Даниэла Стил - All That Glitters

The crassness of his suggestion gnawed at her all weekend. She hadn’t decided yet if she was going to keep the baby. But if she did, on Sunday night she had an idea of her own. The prospect of his giving up all parental rights showed his total lack of feeling for her and the baby, but was not entirely a bad suggestion, once you got past the heartlessness behind it. If she kept the pregnancy, buying off his parental rights would avoid years of battles over joint custody, disagreements over how to bring up the child, and visitation, and what the child would be exposed to when with him, if he ever saw it. And she was not about to sacrifice a house worth millions to him. But if she kept the baby, she would be more than willing to give up the Sussex property, which had cost her very little and she had no real use for. She didn’t intend to give weekend house parties without Nigel, and it would be an excellent trade if he’d accept it, to buy their child’s freedom from him and her own, to raise a child in peace.

She wrote him back, suggesting the Sussex property in lieu of the London house, if she continued the pregnancy, and got no immediate answer, and advised her attorney of the name of his. The more she thought about it, the more she liked his proposition. Parenting was a two-person endeavor, but not with a man like Nigel. The child, if it was ever born, would be better off without him. His value system, and morals on every front, were deplorable. In Coco’s opinion, he was a disgusting human being, if one could even call him that, after all he’d done. Knowing him, she was sure he would try to justify his actions, buying houses and chartering yachts, as a way of “improving her life” and “putting her inheritance to good use,” which she knew now had nothing to do with her. It was all about him, and he had used her to impress the friends in his social circle, and elevate his own status with them. She was just taken along for the ride, to pay the bills, which she had done willingly, because she loved him. It all seemed like a cruel joke now, and a terrible trick he had played on her for his own gain.

It took Nigel two days to respond to her email, and much to her amazement, he accepted her offer to trade the Sussex property instead of the London house for all parental rights to their child. He was smart enough to take the lesser offer when he didn’t have a winning hand. Coco thought his idea would benefit both of them, and even the baby, to keep it out of Nigel’s clutches, and she forwarded the email exchange to her attorney. He called her as soon as he got it.

“You didn’t mention that you’re pregnant,” he said in a serious voice. “That could be complicated, although the exchange that he’s suggesting would certainly simplify it. We’ll have to choose the language very carefully, to make it palatable to the court. A judge might feel that he was protecting the child’s rights, by not depriving him or her of a father. You’d be satisfied with that exchange, though, for your property in Sussex?”

“Yes, I would. Very much so. I’d rather lose the money I spent on it, and have him out of our lives.”

“When is the baby due?” he asked cautiously. The exchange they had unofficially agreed to, and come up with between them, was one he had never done before, but even he agreed it had its merits.

“I’m not sure,” Coco said in answer to his question. “Probably next summer, if I have it. I haven’t decided yet.” He understood the option she was referring to, and refrained from comment.

The following week, Nigel’s attorney communicated the rest of what he wanted from her, in light of her personal fortune. Nigel was trying to annul their prenuptial contract, claiming that he had not been represented by an attorney, which had been his choice at the time. He had simply signed it and handed it back to her. Now he was claiming that he hadn’t understood what he was signing and no one had explained it to him. He wanted a five-million-dollar settlement as consolation for the pain and suffering and trauma of the divorce, another million in damages, citing his being fired as her fault, because she had kept him so busy supervising the work on the houses and their demanding social life. He wanted spousal support of three million dollars a year for ten years, to help him get on his feet, and to live in the style to which she had accustomed him. And another million for his summer vacation, using the yacht they had chartered as the model for it. In addition to the Sussex property, as compensation for losing his home in the city, on the terms that they had agreed to. In its totality, he was asking for a thirty-seven-million-dollar divorce, plus Sussex, for eleven months of being married to her. It amounted roughly to a forty-million-dollar divorce for breaking her heart and eleven months of her time. Ed Easton had been an amateur compared to him.

“He has an ambitious attorney,” hers said in a cool tone. They had said that given the size of her fortune, it was a drop in the bucket to her, and a negligible amount in proportion to what she had. “He puts a high value on himself, doesn’t he?” He already couldn’t stand the guy, just reading his demands. He stayed neutral in the cases he handled as a rule, but Nigel’s proposals were so outrageous that her lawyer, Harold Humphreys, felt protective of her. Nigel’s intentions were plainly transparent. It was interesting that she had managed to hold down a job during the entire time, despite two house remodels, a full social life, and even a pregnancy, and he couldn’t, and had made no effort to find one after he was fired. “I think a judge will take a very dim view of this, Miss Martin.” She had called him using her maiden name, and not her married one. She wanted nothing more to do with anything of Nigel’s, not even his name. “Judges are human too, and work for a living. They have families to support, and the same expenses the rest of us do. For him to ask for support in these amounts, damages, and compensation, no matter what your parents left you, will infuriate any judge after an eleven-month marriage. You could even ask for an annulment on the basis of fraud, but it might take longer. I think you’ll be best served by being rid of him as quickly as possible, for the least amount of money.”

“Thank you, I’d like that.”

“I’ll get the ball rolling immediately.”

She hadn’t heard a word from Nigel since his email about the Sussex property, and she suspected she wouldn’t. She could just imagine Nigel and his lawyer going over the numbers and trying to figure out how much they could get away with. What they had come up with was shocking, and according to Harold Humphreys, offensive. He said that with luck, the marriage should be dissolved within six months. Their coming to an agreement would speed it along. The lawyer suspected that what Nigel wanted most on the list was the Sussex property. And as much money as he could get. The issue of parental rights could be more complicated, if he didn’t agree to the Sussex property, or reneged on the arrangement.

“I’d like that part of it settled before the baby’s born,” Coco said. But if she was two months pregnant, she’d be divorced a month before the baby was born.

“I’ll do my best,” he promised her. She knew she had some battles ahead with Nigel, and probably very nasty ones, and there was always the danger that it would leak to the press, particularly with those amounts, but she thought that her lawyer was the right man for the job, and Nigel’s had overshot the mark, possibly to his client’s detriment. Nigel had probably spurred him on in his unlimited greed and total lack of remorse.

After the first exchange between the lawyers, and several calls between her attorney and her trustee, Coco did what she’d been planning to do all week. She packed up every last shred of Nigel’s belongings, some personal files he had, his gym equipment, his clothes, the few things he had brought from his apartment. She boxed it up, hired a delivery service, and sent it all to her house in Sussex, where she knew he was living, until further notice. If they didn’t make the agreement he had suggested, she intended to evict him and put it up for sale. She didn’t want the headache of a country estate and didn’t need it. She hadn’t made a decision about the city house yet, and needed to think about what to do about the baby first, before she dealt with real estate. There was so much to think about. She returned his grandmother’s ring to her attorney to turn over to Nigel’s.