“Thanks. I did it myself.” Her pink nails gleamed against the leather steering wheel. “By the way, I scheduled an appointment with Dr. Silverman today.”
“What time?”
“Two. Figured we should make sure you and the baby’re fine.” She stopped for an intersection. “So how are you, really? Are you still going to ditch Gavin?”
“I don’t know.” Amandine stared at the busy traffic. The Mercedes started moving again. “I thought I would because he didn’t love me. And there’s the whole Catherine thing. But when we were alone in Thailand, it was like we were…connecting better. We’ve never spent so much time together as a married couple, and it was great.” She sighed.
“But…?”
“But that’s a fantasy life. What we could have if he didn’t work twenty-four seven. He delegated most of his work while we were there, and only checked in at the office in the morning and a little bit in the afternoon. Now that we’re back, I probably won’t see him for a week while he catches up. He might even sleep in the office. And,” she sighed, “he has to go to Houston again.”
“For what?” Hostility edged Brooke’s voice. “Did Catherine fire her pool boy?”
“It’s a meeting regarding the family business,” Amandine said quickly. “Ethan’s going to be there, too.”
“Well then. Guess that’s all right.” Brooke sat up straighter, pushing herself more firmly against her seat. “I know you guys are now back to real life, but if he wants you, he has to find a good balance of work and making his wife happy.” She glanced over at Amandine. “I was thinking that maybe he doesn’t realize how bad he is. He’s probably used to women who saw themselves as trophy-wife material, you know? And they probably didn’t care about spending time with their husbands, so long as they could spend all their money.”
“I don’t know if Gavin’s experience is limited to trophy-wife wannabes. Catherine wasn’t like
that.”
Brooke burst out laughing. “Oh please. I don’t know why you put her on some kind of pedestal of womanhood. So she grew up rich and is from a good family. So what? She’s not that special. She’s not all that smart, not particularly talented—”
“That’s not true.”
“Girl, dating a string of rich guys doesn’t take any special ability. It’s called youth and beauty. And she didn’t date rich man after rich man out of some deep soul-searing love. I mean, other than for their wallets. She probably thought she had it made when she snagged Jacob.” Brooke drove past the gates as they opened for her at the mansion. “This is just the feeling I got watching you, her and Gavin all those years ago, but she was never seriously into Gavin. She used him as a stepping-stone to Jacob. The Lloyds Development is a solid company that keeps every one of the Lloyds flush and happy, and Jacob was the CEO. That’s what she wanted. If Ethan had been the one running the company, she would’ve married him.”
Amandine felt her mouth drop at Brooke’s scathing comments.
“You think people like Catherine Fairchild can’t be motivated by something like money?” Brooke snorted. “People like her are always motivated by it. She knows what it’s like to have money and influence, and she’ll do anything to get them back. If Gavin’s smart, he’ll stay away from her no matter how many times she wags her tail.”
“Oh geez.”
“Even Korean people say the same thing about gold-diggers. It’s universal.”
“Really?” Brooke had been half-raised by her maternal grandmother, a Korean who’d immigrated to the States decades before.
“Yup. Grandma said they’re like foxes that wag their tails to steal men. Like this.” Brooke wiggled around in her seat, canting her shoulders left and right in an exaggerated manner.
Swallowing a half-horrified laugh, Amandine shook her head. “Don’t be mean. She just found out her marriage was never valid. I’m pretty sure the State of Texas doesn’t condone bigamy.”
“Uh-huh. The only thing she’s really upset about is that she’s back to being poor, and now she’s five years older than when she snared Jacob.”
“Brooke, why are you being so…virulent? It’s not like you.”
Brooke pulled up in front of the main entrance, shifted into park and turned to face Amandine. “Because I can see you wavering and second-guessing yourself again. Look, you want Gavin. You didn’t sleep with him for money, and you didn’t marry him for anything other than love. Right? I guarantee you that those two facts alone make you a better person than ninety-nine percent of the women he’s ever slept with. But there are times, like now, when you start comparing yourself to Catherine and thinking you don’t measure up. And it pisses me off.”
Amandine found she didn’t have anything to say. Brooke’s intensity was a little intimidating.
“Even now you’re a little bit worried about Gavin’s going to Houston because he might see Catherine again,” Brooke continued. “Right? Well, stop. You’re so much better than the likes of Catherine friggin’ Fairchild. And Gavin knows it. If he didn’t, he would’ve given you the divorce the moment you asked for it.”
“He might be doing it for the baby.”
“No, he’s not. Like he said, he’s a Lloyd. If all he wanted was the baby, he could just take it from you. He can afford a legion of lawyers who specialize in taking babies from their mothers. Investigators who’ll dig up all sorts of silly little things you’ve done, so the baby-snatching lawyers can blow them all out of proportion and portray you as an unfit mother. Maybe even a whore of Babylon for having gone to the high school prom.”
Amandine’s mouth dried. Everything Brooke was saying was the truth. If Gavin really wanted to, he could utterly ruin her. She could never fight him and his twenty billion.
“It’s great that your second honeymoon was nice, but you can’t spend all your time in Thailand. Time to get back to real life, and it isn’t going to be easy. But if your heart tells you that you want Gavin, don’t give up on him out of some stupid sense of inadequacy. Fight dirty. Keep him. Play to win.”