TWENTY

“Mommy, why don’t you live here with me and Daddy anymore?” Rowe looked at Reese with big, round, quizzical eyes and a pout on his upturned face. He was a cute but precocious little boy. Reese sighed, tired of having to answer this same question during each visit. Her attorney, Justin Brookes, a colleague of Max’s, had insisted that she maintain a regular visitation schedule whether she wanted to or not. It was important that she begin establishing a track record as a good mother.

“I told you, Mommy and Daddy are not together anymore,” Reese said in a barely patient tone. “But I’m still your mommy, and we’ll see each other all the time.” Rowe’s three-year-old’s attention span had already latched on to something of greater interest. He was happily pulling things out of Reese’s bag while Reese sat nearby, distracted by thoughts of her recent bank statement. Rowe struck pay dirt upon finding a tube of MAC lipstick, and prepared to make a magenta mess on the cream-colored carpet.

“Rowe, you’re not to play with Mommy’s things. Where is your paint set? You can paint in your playroom, but not in here.”

“But I like this paint,” the child whined, putting a death grip on the tube of lipstick. When she took it away from him he folded his arms firmly across his little chest and stamped angrily on the floor.

“This is for adults, not kids.” On some level Reese did love her son; however, she’d just never managed to truly bond with him, mainly because his birth began as a means to financial end.

“But I waaaannnnttt iiiit,” Rowe whined, as he began stamping his feet adamantly in place. The child was becoming increasingly spoiled, due to the fact that his mother ignored him, his father was never home, and his nanny thought her job was to comfort and entertain him, rather than instill discipline. Having his grandmother around hadn’t helped the situation; her solution to everything was another home-baked cookie.

“What did I say?” Reese asked sternly. The little tyrant, Reese thought. When she was a kid a fit like this would have been brought to a swift resolution with the help of a well-worn belt, but these days you could barely raise your voice at your own child without the risk of being reported to the authorities.

“I don’t care what you said! You’re mean! And you’re not my mommy anymore anyway.” Rowe stuck his tongue out at her defiantly. “I have a new mommy now.”

Reese was about to snatch the little brat up by his collar and call out for his nanny, until she realized what the child had said. “You have a new mommy?” she repeated, her unwaxed brow furrowed in question.

By now, Rowe had sidetracked his hissy fit, and was sitting on the floor calmly playing with a jigsaw puzzle. “Yes, and she’s very pretty,” Rowe said without looking up.

Reese calmed herself down and clasped her hands together, stemming the nearly irresistible urge to wrap them around the boy’s neck. “What’s your new mommy’s name?” She’d known it was only a matter of time before Chris would have some hoochie up in there, but so soon? She wouldn’t admit it—even to herself—but some part of her was still in denial, and was sure that Chris would come back to his senses, and realize that he still loved her madly and couldn’t possibly live without her. It was irrelevant that she didn’t want him; this was a matter only of ego and her own selfish principles. She should be the one to end it, not him.

Rowe looked up, leveling a steady gaze, wanting to witness his mother’s reaction. “Auntie Kira.” Even at his tender age, Rowe instinctively knew that what he said would punish his mother, but he had no idea the impact of the bombshell he’d lobbed her way.

Reese’s face froze in shock, and her mind reeled back to her sordid deal with the devil, and how the horn-wearing bitch had disappeared like Casper the Friendly Ghost after the shit hit the fan. Heat rose through her body like vinegar separating from oil. Her anger started from the very core of her being, and steamed upward and out. The nerve of that fucking slut-bitch! No wonder the whore hadn’t bothered returning her calls; she’d been too busy getting in position to stick the knife farther into her back.

Calm down, she told herself. She had to get more information. “Does your new mommy live here?” she nonchalantly inquired. By now Rowe was over the fleeting excitement of delivering bad news and was back to his puzzle, trying to fit a square-shaped piece into a round hole.

“She just visits, like you,” Rowe said, smiling sweetly, but devilishly.

She left him in the living room and charged into the library, making a beeline for Chris’s cabinet, where he kept his bills. Reese began rummaging through the files with an obsessive vengeance. She cursed and flipped folders until she came across the one she wanted, a file containing his cell phone records. Starting with the most recent one, she scanned the log with a chipped nail until she came across the familiar numbers she’d called to contact Kira herself. “That bitch!” she screamed. She cursed herself for not continuing to try reaching Kira, but after her life hit the skids, she’d become most preoccupied with figuring out how to survive, and easily assumed that their plan hadn’t worked and Kira had just gotten busy. She was right on that account: The backstabbing hussy had gotten busy, all right—busy stealing her husband. She may have hired Kira to fuck him, but that certainly didn’t give her leeway to be his damned girlfriend!

She stuffed the bill into her back pocket and snatched up the phone, frantically pounding out Kira’s phone number.

“Hello?” Kira answered on the fifth ring, sounding like she’d just woken from a dead sleep, or, more likely in her case, she’d just rolled over from a good romp in the sack.

“Wake the fuck up, bitch,” Reese spit.

“Who the hell is this?”

“The woman whose husband you stole. Though I’m sure that where a whore like you is concerned, that’s not much of a distinction; it only makes me one of many.” She’d always heard that Kira was a guiltless barracuda, but she never imagined that the woman would bare her fangs at her.

“Oh, it’s you.”

“You damned right it’s me, and I want you to stay away from my husband.”

“The last time we spoke you wanted to pay me to fuck him, so why don’t you make up your mind? Which is it?”

Reese’s nostrils flared in anger. “You don’t know who you’re fucking with, Kira. I’ll kick your sorry yellow ass.” The south Bronx surfaced, smothering years of social exfoliation.

“Listen, Reese, you need to chill. If you hadn’t been so damned greedy this never would have happened. You asked for it; now you deal with it.”

“You fuckin’ bitch—” Before she could finish the sentence, the phone was snatched from her hand.

Reese spun around to find Chris standing behind her, pissed off and ready to spit hollow-points.

“I should have known you were fucking around with that slut!”

Chris put the phone back on the receiver. “It takes one to know one.” He turned to leave.

She silently prayed that Kira hadn’t told Chris all about their scheme to trap him in bed with her. That would only make her settlement discussions with him that much harder. Maybe she had only told him about her affair with Shaun. Reese ran around him, blocking his exit. “What did she tell you?” she demanded.

“Everything.” He folded his arms across his chest, ready to stand his ground and fight if she wanted to go there. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to get back to my son.”

“She’s lying.”

“How would you know what she was lying about if you weren’t involved in anything?” he asked.

Frustrated and caught, she passed him, blew into the family room, snatched up her purse, and was out the door, not even bothering to say good-bye to Rowe, who looked after her questioningly.

The minute she got into Paulette’s new Mercedes, which she’d borrowed, she pulled her cell phone from her purse and dialed her friend’s number. “That bitch is sleeping with my husband,” she said without a greeting or preamble.

“Which bitch?”

Reese slammed her fist down hard on the steering wheel. “Kira! She and Chris are fucking.”

“I don’t know why you’re surprised. You set it up, remember?” Paulette let out a long yawn.

Reese stared at the phone, then screamed into it, “I asked her to fuck him, not be his girlfriend, damn it!”

“What did you really expect? The girl’s a gold digger.” Even Paulette grasped the irony of calling someone else that term, but she also knew that, like bitches—as in dogs—gold diggers came in all shapes, sizes, and pedigrees, and she considered herself head and shoulders above the rest.

Reese sighed heavily. The whole world seemed to have turned against her. “It’s just fucked-up.”

A click sounded on the phone. “Hold on, Reese; that’s my other line.”

While Paulette took the call, Reese sat dejectedly, going over the log of calls on Chris’s bill, torturing herself as she noted how often Chris and Kira had spoken on the phone during the days before and after D-day. As she sat lamenting the situation her eyes fell upon another familiar set of numbers. She blinked, sure that she was seeing things. When she opened them, sure enough another other ten digits on Chris’s cell phone log were familiar. They belonged to Shaun, her lover!

Her heart lurched in her chest. Not only did they talk regularly, but there was a call made from Shaun to Chris on that fateful night they were together at the Four Seasons. Her face flushed with anger. Not only had Chris played her where Kira was concerned, but the sneaky bastard had set her up with Shaun. In her anger another possibility bubbled to the surface: Maybe Chris and Kira set her up. After all, Kira was in town and at the party when Shaun mysteriously appeared. She felt like such a fool! Their plan had worked brilliantly, while hers had fallen apart at the seams.

“Sorry about that.” Paulette was back on the phone. “Reese, are you there?”

In a monotone she said, “You’re not going to believe this.” Reese sat there slowly shaking her head.

“What now?”

“It’s Shaun.”

“What, is Kira fucking him, too?”

Reese rolled her eyes. “Maybe.”

“What are you talking about?” Paulette was sounding impatient.

“Chris and Shaun.”

“What? Is Chris fucking Shaun?”

“No, but they both fucked me.”

“I know that; now, what’s the big deal?”

Reese exhaled, exasperated. “Chris, and probably Kira, set me up with Shaun. Chris and Shaun are boys! I’m looking at the phone records!” she yelled.

“You’re kidding! Wow!”

“That dirty, low-down muthafucker!”

“Which one?”

“Both of them. No, all of them! That’s fucked-up.”

“Yeah, it’s exactly what you were planning; he just beat you to it.”

“Hey, whose side are you on?”

“Don’t even go there. Remember, I’m the one who’s letting you sleep at her place, has hired an attorney for you, and has your back in the press.”

“Speaking of attorneys, we need to call Justin. Since Chris is fucking around with Kira, maybe it could help my case.” Her attorney had been in contact with Chris’s lawyers, and so far they were still playing hardball, protesting any financial settlement at all since Reese had broken the marital vows, and Chris was seeking full custody of Rowe. Under the original tenets of the prenup she would have been entitled to $2 million, plus child support. That sum had seemed piddling a couple of months ago, but at this point she would have welcomed every penny of it.

“That may not be a good thing,” Paulette cautioned. “Chris filed a legal separation, so it won’t matter who he’s sleeping with now, unless you can prove he did it before you split up. Besides, if you drag Kira into court and she testifies that you plotted with her to set him up, it could hurt you more than it hurts him.”

“You’re right, but we’ve gotta do something. What about press?” Reese was biting her chipped fingernails, something she would never have done months ago.

“You have to trust me, Reese. The one thing that I know from being in this business for the last six years is that everybody’s got a skeleton or two buried somewhere, so I’ve got a private investigator digging around. Once we find something, then I’ll start the press campaign. We will need public opinion moving toward your side in order to get Chris to settle out of court. He can’t afford to have skeletons walking around, not with all of those lucrative sponsorship contracts he has on the table. All we have to do is a little digging, strike gold, and then you’ll get paid.”

And then you can get the hell out of my house, Paulette thought to herself.