Chad knocked on Jack’s office door and poked his head in. “You have a minute? I want to touch base about the tail on Kelly.”
“Sure, come on in,” Jack said and waved his cousin into his office.
“So, what do you have?” asked Jack as Chad came into the room and sat in one of the large leather armchairs facing his desk.
“We’ve seen the tail on Kelly multiple times and occasionally on both of you when you’re out for the evening. My guys have run the plates, but they’re expired and they rotate the plates frequently, so we’re sure the registrations have no connection to the driver of the car. That makes me think this is a professional, not some crazed ex-boyfriend or stalker type that doesn’t know what they’re doing. We don’t have an ID on the guy yet.”
“I don’t like the sound of that. Starting tomorrow, let’s put someone with Kelly whenever she leaves the house. I want them to stay right with her. I’ll talk to her about it tonight and let her know she’ll have someone with her until we figure this out. I don’t care if it does scare the crap out of her, I’m not taking chances at this point,” Jack ordered.
“You got it. I’ll have someone meet her at the house in the morning,” Chad said.
“Hey, Chad….” Jack hesitated and ran his hand over the back of his neck. “Do you think this could be your mom having Kelly followed? Investigated?” he asked even though he didn’t really want to bring up that possibility with Chad.
Chad’s eyebrows shot up. “What?” he said and he didn’t try to hide his shock. “What makes you think that? You can’t be serious.”
“Well, I know your mom’s set on proving my marriage isn’t real. Kelly’s theory all along has been that your mom hired a private investigator, and she wants to ignore the tail so that they can report back to your mom that she isn’t seeing someone else or hiding anything. I don’t know if she could be right or not. What do you think?”
“Jack, man, I’m so sorry. I don’t know why Mom thinks doing this to you is okay, but she seems to be getting worse.”
Chad looked deep in thought for a few minutes before he responded to Jack’s question.
“She did say she wanted to try to show the board members your marriage was fake. I guess she could’ve hired someone to try to find proof,” Chad said, frowning.
Jack crossed his arms over his chest. “Well, I guess that shouldn’t be a surprise since she’s moved in with us. She does seem to be taking this pretty far.”
“She did what?” Chad’s eyebrows were practically off his head now.
Jack laughed. “She didn’t tell you? I was going to ask you the night you offered her a lift home from the party. She’s been with us almost from the wedding. Made up some excuse about fixing up her kitchen and not being able to stay in her townhouse or with you because you had a friend visiting. She’s been living with us for weeks. I figured I’d let her get it out of her system and she’d give up.”
Chad started to laugh. “Sorry, Jack, I know it’s not funny, only it kind of is. No wonder she said she didn’t need a ride home from the party the other night. I wondered how she was getting home but didn’t press it. I guess she was home!”
Chad sobered then. “Oh God, Jack. Kelly must think our family is nuts. What did she have to say about all of this?”
Jack joined Chad and laughed at the situation that now resembled a sitcom. How had his life become like this?
“Kelly’s been great about it. She barely batted an eye when your mom showed up. She didn’t even object when she had to move into my room.” Jack froze, realizing one second too late that he had let that little bit of information slip out.
Damn, there was a time when I was on top of every fact, every angle of a deal, and I never would have let a detail like that slip. This thing with Kelly has me a hell of a lot more tied up in knots than I thought.
“Wait…. What?” Chad wasn’t laughing anymore either. He stared at his cousin. “Jack?”
Jack stood and moved to the front of his desk and leaned against it, legs crossed in front of him. “All right, listen. If I tell you the truth, will you promise not to tell your mom yet? I need some time to convince Kelly to stay with me.”
“Oh, this I have to hear,” said Chad, and he moved to Jack’s couch and sat back with his feet up and his arms behind his head, ready for a good story.
Jack sighed and began. “Well, the day you guys met Kelly when she came to my office?” Chad nodded and Jack went on. “That was the first time I met her too.”
“You met her that day!” Chad said.
Jack knew Chad was loving every minute he had Jack squirming as he told the story. He’d never let him live this down.
Jack shook his head. “That minute. When she walked in and introduced herself to you guys? That was the first time I saw her,” he said and he looked more than a little sheepish.
Chad was now holding his stomach, he was laughing so hard. He sat up on the couch with his arms around his stomach, doubled over from the hilarity of Jack’s situation. He seemed completely unable to talk and there were tears running down his face.
“I know, I know,” Jack said. “Laugh it up. She’s had me completely wrapped around her little finger since the day I set eyes on her.”
Andrew poked his head in the door. “What’s all the noise?”
For some reason, Andrew’s presence only made Chad laugh harder, so Jack had to answer. “I’m telling Chad how Kelly and I met,” he said wryly.
“Uh, the real story?” Andrew asked, and he glanced over his shoulder to be sure no one had heard him, then came in and shut the door behind him.
“The whole nasty story,” Jack said with a shake of his head.
“So, he told you he thought maybe she was a call girl I hired for him? Or some random girl I picked up off the street?” Andrew said to Chad as he poured each of them two fingers of scotch from the small bar in Jack’s office.
“Oh, well, I guess not all of it,” Jack said wryly as Chad fell off the couch, laughing on the way down.
It took about ten minutes while Jack and Andrew drank and watched him, all the while grinning, but Chad finally got himself together enough to talk.
“So, what is she getting out of this?” Chad asked as he wiped tears off his face. Jack explained how she had found out about the will from his temp assistant and about their trade: Three years of law school tuition for one year of marriage.
“That’s all she asked you for? Man, she could have taken you to the cleaners. Would have if she was anything like those vultures you usually date.”
Jack nodded and laughed to himself. “I gave her my credit card and told her she could use it for anything. I looked at the statement the other day. You wanna’ know what she’s bought in all this time?” He paused before he answered his own question. “A dress for the cocktail party and shoes to go with it. No jewelry to match. Not two or three dresses in case she changed her mind the day of the party. What she needed and nothing more. Hell, I gave her a BMW today, and she was pissed.”
Andrew and Chad shook their heads. They had enough money themselves to understand where Jack was coming from. Women often preyed upon them for their money, their positions, their power—and were really interested in nothing more. Andrew had learned that lesson in a particularly painful way several years ago so Jack knew that Andrew, most of all of them, understood how important it was that Kelly didn’t care about Jack’s money. Most women would have taken the credit card and run up a huge tab with no concern for the fact that it wasn’t their money to spend.
“I still can’t believe you got beat at your own game, Jack,” Chad said as he shook his head. “You always have all the dirt on your opponents so you can win any negotiation. That’s pretty amazing that she turned the tables on you like that.”
Chad stopped and looked at his drink for a minute, then shook his head with a grin. “And that she had the guts to walk in here and pull that off. Man, that is one classy lady.”
“I know,” Jack said. “Now I need to convince her to stay with me.”
“Damn, she wants to leave you already? What happened to the deal?” Andrew asked.
“No, I don’t mean that. She’s staying for the year,” Jack said, “but I want more. I want the real thing, a real marriage, kids, her. For the rest of my life. The whole thing.”
“Oh man,” Chad said as he stared at Jack. “You love her.”
Jack looked down at his drink and nodded slowly. “Yeah. I couldn’t even admit it to myself at first, but I think I might have fallen in love with her that first day she walked in here, and it keeps growing every time I’m with her. It grows when I’m away from her too.
“The only problem is she has plans…you know? Things she wants to do, and I don’t know if marriage fits in there. She has three years of law school, and that means going off for clerkships and internships and then long hours when she graduates to make her mark and build her own career. I don’t know if there’s room in there for me.”
They all grew quiet for a very long moment, staring down at the amber liquid in their glasses and then quietly, Andrew chuckled. “Oh, how the mighty have fallen,” he said in a low voice.