Chapter 1 #2
Dominique ran Dupont Designs with her husband’s advice and a solid business plan.
A year after she launched her company, she had their first child at twenty-seven, a boy, Thomas Dupont Walker.
She had bought a discreet brownstone house in the East Seventies when she arrived, where they’d lived when they were married, and where she still did, long after their divorce.
She had married Andrew because he was intelligent, well-educated, from a good family, and he reminded her of her father.
But Andrew was nothing like Armand. Andrew’s indiscretions were legion, and while she worked hard, he played hard, collecting new clients for his investment management firm.
He wasn’t after her money. He had his own, although her fortune was far larger than his, but he was always in hot pursuit of new clients, and his flings and affairs were frequent and indiscreet.
Knowing her history, he had assumed she would tolerate his cheating on her since her own parents had never married.
But her father had been faithful to Marie-Aurélie.
Andrew never was to Dominique from the earliest days of their marriage.
He found the restrictions of marriage suffocating.
He had his first notorious affair months after they married, when Dominique was pregnant, and his second one right after Tommy was born.
She lost count of his infidelities after that.
But marriage was sacred to her, because of her own history, and she didn’t want to divorce.
She tolerated Andrew’s behavior for as long as she could.
Andrew was forty-three when their son was born, and it became rapidly obvious that he wasn’t cut out to be a husband or a father.
Dominique loved her babies and her business, but Andrew was a severe disappointment as a husband.
He shattered her dreams and his blatant affairs were a deep humiliation to her.
She had three babies in five years, and divorced Andrew in six. Thomas was rapidly followed by two daughters, Felicity and Violet. Dominique worked even harder at her wedding dress business after the divorce, and was a talented designer with a strong work ethic.
She didn’t have time for romance or dating in the early years of establishing her business when her children were small.
Andrew hardly saw them, and had no interest in them.
She was thirty-two when she got divorced, and had little time for a social life, building the bridal empire she was known for now, and outstripping her competitors, while still paying close attention to her children.
A dozen years had flown by since her divorce, when she met William Smith.
He was the attorney for her business. She was forty-four when they met, and Bill was forty-six, brilliant, vital, serious, kind, with children of his own, devoted to his family, with a marriage that had never worked.
She and Bill fell in love, which came as a surprise to both of them.
They struggled with what to do about it.
Dominique had never wanted to be in the same situation as her mother, a married man’s mistress, and this wasn’t France.
They were extremely discreet, but they fell into an affair, deeply in love, and carved out time with each other whenever they could.
They had long since settled into spending two nights a week together.
When her children were younger, Dominique and Bill spent the night at a hotel, leaving her children with a nanny.
Now that the children were grown up and gone, Bill stayed at her apartment, and her children never knew.
He was a successful attorney, head of his own law firm, and advised her in all her business dealings.
She never pressured him to divorce. Over the years, their children had grown up and he was still married.
The affair had continued for sixteen years.
It wasn’t what Dominique had planned for her life, but it met their emotional needs at the time, and seemed like enough.
His wife pointedly ignored what she suspected and preferred to stay married to a man who didn’t love her and whom she didn’t love, rather than rebuild her life.
She liked the status of being married, not the man.
Bill was sixty-two now, and he and Dominique still thought they might live together one day, but the right time had never come.
Bill’s youngest son had just left for college and had been only two years old when they met.
Hers were old enough to get to know him and were attached to him as a reliable and warm constant and a close affectionate family friend they liked.
He was the only father figure in their life.
Andrew, her ex-husband, was seventy-six now, still chasing young women, and as disengaged from his children as he always had been.
They were adults now and he had never been there for them.
He was still working as an investment advisor, and still constantly involved with women less than half his age.
He was in good health and full of energy.
He only dated women the age of his children or younger.
Dominique wasn’t close to him, and didn’t respect him.
She hadn’t since the divorce or even before.
She loved and respected Bill, after sixteen years.
And she understood her mother better now, although her situation with Dominique’s father had been more shocking and more public but also less complicated, since they had been so open about their relationship and it was more socially acceptable in France than in the U.S.
Dominique and Bill had kept their relationship hidden for sixteen years, except with close friends, and her children suspected but still weren’t sure if they were lovers or just friends.
What they shared privately, and the deep feelings they had for each other, satisfied both of them most of the time.
It seemed a little late now for him to divorce in his sixties.
His marriage had been an emotional wasteland forever, but their lives were entwined.
His wife stayed at their Connecticut home most of the time, and had her own life and friends, and he worked in the city and spent nights with Dominique during the week when he could, now that the children had grown up.
For years they tried to figure out what to do about it.
In the end, they did nothing. He stayed married, and they met in secret for stolen moments.
It was far from ideal, but their attempts to break off their relationship never worked.
They loved each other, so the relationship had lasted for sixteen years, with all its weaknesses and strengths.