Chapter 5
Emmett
I ’ve called in every favor anyone has ever owed me to find out more about Vivian Stevens’s autobiography, but I’ve learned everything about the book is on lockdown. No advance copies have been issued, even to reviewers, which I’m told is exceedingly rare. This information only confirms that Max is right to be worried about what bombshells might be waiting to explode his life—and Stella’s.
They’re not my parents, but I love them like they are, and the thought of anything threatening them is unbearable to me. The term salt of the earth gets thrown around too much, if you ask me, but it suits them. They’d do anything for anyone, especially the people they love, and my family is fortunate to be among those ranks.
I can’t stand calling any of the partners I work for with bad news, but I promised to keep Flynn informed, so I put through the call to him as I drive home from the office.
“Hey, Em. What’d you find out?”
“Nothing good.” I fill him in on Vivian’s memoir being the best-kept secret in publishing.
“ Fuck. ”
“My sentiments exactly. Did your dad tell your mom about what’s going on?”
“He did.”
“How’d that go?”
“Not well at all. She asked him to leave. He’s on the way to my house now.”
“No…” I can’t imagine either of them without the other by their side. They’re an institution. “I can’t believe this.”
“Right there with you.”
“What about the party?”
“Annie was just with my mom, and she says to go ahead with it because canceling it would cause an uproar she doesn’t need right now.”
“I thought it was a surprise.”
“Nah, we learned the hard way that Mom doesn’t like being surprised like that.”
“I hate that this is happening at a time when we should be celebrating them.”
“I hate it, too. And I can’t fucking believe it, to be honest.”
I tighten my grip on the wheel as my stomach churns from hunger and distress on behalf of my friends. “How’d he keep this a secret for more than fifty years?”
“That’s the question of the day. Shit like this doesn’t stay buried in this town. How did it never get leaked before now? Makes me fear there’s more to the story than what he told us.”
“What else could there be?”
“I don’t know, and the not-knowing is making me crazy. Oh hey, that’s my dad now. I’ll check in later. Thanks for everything you did today.”
“I wish it could’ve been more.”
“It was what we needed, as always. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”
“Sounds good.”
I end the call with him feeling unsettled, as if there’s trouble between my own parents rather than my friend’s. But Max and Stella have been in my life since high school. Their house was the preferred destination for Flynn’s friends. They were always there for us and still are to this day. I simply can’t fathom the thought of them on the outs with each other. It’d be like breaking up peanut butter and jelly, for crying out loud.
As I get closer to the home Leah and I recently purchased near Kristian and Aileen’s house in Calabasas, I try to clear my mind of the day’s distressing news so I can focus on my wife and son. Today was my fourth day back to work in the office after three months of paternity leave, during which I worked sporadically from home while my capable team handled most of the heavy lifting.
It was the first real break I’ve taken since I finished law school and went to work for Quantum, rising through the ranks to become the company’s chief counsel less than four years later. The partners I work for are my closest friends, family in every sense of the word.
When one of them is threatened, so am I.
After I park in the garage, I sit for a second to gather myself, to change gears from office Emmett to husband-and-father Emmett. I never thought I’d find anything I loved more than my work, but then along came Leah and her special brand of insanity, which gave me no choice but to fall madly in love with her. And now… Now we have a son, and life has never been sweeter than it’s been since Holt’s arrival.
I grab my work bag and drop it inside the door, where it’s apt to remain until the morning as I haven’t spent one second on work any night this week. I’m so far behind on everything that I’ll never catch up. Ask me if I care. That attitude would’ve been unthinkable before Leah and Holt. Now it’s my way of life.
Luckily, I work for my best friends, who value family over everything, and none of them would want me to sacrifice time with mine to review contracts after hours. I’m always available to put out fires, but short of that, I’m off the clock when I get home. I bring the work home more out of habit than an actual plan to accomplish anything.
I walk through the spacious home that Leah still can’t believe is hers after almost six months there, wondering where I’ll find them. They’ve been in a different spot every night, from Holt’s nursery to our room to the office she keeps at home to maintain her job as Marlowe Sloane’s assistant to the back patio that overlooks the pool.
Tonight I find them passed out on the sofa in my office, which is funny to me. Leah hardly ever steps foot in my domain, because she believes I need a space that belongs only to me, which is one of many ways that she’s the perfect wife for me. As I pull at my tie and release the top button of my shirt, I wonder what brought them in here.
I’m sad they’re asleep, because I’ve missed them like crazy all day, but I leave them to rest while they can. Holt is a lousy sleeper, which means we’re sleep-deprived as well. Leah wants nothing to do with nannies or help of any kind, so we’re powering through on our own, hoping he’ll sleep through the night before he leaves for college.
Before he arrived, I had no idea it was possible to be so tired and continue to function somewhat normally. I refuse to leave it all to Leah to deal with, so we’re in the trenches together, even when she insists I sleep because I have to work. I’d rather be with her—and our son—than asleep anyway. What’s that old saying? I can sleep when I’m dead. For now, I’m just dead on my feet.
After I change into a T-shirt and track pants, I consider a workout in our home gym, but I’m just too fucking exhausted for anything more than dinner, a snuggle with my love and then as much sleep as I can get before Holt is awake again. It’s just after seven o’clock, and I’m thinking about bed, which cracks me up. In the pre-baby years, I could stay up all night partying or fucking and then go to work in the morning. Somewhere along the way, I’ve turned into a seventy-year-old man, a thought that makes me chuckle as I pour myself a drink.
“What’s so funny?” Leah asks as she comes into the living room and wraps herself around me from behind.
“I’m laughing at how all I want in the world is to go to bed right now.”
Yawning, she says, “Right there with you, babe. This kid is killing us.”
“We’ll pay him back when we’re crotchety senior citizens.”
“Oh yeah, we’ll drive him crazy then.”
I turn to her, happy and relieved to see her after the long day apart. There was a time when the sight of her put me on edge because of how much I didn’t want to want her. Yeah, make it make sense. She wore me down, and now I’m the happiest bastard who ever lived. After three months of spending twenty-four hours a day together, I miss her like crazy now that I’m back to work while she works for Marlowe from home for the time being.
“Missed you today,” she says softly as she lays her head on my chest.
“I was just thinking how much I missed you, too. I got awfully addicted to being with you and the little mister all day, every day. Work is a drag now.”
“Don’t say that. You love your job.”
“Not as much as I love my family.”
“Aw, look at Emmett Burke, all domesticated and shit. Who’d a thunk it?”
“Not me until this pesky little fruit fly started buzzing around my head and wouldn’t leave me alone until I fell in love with her.”
She looks up at me and smiles widely, the way she always does when I recall how we began with her coming to me, the company’s chief counsel—just about every day—with some stupid legal question she could’ve answered with a two-second web search. As I tried to resist her, she wore me down, and no one in the history of the world has ever been happier to have been worn down by a woman.
“You want a drink, babe?” I ask her.
“A short one. It might help him sleep through the night.”
I pour her a glass of the orange-flavored vodka she likes. “Is that what we’ve come to? Getting him drunk?”
“Whatever works, right?”
We curl up together on the sofa, legs intertwined in a position that’s become as familiar to me as anything in my life. There’s nothing better than being wrapped up in my Leah.
“How was your day, dear?”
“Not so great.”
“Why? What happened?”
“Flynn called me in a panic.” I fill her in on the situation with Vivian Stevens and what occurred between Max and Stella today. We have a deal—I keep her in the loop about the things I can tell her, and she never repeats anything she knows about my work.
“She actually kicked him out of the house?” Leah sounds as floored by this as I’ve felt since I heard it.
“She did. He was on his way to Flynn’s when I talked to him just now.”
“Oh my God. Their anniversary… The party is Saturday!”
“Believe me, they’re painfully aware of that.”
“It hurts my heart to hear there’s trouble between them. I can’t imagine one of them without the other.”
Like most of us in the Quantum family, Leah had a chaotic upbringing after her mother died when she was a teenager, leaving her with a father who was unprepared to manage her or anything else, for that matter. The Godfreys have filled that void for us and many others.
“I said the same thing to Flynn. It’s unbelievable that something like this could happen to them.”
“How could he keep that from her for all this time?”
“I think he did it initially because he felt he’d never have a chance with her if she knew he’d been married to Vivian. And then one year became two, which became fifty, and here we are.”
“Damn.” She looks up at me. “You’re not holding on to anything like that, are you?”
“No,” I say with a chuckle. “You know the good, the bad and the ugly. How about you? Any skeletons buried in your closet?”
“None that you don’t already know about. My life was kinda boring until you came along.”
“Likewise, my love.”
“Your life was not boring before me.”
“Yes, it was. The things I thought were exciting then have nothing on this life with you.”
“Right… Getting puked on and peed on and pooped on and kept up all night… These are exciting times, I tell you.”
I tip her chin up and kiss her. “These are the very best of times.”
Flynn
The man who walks into my house bears no resemblance whatsoever to the Max Godfrey I’ve known and loved my entire life. This version of him is broken, and that breaks me, too. I go to him and hold him as he sobs.
I’ve never seen my dad cry over anything other than a happy occasion, such as one of our weddings or the birth of a new grandchild.
That he’s clearly heartbroken and terrified sends my own anxiety through the roof. I simply can’t conceive of a world in which my parents aren’t happily married and as in love with each other as they’ve always been.
I lead him into the living room and sit with him on the sofa.
Natalie comes in, visibly crushed to see my dad in this condition. She pours our favorite drinks, puts them on the coffee table, kisses my dad’s cheek and then leaves the room.
I pick up the glass of my dad’s favorite gin and tonic and hand it to him. “Have a drink, Dad.” I’ve yet to meet any challenge that a little bit of booze couldn’t help, and besides, I don’t know what else to do for him.
When I notice his hand is shaking as he raises the glass for a sip, my heart breaks all over again. I’ve never viewed him as fragile or elderly or noticed any of the traits most seventy-eight-year-old men exhibit on the regular. Normally, he’s strong, dynamic and as far from elderly as it gets. But this day has knocked the legs out from under him. I’m trying to figure out what to say or do to help him and coming up blank.
He’d know what to say to me. He always does. I have to find some words that’ll comfort him the way he does for me any time I’m in distress.
After a healthy sip of gin and tonic, he sits back against the sofa and closes his eyes. “I don’t know what to do, son.”
“Give her a minute to process this news, and then I’m sure she’ll want to talk about it.”
“I wish I could be so certain. I’ve never seen her like she was just now. Not once in fifty-plus years…”
“She’s in shock, Dad. You have to give her some space to wrap her head around it.”
“I fucked this up so bad. So, so bad.”
“I keep going back to what you said earlier, that if you’d told her about Vivian when you first met her, you’d never have had a chance with her.”
“That’s true. The wound was still raw when we met on Merv’s show when she was getting her singing career off the ground after the scene with Vivian had derailed her acting path. I knew better than to even mention her name around Stella.”
“When she has time to think about it, she’ll remember that. She’ll remember how heated she was on that subject, and how there was no way you could’ve casually mentioned being married to Vivian and continued your relationship with her.”
“No, there wasn’t a way to do both. I chose her. I’d choose her a million times over.”
“She knows that. Which one were you married to for five minutes and which one have you been married to for fifty years? Which one do you have four children and twelve grandchildren with?”
“Will any of that matter now that she knows I kept such a big thing from her the whole time we’ve been together?”
That’s the great unknown. Will the lie… or the sin of omission… undo everything between them?
“Mom isn’t known for being unreasonable.”
“Except on the subject of Vivian. Any time her name is mentioned anywhere, she’s revolted. That’s all it takes. A mere mention of her.”
“Does Vivian know that Mom hates her?”
“Oh hell yes. Any time we’ve crossed paths with her, Mom refuses to even look at her. Back then, the scene between the two of them was the talk of the town for a few weeks. By the time I met Mom, the full details of what’d gone down between her, Jonah and Vivian were well known. I didn’t dare mention her name to Stella. Five minutes after I met her, I knew that secret would have to stay buried forever.”
“What I don’t get is how it’s never come to light before now. Vivian is so proud of her six husbands and her checkered romantic past. They’ll lead with that in her obituary, for Christ’s sake. Why wouldn’t she want the world to know she was also married to Max Godfrey? That there’re actually seven ex-husbands?”
A look passes across his face that can be classified only as guilty.
“Dad… What else is there?”
He shakes his head. “I can’t.”
I blow out a deep breath. “If there’s more to this story than you’ve let on, you have to come clean to Mom. You can’t let her be blindsided.”
“She’ll hate me.”
“No, she won’t.”
“She will. I’m sure of it.”
“Is it something that could be in the book?”
“Possibly. Vivian has no reason to want to protect me, after all.”
“Dad.” I wait until he glances my way. “Tell me. Whatever it is, we can figure it out, but if I don’t know, I can’t help you.”
“I’m ashamed to talk to you about this.”
“You’re my best friend in the whole world, and I’d like to think I’m yours.”
Tears fill his already-raw eyes. “Of course you are, but you’re also my son…”
“I’m a grown man. I can handle anything you want to talk to me about. I promise.”
He shakes his head, and his apparent agony strikes new fear in my heart as I worry about how this terrible situation could actually get worse. “I was so young and stupid then. I did things I’m not proud of…”
“We all do things we’re not proud of before we know better.”
“Some things are worse than others.”
“Tell me.”
He doesn’t want to. That’s as obvious as the prominent nose on his face. After a long pause, he softly says, “Do you know what a sexual dominant is?”