Billionaires, Bad Boys, and Alpha Males (134 page)

“Danielle, I swear to you—I’m not
upset that you and Kane Wright are together and that you’re happy.
 
Red and Kane might not be the best of
friends, and maybe Red is stinging from what happened with Jameson
International.
 
But I personally
haven’t given it a thought in the last few days.”

Danielle listened to her and nodded.
 
“Well good.
 
I just…I really care about you,
Nic.
 
You’re one of my best friends
and you’re the only one who knows what it’s like to be in this kind of
situation.”

“What kind of situation?” Nicole
asked.
 
A flock of birds suddenly
burst from a nearby grouping of trees.
 
Watching them soar into the sky and take off into the distance, she
thought of her never-to-be-born child and her heart twisted in her chest.
 
Maybe her child’s spirit was soaring off
with them, completely free and unbound.

Danielle followed Nicole’s gaze.
 
“You know the situation we’re in.
 
Getting married to an extremely wealthy
man.
 
All of the shenanigans, the
drama, dealing with business associates and friends and ex-lovers and family
members.
 
Everyone feeling
threatened by your new place in his life.”

Nicole nodded, thinking of Red’s
vindictive mother.
 
“I do know about
that stuff.
 
It’s not easy to deal with
those people.”

“And everyone thinks you’re after his
money,” Danielle complained.
 
She
gripped her hat so tightly in her hands that Nicole thought she might tear it
to pieces.
 
“Even he suspects that
you might be in it for a quick payday.
 
And then you have the whole awkwardness of negotiating the prenuptial
agreement.”

Nicole didn’t respond to that.
 
She just licked her lips and looked
away.

“I mean, hasn’t Red talked to you about a
prenup yet?” Danielle said, when Nicole didn’t say anything.

“No, not really.”

“What do you mean?
 
Aren’t you getting married soon?
 
Haven’t you two even discussed the
financial part of the whole thing?”

Nicole shrugged.
 
“I mean, sort of.”

“Well you need to sort that out.
 
He’s going to want a prenup, Nic.
 
They all do.
 
So don’t get all pissy with him when he
brings it up.”

“Danielle, he doesn’t want one.”

Danielle stared at her for a long
time.
 
“You’re sure about that?
 
He said that?”

“He said we share everything
fifty-fifty.”

She snorted.
 
“Well, there’s a lot less to share now,
isn’t there?”

Nicole’s eyes narrowed.
 
“That’s a shitty thing to say.”

“I’m sorry, you’re right.
 
That was really a mean thing to
say.”
 
Danielle stood up, still
gripping her hat for dear life.
 
“The
thing is, it really bothered me when Kane brought up the contract.
 
The prenuptial agreement.
 
It hurt my feelings.”

“I understand it did.
 
Of course.”
 
Nicole tried to hide the tiny feeling of
triumph she felt that Danielle and Kane didn’t have the same kind of trust that
she and Red shared.
 
The way
Danielle was prancing around, flaunting her new social status, it was hard to
sympathize with her plight.
 
But
Nicole didn’t want to gloat over something so trite.
 
“Did you tell Kane how it made you
feel?”

“Of course,” Danielle said, pacing across
the verandah.
 
“And he explained to
me that the contract was merely precautionary and meant to protect both of
us.
 
Also, it’s not as if I get
nothing if we have a divorce.”
 
She
stopped and looked at Nicole.
 
“I
must sound so shallow right now.”

“Not at all.”

Danielle flushed.
 
“I just hate to feel like I’m one of
those stupid celebrity wives that gets dumped after two or three years and then
sits around getting Botox injections and tennis lessons for the rest of her
life.”

“You’d never be that kind of woman.”

“But the prenup made me feel like that
kind of woman.
 
I kept reading it
and thinking how there should have been more for me in there.
 
I hated how greedy it made me feel to
think about our relationship that way.”
 
Her expression was genuinely pained now.
 
“And here I was, assuming that you and
Red had the same arrangement as us and now I feel like a complete fool.”

“Danielle, don’t be silly.
 
Nothing you’re saying is foolish.”

“Well Red must really love you if he’s
not protecting himself at all.”

“It’s got nothing to do with love.”

“Then he must trust you.”

Nicole thought about it.
 
“He does trust me.
 
But just because Kane had you sign a
prenup doesn’t mean he trusts you any less.”

“Doesn’t it, though?”

Nicole didn’t know what to say.
 
Danielle turned and stared out at the
property.
 
“You know what?
 
Those trees are really beautiful just
the way they are.
 
I wouldn’t change
a thing if I were you.”

***

Nicole and Danielle decided to have a
picnic for lunch.
 
They gathered
cheese and crackers, fruit, and a bottle of wine and put everything in a
cooler.
 
They took a blanket and
walked out to the grounds and just started to stroll, in order to find whatever
place might feel right to sit down and have their picnic.

The sky was clear and blue, with only a
few passing clouds, but there was still a nice breeze that would cool you off
if the sun ever started to feel too warm.

Finally, they settled for a spot on a
hilly section of land that gave them a three hundred and sixty degree view of
the property.
 
Danielle spread that
blanket out and kicked off her shoes, while Nicole opened the cooler and took
out the cheese and crackers and poured wine into two plastic cups.

She handed a cup to Danielle and then sat
down next to her on the blanket and sipped her drink for a moment.
 
They both popped a few grapes in their
mouths and grinned at one another.

“How crazy is this?” Danielle laughed,
after a moment.
 
“The two of us
married or engaged to billionaires, drinking wine and relaxing on the acres of
land surrounding your mansion.
 
Just
a couple of months ago we were struggling to find jobs to make rent on our
crappy Brooklyn apartment.
 
How
lucky are we?”

Nicole tried to smile.
 
She didn’t feel lucky right now.
 
At the same time, she was appreciative
of Danielle’s friendship and the fact that her friend was going through a
similar process of fitting into a powerful man’s life and all the complications
that entailed.
 

“What do you love most about Kane?”
Nicole asked, out of the blue.

Danielle cocked her head.
 
“I guess, I love the way he looks at the
world.
 
He’s not afraid of
anything.”

Nicole smiled and took a long sip of
wine.

Danielle tilted her cup back toward
Nicole.
 
“And you?”

“Me what?”

“What do you love most about your man?”
she asked, laying back and staring at the sky.

“I love the way he looks at me,” Nicole
said.
 
She felt her face flush with
embarrassment at such an honest assessment.

Danielle turned to her.
 
“That’s awesome.
 
Now I want to change my answer.”

“Your answer was beautiful.”

“No.
 
I said I love that Kane’s not afraid of anything.
 
But I didn’t say anything about us, you
know?”
 
She shook her head.
 
“Maybe we’re missing something.”

“Danielle, no.
 
You guys are awesome and you’re so
happy.
 
You shouldn’t compare
yourself to anyone.
 
Red and I are
just two people and we’ve had plenty of ups and downs as you well know.”

Danielle assented to that fact.
 
“But,” she said, picking another grape
and popping it in her mouth, “you seem to have gotten past all the drama.
 
You guys seem like you really found your
stride.”

“I guess we have.
 
That doesn’t mean we don’t have our
problems.”

Danielle nodded as if she completely
understood.
 
“What about the
wedding?” she said eventually.
 
“Sometimes I wish Kane and I had done a big production instead of marrying
just the two of us on the island.
 
Are you super excited?”

“I don’t know.
 
I’ve started to question whether I want
much of a production.
 
Maybe
something really, really small.
 
I’ve even thought of eloping.
 
Just me and Red together, nobody else around to worry about.”

“I hope you don’t do that,” Danielle told
her.
 
“I really want to be there for
your ceremony.
 
It would mean a lot
to me.”

“Yeah.”
 
Nicole sighed.
 
“I just don’t know if I have the energy
to plan something like that and deal with all the stress involved.”

“What you need is a wedding planner.”

What
I need is to have my child with me, growing inside of me still.

“Yeah, maybe a wedding planner,” Nicole
replied listlessly.

Danielle started to smile.
 
“Hey—you guys would still invite
me and Kane to the wedding and everything, right—Red wouldn’t keep Kane
from attending?”

“Of course we’d invite both of you.”

“I wish we could get Red and Kane to hang
out under different circumstances,” she said.
 
“I just know the two of them could be
friends.
 
I mean, Kane really likes
Red.”

Nicole didn’t know what to say to
that.
 
She thought it highly
unlikely that Red would ever seriously consider trusting Kane Wright enough to
be friends with him.
 
In fact, they
hadn’t yet discussed Kane’s attendance at the wedding, so she was already going
out on a limb by telling Danielle that her husband could even come.

“Let’s just see how it goes.
 
We can’t force them to have play dates
like they’re a couple of kindergarteners.”

“Speaking of kindergarteners,” Danielle
said, getting a big grin on her face.
 
“I was talking to Kane about kids, and he told me he might want them
someday.”

Nicole got a strange feeling in her
stomach, like she’d just been kicked.
 
For a brief second she’d forgotten about her loss.
 
And now, with this one comment from her
friend, it all came flooding back like some horrible nightmare.

She forced a smile to her face
somehow.
 
“How do you feel about
it?” she asked.

“Of course I want to have kids.
 
I mean, I’m not sure when.”
 
Danielle twisted one of her braids around
a finger, still smiling and red faced.
 
“I just picture us together—a little happy family.
 
And then I picture all of the things I
didn’t have, and giving them to our little boy—or girl,” she added
hastily.
 

Nicole nodded with a dry mouth and eyes
that were ready to fill with tears.
 
She looked away and had a big gulp or two of her wine.
 
She refilled the cup.
 
“Sounds great, Danielle.
 
Seriously.”

“I didn’t think Kane would want
children.
 
Something about him
screams bachelor lifestyle, doesn’t it?”

“I don’t know him that well.”

There was a somewhat awkward
silence.
 
And then, Danielle asked
the one question Nicole couldn’t take right then.
 
“What about you and Red?
 
Have you talked about kids yet?”

Nicole burst into tears.
 
Again.