Nancy Holland - Owed - One Wedding Night

A foghorn sounded. Somewhere a buoy bell clanged on the waves. A car drove by, leaving a trail of loud music in its wake.

“What happened, Madi?”

The question seemed to surprise her as much as it surprised him. She didn’t answer, but stared past him toward the water.

“What happened to us?” he asked again.

“I couldn’t be your trophy wife.”

What the hell did that mean?

He kept his tone calm. “That's a pretty dated term. Aren't trophy wives young second wives for old guys?”

“Not necessarily. A lot of people would say, have said, our mothers were trophy wives, even though they were first wives and our fathers were only a few years older than they were.”

He didn’t try to deny it.

“Your father used his family’s wealth to win the model of the year as his wife,” she went on. “My father won Dartmoor by marrying my mother. I’m not sure which one was the trophy there, but you get the idea.”

The bitterness in her voice stunned him, but he knew her better than to comment on it.

“Even if that kind of marriage was good enough for our mothers, it would never have been enough for me, Jake. I wanted to do more with my life than have babies, hand them over to a nanny, and wait for you to come home at the end of the day.”

He swallowed the sucker punch she didn’t realize she’d so expertly delivered. He couldn’t count how many times he’d day-dreamed about exactly that.

“We could have worked it out.”

“I tried to talk with you about it. The only conversation we had about it ended with you forbidding…” She paused to underscore the word. “Forbidding me to get my MBA.”

He remembered that argument. He’d been so angry and hurt to learn that Madison didn’t wanted their marriage, their family, to be the center of her life that he hadn't known what else to say. He’d ended up silencing her outrage with a soul-searing kiss. They hadn’t come up for air until the next morning.

“Your father agreed with me.”

She winced.

“And you didn't bring it up again.” His tone was harsher, colder than he intended.

“The wedding was a run-away train. I didn’t know how to slow it down so we could talk. Our mothers had every minute scheduled for weeks. You and I were almost never alone together, and when we were we always ended up in bed. I didn’t want to fight with you in bed. I kept trying to find another chance to talk to you, to work it out, but that chance never came.”

Anger tightened his voice. “So you decided the best solution was to call your father from the limo on the way to the church and tell him the wedding was off.”

“That's not what happened.”

Madison took a deep, shuddering breath.

He was waiting for her to say more. The harsh parking lot lights transformed his handsome face into a demon’s mask of pale skin and dark shadows.

“I called my father to tell him we were caught in traffic and would be a few minutes late.”

Still no reaction from him, as if he didn’t care about what had happened. Maybe, after all this time, it no longer mattered to him. But it mattered to her. She needed to tell him for her own sake, if nothing else.

“When my father answered, I heard you in the background talking to someone. Your cousin Mark, probably. You were bragging to him that I was the ultimate trophy wife. I–I couldn’t go through with the wedding after that. I refused to stop being who I was, to give up my dreams to be your trophy wife, no matter how much I loved you.”

His face remained frozen.

“I didn't think of you as a trophy wife.”

“I heard you, Jake.”

“You didn’t hear the whole conversation.”

He put his hands on her shoulders, but she shook herself free, wishing there was some way to stop time right there.

For three years she’d told herself, if only in her weakest moments, that maybe she’d been wrong, maybe there’d been some other explanation for what Jake said. How could she live with the guilt if she had been wrong? And if she hadn't, how could she live without that one tiny hope? That was why she’d never had this conversation with him. Not that he’d ever given her the chance before.

She held her breath, dreading the inevitable pain, no matter which way he answered.

He gave her a grim smile. “Mark and I were joking with each other about our ‘trophy wives’. He was married to a hot young starlet at the time, remember?”

“You sounded plenty serious when you said it.”

He didn’t say anything right away, but jammed his hands in his pocket and turned half away from her. The hesitation, the way he couldn’t meet her eyes told her it would be worse than she’d feared. Whatever he said next would be a lie.

“I was serious. I didn’t want him to think I really felt that way about you. I told him you were the ultimate trophy wife because you were so smart as well as beautiful.”

She closed her eyes against the hurt that seemed to cut her open from neck to belly.

“Don’t lie to me, Jake. Not about this.”

She had to stop to breathe. She slowly counted to ten, waiting for him to say something.

He stood silent, the demon’s mask back in place.

So she turned and walked away.

A gust of wind stirred the fog. Jake saw Madison shiver and automatically took the two steps to catch up with her to put his arm around her shoulder. She froze for a moment, but let him walk beside her as she crossed the parking lot to her car.

When they reach the bright-red Ferrari she shook herself free and pulled the key from her purse without the usual female rummaging around. She unlocked the door and threw her over-sized purse across to the passenger seat before she straightened and faced him.

“Good-bye, Jake. Thank you for dinner.”

He couldn’t find words. She climbed into the car and he swung the door shut, then watched while she started the engine and drove off.

He still hadn’t moved when she pulled out of the parking lot and into the busy late-night traffic on Marina Boulevard.

Why hadn’t he told her the truth about what he’d said to Mark?

He sighed and headed for his car.

Because he refused to open old wounds, refused to be that guy again. The guy who’d loved Madison so completely she’d almost destroyed him.

A trophy wife! He shook his head and got into his car.

Sure, he hadn’t wanted her to get her MBA. He knew how much time and energy business school took. He’d wanted, needed, her at his side instead while he took over more and more of the day-to-day leadership at Carlyle & Sons to conceal his father’s deepening depression.

He’d had to keep his business problems secret from Madison back then, for fear she’d let something slip to her jerk of a father, who would gleefully spread the news in the business community. But Jake had planned to explain the situation on their honeymoon.

The honeymoon that never happened.

As he turned his car onto Marina Boulevard, the cell he’d left in its hands-free station buzzed. He flicked it on, not caring who was calling. Even a telemarketer would be better company than a mind full of memories and regrets.

“Ah, hello, Mother,” he said.

As soon as rush hour was over the next day Madison drove the Ferrari out to the newest Dartmoor store in Antioch. She needed the driving time to think about some changes in her plan, and fewer people would recognize her at this store than at those closer in, so she’d have a chance to pretend to be a shopper for a while.

Her first impression when she stepped into the store was sameness. Not sameness with the older Dartmoor stores, which varied in layout according to the age of the buildings, but sameness with every other store built the same decade in every other mall she’d ever been in. This was their most profitable store, but it lacked the distinctively Dartmoor flavor that would make shoppers look for their ads or lead them to their website.