The Convenient Wife (A BWWM Steamy Marriage of Convenience Romance) (7 page)

“See? I knew there was a reason I
brought you,” I said, nudging Ollie on the shoulder. “Look at how useful you
are.”

“You told me I was an idiot for
taking that course,” he replied, glaring at me.

I nodded very seriously. “And you
were right to not listen to me.”

I took a pen from Ollie’s jacket
pocket and popped the cap off, scrawling my initials in across the document at
the proper spots. With a flourish I signed my name at the last page, along with
the date before taking the contract and holding it out for Gigi.

“Here you go, wife-to-be,” I said, a
grin playing across my lips. “It’s time to sign our souls away.”

“You can cut that wife crap right
there. Unless someone’s around, you’re going to treat me like your roommate
until I’m ready to take things further... Clear?” she said, reaching out to
take the stack of legal papers from me.

“Is that in the contract?”

“Don’t make me revise it.”

Our thumbs brushed ever-so-slightly.
Her smooth skin felt like silk against mine, and I could have sworn I felt my
breath catch for the briefest of moments. My eyelids fluttered for a second,
unable to let go of the papers. My eyes locked onto Gigi’s.

Once again, the world returned to
normal speed and I let go of the contract with a jolt. I swallowed nervously,
my stomach churning. I cleared my throat.

What
the hell was that?
I
asked myself, turning my eyes toward the table as she initialed and signed just
as I had done. Once everything was signed, Gigi handed the papers to Ollie.

“That should take care of
everything,” she said, giving a fleeting smile as she took one last drink from
her coffee. “I want a copy of that.”

“Right!” I said, scrambling to my
feet, desperate to find any way out of the uncomfortable situation. It was
strange to feel like this. I thought my feelings were just a bit of look but
don’t touch infatuation… I couldn’t actually be
attracted
to her, could I? No, she was
nothing
like any of the girls I went for. She was… different.
Completely different. But maybe that was a good thing…

Don’t
be a dumbass. You’re going to ruin everything! You told her you could love her.
Attraction comes with the territory.

“Let’s get you that car, huh?” I
said, trying to turn our conversation and my thoughts to something I was way
more comfortable with: money. “I’m sure you have places to be.”

“You got that right,” she said with
a little laugh. For some reason, it made me feel a little…

…small.

And not at all like the Dorian
Lambert I was so sure I knew.

What
the hell is this girl doing to me?

My new Mercedes-Benz rolled so
smoothly through the crowded streets, the purr of its engine so silken I could
barely even hear it. I opened her up as I merged onto the highway going north.
Despite the euphoria of knowing that this marvel of modern engineering was all
mine, the thought of what I was speeding toward was spoiling my otherwise good
mood.

In a week, the bank would repossess
my father’s house, leaving him like so many other veterans—alone and without a
home. I had to find somewhere for him to stay, at least until this deal with
Dorian could be finalized. My tiny apartment was barely big enough for me, let
alone a seventy-two-year-old man. My options weren’t numerous, and the thought
of my father in some ratty “facility” made my skin crawl. I knew how many
lawsuits for neglect were raised against places like that.

And that was just the cases that
actually got reported.

My only other option was almost
equally unappealing—my brother.

Growing up, the two of us were
always at odds—fighting, name-calling, the kind of things you would expect a
couple of siblings to get up to. It wasn’t until college that our sibling
rivalry turned into genuine dislike, especially after my brother decided to
stop going by his first name.

“What’s wrong with the name your
mother gave your?” my father would ask, his wrinkly brows knitted together.
“Tyrell is just as good a name as any.”

“Jon
is
my name, dad! I just don’t like being called Tyrell.”

“You just don’t like sounding
black,” my father had accused.

Things got a little more heated after
that
argument. Jon left to stay in
the dorms on campus, and my father did his best not to mention him again. The
truth was they only hated one another so much because they were exactly
alike—pigheaded.

I pulled off the highway and made my
way through the quiet, suburban streets that my brother called home now. I’d
only ever been to his house once before when he invited me to a dinner party
for some of his coworkers. It ended with at least four white guys breathing
down my neck looking for a date, and not a single person there that I even
knew.

I pulled into the driveway and put
my car in park, looking up at the impressive home my brother’s money had bought
him—money, my father would always say, he got from being ashamed of who he was.
It was a two-story colonial knock-off, a house you pictured a cute old couple
living in with their cute little miniature poodle. Not exactly threatening.

The man who stepped out to greet me,
however,
definitely
looked
threatening—at least before I noticed his blue terrycloth bathrobe and
slippers. Jon’s eyes were practically falling out of his head as he looked at
my new car.

“Gigi? Since when have you been able
to afford a Mercedes?” he asked, something other than admiration in his voice.
Was he actually jealous?

“Don’t worry about the car,” I said
as I got out and locked it remotely, driving my point home with a little
beep
. “I really need to talk to you
about something. Something important.”

Jon narrowed his eyes at me before
motioning for me to come inside. His house was quaint in a way I didn’t expect
to see from my brother—or at least, the guy he
used
to be.

“Hey, Georgia!” came a familiar
lyrical voice as we cleared the door and entered the foyer.

My brother’s wife, Mary, was a
gorgeous woman, light-skinned with flowing hair that bobbed just past her
shoulder blades. I’d never really gotten to spend much time with my brother’s
wife before they’d gotten married, and even less now that they lived in
Suburbia, USA. She was a nice enough lady, and she and Jon had made cute kids
together.

I smiled. “How’re you doing, Mary?”

She smiled even bigger. “Fantastic!
I was just about to head out to the gym for an afternoon workout.”

“Sounds
fun
,” I said, trying to sound a least somewhat sincere. “I just
needed to talk with you two about something really quick.”

“Oh! Of course. We just need to make
it quick. I can’t keep my trainer waiting too long.” She winked. “You know how
it is.”

No. I really didn’t. I nodded
anyway. “Sure. Where are the kids?” I asked, noticing the missing sounds of my
nieces screaming from the backyard swing set.

“Over at Mary’s mother’s house,” Jon
said. Then he added, almost defensively, “The kids missed grandma.”

“And we definitely needed the
break,” Mary chimed in, feigning exhaustion. Jon replied with a faint smile.

“Maybe they should learn that they
have a grandpa, too,” I said as the three of us walked into his kitchen. The
pictures on the wall were all full of Jon sitting with his kids and Mary, even
a few with their grandparents—their maternal ones, at least.

Not a damn one of me or Dad. Maybe
he was right back then. Maybe Jon really did want to forget where he came from.

“I don’t want to expose them to that
man,” Jon shot back, his voice turning venomous.

“They at least deserve to know that
they
have
a grandfather, Jon,” I
pointed out. “What’re you going to say to them when you’ve got to bring them to
his funeral one day? ‘Oh, by the way kids, you have a grandfather I never
wanted to tell you about?’_”

“We just don’t think it’s the right
time. And I think your father might scare the kids a bit,” Mary tried to
explain, but all I could hear was the poorly hidden disgust in her voice. Our
father hadn’t even been invited to their wedding.

Jon sighed. “Don’t make me out to be
the bad-guy in this, Gigi. Dad’s the one—”

“Dad just wanted you to be proud of
who you were, Jon.” I shook my head at him, looking again at all the decidedly pottery
barn style décor in his house. “What’s so wrong with that?”

My brother scowled. “Do you know how
hard I had to work for the people here to accept us? We’re the only black
family in this entire neighborhood—do you know what that feels like?”

Of course I did! I was a lawyer, for
Chrissakes! And as hard as it had been for Jon to get ahead in this world as a
black man, it’d been twice as hard for me to get ahead as a black
woman.

I held up my hands in an attempt to
salvage this discussion. “I get it, Jon. I do. But you need to understand where
Dad was coming from. We’d just lost Mom, and you giving up your name just felt
like one more thing he was losing on top of her death. He didn’t want you to
feel ashamed of yourself—of him.”

“But things are better this way,”
Mary said, doing her best to keep her bleach-white smile bright and cheery.
“Simpler. And I think adding your father to the equation would just make things
worse.”

I stared at her for a while, letting
that gut punch sink in. All right, if I wasn’t going to hold her skin tone
against her, then I was definitely going to hold a grudge against that remark.

Jon didn’t say anything at first,
walking over to the cabinet and taking out a bottle of what looked like
whiskey. He pulled out a tumbler and poured himself a glass. I couldn’t help
giving him a disapproving glare—it wasn’t even one o’clock in the afternoon
yet. I glanced at Mary, who averted her gaze.

“So, what did you want to talk to me
about?” he muttered.

I took a breath. “Dad needs help,
Jon.”

Jon snorted. “What is it this time?
More money for bail? Another round of rehab?”

“I’ve been handling the bail. Me,” I
reminded him with a glare. Jon had never contributed one red cent to bailing
our father out of the results of his escapades. No, he left that to his
deep-in-debt sister. “He needs a place to stay for a little while—until I can
figure something else out, something more permanent.”

“No, Georgia. We can’t possibly—”
Mary began before Jon started talking over her.

“You want him to stay here? In
my
house?” He laughed, but there was no
joy in it. He took a long sip from his tumbler. “You’re fucking crazy.”

I scowled. “It’s not permanent, Jon.”

“It’s not even going to be
temporary
, Gigi. My answer is no.”

I threw up my hands, my rage starting
to get the best of me. “I can’t keep him at my place, and they’re going to take
the house.”

Jon took another swig. “Good. It’ll
serve his drunk-ass right.”

I looked pointedly at the glass of
whiskey in my brother’s hand. “Like you’re so much better,
Tyrell
, drinking your damn whiskey at noon.”

“So I can’t drink in my own damn
house without being just like my old man?” he sneered. Christ, he really was
like Dad. “And besides, what would my neighbors think? As though I don’t have
to tip-toe around here, now I have to have my alcoholic father move in. That’s
a sitcom I
don’t
want to watch.”

Looking at Mary, I noticed she’d gone
silent, her eyes on a picture of Jon playing with the girls out back. My
brother always cared way too much about what other people thought about him,
and it never failed to drive a huge wedge between him and the rest of our
family; if I didn’t insist on seeing my nieces, I’m not even sure they’d know I
existed.

“Just for a few days, Jon,” I
pleaded, growing weary. “And then we can work something else out. I promise.”

“How about for
zero
days?” he shot back. I swear, I was so angry that smoke was
coming out of my nose like a bull. “I don’t even need one of my neighbors
catching a look at Dad, especially the way he dresses. It’s an embarrassment.
Does he even wash his damn clothes anymore?”

“That’s it. I’ve had it,” I growled,
pointing a finger at my brother and his stupid booze. “You need to watch your
damn mouth, Tyrell. You don’t get to act like you’re better than us just
because now you get to keep up with the fucking Joneses.”

“Georgia, please don’t start this
now,” Mary said, her voice losing some of its musical quality.

“Don’t you start with me, Mary,” I
snapped, and she withered under my glare. Jon tried to get between us.

“Look, Georgia—”

“You’d best call me Gigi if you know
what’s good for you
Tyrell
,” I
interrupted, my face flaring with red-hot anger.

“Whatever. There are places for
people like Dad to go, facilities and senior centers where they take care of
people like him—drunks and veterans.” He gave a little chuckle. There still
wasn’t a single note of happiness in it. “I’m not sure whether those are
synonyms yet or not. But he’s got his pension, and the Army’s got his health
insurance. He can afford a decent place to go.”

“You have a shitty idea of what ‘decent’
means,” I muttered. I’d never realized just how much of a snob my brother had
become. The more I stood in his presence, the more I felt him looking down his
nose at me.

“Well, decent living arrangements
for Dad qualify as a drunk tank in the back of the local precinct, so yeah, I
guess those standards are pretty low.”

“We can’t put him in some home, Jon.
It’s not right. The way they treat people there is terrible.”