spread any serious gossip about one of their coworkers or caused any problems with morale, I would have to do something about it. If it's just about me, I can ignore it. Trying to come up with stories about how I live amuses them, so until it starts to impact their work, or they go to the extreme with it, I can ignore it."

"So, you don't sleep with anonymous women when you go to the gala?"

"Now, I didn't say that. If we are being honest, that party is usually a chance for me to pick someone up. But not this year."

"Really?"

"Really."

I let out a long breath. I thought about my last engagement and how spectacularly that had gone up in flames, then about this baby that I already loved so much. Then I thought about my mother and how much better she was doing. She was really thriving in the new house with all the care that was available to her. Having access to the best medical equipment and treatment was giving her so much more of a chance to fight and having a nurse with her all the time was improving her quality of life to a level I hadn't seen in years. I always wished there was more I could do for her, but I couldn’t be her full-time caregiver and support both of us. Now I saw just how much she benefitted from the continuous care and I knew she still needed it and would in the future. Then I thought about Brent and his promise to always take care of my mother and me. He hadn't been able to do it, but that didn't mean I couldn't. I had committed myself to doing anything I needed to do, and this was just another step in fulfilling that promise.

"I'm in," I said.

I didn't want to say yes. That was a word I wanted to reserve just in case I ever had the opportunity to say it again.

"Thank you," Gabriel said, gathering me into a hug.

The smell of him was as intoxicating as ever and I wished I could stay there in his arms for the rest of the day.

"We can just go to City Hall," I said when the hug ended.

"City Hall?"

"To get married," I said. "We can do that, and it'll be done fast and easily, and we won't have to bother anybody about it. My mom won’t even have to know."

Gabriel shook his head. "No, that won't work. That would never convince my father it was a real marriage. No, we need to have a real wedding. He's already started to contact people in the industry. We need to start planning as soon as possible. We can't wait for too long for obvious reasons."

"So… what do we do first?"

 

Just as fast as Gabriel had moved my mother and I out of our houses and into our new home after finding out that I was pregnant, I suddenly found myself right in the thick of lavish wedding planning. It seemed that every minute during the day brought another decision I needed to make or a call from Monroe Reed telling us about the next over-the-top detail he had put into place for the ceremony or reception. I knew that both men were rushing the planning of the wedding to accommodate my pregnancy and growing baby bump, but I still felt like we were on a runaway train, barreling dangerously fast down the track. I felt like I was constantly surrounded by wedding dress samples, photos of potential floral arrangements, cake tastings, and everything else wedding. It was exhausting. I told Jess about the engagement the day after agreeing to marry Gabriel but stopped short at telling her it part of another arrangement. I remembered what she had said about me lying to her before, but this time I felt like I really was doing something right for her. I knew there was a very good chance that she would be judgmental and scrutinizing if I gave her the true story, but beyond that, this was very much for her. She loved weddings and jumped at the chance to be involved in them. I didn't know if I would ever get legitimately engaged again, so this was her opportunity to have fun planning. She also got to fulfill the role of maid of honor that had been stolen from her during the whole Anthony debacle. At least Smyth wasn’t in the picture this time.

Jess was beyond thrilled when I carefully pieced together the announcement that not only had Gabriel not slept with three women on his visit to the museum Gala, but we were getting married. Her eyes immediately filled with stars and I quickly lost her to the fervor of planning. She was just as wrapped up in all the details as the professionals we hired to put everything in place for us. Watching her run around and taking care of everything on her to-do list left me feeling dizzy and exhausted, and it was clearer than ever why most people took nine months or longer to plan their wedding. Trying to shove all the planning and organizing it required into just a few weeks seemed impossible.

Fortunately, there were occasional times when I found the chance to just sit in the quiet and breathe. Gabriel often joined me on those evenings. It was fun in a weird way. It felt like we were escaping our responsibilities by hiding ourselves away so that we didn't have to decide which of the ridiculously large, over-the-top floral arrangements was just too ridiculous for us, or whether we wanted sweet pea pink, Halcyon pink, or tiny kitten nose pink napkins. We were getting closer again and my feelings for him were even stronger than before. It was one of those nights when I was just trying to breathe that I saw Gabriel in a way that I never had before.

He came over after a particularly heated debate with people far more invested in the wedding than we were, over whether fondant was the appropriate icing for a wedding or if the couple should try something more interesting. After listening to them argue over the flavor of the cake versus the presentation of the cake, and the all-important plan to keep the top layer in our freezer until our first anniversary, both of us were completely exhausted. We curled up on the couch with the intention of watching a movie, but I barely remember anything beyond the opening credits. I had fallen deeply asleep, but I was startled awake by Gabriel's voice calling out.

"No! No! Don’t take him!"

I was disoriented and for a moment, could not figure out where I was or what the heck was going on. Then I realized Gabriel and I had fallen asleep while curled up on the couch together, but it seemed like he was being tormented by a nightmare. I grabbed his shoulder and gave him a firm shake to bring him out of the dream. As soon as his eyes snapped open, he lowered himself to the floor, dropping his head into his hands. I scooted over so I could sit directly beside him and tightly wrapped my arms around him. I often thought of waking up beside Gabriel. Thoughts about the possibilities of the future had begun to dance at the edges of my mind when I looked at him lately. Seeing him in such obvious devastation had taken any possible excitement out of waking up with him curled around me.

"What happened?" I asked. "What were you dreaming about? "

He shook his head.

"I'm fine," he said. "I don't want to talk about it."

"Gabriel, what's going on?"

"I should have stopped him," he said. "I should have stopped him and kept him safe."

"Who? Who should you have kept safe? Safe from what?"

Gabriel finally lifted his head and looked at me with hollow eyes.

"Brent," I said. "It's my fault that he's dead."

"What do you mean it's your fault?"

"I should have stopped him from leaving. That party was at my house and I knew he must have had a couple of drinks. I should have kept his keys. I shouldn't have let him leave."

"I know you took his keys from him," I said. "You hid them in your bedroom. You told him you didn't want him to drive. You begged him not to go. Plenty of people heard you. You did everything you could have in that situation."

"Except stay awake."

"How were you supposed to know he was going to find the keys while you were sleeping and leave anyway?"

"But why did he have to leave? He could have stayed there for the rest of the night and left in the morning? He would have been safe."

"It was the summer," I said. "He was lifeguarding. You know how he was. Brent had to clock in at least an hour before any customers showed up to the waterpark. He didn't have any of his work stuff with him, so he probably figured he should get home so that he could have a good start to the next day.

"If I hadn't fallen asleep, I could have stopped him."

"Gabriel, it's not your fault. You didn't do anything wrong. And neither did Brent. The coroner's report said the alcohol had metabolized out before he even started driving. He wasn't impaired when he was driving. At all. It was the truck driver who drove out in front of him who shouldn't have been on the road. It was a bad decision that Brent made, sure. He should have just stayed with you, gotten some sleep and then left early so he could swing by the house and pick up his things. He also could have showed up just a little late for work. But the fact that he didn't do any of those things doesn't mean what happened was your fault. "

"I tried to save him," he said into his hands. "I pulled him out as fast as I could."

"I know you did," I said.

My heart felt like it was tearing in two. I pulled him closer to me, really noticing how large his chest was as I tried to hold him. I could hear the agony in his voice and wanted to do anything to make it go away.

"As soon as I realized he was gone, I went after him. I got there just in time to see that truck smash into his car. I didn't even turn my car off. I slammed the emergency brake, hopped out, and ran to Brent's car and pulled him out of the wreckage. I got him as far away as I could before the engine exploded. When the paramedics got there, they said that if he was in the car when the gas ignited, he would have died instantly. It gave me hope. I thought that sounded like they were optimistic about him. I thought maybe everything was going to be okay." He shook his head. "But it wasn't. It was never okay again."

"Gabriel, look at me." He resisted so I jostled his shoulders. "Look at me."

He finally complied, and I looked directly into his eyes.

"You have absolutely no reason to feel guilty. Brent's death was an accident. A horrible accident caused by the stupidity of one drunk, stupid man who got behind the wheel of his truck and drove, not thinking he’d encounter anyone else on the road. You didn't do anything. Brent loved you. He wouldn't want you to waste your life feeling guilty about how his ended. He would want you to live it."

Gabriel tucked an arm around me and lowered us down to lay on the floor together. He rested his hand on my belly and softly stroked it with his thumb, closing his eyes to try and go back to sleep. I cradled him for hours without falling back to sleep. I felt like I was on guard. To see Gabriel, the strong and powerful man he is, so hurt, it shook me to my core. At the same time, I felt the emotions and feelings I had coursing through me, grow even stronger.