Danielle Steel - Matters of the Heart

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“Five million?” she asked, with a look of disbelief. “Are you kidding? What on earth are you planning to buy? The house only cost one and a half.” And she had spent that just to make him happy, to buy a house that, it turned out, had never belonged to his family after all.

“That’s the whole point. I don’t want to have to ask you for every penny, and then have to explain what I want to spend it on.” He sounded as though it made sense to him, and she stared at him incredulously, with a sinking feeling in her stomach.

“Finn, a spending account of five million dollars is insane.” She wasn’t angry, she was shocked. And he hadn’t hesitated to ask her for the money, as though it were a ten or a twenty floating around in her purse.

“With the kind of money you have?” Finn suddenly looked annoyed. “What the fuck is that about? Trying to control me by keeping the purse strings to yourself? Five million bucks is small change to you.” He wasn’t even being nice about it. It was as though everything between them had changed. Suddenly he wanted money, and he alternated between his old sweetness, and being angry and accusatory a lot of the time. This was not the Finn she had fallen in love with. It was a new one who upset her a lot of the time, and then would suddenly revert back to being loving again. But he did not look loving now. This was the new Finn in full bloom, with his hand up to his elbow in her purse. That was very new, and she didn’t like it at all.

“That’s a lot of money to anyone, Finn,” she said quietly. She was not amused.

“All right, make it four. If I’m going to be your husband, you can’t keep me on an allowance.”

“No, maybe not. But I’m not going to give you millions either, to blow however you want, or I’ll be out of money as fast as you are. I’d rather just pay the bills, the way I do now, and keep a few thousand in a petty cash account for you.” It was as far as she was willing to go. She didn’t want to buy him, and she was no one’s fool. She had learned a lot about handling money since her divorce.

“So you’re going to keep me on a leash,” he said angrily, narrowly missing a truck on a turn in the road, and his driving was scaring her. The road was wet and it was already dark, he was driving too fast, and he was furious with her.

“I can’t believe you’re asking me for five million dollars in an account for you,” Hope said, feigning a calm she didn’t feel.

“I told you, four would be fine,” he said through clenched teeth.

“I know you’re having money troubles, but I’m not going to do that, Finn.” She was offended that he had asked her, and even more so that he was insisting. “And when we get married, we’ll have to have a prenup.” She had mentioned it to her attorneys in New York several months before. They had already done a rough draft. It was relatively simple and said that what was Finn’s was his, and what was hers was hers. For obvious reasons, she didn’t want to commingle funds with him. Paul had given her that money, and she was keeping good track of it.

“I had no idea you were cheap,” he said bluntly, as he took another sharp turn in the road. It was an incredible thing for him to say to her, given what she had done for him with the house. He seemed to have forgotten very quickly her generosity with him. And she wasn’t cheap, she was smart. Especially given his newly discovered talent for telling lies. She was not about to turn her fortune over to him, or even a portion of it. Five million dollars was ten percent of what Paul had given her after twenty years.

They drove the rest of the way home in stony silence, and when he came to a sharp stop in front, she got out and walked into the house. She was extremely upset by his request, and he was even more so about her refusal. He walked straight into the pantry and poured himself a stiff drink, and she could already see the effect of it when he came upstairs to their room. She suspected he might even have had a second one by then.

“So what would you think is reasonable?” he asked her as he sat down, and she looked at him with a pained expression. Things were going from bad to worse. First his obsession with her getting pregnant, then the lying, and now he wanted a huge amount of money from her. Day by day he was turning into a different man, and then out of nowhere she’d get a glimpse of the old one, who had been so wonderful to her, and just as quickly he’d disappear again. There was something very surreal and schizophrenic about it, and she remembered his brother referring to him as a sociopath in the investigator’s report. She wondered now if maybe he was. She also recalled reading an article about something called “intermittent reinforcement,” where people were alternately abusive and loving, and their victims were so confused, they became more determined than ever to work things out. She felt like that now. Her head was spinning. His manipulations were a powerful magnetic force. It was almost as though his mask was slipping more and more and what she was seeing behind it was scaring her to death. She still believed that the good Finn was in there somewhere. But which one was real? The old one or the new one, or both?

“I’m not going to give you any money, Finn,” she said calmly, and then she saw that he had brought the bottle of scotch upstairs with him and poured himself another drink.

“You don’t think you can get away with that, do you?” he asked, turning nasty. “You’re sitting on fifty million bucks from your ex-husband, and I’m supposed to hang around, waiting for small change.” She had thought he was making a decent living, which would have solved the problem, but even if he wasn’t, she wasn’t about to start pouring millions of dollars into his accounts. It wasn’t right, and she didn’t want to buy a man. She realized too that he had complained about his expenses, sending Michael to college, and she wondered now if he paid for anything for his son, or if Michael’s grandparents were paying all his bills, and Finn was paying nothing.

“I’m not trying to get away with anything. I don’t want to buy a husband, or confuse things between us. I think what you’re asking for is unreasonable, and I’m not going to do it.”

“Then maybe you should marry Winfred instead. Maybe what you want is a servant and not a husband. If you’re only going to put a few thousand in an account and keep the rest yourself, then you should marry him.”

“I’m going to bed,” Hope said, looking unhappy. “I’m not going to discuss this with you anymore.”

“Did you actually expect to marry me, and not level the playing field a little? What kind of marriage is that?”

“A marriage based on love, not money. And honesty, not lies. Whatever happens after that is a matter of good fortune. But I’m not going to make a deal with you, or have you dictate to me to put five million dollars, or even four, in your petty cash account. That’s disgusting, Finn.”

“Your sitting on fifty million bucks of your ex-husband’s money and keeping it to yourself sounds pretty disgusting to me too. And fucking selfish, if you ask me.” It was the first time he had ever said anything even remotely like that to her, and she was shocked beyond belief. And she hadn’t appreciated the comment about marrying Winfred either, if she didn’t want to pay up. Finn was being rude, and mean. And tipping his hand in a frightening way.

Hope didn’t say another word to him. She turned around and walked into their bedroom and went to bed. She didn’t hear him come in that night. She had lain there for a long time before she fell asleep, wondering what was happening to her and what Finn was doing or turning into, right before her eyes. But whatever it was, it wasn’t good. In fact, things seemed to be falling apart at a rapid rate and getting worse day by day. It was getting harder and harder to believe that things would work out. She felt as though her heart were breaking as she went to sleep.

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