The Mischievous Mrs. Maxfield (73 page)

Blood pounded in my ears and probably flooded my eyes because all I could see was red for a long time as I stood perfectly still, summoning all my will power not to land my fists on Francis’s flushed face.

It was only when he broke his gaze from mine and looked around, the color draining from his face, that I realized the room had actually fallen silent despite the roaring in my ears.

With a suddenly dry throat, I blinked and slowly turned around, finding nearly a dozen pairs of eyes staring at me, rounded with shock.

If I ever had a moment when I wished the ground would open up and swallow me whole, this would be it.

I suddenly felt so sick to my stomach, the sharp, bitter acid of both my lunch and lies surging up my throat. 

I opened my mouth to speak but the only sound that emerged was a shaky gasp as my heart recovered from its momentary paralysis and started hammering against my ribcage as eager as I was to get away from this all.

My eyes darted around until they locked with a pair of bright blue ones, with corners that wrinkled with time and laugh lines—except that he wasn’t laughing now.

Martin. He knows now. He knows what a scam you are.

My vision suddenly watered but I quickly blinked the moisture away, opening my mouth at another attempt to speak again but I was interrupted by the slow swish of a door closing.

“What’s going on?” Brandon’s voice rang out clear in the dead-silent room. 

I turned my head toward him and my heart took a dive straight into my gut where the guilt was slowly burning me from the inside. 

He can’t be a part of this. All these people love and respect him. He’s got so much to lose while I had none to begin with.

“Francis just said that... that you paid Charlotte a million dollars,” Anna answered slowly, her beautiful face creasing into a confused frown.“You paid her to be your wife. I mean...  I... What’s he talking about, Brand?”

Brandon blanched as his gaze swung back to me, his hazel eyes alarmed, and took a step toward me. 

“No.” The word was loud yet hollow as it left my lips but it effectively stopped Brandon in his tracks.

“Why don’t we ask Francis to expound on his statement,” Martin spoke up in a soft, even voice that arrested everyone’s attention. “Frans?”

The man beside me snapped out of his frozen state and I could hear his ragged breathing as he took a long moment before speaking.

“I have in my possession a contract that states a business arrangement between Brandon and Charlotte worth about a million dollars in payout,” Francis explained, surprising me when he sounded pained, like a man who was shooting his foot with every word that left his mouth. 

I glanced at him and realized that he was actually not enjoying a single moment of this. 

Apparently, Francis doesn’t like playing Judas. I mean, he hung himself to death later in the story, didn’t he?

“The terms are for them to join in marital union for a year, each clause in the contract summing up to what is essentially a marriage in name only,” Francis continued and I could see Brandon flushing so deep a shade of red, he was going to catch fire any second. “At the conclusion of a year, the two parties are going to dissolve the marriage, Charlotte walking away with a million dollars total after four quarterly pay-installments and Brandon a free man once again, his fortune intact due to a pre-nup.”

The cold, business-like nature of my marriage with Brandon sounded like fingernails on the chalkboard but they were the black and white facts no amount of gray area was ever going to completely cover for good.

The more complicated the lie, the harder it was to untangle your way out of it.

“But why the hell would they do something like that?” Jake demanded. “People don’t just strike up a bargain to get hitched for a year for no particular reason.”

Brandon came forward. “I can explain—”

“No, I’ll explain,” I interrupted, swallowing the lump in my throat and thrusting my chin up to face up to the truth we could no longer run away from.

“Martin gave Brandon an ultimatum—marry me or give up the CEO position to Francis,” I confessed, glancing at the old man whose expression betrayed nothing despite the collective gasps in the room. 

“I’m not sure why I was picked the candidate or why Martin came up with the idea but Brandon’s initial offer had been simple—that I convince Martin to change his mind,” I continued, ignoring the voice in my head warning me that to tell another half-truth, half-lie concoction to get out of another lie wasn’t going to get me ahead at all. 

Forgive me, Brand, but I can’t cost you every person in the world you care for. You can’t be the bad guy. Too many people need you to be the hero.

He must’ve understood what I was trying to do because he suddenly looked stricken and reached out as if to grab me.“Charlotte, no. Don’t—”

“But it was the chance of a lifetime and I was smart enough to know what I could get out of it,” I went on in a loud, firm voice that warned away any interruption. “I was attracted to Brandon, and I could certainly use some of his cash so I gave him a proposition where we all win—Martin gets what he wants, Brandon makes his Dad happy and gets to keep the CEO position, and I get to have a million dollars. Our marriage has become a bit more real than the original one we stated in the paperwork but that’s the truth behind our mad rush to get married—and to each other, of all people, when it was quite clear to everyone from the very beginning that were very wrong for each other. There was no Cinderella story where the prince met the pauper and fell in love. We cooked that publicity up. It was all business in the beginning. I’m so sorry that we lied to you but it wasn’t our intention to hurt anybody.”

I turned to Martin pleadingly. “And please don’t hate Brandon. He only wanted to make you happy and he was willing to pay whatever price it cost him.”

I hastily turned away before I could see every damnable thing I did reflected in Martin’s usually kind eyes. The man had been more of a father to me all these years and the shame that I’d kept at bay since this whole masquerade started finally crashed into me like a tidal wave.

I wanted to run, and keep running.

“My wife takes on the blame I have more than an equal share of,” Brandon spoke up, striding forward and slipping an arm around me before I could react, drawing me away from Francis and pulling me close in a protective stance.

Oh, Brand. Why burn with me? 

“It was all my idea and Charlotte wanted no part of it,” he continued, levelling our audience a look that challenged anyone who wouldn’t believe him. “But her circumstances were dire and like the businessman that I am, I used them to convince her of what she would gain if she went along with my idea. While that weakened her defense, it didn’t persuade her. So I used her regard for my father to talk her into it. She loves the old man and would do anything to see him happy and I convinced her that marrying me for a year to satisfy Dad’s plans should do the trick.”

“Brand, don’t do this,” I whispered to him, my head lowering in shame. 

Whether he heard me or not didn’t matter because he kept going like a man determined to drag himself home on one leg, clutching the bleeding wound where he’d hacked off the other one. “She fought me all the way to the altar, and while I can’t deny that the motives that prompted our union were purely selfish and wrong, my marriage to Charlotte became as real as it could be from the moment I first met her. I love her—I might have since the day she nearly smacked me on the face for accusing her to be a teenage gold-digger who manipulated my father into becoming a pawn in her money-making scheme. Dad’s ultimatum just became an easy excuse to justify why I suddenly wanted to marry the girl I hadn’t even wanted to be saddled with in the first place, and who I was prepared to pay off to be rid of.”

I sagged against Brandon, grateful for his solid strength because I was about to fall apart—both from the guilt and relief that despite all the people I may have lost forever today, I still had him, at least—until I eventually give him up once it became clear just how much he’d lost because of me.

“I love her, and she’s my wife. She’ll be my wife for the rest of our lives, the contract be damned. If anyone has a problem with that, you can take it up with me.”

Brandon’s last statement issued a challenge that left the room completely silent save for the sharp breaths I was sucking in to hold it together.

I couldn’t bear to look at anyone—not at the people I’d started counting as my own family. They were people who, at some point, had put their trust in me and took me in despite how awkwardly I fit the shoes I was never meant to wear—people I’d betrayed from the moment I signed my name on that dotted line, whatever the reason may have been.

It didn’t matter that Brandon and I had fallen in love—we still fed them a lie and smiled our way through it. 

Suddenly, I felt like I was as small and worthless as an insignificant speck of dust—the kind you brushed off and left behind.

“I’d  be the first person to say that my methods were completely selfish and antiquated but I can’t say I have regrets with how I’ve acted.”

I looked up a second after I realized it was Martin who’d just spoken.

“I knew of the crush you’d nursed for my son over the years, Charlotte,” the old man continued calmly. “And I knew how you were struggling to keep your head above water after you came back from Paris at your father’s death.”

Brandon’s arm tightened around my waist but he said nothing.

“I knew of Brandon’s cycle of dating women who understood and accepted his rules about commitment or lack thereof,” Martin said. “I knew that if he kept dating the same kind of woman, he would never make the effort to look for one he could love, marry and spend his life with.”

Martin’s eyes swept back and forth between me and Brandon, a glimmer of a smile in them. “I’m an old man with little time left in the world. I thought I could do something for two people I deeply cared about.”

“You were matchmaking them, Dad?” Tessa asked, her eyes wide with shock. “Are you kidding me?”

The old man smiled a little. “It was a risky bluff—one they could’ve both called me out on. I know them both well enough that if they really hated each other once they’ve met, they would come to me to demand that I drop my outrageous ultimatum—and I would’ve. But I got Brandon’s call saying he was bringing Charlotte to brunch and when I saw them together, I realized just how well my plan worked out.”

“Didn’t it occur to you to maybe just invite them both to dinner or something? Did you really have to get them married right away?” Anna asked with a disbelieving shake of her head. I couldn’t blame her because my mouth had dropped and stayed open as I continued to listen to Martin’s confession.

“I had to put the seed of marriage into Brandon’s mind somehow,” Martin answered with an unapologetic shrug. “I didn’t want him to meet Charlotte and think of her as some new girl he could date for a little bit before moving on to the next convenient choice. It wasn’t the smoothest of ploys but it worked, didn’t it? I thought I would at least get them to somehow date but that they actually wanted to get married right away was just a bonus.”

I looked up at Brandon and saw that he was as flabbergasted as I felt.

Really? All of this was just Martin’s pure whim?

“Just as you said in your speech at the Teaser’s opening party, Charlotte,” the old man added. “The world turns on the momentum of a chain reaction spurred by perception—I gave an ultimatum. Your interpretation of it prompted decisions from both of you that eventually led you here today, happily married, each of you eager to shoulder the entire blame to spare the other the slightest grief.”

“So you’re not mad at them... right?” Mattie’s asked, directing his father an expectant gaze. 

My chest tightened at the realization that it was so much worse to have your sins laid out in front of a child who still knew very little of the very flawed life adults lived.

Martin let out a long, deep sigh. “I have no right to be angry at them when I’m the one who forced them into these circumstances. I only wish their rough start didn’t haunt them as it obviously has because it suddenly became very clear that it’s made the menu for blackmail.”

No one missed the sharp, narrowed gaze Martin directed his nephew.

“They’re not even going to get a scolding, are they, Uncle?” Francis spat out bitterly. “Brandon pulls a fast one on you and you pat him on the back for a job well done. I bring out the truth and I get your condemnation.”

“Should I pat your back then, Francis, because you decided to use the truth when it was convenient to you, for an agenda solely your own, and at the expense of everyone who has nothing to gain from your selfishly motivated honesty?” Martin asked bluntly, his mouth set in a grim line. “The difference between the heroes and the villains is in the purpose their actions serve.”

The comparison didn’t sit well with Francis because his nostrils flared and his fists clenched. “I have something important that your hero of a son took away from me. I used whatever available leverage I had to take back what he should’ve never taken from me in the first place.”

There was a long, silent pause in the room before Martin exhaled wearily, the fight draining from him, each year of his several decades showing plainly on his face.