Fractured (Not Quite a Billionaire #2) (13 page)

“We aren’t fighting,” I said. Well, hopefully not.

“Hope,” Karen said, “you’re totally fighting. Maybe you guys need, like, marriage counseling or something.”

“That would be wonderful,” I said, “except that Hemi is apparently still married.”

All right, so I exploded a teensy bit.

“I’m gone,” Karen said. She slammed the car door and headed down the street, and I sat and took deep breaths and tried to calm down.

“Right,” I finally said. “I want to hear what he says. Please call him back.”

Hemi shot another glance at me, then picked up his phone and punched a button.

“Walter Eagleton,” I heard over the speakers.

“We got cut off,” Hemi said. “Tell me now.”

“You’re still married,” the voice—Walter—said. “The attorney you used seems to have had a bad habit of taking clients’ money without doing any work, then faking the documentation. You weren’t the only one. He left a real mess behind. He’s disbarred now, or I’d advise you to file a complaint.”

“He didn’t file anything? Not even the initial paperwork?” Hemi asked, his voice still perfectly controlled. “The separation?’

“No.”

The word lay in the car like a stone, and after a minute, when Hemi didn’t respond, the voice went on. “I did some poking around, contacted a family law attorney over there, and got some more information. It sounds like it could get complicated.”

“How?” Hemi asked.

“Well, first, there’s getting that divorce through. You’ve got to serve the other party, then get on the docket. The good news is, it’s not New York. A few months, that’s all, as long as we can find her.”

Her. The other party.
Hemi’s wife.

Well, I’d felt like we were rushing, hadn’t I? A few months would be fine. Never mind that we already had the date and the place, and that it was a place that mattered to Hemi, and the people who mattered to him, too. Not to mention those hopes and dreams of my own.

No. This is reality, not a fairy tale.
It would be fine. Except for, you know, that thing that was keeping me frozen. Another secret. After everything we’d said—one more great big, whopping, destructive secret.

“But maybe that’s just as well,” Walter said, echoing my thought, except not, because he went on to say, “There’s still that prenuptial agreement to work out. You do know, I’m sure, that your fiancée will have to get her own attorney for that, and if he’s any good at all, he’ll be pushing us hard. Working with that tight deadline might have been advantageous there, but that’s out the window anyway, so we may as well focus on the positive. We’ll have plenty of time to play hardball.”

I’d heard the phrase “The hair rose on the back of her neck,” too, but I’d never experienced it before.

“But the main issue,” Walter said, “is that the division of marital property in New Zealand is on an ‘equal sharing’ basis. Which appears to be what I’d think of as ‘community property.’ In other words, you’re looking at a fifty-fifty split of anything either party has acquired during the course of the marriage. And that is very bad news, unless…”

Hemi remained as still as stone, but my head was spinning. Too much information, and, no, it wasn’t the prospect of Hemi having less money that was dominating my thoughts.

“Unless what?” Hemi asked.

“The ‘equal sharing’ rule only applies if you lived together a total of three years, not counting your mandatory two-year separation before the divorce. I have the date of your marriage here, of course, but I don’t know whether you lived together before you got married, or when you separated.”

Hemi, his voice curt and cold, gave Walter two dates—months and years—that he’d somehow pulled from his memory bank, and I found myself able to marvel at that even in the midst of my agitation.

“Hmm,” Walter said. “I make that not quite three years. Are you sure?”

“I’m sure,” Hemi said.

“Then from what I know, the divorce—dissolution—is simple. We just have to track down your wife and serve her, then get a court date. You won’t even have to appear. We won’t bring up the issue of any property settlement, of course, and we’ll hope for the best.”

“Fine,” Hemi said.

“And I’d recommend that you delay setting any date for your wedding until everything’s settled,” Walter said. “As the terms of the prenup could depend on what you’re required to distribute to your current wife, if anything, and not setting the date will give you a strong psychological advantage. From what my matrimonial colleagues tell me, that leverage could be important. It could save you millions, in fact.”

“Fine,” Hemi said again. “Get it started straight away. Today.”

“The dissolution?” Walter asked. “Or the prenup? Or both?”

“The dissolution. Today. Go.”

A moment of silence, and then music filled the car again. Al Green.
Let’s Get Married.

Oh, great. Nice. Perfect.

Hemi twisted the key, pulled it from the ignition, and the music blessedly stopped. “Well, that’s that,” he said. “It won’t be this week. You’ll have time to get your shoes.”

Hemi

“And no,” I told Hope, aiming to cut her off before she started. “Obviously, I didn’t know that I was still married.”

She turned and stared at me for a long moment, her eyes huge in her set face. Then she got out of the car, slammed the door, and started walking fast down the street, in the opposite direction from the café.

I swore under my breath and headed after her, and she’d only taken a few steps before I had a hand on her upper arm. “Do not run away from me,” I told her, and if I wasn’t completely under control? I had good reason. “You want to talk? We’re talking. Now.”

She whirled on me and said, “Do…not…push me! I am so
mad
at you, Hemi. I don’t…” She put both hands on top of her head, made the kind of noise that, in a cartoon character, would be something like,
“Grrr!”
and I almost laughed in spite of everything.

I didn’t, though. I was more clever than that.

“Right,” I said. “Let’s walk.” Unnecessarily, since Hope was already marching down the street again, fury evident in every line of her body. The storm from the day before had passed, at least, but the air was chilly, night was falling, and she’d left the car without a coat.

I took off my suit coat and handed it to her. “Here. Put this on.”

“I don’t need it,” she said stiffly.

“Hope,” I said. “Don’t push
me.
Put it on.”

She swung around on me again. “Do you think you have any room at all to tell me to do
anything?”

I took a breath and blew it out, trying to center myself. “Yes. I do. Because I love you. And right now, I don’t want you to be cold.”

She hesitated a moment, then said, “Fine. Whatever. Thank you,” let me settle the jacket over her shoulders, tugged it around her, and turned the corner.

Within a couple minutes, we’d left the commercial buildings behind and were in a residential area. A dog barked as we passed, and that was all. Waihi at almost six o’clock on a June evening, the deep blue of twilight settling in, lights shining from windows and only the occasional car passing.

“I suppose you want me to say that I’m sorry I didn’t tell you there was a…wee glitch with the license this morning,” I said when Hope remained silent. “I didn’t think I’d need to.”

“Uh-
huh,”
she said. “And what were you going to do if the…wee
glitch
didn’t resolve itself, and you couldn’t get the license? I can’t wait to hear this plan.”

“Uh…” I put my hand up and rubbed the back of my head. “I was thinking I’d…” I stopped.

“Hemi,” she said.
“What?
Talk.”

“Right,” I said reluctantly. “I thought I could have a word with the celebrant and see if he’d do it anyway. As a…an affirmation,” I hurried to add.

She’d turned to stare at me, her steps slowing. “An
affirmation?
You weren’t even going to
tell
me? Or anybody?”

“Of course I was.” I was starting to get narky myself. She wanted me to be honest, and then she didn’t want to hear? Then she shouldn’t ask. “I’d have told
you
, at least. Later. I’d have had to, wouldn’t I? I’d have explained once I had the paperwork sorted, and we could’ve done the official bit back in New York, and we’d have been all good.”

She’d stopped walking, and her mouth was opening, then closing. “The official bit,” she finally got out. “That would the actual marriage.” She started walking again and shook her head. “I should still be so upset. I
am
still so upset. But I’m also just…” She waved an arm around. “I’ve got no words.”

“Gobsmacked,” I suggested. “That could be the word you’re looking for. It doesn’t sound like the best plan when you put it that way, no.”

“I know you’re better in business than that,” she said, “because I think we’d call that idea ‘dumb.’”

“Granted. And that one’s done, since you have a forgiving nature.” This was a negotiation, I reminded myself, and I was a good negotiator. Time to move on.

“Nope,” she said.
“Not
done. You have to say the ‘w’ word.”

I sighed and gave it up. “I was wrong, then. Happy now? Because I’m not. I’m still married, and I’m not one bit happy about that. You’re disappointed? Well, I’m disappointed as well. You could think of that.”

She was silent, and I said, “What?”

She glanced at me from the corner of her eye and kept walking. We’d come to an expanse of green lawn, a rugby pitch with a stand of trees beyond it, and she turned and headed across, heedless of the damp grass.

“What?” I asked again. “You heard what he said. I wasn’t with Anika long enough to give her the right to anything I’ve earned since.” I ignored the niggle at the back of my neck. I didn’t borrow trouble, and I didn’t worry. Both were a waste of time.

Half your marital property,
Walter had said. And I was still married.

No.
I hadn’t lived with Anika for three years—quite—and according to Walter, that was the law. We had to go through the formalities, and it would be over, even though it had really been over fifteen years ago.

Hope was beyond the pitch and veering off onto a track made of beaten earth, still muddy after the rain, that led through the trees at the edges of the reserve. I thought about suggesting that walking back to the car might be better than a tramp through the mud in the gathering dark, but I didn’t. If she wanted to walk through mud, I reckoned we were walking through mud.

You see how reasonable I was? How willing to compromise? Pity Hope didn’t.

Finally, she said, “When exactly were you planning on springing the idea of a prenup on me? The day before the wedding, when I was thinking about the vows, and our life together?” When I didn’t answer, she said, “It’s Monday night, Hemi. The wedding was supposed to be Saturday. You were running out of time, weren’t you, if I need an attorney? Or was it that ‘leverage’ thing? And that would have been a good thing to talk about when we had that ‘money’ discussion, don’t you think?”

Her voice was shaking. Anger, sadness, disappointment, I couldn’t tell. Maybe all three. But I had my own share of those, and now, I gave up on fighting it. “Did you hear me agree to that?” I asked. “Did you wonder why I didn’t cut him off? I let you hear him say all of that, and did you ask me about it, or did you jump to conclusions?”

“What? You sounded like you’d already had the conversation. You clearly
had
had the conversation. When?”

“This morning,” I said reluctantly. “But I didn’t ask him for a prenup.”

We’d come to a junction in the track, and she turned to face me, searching my eyes for the truth. It was even darker here, and I didn’t know what she could see, but Hope always saw too much.

“I don’t…” I said. I wanted to pace, so I held still and centered myself again. “I don’t talk about things until I’m ready to talk about them, and until I have to. I told you, I operate on a need-to-know basis. I didn’t want to talk to Walter about it in the car, so I didn’t. I’ll talk to him about it later.”

“Are you telling me you haven’t thought about asking me for a prenup?”