But there was almost nothing left of that woman now – the one who looked like a strong wind would blow her over, whose arm had felt alarmingly thin and frail beneath his fingers, whose eyes looked dead.
He
had done that to her, he realized now with a groan. She’d devoted herself to him, had given him everything he’d asked of her, had
loved
him for God’s sake, and he had thrown all of it away – he’d shoved her out of his life just as he’d shoved her out of his car that night.
When he’d finally accepted the offer to join Morton Sterling, it had been with the knowledge that Angela worked for the same firm. The decision to leave Jessup Prior – and all that he’d built up there – had been a tough one, a decision he’d thought about and planned for nearly a year. He had grown increasingly concerned about the company’s financial stability over the years, was dissatisfied with its earnings and cash reserves, and had begun to hear mounting rumors of potential buy-outs or takeovers. But when he’d shared his concerns with fellow brokers or upper level managers, they had all brushed him off, either unwilling to believe the cold hard facts or choosing to ignore them for reasons of their own. Nick had been determined not to go down with a sinking ship, and to leave on his own terms. He’d discreetly met with three different rival firms, carefully weighing what perks and bonuses each one offered, and taking his time to plan his ultimate departure. Management at Jessup Prior had been in shell-shocked disbelief when he’d rather casually announced he was leaving, and though he hadn’t been able to outright take his accounts with him, he was supremely confident that nearly every one would follow him to his new firm. He had also taken three of his team members with him, and had the guarantee of being able to hire a fourth as part of his signing package.
Even before his new manager – Paul McReynolds – had brought him to “meet” Angela, he’d heard grumblings from a few of the other brokers about the “ice queen in the corner” and “Ballbreaker Barbara’s protégé”. After leaving Angela’s surprisingly small corner office – surprising given the level of production she’d achieved – he had casually asked Paul about her. Nick had felt immensely proud to learn how she’d built up her portion of Barbara Lowenstein’s client base into a truly impressive book. True, she’d received something of a lucky break but, given what he’d known of the older woman, there was little doubt Angela had more than earned those accounts.
And seeing Angela again today after all this time had definitely sent him on a little trip down memory lane. In the years since he’d ended things between them, he hadn’t allowed himself to think of her very often, largely to avoid the guilt that invariably accompanied such thought. He’d moved on, of course, easing back into his old routines without blinking an eye. But while there had certainly been other women, none of them had lasted more than a week or two, and he couldn’t honestly remember any of their names by now. And for the last eighteen months or so, he’d been without a woman altogether, had been celibate for perhaps the first time since his teens.
He’d told himself the reason for his self-induced celibacy was simply because he’d been too focused on transitioning his business to another firm, getting everything in order, and making sure he took the best possible offer. But a big part of his abstention was because he was tired of the whole dating scene at this point in his life, weary of all the work involved, and the inevitable nasty scene that occurred when he told a woman he wouldn’t be seeing her again. During the year he’d been with Angela, it had been a tremendous relief not to have to engage in all of the various dating rituals, to know that for once he had a steady woman in his life. It had really been the perfect arrangement, especially since she’d been so completely keen to obey his rules and had never tried to ask him for more than he was willing to give. And as each month of their relationship had passed, Nick had been increasingly surprised that he hadn’t grown bored or dissatisfied with her, or that he hadn’t felt the restless need to move on to someone new.
Yes, everything had been near to perfect until she’d come home from that damned family wedding looking like she’d been emotionally tortured and drained. He’d silently cursed her total bitch of a mother, had wondered how a woman could say such awful things to her own child, and had felt tremendous empathy for Angela. Granted, his own mother and father would never win any awards for Parent of the Year, but at least he’d never felt unwanted or unloved.
Nick had sensed all along that Angela secretly wanted more from their relationship – even though she’d been extremely careful, almost paranoid about voicing such needs – and had seen the hurt on her face that she couldn’t always hide when he’d left her bed after several hours of hot, intense sex. The air of casual sophistication she’d always assumed in his presence had begun to ring false, and by the end she’d started clinging to him in near-desperation, as though she knew the end was near for them.
It had been on the night of her birthday when he’d realized things had to end once and for all. When, at the very height of passion, she’d let the words slip out, the three words that had felt like an electric shock to his system. And he’d realized then he had known all along that she’d fallen in love with him, and had deliberately chosen to ignore that fact. He’d continued to take advantage of her willingness to be with him under any conditions – conditions that any other woman would have balked to even consider. But Angela had wanted him badly enough, had loved him that much, that she’d put up with his neglect, his control, the deliberate way he always kept her at a distance. And he’d decided that he couldn’t keep leading her on, couldn’t live with himself another week under such conditions, so he’d done what he believed to be the right thing and cut her loose.
In the weeks following their break-up, Nick had resisted the urge to call and check up on her, and make sure she was okay. He’d told himself over and over that this break was the best thing for Angela, and that now she’d be free to find a nice guy who could treat her right and with whom she could form a normal, healthy relationship. God knew after the way he’d been brought up, and after what he’d seen firsthand of so-called normal relationships, that he had zero idea of how to have one himself.
Nick had thought many times over the years that a list of the more unfortunate twists of fate in the history of mankind most assuredly had to include the day his parents met. There was no other logical explanation for why two people who were almost polar opposites, and who had nothing even remotely in common with each other, would have met, hooked up, conceived a child – accidentally, of course – and then muddled things up even more by deciding to get married. But fate eventually corrected itself when his parents got divorced less than three years later, going their separate ways to live the sort of lives they had always been intended to. All would have been right with the world from that point on except for one major complication – the child they had conceived together, namely Nick.
It was hard for Nick to imagine how his stern, uptight, and by-the-book father had ever let his hair down long enough to get involved with his fun-loving, amoral, and irresponsible mother. But, having seen photos of the two of them when they’d still been in their twenties, he’d had a fairly good idea of the one thing that had brought them together – sex.
Roger Manning’s own father – Nick’s paternal grandfather – had made it very clear to his only son from a young age about what would be expected of him –just as several prior generations of Manning men had done with their own sons. Roger attended a prestigious private high school, obtained his undergraduate degree at the family alma mater Yale, and then enrolled in law school at the same university. After passing the bar exam, he’d be expected to join the family firm in Boston, and perhaps eventually become a judge or a member of the Presidential cabinet. There was no question of Roger not obeying or going against his father’s wishes, and until he met the gorgeous Sheena Sumner during spring break of his final year of law school, he wouldn’t have even considered doing so.
Sheena – blonde, buxom, and beguiling – had been a young, up and coming TV actress when she’d met the darkly handsome but rather prudish Roger. She’d been visiting the same Florida beach town where Roger was enjoying spring break with several of his school friends, even staying at the same resort. His friends had dared him to approach her, having found it hilarious that he was possibly the one man in America who didn’t know who the sexy, provocative actress was. After several drinks to bolster his courage, Roger had asked her to dance and the rest was history – tawdry as it was.
They had fallen in instant love/lust and spent the rest of the week together. With her TV series having wrapped for the season, Sheena had followed Roger back to New Haven where they’d continued their steamy, passionate affair. And then two things happened almost simultaneously that changed everything – Sheena’s series was cancelled and she discovered she was pregnant.
She’d begged Roger to marry her, vowing to give up acting to become a full-time wife and mother. They’d eloped, choosing not to break the news to his parents until after the fact. Very predictably, his father had hit the roof but none of his threats or insults could convince Roger to annul his ill-advised marriage. Time and the course of nature would wind up taking care of that matter instead.
Extremely ambitious and intent on advancing his career as quickly as possible, Roger had grown impatient and intolerant of Sheena’s lack of formal education, her unwillingness to play the part of devoted wife, and her careless, irresponsible attitude. For her part, Sheena swiftly became bored with being a stay-at-home wife and mother, missed California and all of her celebrity friends, and longed for a more exciting, glamorous life. So when Nick was barely two years old, his parents divorced, and none too amicably. And while Sheena left her marriage with a considerable financial settlement, the shared custody arrangements for Nick were far less generous to her.
Nick remained in Boston with his father, who wasted little time in remarrying – this time to a fellow attorney, an ambitious, intelligent woman who understood and supported Roger’s rapidly advancing career. Nick was left largely in the care of nannies, sent to the same elite private schools that his father and grandfather had attended, and had been subjected to the exact same sort of rules and controls that they had had to endure as well. But from the time he’d been old enough to think and speak for himself, Nick had rebelled against those rules, had chafed against the controls. Roger had blamed his son’s continual defiance on the bad genes he’d inherited from Sheena, and dealt with Nick’s rebelliousness by imposing still more rules. By the time Nick had entered his senior year of high school, he’d been counting the days until he turned eighteen and would finally be free to make his own decisions and control his own life.
The very first thing he’d done in preparation for his liberation had been to rather calmly inform Roger that he had no intention of following in the family footsteps, either by attending Yale or becoming an attorney. Roger had stared in speechless shock when his only child had announced very matter-of-factly that he would be attending Stanford instead, courtesy of the athletic scholarship he’d been offered, and would be majoring in finance. Roger had protested, of course, had shouted and threatened and had very nearly taken a swing at the son who now towered over him by several inches and outweighed him by more than thirty pounds. But all of his yelling and theatrics had been of no avail in the end, because Nick had intimidated his father in more than a physical way and Roger had thrown up his hands in exasperated surrender.
From that point on, Nick had immediately begun to make his own rules, control his own life, and for the past twenty-odd years no one had ever tried to defy him or bend him to their will. Not his teachers, his coaches, his employers. It helped, of course, that Nick had always come to class or football practice or the office more than fully prepared, having thoroughly studied the lesson or the game plan or the investment, and by doing so had gained the respect of his superiors and colleagues along the way.
Roger had certainly tried many times over the ensuing years to re-assert his control over his son, but had not so graciously conceded defeat each time. As for his mother – well, that was a whole different story, wasn’t it? Because if his father had been an uptight control freak who lived his life according to an archaic rule book, then Sheena had delighted in breaking every single one of those same rules and then some.
Had it been under Roger’s – and the rest of the Manning legal team’s – complete control, then Nick would likely never have been allowed to see his mother at all. But even though Sheena was something of a fluttery birdbrain with little common sense, the same could not be said of the sharp, streetwise attorney who managed her business affairs and contracts. It had been due to his influence that Sheena had set her stiletto-shod foot down and insisted on having summers and holidays with Nick. Roger hadn’t been able to block his ex-wife’s access to their son, and thus Nick had spent his summers and most holidays in various parts of the globe with his glamorous, fun-loving mother – in Monte Carlo, Buenos Aires, St. Bart’s, Mallorca. And Sheena had more than lived up to her well-earned reputation as a free-spirited party girl. Wherever they happened to be staying for the summer – a rented villa in the south of France; on her current boyfriend’s yacht sailing around the Greek Islands; in the luxury condo in Acapulco that belonged to her agent – there were always lots of other people hanging about, always a party of some sort happening. Sheena’s vibrant personality attracted an entourage wherever she went, and Nick never knew who he’d find sleeping in a guest room or passed out cold on the living room sofa. Sheena had a constant parade of husbands, boyfriends, and lovers, was always in love, always happy, and had never learned the meaning of the words privacy or discretion. Whenever Nick stayed with his mother, it was a sure bet that the paparazzi was also close by. He’d still been a young boy when he had become repelled by their persistence and intrusiveness. His own image had been plastered all over the tabloids, usually next to a photo of Sheena drinking and dancing with the current man in her life – men who had gradually become younger and younger as the years passed. Nick had been angry and upset at this gross invasion of his privacy, especially when he returned to school in the fall and had to bear the brunt of jokes from his friends who’d seen one or more of the photos.