And that would eat at him.
It was then I understood why people like me partnered with people like me. Why my mother drilled it into my head at every opportunity just what kind of man I needed to find.
Conrad had fit that bill not only because he was a neurosurgeon who made an excellent salary, but because he came from money. His family was not as wealthy as mine but they were far from hurting. Like me, he’d lived a privileged life and had his own trust fund. He started his practice without crippling student loans to repay because his parents had paid for every penny of his education.
Before I made the decision to move on with Mickey, I needed to know down to my soul that I could give him what he needed and I could accept what he could give me.
It was then I thought of waking up in his bed in his masculine bedroom in his family house in a very nice neighborhood, doing it with Mickey making love to me.
Sure, his fireplace was not as stylish as mine and my daybed would not match his furniture.
But I’d go to sleep in Mickey’s bed with Mickey and wake up with Mickey. A Mickey I hoped was falling in love with me. A Mickey who would never cheat on me. A Mickey who teased me and annoyed me and got me deals on cars I didn’t need because I could afford to overpay. A Mickey who protected me, and even when we were fighting and the sex started rough and distant, it was fabulous and we ended up connected in more ways than just physically.
I had had the partner I was supposed to have and he nearly destroyed me.
And it shook me tremendously to understand that if the good I got from Mickey kept going, got better, I’d give up everything to keep it.
This shook me because the problem with all of that was convincing Mickey to believe it and getting him past any concerns he had about sacrifices I was willing to make to have a man at my side who truly cared, who looked out for me, who I enjoyed annoying me, who made me laugh, made me happy and who was phenomenal in bed.
“Amy,” he called when I didn’t speak.
“Do you understand that will always be just what I need?” I asked.
“I think that’s dawning on me.”
“If this works,” I whispered, “I get to go all out for Christmas. Birthdays, we keep it real. I don’t want to one-up you or make you feel anything but good about what we give the kids and I don’t want you competing with what we give each other. But Christmas, just Christmas, I get to go crazy and we can say it’s from Santa.”
“Crazy in the sense checkin’ off more than a few items on a wish list is a crazy where I can deal. Crazy in the sense you buy each kid a Porsche and take us all on a family cruise of the Caribbean on the staffed yacht you buy me, no.”
“Do you want a yacht?”
“Do you know how steep Magdalene Harbor slip fees are?”
“No.”
“Just sayin’, no, I don’t want a yacht or even a dingy, I gotta pay slip fees and it sits there with me not usin’ it because I’m busy working, with my kids or fuckin’ my woman.”
I started giggling but stopped abruptly and called, “Mickey?”
He didn’t answer. He just tightened his arms around me.
So I kept going.
“I have a lot. I can have most anything I want. But there are only five things in the world that mean so much to me I’d do anything to keep. Auden. Olympia. Lawrie. Robin. And now…you.”
He moved then, sliding me off his cock and shifting to fall back at the same time turning me so when he was on his back in the bed, my weight was on him, chest to chest.
He slid his hands into my hair on either side to hold it away from my face.
“She didn’t,” he whispered.
“I’m sorry?” I asked.
“She didn’t do anything to keep me.”
I lifted a hand to his stubbly cheek and said softly, “Mickey.”
“Do not take from that I got feelings for her. I don’t. But she burned me, Amy. I heard you about it bein’ an illness but in her case, it’s her that had to find the strength to beat back the symptoms, even if she’ll never have a cure. Already told you I had a woman I couldn’t give what she needed, now you get how deep she scarred me. And I guess it’s eatin’ me I got one I like havin’ that needs nothing from me.”
I stiffened on top of him and said, “Mickey, I think I told you—”
“You did, baby,” he said gently. “But that shit has to sink through scar tissue that’s tough and runs deep. So you gotta keep gettin’ in my face, kickin’ my ass and makin’ that statement until it digs through.”
I glared at him, shifting my hand to his neck and declaring, “I think I’d rather kick her ass.”
“Please don’t do that, Amy. You do, she’ll think it’s part of my grand scheme.”
I said nothing even though I was happy to see Mickey was grinning.
Considering his mood seemed to have improved, I demanded, “Do I get Christmas?”
“You get Christmas,” he agreed.
“Thank you,” I snapped, though, I was not only glad he gave me Christmas, I was glad we both thought we’d be together at Christmas, that “we” including Mickey.
He kept grinning. “Told the guys. They’re pretty happy about the new shit that’s coming.”
“Of course they are,” I returned. “It’s a sixty inch TV. A woman is happy with six inches. For a man to get happy, it has to be sixty.”
He burst out laughing.
“Do I speak truth?” I asked.
His brows shot up. “You’d be happy with six inches?”
“I was happy with less than that for sixteen years so I guess the answer is yes.”
He kept laughing but started doing it so hard the bed shook.
In the face of his hilarity, I started grinning and said, “It was amusing, honey, but not that amusing.”
He sobered but not entirely, and replied, “Knew that guy had a small dick.”
“Without extensive study, I would hazard to guess that it was average and you’re…not.”
He kept smiling, doing it big, as he returned, “Guess I can give you somethin’ else you can only get from me.”
“Like you didn’t know you were endowed,” I scoffed.
“Never got out a ruler and do my best not to compare.”
“Guys do that all the time,” I told him.
“Uh…no they don’t,” he told me. “And I’m in a rare situation where a guy is doin’ that shit, he gets a look from me he knows if he doesn’t mind his own fuckin’ business, he’s gonna find his nasal passages at the back of his skull.”
My focus shifted to his ear as I mumbled, “I find this interesting.”
“You thought guys stood around comparing dicks?”
I focused back on him. “Actually, yes.”
He grinned at me. “My heiress and her perverted fantasies about guys comparing dicks.”
“It’s not a fantasy, Mickey.”
“Good you got one that’s a winner.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “Can we stop talking about this?”
Suddenly, he pulled me close to his face and sobered entirely.
“I’ll try my best not to be a dick, not to bring it up, not to hurt your feelings or make you worry about it. I hate that I made somethin’ good you did that you were excited about, that I should have been excited about, into a fight. I may stumble along the way, Amy, but you got my word I’ll work on it.”
That, just that, was all I needed.
I melted into him, glided my hand to his jaw and slid my thumb along his lower lip, replying, “All I can ask, honey.”
He pulled me even closer, touched his lips to mine and then pushed me an inch away.
“Clean up,” he ordered quietly. “Get in one of your nighties and come back to me. Need sleep.”
“Okay, Mickey.”
I bent and gave him my own touch before I lifted up and again glided my thumb over his lower lip. After that, I rolled off, cleaned up, donned a nightgown and went back to him.
br /> Mickey turned out the lights and tangled himself up in me.
I was almost asleep when Mickey mumbled, “My heiress thinks men compare dicks.”
My eyes shot open and I snapped drowsily at his throat, “Stop teasing me when I’m half-asleep.”
He gathered me closer. “You got it, baby.”
I sighed loudly, closed my eyes, snuggled into his heat and fell asleep tangled up in Mickey.
Chapter Twenty-One
Stamp Me Approved
“Truth be told!” Mrs. Porter shrieked at the TV.
“Jesus, what is that?” Lawrie asked in my ear as I moved away from the lounge at Dove House with my phone.
“Mrs. Porter. Wheel of Fortune.” I shared. “She got it on only the r.”
“Impressive,” he replied. “But are your ears bleeding?”
I grinned. “Since they got a TV they can actually see, Wheel of Fortune gets extreme. And you don’t want to be anywhere near the lounge during Jeopardy.”
I heard Lawrie chuckling.
My grin turned into a smile as I got into a much quieter hall, leaned against a wall between two residents’ rooms and gave him my attention.
“Why are you calling, big brother?”
“The invitation still stands, I’m coming for Thanksgiving.”
I felt joy.
Then I felt fear.
“Mariel?” I asked.
“Only me.”
I felt more fear. “Not the boys?”
“It’s time they got used not having me around, even on special occasions.”
Oh no.
“Lawrie,” I whispered. “Marriage counselling isn’t working?”
“Our counselor never touches us,” he told me. “Never even looks like she’s going to. Last session, she grabbed Mariel’s hand for no purpose except, my guess, to see if she had a pulse.”
I didn’t laugh. His words were funny but the tone he delivered them in was not amusing.
I pushed away from the wall and wandered further down the hall saying, “I’m so sorry.”
“I wanted to know.”
I stopped and braced because now he was being quiet but fierce.
“Wanted to know what, honey?” I asked softly.
“What went wrong,” he answered instantly. “What I was doing that took her away from me. I wanted to know. I didn’t care what it was. How big. How small. How petty. If she’d mentioned some bracelet she had to have that I didn’t notice she’d asked for and I didn’t get her. If she was hurt I stopped telling her she was beautiful. I wanted to know so I could change it. I wanted to know what took away the girl I fell in love with so I could get her back. The girl who made me laugh. The girl who’d ruin a complicated soufflé and toss it in the trash without giving that first shit and pull out Chips Ahoy and slather them in Cool Whip for dessert. Rather than that being something that heralded an ice storm the boys and me would have to endure for a week. The girl who wanted nothing more than to stay in bed naked all day with me. I wanted to know how she became our mother. I wanted to know why she surpassed that until we had nothing.”
I closed my eyes and leaned a shoulder against the wall at hearing my brother’s pain.
“During your counselling, she gave you nothing?” I asked.
“Once the dread sock situation was outed, she’s hardly said anything in our sessions. Once a week she sits there barely moving with her arms crossed on her chest and her eyes to her knees. Her expression doesn’t even change. I lay it out. I even throw out the ugly just to see if I can get her to react to something. Nothing, MeeMee. It’s so bad even our counselor suggested a trial separation, and I think she did in an effort to put me out of my misery. The fuck of that is it’s humiliating. In fact, the whole fucking thing is humiliating.”
I hated that.
I hated that for my glorious big brother Lawrie.
He was not short like me. He was tall and straight and lean and commanding, like my dad.
But he had great, thick, dark hair that now had silver in it that was attractive (which was like mine, without the dye job and highlights, obviously).
And we shared our hazel eyes.
He got my father’s cut, angular, masculine bone structure that started forming and defining when he was fifteen. So since then, to when he met Mariel, he’d had to beat them off with a stick.
He loved his sons.
He was the youngest attorney in the history of his firm to make partner.
He made a ton of money and just had a ton of money.
He was smart. He had a great sense of humor.
And I remembered. I remembered the way he used to be with her. How she’d walk into the room and everything about him would change. The way he told her she was beautiful, and it wasn’t a throwaway compliment she could settle into, but he did it, each time I heard it, like he meant it and he wanted it to mean something to her.
I also remembered the way he stood at the altar at the church and watched her walk to him with this look of happy, expectant certainty like he just knew their lives would be beauty from that day until they left the earth.
This was why I hated her.
Because she became my mother when he did not become our father, and then she became worse than my mother and doing it, proved him wrong.
“You’re welcome, with the boys, without them, with her, or without,” I assured him. “You’re welcome anytime, Lawrie.”
“Thanks, MeeMee.”
“And I’m so sorry,” I repeated.
“I lived for years stupidly hoping she’d snap out of it or just snap. Let fly what was causing her to be the way she was being. And maybe I should give it longer. But I’m not twenty-five. It isn’t that I didn’t try to talk to her. Take her away for the weekend. Adjust things I was doing in case I hit on the right one. She gives no indication it’s anything but over. The boys are old enough to get it and the fuck of that is, I think for them it’ll be a relief. They love their mother but she isn’t what I want for them because she gives them less than Mom gave you and me. And that’s my biggest fuck up, MeeMee. I should have gotten them away from that a long time ago.”
“Hindsight is twenty-twenty,” I told him.
“And hope is as blind as love,” he told me.
God, but the two men I loved most in this world had taken a licking by the women they gave their hearts to.
I straightened from the wall at that thought because I’d admitted to myself I was falling in love with Mickey.
I’d never admitted I was there.
Since in that moment my brother needed my attention, I shook this off and said, “Come for Thanksgiving and let me, Auden and Pip take care of you.”
“I’ll be there, MeeMee, and I’ll let you know what Mariel and I decide about the boys.”
Whereas I couldn’t wait to have my kids with me for a holiday, she’d probably shrug and say, “Whatever you think is best, Lawrence.”
Lawrie took us off that subject by asking, “Since you brought up Auden and Pip, things still going good with that?”
They were. It had been three days since Mickey and my fight. It was now Monday, his kids were back and as for my kids, the TV visits were continuing. Not to mention Pippa and Polly had a sleepover on Saturday night at my place (Pippa having a sleepover I was happy about, her bringing Polly, who, when she wasn’t being negative she was being mean, not so much).
And that evening, both of my kids were coming over and Auden had said they were spending the night.
We were definitely back. Things were Mom and Kids. It was a different brand of Mom and Kids that meant they had two homes and a divided family, but it was working for us.
I still had concerns there was something not right about it, but they didn’t seem to be cagey about anything. It was just like they wanted to spend time with their mom.
So I was taking it.
I shared all that with Lawrie and ended it, asking, “By the way, have you heard from Mom and Dad?”
&nb
sp; “Mom called this weekend. She wanted to know when Mariel was taking her next spa weekend so she could come up. Since every other weekend is a spa weekend for Mariel and we’ve hit that rotation, she’s coming up on Friday. Why?”
Mom and I agreed on very few things. Our mutual dislike of Mariel was one of them. And a shocking twist to this, we both disliked her for the same reason.
Not that Mariel wasn’t the appropriately styled, turned out and behaved wife to a prominent attorney who also was a Bourne-Hathaway (because she was).
But that she didn’t make Lawr happy.
Mom avoided Mariel like the plague.
“I haven’t heard from them for a while. I’ve been emailing but I get nothing,” I explained.
“Neither of them are big on email,” Lawr reminded me.
“I know but they also haven’t phoned or anything. Not in weeks, or, Lawr, maybe even months.”
“They disagreed with you moving across country, MeeMee. Maybe this is your penance. But I’ll talk to Mom when she’s up this weekend. See if I can find out where she’s at with that.”
I knew he’d get nowhere with that. If Mom didn’t feel like sharing, and with her silence she obviously didn’t, she wouldn’t share.
I still said, “I’d appreciate it.”
“Consider it done.”
I smiled and asked, “You going to be okay?”
“In the stages of grief, I’m past denial, anger and bargaining. I’ve hit depression. One more to go and I’m good,” he joked.
I didn’t laugh.
“I’m here, anytime you need me, Lawrie,” I told him.
“I know, sweetheart,” he replied.
“I’ve gotta get back to the residents. Jeopardy is after Wheel of Fortune and the staff try to stick close in case a fight breaks out.”
I was relieved to hear the smile in his voice when he said, “I’ll let you go.”
“Lawrie?”
“Hmm?”
“I love you lots and lots,” I whispered words I’d say to him when he was there for me when we were kids. Putting a Band-Aid on my arm or calamine lotion on my poison ivy or listening to me after a boyfriend broke up with me. In that house with zero love and affection, he was the best brother there could be.