Four of Hearts (24 page)

Fallon shrugged. “Whatever. I’m sure we could make that decision somewhere down the road.”

“Fallon. You know as well as I do that accidents happen.”

“So, what would you say to me if I told you I’m pregnant right now, and it’s Ryan’s?”

* * * * *

Candace carried her plastic tray laden with a two cold cut sandwiches and soft drinks in paper cups, to the table for two in the back corner of the small downtown shop. Nearly every table was filled, and a line of people in business attire snaked out the door. Fallon and she had arrived moments before the lunch rush, and while Fallon secured one of the few remaining tables, Candace had ordered their lunch. No one paid them any mind. They were as anonymous as any two women on their lunch hour.

“See,” Fallon said. “If you act ordinary, no one notices you.” No one except the two bodyguards Drew had arranged for them before he returned to the ship.

Candace unwrapped her sandwich, and paused with it half way to her mouth. “I think the point our husbands are trying to make is that we aren’t acting ordinary.”

“True,” Fallon agreed. “But I don’t see why we have to let strangers dictate the way we live our lives.”

Candace washed the dry sandwich down with a sip of cola through a straw. “I’m with you, but Ryan isn’t budging. It’s been three weeks. I miss you guys so much I can hardly stand it.”

“I know. I miss you and Ryan too. What arguments did Ryan pull on you?”

“The usual, then he went for the jugular with the kids issue. It threw me for a few days, mainly because I hadn’t thought about the idea of my kids maybe having different fathers, or his having different mothers.”

“Yeah, Richard pulled that one out too.” Fallon put her sandwich down and leaned over so Candace could hear her better without anyone else overhearing. “I got to thinking about that, and I don’t see it’s much different than a lot of families. Divorced couples bring children from previous marriages into their new families all the time. The only difference would be that we wouldn’t be divorced.”

“Good point. I’ll have to use that one on Ryan. How do you feel about having kids? Would you want to have a child with Ryan?”

Fallon laughed so hard she had to cover her mouth with a napkin. “Oh God! I have to tell you what I did.”

“What? Tell me,” Candace urged.

“Richard said he didn’t know how he would feel about me having Ryan’s child, so I asked him what he would do if I told him I was pregnant right now, and it was Ryan’s.”

“You didn’t.”

“I did. I swear. You should have seen the look on his face. At first I thought he was going to blow his top, but he just sat there a few minutes staring at me, then his eyes went to my stomach. I almost had heart failure waiting for him to say something, then he looked me in the eye and he said, ‘You’ve got me. I’d love the kid like it was my own.’ Then he asked me if I was pregnant. I think he was actually disappointed that I wasn’t.”

“Hmm. I don’t think I’d better try that with Ryan, but it’s an interesting approach. It does go to prove how much Richard loves you though.”

“He loves you, too. I told him I thought you and he would have some awfully cute kids, but of course I had to say our kids would be cuter!”

Their burst of laughter had people turning to look at them, so they stifled their merriment behind paper napkins.

“Oh. My. God. I can’t believe you said that!”

“What can I say, it’s true,” Fallon teased.

“No jealousy?” Candace asked when they’d regained their composure.

“No. Richard loves me, and I love you both. I’d love any child you produced, but I’d like to have Richard’s child too. What about you? How would you feel about me and Ryan?”

“The same, I think. I’ve never been jealous of the time he spends with you. I know I’d love any child Ryan fathered, and any child you have, so why wouldn’t I love a child you created together? I don’t know if I want to have a child with Richard, but the idea doesn’t repel me.”

“So, how do we convince our husbands to thumb their noses at society?”

“Actually, that’s why I wanted to see you today. I have an idea.”

* * * * *

Ryan sat on the edge of the sofa, his head in his hands. His hair stood on end where he’d raked his fingers through it time and again over the last ten minutes. Candace sat in an adjacent chair where she’d been watching his reaction from afar. As the minutes passed, her skin had grown cold, and her heartbeat had escalated. It was too late to go back. What was done, was done, and what had seemed like a good idea at the time, now looked more like the end than a new beginning. Her teeth worried her lower lip, and if she clasped her hands together any tighter, she’d have broken bones.

Ryan’s silence sounded like a death knell to their marriage.

“I can’t believe you did that,” he said.

His tone was flat, giving her no hint as to his emotional state, so she waited for him to say more.

“Who’s idea was this? Yours or Fallon’s?”

“Mine. Fallon helped arrange it.”

Ryan straightened, then sprawled back against the sofa as if his muscles refused to hold his body upright any longer. “I can’t believe it. You and Fallon went on national television and told the world you are adulterers, and that you’re proud of it. What the hell were you thinking?”

That cleared up Candace’s confusion regarding Ryan’s state of mind. He was pissed. As he spoke, color infused his face. She hadn’t seen him angry many times in their short marriage, but she recognized the look. She and Fallon had anticipated this reaction from their husbands, and they’d carefully planned their defense. They’d even practiced it with each other in their secret meetings over the last few weeks. Faced with Ryan’s anger, and a measure of hurt or was it disappointment, she saw in his features, she couldn’t recall a single word of her rehearsed speech.

“I. . . .”

“You what?” Ryan stood and began to pace. Once again, his fingers speared through his hair. If the situation hadn’t been so dire, she would have found his appearance comical. When she’d dragged him out of bed, insisting he watch the morning show on the television in the sitting room, he’d pulled on a pair of tighty-whities and nothing else. He looked rumpled and sexy as hell, as long as you didn’t get a good look at his face. For the first time since she’d come up with the idea to take their situation public, she thought she might have made a mistake.

“Tell me, Candace. Tell me how you thought this was a good idea.” His hand swept to the flickering television. The morning show had broken for updates from local stations immediately after airing Candace and Fallon’s taped interview. Now, someone pitched discount furnishings available at several locations in south Florida. “You know that was a national show  didn’t you? Everyone we know saw that, or will see it, including our families.”

“They saw it. I told them all, or at least as many as I could reach, last week.”

Ryan stopped his pacing and glared at her. She fought the urge to squirm in her seat.

“You told your family, and mine, about this?”

“Yes. Fallon did the same thing. We didn’t want them to be caught unprepared. I’m sure they’ll be hounded by reporters wanting to know what they thought of the interview.”

“You mean they’ll be hounded by reporters wanting to know what they think of their perverted sons and daughters, don’t you?”

His words stung. Tears came to her eyes and she brushed them away with a shaking fingers. “You don’t really believe we’re perverted. I know you don’t.”

“It doesn’t matter what I think. The rest of the world will think it.”

“You’ve got that backward, Ryan. It doesn’t matter what the rest of the world thinks. It only matters what you and I, and Richard and Fallon, think. It’s our lives, not anyone else’s. It’s our four hearts that matter.”

“Well, you gambled the four of hearts on this one. No amount of damage control Gabe could do will fix this.”

Ryan’s words felt like a knife to her heart. The tears she’d tried so hard to hold in spilled over the dam. She wrapped her arms around her midsection in an effort to keep from falling apart. Her legs threatened to buckle when she stood. She had to get away from him, from his venom before she lost what little dignity she had left. At the bedroom door, she turned and uttered the only defense she had. “I love you. We aren’t damaged, and we don’t need to be fixed.”

* * * * *

“Well, shit,” Ryan muttered to the closed bedroom door. Candace was right. They weren’t damaged. At least, he didn’t believe they were. He looked around for his cell phone and found it on the raised bar that separated the sitting room from the small kitchen. He wanted to follow Candace. His body ached to hold her, to tell her he was an ass, that she was right, that he thought what she’d done was the bravest thing he’d ever seen in his life. He wanted to tell her she was the strong one, that he had taken the coward’s way out, hiding his true nature behind Gabe’s carefully worded denials. But first, he had to man up.

He hit the single digit that would connect him with Richard. First things, first. They had to all be on the same page with this before he talked to Gabe. His conversation with Richard was short. Apparently, a similar scenario had played out across town between Richard and Fallon, and his friend was eager to make amends with his wife. Ryan told Richard what he intended to say to Gabe, urged him to follow up with a confirmation phone call of his own so Gabe could go ahead with the press release.

“Tell Fallon I love her,” Ryan said.

“Yeah, give my love to Candace,” Richard said. Ryan disconnected and placed another call to Gabe. His lawyer/publicist listened to his about-face instructions.

When Ryan wound down, Gabe spoke. “I have to say, I think I was wrong. Tell Candace I’m sorry. If we’d sat down and talked about this two months ago. If your wives had explained to me then, the way they did on television today, I don’t think I would have advised the plan of action I did. I can’t tell you how sorry I am. For what it’s worth, I’ve changed my mind. What the four of you do is between you. Hell, after seeing Candace and Fallon in that interview I’m half in love with both of them myself. I’ll write up a press release, and as soon as I hear from Richard, I’ll e-mail it to the both of you for approval before it goes out.”

Ryan sucked in a deep breath. He’d stood up like a man, now he suspected he needed to do some crawling. Begging might even be in order.

* * * * *

Richard pushed the end call button on his cell phone and turned his attention to his wife who waited, supplicant, for him. He had time to deal with Fallon before he called Gabe to confirm all the things Ryan was now imparting to their lawyer. The phone landed on the coffee table with enough force to make Fallon jump.

Only a few feet away, she’d had to have heard everything he’d said to Ryan, so she knew his anger had dissipated. She and Candace had basically slapped him and Ryan in the face via their taped interview/confession. Now that their lifestyle was out in the open, he felt like the millstone had been lifted from his shoulders. Over the last two months, he’d watched as Fallon struggled with the separation he and Ryan had forced on them, and what he saw happening to his wife had began as a tiny bit of guilt and testosterone driven instinct to protect, had grown into a crushing weight of heart ache and doubt.

Fallon stood before him now, naked, her hands bound behind her back, her eyes downcast. He should have listened to her weeks ago. That first day, she and Candace had insisted they had done nothing wrong, that they should just come clean. It grated that the women he loved were, in the end, right, and he’d been wrong. It was a hard thing to admit. For that he would extract revenge, but he knew it was the kind of revenge Fallon would find pleasure in.

He kicked the coffee table out of the way, and sat on the sofa. His morning hard on had grown to painful proportions. With impatient fingers, he stroked his length. “Look at me,” he commanded. Fallon raised her gaze to his, then her eyes dropped to his groin where he caressed himself. “You unmanned me this morning. You took it on yourself to wear the pants in this family.” With his free hand, he cradled his balls so Fallon couldn’t miss them. “I think it’s time to remind you who has the balls. Watch me, wife of mine. I know you want me to fuck you. You want me to hold you, tell you I love you, and that everything is just hunky-dory, but that isn’t going to happen.”

Fallon shifted so her thighs were held tightly together. Richard continued to stroke his cock from base to tip in a slow, deliberate motion. Fallon wanted him, but in this, he would deny her, for once. Jacking off when he could be buried inside her wet heat served as self-punishment for his stupidity. He rolled his balls in his fist and tugged. His hips rose off the sofa at the pain and pleasure. “The pretty ladies put on their poker faces and gambled with our lives this morning. You threw away two pairs, hoping to draw the four of hearts.”