Chapter 19
Chapter Nineteen
A h, the innocence of youth. I missed it. I missed it more than I could say as I sat in my wheelchair, stunned at the news story on the television.
The movers showed a couple of weeks ago to relieve us of our no-longer-wanted furniture before others dropped off the very wanted new stuff. As I was no longer able to decorate the house, we put Jupiter in charge of that task while I healed—but I had final say on all decisions.
Once Blake returned from the trip, he tendered his resignation. Robert took it about as well as you’d expect. Blake made the company loads of money, and one thing most rich people loved more than anything was to make more money. Then he’d come home for two days and left again, to meet with another corporation that would cream in their collective suits to have my husband on board.
Our original plan made sense.
Now?
Fuck! Yes, I said it because this was a fuck situation. Why? Because pictures of me from our day at the beach flashed across the screen. Unflattering pictures of me in my bikini—that was unflattering angles. I liked how I looked in that bikini. Blake liked how I looked in that bikini. As evidenced in one of the pics. One showed me lying on my bath sheet, propped up on my elbows in what was framed as a sexy, flirty pose talking with Ryan. In reality, I’d sat up to see where Lorelei had gotten off to. Then the next, I was making out with my husband, but no one could see his face. His back was to the camera which made it look like I’d gone from flirting with one man to making out with another, and all behind my devoted husband’s back according to the lead-in.
I’d tried calling Blake at least five times since the first news story flashed across the screen. I figured he was in his meeting.
Private conversations that I’d only shared with Pen, Sierra, and Lorelei popped up on the screen in flashing words and spoken by anchors to make me sound like some kind of sex-crazed, wanton hussy. A nympho of the highest order.
My stomach dropped as Olivia and her husband… Ryan . And Lorelei and her husband , John gave interviews. Single and ready to mingle? God, stupid, stupid, stupid Gloria . As the hot tears fell harder, I screamed. Maisie came running into the room to check on me.
“I didn’t…” I cried to her. “I never…”
“Shh…” She tried to console me. “I know you didn’t. Don’t think for a minute I believe any of that. Neither will Blake.”
“How would you feel being called a whore?” I sobbed. Ugly, blotchy-face sobbed.
Finally, finally , after a hundred thousand phone calls to my husband from me and Maisie, and Dee, and probably everyone else they’d pulled into my nightmare to try to help, he called back.
“Sweetheart,” he snapped into the line when I answered. “What the hell is going on?”
“Have you watched the news?” I asked.
“What—no. I was in the meeting with the company board. What happened?”
I swallowed hard, pinching my eyes shut while answering, “Turn on the news.”
“Which channel?”
“It doesn’t mat ter .” My voice broke on the last word.
“Sweetheart,” he said again, this time softer. “What?”
“Just watch.”
In the background, I heard the television flick on. I heard the different channels. Then I heard, “What the fuck?”
The tears poured harder.
“Glory—” he started.
“I trusted her. How could I trust her?”
“Sweetheart, you were set up.”
“Don’t you think I know that? And they make you sound like a pathetic cuckold.”
He sighed hard into the line and I just knew—just knew —he was shaking his head. “Listen, I’m packing up and coming home. I’ll be there in a few hours.”
“But what about the new company?”
“I like this company. I love my wife. There’ll be other companies. I don’t want another wife, sweetheart. Love you.”
I sniffled the loud and totally un-sexy kind of sniffle into the phone. “Love you, too.”
Over the next couple of hours, my phone flashed with Pen’s, Sierra’s and my mom’s names several times each, but my humiliation felt too raw. My mother had a signed contract with the Parkers which gave her some level of protection but if this touched Brock’s campaign in any way, would they go after Maisie or Dee?
At this point, I wanted to disappear from the world. Maisie tried to be sympathetic, but I wouldn’t let her. I humiliated myself and my husband. Some days required a do-over, but I never wanted to see this day again. Hiding away— that I could do. Powering my wheelchair over to the steps, I transferred myself to the stair lift, pushing the leaver to take me to the top.
It went like that all the way up until I reached the last step and I transferred to the second motorized chair we kept upstairs, motoring myself into the bedroom. This damn sprained ankle couldn’t go away fast enough. The collarbone debacle, as I’d come to call it, wouldn’t clear up for a couple of months.
After climbing in bed, I cocooned myself under the covers, tucking the sides under my body until not a speck of light showed through any cracks between the blanket and sheet, which was a feat when you only had one arm to work with.
Maybe everything would be okay if I could just keep the rest of the world out. I started bloodshot-eyes - and - snot-dripping-down-my-nose blubbering again, using Blake’s pillow as my surrogate shoulder to cry on, pressing my face against the spot that smelled strongest of him, and held it close.
Eventually, the pillow started talking and the words sounded like Blake. “Scoot over,” the pillow said in my husband’s voice, and I scooted back over to my side of the bed.
“You don’t normally talk,” I told the pillow and it laughed.
“What?” it asked.
“You don’t normally answer me.”
“Sweetheart, I answer you all the time.” The magical blanket tugged up, flooding my cocoon with light, blinding me. But the light cut off, replaced by a body. A warm body that smelled of spice and aftershave. “Can I have my pillow?” the body asked.
“ No ,” I answered.
“No? Why ?”
“I need it to remember you by.”
“Am I going somewhere?”
“You’re divorcing me.”
“I am? When did I decide that?”
“When I humiliated you by being extremely stupid.” I sniffed loudly.
“ Shit . I’m glad you told me because this could’ve been awkward. I had no idea I was humiliated because as far as I can see, my wife did nothing wrong. Now that you’ve filled me in, I’ll get the papers started tomorrow.”
“For clarity’s sake,” I said, still sniffling, “that was sarcasm?”
He pressed a kiss to the side of my head. “Missed you,” he whispered.
“I missed you, too,” I admitted.
“Clearly, that’s why you made out with that man on the beach.” He did not! I swatted at him with my only good arm and simultaneously laughed through more tears. “What?” he asked. “Too soon?”
“You must’ve raced home,” I said.
“Did you need me?”
“More than you know.”
He smiled as if his smile, or maybe my words, said everything.
“Why do people care?”
“Honey, people love scandals and I’m not just the brother of the man running for president, but I’m a Parker. You know what the company is worth. You know what I’m worth. People love seeing the rich fall, even if it’s not the one they should want to fall.”
“Your parents should be calling soon.”
“I don’t doubt it.”
“Here’s the thing, whatever they come up with, as long as it’s not, ‘ you need to divorce her now ,’ then maybe we should consider going along with it for the time being. Lay low. Give some other celebrity the chance to royally fuck up.”
“ Fuck up ? Since when does my good girl use the word ‘ fuck ’?
I shrugged. “Seemed like a fuck kind of day.”
And I was right. So damn right. Robert called fuming . Like, you’d have thought we were on the verge of a global nuclear war.
The second he hung up on his father—God, I was so proud of him for that—he helped me out to the chair lift then ran back in the room to grab the comforter off the bed, then joined me on the stairs. At the bottom Blake carried me over to the big, new comfy sofa, and I sink down into it.
“Now dinner,” Blake commands.
Crock-Pot mac and cheese courtesy of Dee. And she’d thrown together a salad. I knew this because Blake walked out holding two big plates of mac and cheese and salad, and a bottle of hard cider and Modelo tucked under each arm. He placed the plate on my lap and I reached up snagging the cider. It smelled divine. I mean, Dee cooked it, so obviously.
I held the comforter up, waiting for him to situate himself, then tucked him in so we could get on with watching mindless television.
Sexy times with Blake meant so much to me, but these were my favorite times. Vegging out with the hubs, not doing anything in particular.
We were three episodes into the newest season of Name That Tune when his phone rang again. An unknown number. He drew his brows down, looking ten kinds of irritated at the interruption of his evil phone ringing.
I looked from the phone to him. “You’re not sleeping with the guy at the beach, too, are you?”
“No. But I have something to tell you,” he said and it sounded serious, so I turned my full attention to him.
“ Okay ,” I replied, dropping my fork onto my plate.
“That woman, Gloria Parker , I’ve been sleeping with her for a while now.”
The laugh popped so hard from my mouth that a sharp pain sliced through my collarbone, causing me to laugh and cry.
“ Shit ,” he muttered. “Sorry, sweetheart. I just thought it was best to rip the news off like an old bandage.” And that just made me laugh harder forcing me to press my hand to my collarbone with tears leaking from my eyes.
The phone stopped ringing, but lit up with a voicemail notification.
They left a voicemail?
He opened it and pressed play.
“ Hi, Mr. Parker. My name is Murielle Colgate, and I work for Bernhardt Management Services,” she said in an endearing country twang. “I need to speak with you and your wife. If you would call me back, it’s very important. ” Then she rattled off the phone number where she could be reached and hung up.
“What is Bernhardt Management?” I asked.
“They manage high-profile people.”
“High profile? Like movie stars?”
“I think so, but also?—”
“Political candidates?” I asked. “Kind of like Brock has Candice.”
“Kind of, yes. Should I call her back?”
“Well, now you have to. I have to know why this woman called us.”
“I do too,” he said, pressing the highlighted number on the voicemail screen and waited to connect. He pressed the speakerphone button when she answered.
“ Hello ?” she asked.
“Hi. This is Blake Parker.”
“Is your wife with you?” she asked.
I spoke up. “I’m here.”
“Good, good …” she said, and my mind immediately went to Scarlett O’Hara— no … Dolly Parton. Now that woman was a national treasure. If anyone deserved—I caught myself drifting again and forced my brain to focus when Murielle started speaking again. “I want to apologize for the things that have been blasted over the television today.” She paused then went on quickly, “I had nothing to do with any of it, but I know who did.”
“Go on,” Blake said.
“We manage the PR for Raymond Hill.”
“Raymond Hill?” I asked. “The candidate who’d run against Brockton Parker for the party’s nomination,” I finished.
“Yes, I found out this morning that the campaign hired a Lorelei Branch to befriend Mrs. Parker,” she said.
“But why? Brock already got the candidacy.”
“I’m so sorry,” she said to me. “You seem like a good person and I have no idea what his goal is. Maybe he hopes to embarrass Mr. Parker enough that he’d step down, opening the door to take the candidacy himself?”
“Is it safe for you to be calling us?” Blake asked. And it occurred to me that maybe she was putting her livelihood in jeopardy.
“I could lose my job,” she replied, then let out a slow breath before going on. “May I speak freely?”
“Please,” Blake answered.
“My beautiful grandmother would roll over in her grave if she ever found out that I picked a job over doing what was right.”
“She would?” I asked because in my experience, most people couldn’t care less about their dead grandmother’s opinion. It’s all about the Benjamins, right?
“Bless your heart,” she replied and somehow, I knew that wasn’t complimentary. “You don’t know much about good Christian, Southern grandmothers.”
“I’m afraid I don’t.”
“I hope to hone my ability to guilt as well as she did. You know, so I can haunt my future grandchildren, too.”
Despite the fact that I’d been targeted by a corrupt politician—for reasons yet unknown—I laughed like a crazy person. The idea of this Dolly Parton sound-alike, saying ‘ Bless your heart ’ as a cutdown, haunting her future grandchildren just undid me.
“Is she okay?” Murielle asked.
Blake knew me so well. He read me. And despite his anger, started laughing, too. “She’s fine,” he said while I shouted, “ Aces .”
The man shut down his laugh, clearing his throat. “Thank you for calling.”
“I’ll send you a file with the evidence,” she said not sounding convinced of either of our sanity. “It’s more than just a phone conversation.”
“I figured. People have to be paid,” he replied. “I appreciate it. If you overnight it, I’ll reimburse you for everything.”
Just after one p.m. the next day, a courier showed up at our home to drop off the papers that Murielle, sent over. Right after we’d hung up with her, Blake called his father to ask for a meeting.
We opened the envelope, dumping the contents on top of the coffee table and the both of us began to rustle through the pages, each reading important passages out loud.
Page after page made me want to vomit, but soon enough, my embarrassment turned to outright anger. Okay, I shouldn’t have trusted someone I hardly knew with intimate details of my life. That was my bad. But she lied. Why should this be on me when she was the one who lied?
“What’s our next move?” I asked him after we’d read the last paper in the stack.
“We go to my parents and see what they have in mind to deal with this. From there we can figure out how to move forward.”
“Together, right?”
Without warning he cupped my face in his hands, kissing the crap out of me. A romance-novel kiss of epic proportion. “No future without you, Glory. You’re my dik-dik.”
And I lost it. A wild, hysterical laugh bursts from me. “ Wrong . You’re my dik-dik. Blake Parker, bringing big dik-dik energy into our home.”
He pressed his face to my hair. “I fucking love those birds for stealing my lunch,” he whispered.
Loved them? I was forever indebted to them.
However, despite trying to convince myself that I was squarely in my IDGAF era where his family was concerned, I shrank right down when Maggie escorted us to the formal living room the next day. And yes, I know it was ableist, but I already felt small, stuck in this stupid chair, always feeling like people looked down on me. That was a character flaw I needed to work on, but not here amongst my enemies.
When we entered, Robert tried to use his furious eyes like burning lava to intimidate me, and Adair seethed with so much hatred that I shrunk even smaller. Tiny. Miniscule. A mere speck of Gloria. But when Robert opened his mouth to speak, Blake held his hand up and I remembered he had my back, so why fret?
“Father,” he said. “I’m sure you have quite a bit to say, and I’m sure it will be insightful, but I need you to see these first.” Then he handed the envelope over to his father.
Robert eyed the envelope as if it were a coiled snake that he was waiting on to strike.
“Glory was set up,” Blake explained.
The man squinted at us. “Set up?”
“Yes. It’s all there.” Blake pointed to the envelope again.
“That doesn’t change anything,” Robert spat with words full of derision.
“ Doesn’t change anything ?” Blake asked and I wanted to clap. A standing ovation for his performance.
“If she weren’t so desperate, none of this would’ve ever happened.”
“Would you listen to yourself?” Blake asked. “She married me and moved here for me . Away from all her friends and other family. You forced us onto the campaign trail so she hasn’t had the chance to find her footing. And now, when she tried to find a job, no one wanted to hire her because of the circus media frenzy surrounding Brock.”
“If you hadn’t married some low-class?—”
Robert’s words got cut off when my husband lunged at him. I screamed and rolled myself between them, tugging Blake down to my level. I folded my good arm around his neck. “Honey,” I said in my most calming voice. “Don’t. Please . It’s not worth it.”
“Not worth it? Gloria .”
“ Whoa ,” I whispered in his ear. “The plan. Just let them think they’ve won for now.”
He nodded once but right at that moment Jupiter entered the room. “I rushed over as soon as I could.” Then she shot a chin lift to Brock. “Hey, Brock.” And one to Blake, “Hey, Blake.” And then to me, “Hey Vixen. Nice wheels.”
Vixen? Me? She started laughing.
“Control yourself, Jupiter,” Adair said. “This is not the time.”
“Oh, I think it’s the perfect time. What do you think, Blake?”
“ Jupiter ,” my husband admonished, and I bit my lip. Not the time. Always the place.
“Can we stop?” Brock spat and Emily moved to his side, linking both of her arms through one of his, and how very First Lady of her to show a united front even in private. “I don’t care if she’s still a virgin or fucked the entirety of Fort Liberty, she’s already been passed off as a Parker.”
“She is a Parker,” Blake shot back.
“What do we do now? The election is right around the corner.”
“Calm down, Brock,” Robert ordered. “We’ll do damage control.”
“‘Damage control’?” Blake asked. I still hated being thought of as ‘ damage ’ but this was what we came here for.
“We’ll get this to go away, but for the remainder of the campaign, no one sees her face in public.”
“That’s impossible. She’s not a prisoner.”
Robert rolled his eyes. “It’s just until the election.”
“You’re not putting my wife under house arrest.”
“We need the public to lose interest in her. No new job, no new friends, no new anything.”
“Then what is she supposed to do?”
“I don’t know, knock her up. Voters like children and it’ll keep her occupied.”
I choked on a cough. “‘Knock me up’? Like I’m a puppy mill?”
“Well, you obviously can’t be trusted to do much else,” Brock snapped snidely and I felt myself balling my fist down at my side. I really wanted to punch this guy. Just lay him flat. That would feel so good— no, it wouldn’t, Gloria. You’re better than that, even if he is one of the biggest assholes you’ve met in your life. Actually, I kind of wanted to punch myself for attempting to be reasonable.
“We’re not having a child to further your career. We’ll have children when we’re good and ready.” Yay, Blake! But I wanted to be the one to land a verbal blow. I fed my utter and complete dislike of the man with the fumes of his sheer audacity to think that I’d bring a child into this world simply to help him win an election.
And it probably showed all over my face.
Blake squatted down in front of me, placing his hand on my arm just above my elbow to talk only to me. “What do you want to do, Glory?” he asked in a soft tone that caressed my soul. I schooled my expression.
With a clearer head, I thought about his question. Time to plan. Once the answer came to me, I nodded at my husband. “ Mom ,” I whispered to him and he nodded back. “My mother is getting married back in Michigan. The wedding is in a couple of weeks.”
“There,” Adair said, clapping her hands together once, and sounding almost chipper. “That’s our answer. She can go back to Michigan until this blows over.”
“Absolutely,” Brock agreed.
“ Okay . Blake and I will go to my mother’s wedding in Michigan.”
“Oh—you’ll be going,” Robert said, “but Blake won’t be joining you.”
That— not part of the plan.