Her Inconvenient Groom by Niomie Roland

Chapter 8

 

Dustin stood with his back against the wall, arms folded, smiling with genuine happiness as he watched Kim, Aaron, and Arabella celebrate. They were hugging, gleeful, occasionally sobbing, telling each other over and over the story of how everything had changed overnight for them.

About that strange call from a charitable organization nobody had ever heard of, informing them that Arabella had been selected from an exclusive list of under twenty-five-year-old patients in dire need of healthcare coverage. Apparently, his sister fit the criteria of an anonymous benefactor who lost the love of her life to kidney disease and had become determined to ensure that others wouldn’t have to worry about medical coverage when they’re stressed about their declining health.

Arabella, who was closer to her mother’s complexion, sat up in bed with her oxygen tubes still fitted to her nostrils. The last few days hadn’t been good. Her latest bloodwork wasn’t encouraging, and the dark circles around her eyes were testimony to the fact that she hadn’t been sleeping. But today, beneath her ashen skin, were the beginnings of a glow of hope and promise.

Assisted by Aaron, Kim had hauled herself out of her chair onto the edge of the bed, to wrap her long brown arms around her daughter, squeezing her, not wanting to let her go. “I couldn’t believe it!” she kept saying. “I dropped the phone, thought I’d lost the person on the other end, but they were still there. Promising to send a courier early next week with a check to cover her medical bills!”

Aaron, in typical teenage exuberance, broke into a gleeful dance, boogieing around the bed and snapping his fingers. “Half a million dollars!” he sang.

“And another half in several months’ time,” Kim reminded him, her brown eyes misty with wonder and gratitude. Enough to pay off their bills, pay for Arabella’s transplant surgery, and have lots left over to dig the family out of debt.

What was more, they’d received word that the hospital had located a very promising donor, and that once the tissue match was confirmed, Arabella would immediately be scheduled for surgery.

“It’s a miracle,” Kim murmured, squeezing her eyes shut. “It’s your dad looking down on us and making this happen. It’s a miracle.”

“Half. A. Million. Bucks!” Aaron yelled in Dustin’s ear, pounding on his bicep in punctuation.

“Damn!” Dustin rubbed his upper arm. “Why are you always punching me?”

Aaron winked. “Because you’re too goody-two-shoes to hit back.”

Dustin decided it was time to disabuse his brother of that notion, and shadow-boxed back, but Aaron darted out of the way, laughing raucously.

“Cut it out, you two,” Kim ordered. Then, to Dustin, she said, “C’mon, help me back into the chair and walk with me. I want to take a turn around the garden.”

Wondering what was up, he complied, and as the door shut behind them, he could hear renewed squeals, as two of Arabella’s favorite nurses had heard the ruckus and had come to see what all the fuss was about. No doubt they were being regaled with the news of their charitable windfall.

He and Kim didn’t speak much until they were halfway across the spacious visitor’s garden, when she pointed to a bench and urged him to have a seat. Wheeling to face him, she reached out and took his hands in hers. He looked down at her thin brown hands, clasping his hard, and felt the warmth and sincerity of her love for him.

“What’s up?” he asked. Surely, the problem had been solved. There couldn’t be another issue, could there?

She squeezed his hands. “I just wanted to thank you.”

“For what?”

“For this. For everything. What you’ve done for Arabella and all of us.”

He felt guilt creep into his face. Kim couldn’t know, could she? She couldn’t have guessed that somehow he was behind this? Guiltily, he looked down at his hands, all fingers bare. No sign of a wedding ring, even though he was now a married man.

Two days ago he and Chantelle Moreau–Clark had been married in a ceremony so devoid of emotion or pomp that he even questioned the use of the word ‘ceremony’. It had been more of a formal signing, two signatures at the bottom of a handful of pages, initialed and notarized. It had taken place in the lobby of a small hotel which had been shut down for two hours to afford them some privacy… proof that if you had enough money, you could do anything.

He remembered stepping into the lobby, mildly surprised to find it empty, and then reminding himself that Chantelle Moreau was the kind of woman who made anything she wanted to happen, happen.

He caught a glimpse of himself in the silvered mirrors that graced the lobby walls. He was wearing a dark gray tuxedo, impeccably pressed, cummerbund and pocket square included. His hair was trimmed, his stubble tamed. He’d considered a boutonniere, but had to admit it would have been taking things a bit too far.

The excruciating irony was that this tux hadn’t been bought at the spur of the moment, with money he didn’t yet have. It had been purchased a year ago, intended to be worn at his own wedding, to a girl he thought he’d loved, and who he thought had loved him back.

That was before his fiancée, Jen, had shown her true side, springing into action while he was away on an artists’ retreat in Colorado. He’d come home to their shared house to find her and her clothing gone. No note, no explanation.

Cold intuition led him to check on his bank accounts, both savings and checking, as well as the small money market fund they’d set up to save for their wedding, honeymoon, the down payment on a house, where they could start their family….

“What’s this?” Chantelle was standing before him, taking in his clothing with surprise. Maybe a hint of disdain. “That’s a bit of overkill, isn’t it?”

He felt a tinge of embarrassment, but answered nonchalantly, “Oh, this? Just something I had lying around in my closet.”

She gave him an I-doubt-that look. “Dustin, I don’t know if you think this is a joke. Or if somewhere in the back of your mind you think any of this is real, and that you and I are going to be playing house. All of this….” She pointed into the room, where a sour-faced man holding a folder of documents, who he assumed would be performing the ceremony, stood next to the arrogant, slimy-looking lawyer he’d met before, and a beautiful, curvy dark-skinned woman with thick black hair. He figured this must be Chantelle’s admin, Sienna. They’d spoken on the phone before. “All of this is merely a formality—”

“I understand, Chantelle,” he said patiently. “I am not the fool you think me to be.”

“I don’t—” she blustered.

“It’s fine.” It was his turn to stare at her. She was wearing a severe steel-gray pantsuit that looked more like a scaled-down men’s suit than a suit tailored for a woman: it did its darndest to hide the femininity of her curves. He noticed she was wearing flats and wondered if this was to accommodate her dizziness. It brought him a twinge of concern, both for her and the baby, but he didn’t dare ask, lest she rip his head off and slam it onto the end of a pointy stick.

“I’m guessing from what you chose to wear today that this is indeed just another business arrangement. The only hint of color about you is your lipstick.”

She bristled. “How is what I wear any of your concern?”

“How is what I wear, any of yours?” he shot back.

She gave him an infuriated look and turned away. He followed her, enjoying her discomfiture like a middle school boy enjoys putting bugs in an annoying girl’s hair.

The officiant and the lawyer—who, Dustin thought, was so cold and bloodless he probably didn’t even bleed from paper cuts—both looked impatient. They shuffled their documents and conveyed with every inch of their body language that they just wanted to get all this bullshit over with and get back to their respective offices.

Again, Dustin felt that dip in his spirits. He was a man who put family over all, the kind of man who believed you got one shot at it… and here he was, about to make empty, meaningless vows to a stranger. In a way, although he felt vaguely lonely, he was glad that Kim, Aaron and Arabella weren’t here to witness this, his ‘special’ day.

He realized that Sienna was staring at him, not with the cool, detached impatience of the others, but with something that almost felt like compassion and understanding. Could it be that she had even an inkling of what he was feeling right now?

When she nodded her encouragement at him, he knew that she did. He nodded back.

As for Chantelle, she barely looked at him, barely acknowledged him, except to ensure that he signed in the right place and was given copies.

When they were declared husband and wife by the bored man—who radiated an energy that said, I got out of bed for this?—they stood and stared at each other. This was the point in a wedding ceremony where the bride began to shed happy tears, where the groom beamed at the congregation and declared it the happiest day of his life.

This was the point where the groom was invited to kiss the bride.

Why not? Dustin thought. Chantelle might be more tightly wrapped than a cigar, and was sending out waves of stay-away vibes, but she was his wife now.

That had to stand for something.

She read his intention in his eyes and flashed a warning back with hers. Don’t even, was her silent message.

And his silent response was, then stop me.

He was shocked by that first contact, by how warm her lips were. Something inside him had weirdly wondered if they’d be cool, like the rim of a beer glass. But nah, they were full and plump and soft, yielding against his.

She gave a little yelp of outrage—but it didn’t last long. As the pressure from his mouth increased, her resistance decreased, and when he probed past her lips with the tip of his tongue, there was no resistance at all.

Having begun his incursion past her defenses, he kept going, enjoying the delectable sweetness inside. Inhaling her scent, the mingled combination of freshly washed hair and expensive perfume. Of warm flesh and sweet breath.

His hand curved around her waist; her slenderness surprised him, but he remembered how hard she worked to disguise her curves, shield them from the gaze of the world….

She placed both hands on his lapels, palms flat against his chest. Her eyelids fluttered shut, and he could feel the puff or warm air against his lips as she exhaled. And then she stiffened, as if waking from sleepwalking and suddenly becoming fully aware of what she was doing. She shoved him back, and he was lucky to be quick enough on his feet to catch his footing. “What the hell, Dustin!”

He was so drunk on that one kiss that he could only smile and say, “Delicious.”

“Don’t do it again! I mean that!” She was stomping back to Grady, snatching the documents from his hand and glaring down at them with almost enough heat to make them ignite. “Are these done?” she demanded.

Grady made sure everything was wrapped up, and then with an incline of his head, assured them that the deed had been done. Making sure Sienna had everything they needed, he glanced at his watch and hurried out. Probably off to prepare foreclosure papers on an orphanage or something. The officiant followed.

Sienna patted the documents lightly and sent Dustin another tiny smile. Just a quirk of her lips, but to Dustin, it felt like he had an ally.

Two minutes later, lifting her head from the documents, Chantelle handed him his copies. He didn’t bother to look at them, just rolled them up into a tube shape. He was more interested in whether she was still rattled from their kiss. Because make no mistake, she’d enjoyed it, too.

But she seemed to have mastered herself once more. Wrapped herself in that shadowy cloak of untouchability. She coolly shook his hand, thanked him for coming as if she was dismissing a board meeting, and promised that the financial side of their agreement would be fulfilled immediately.

Then she, too, had walked away, brisk, distracted… no sign at all that a wedding had just taken place. That it meant anything to her, that she was now married… to him.

So how did Kim know this? Had he somehow let something slip? Why else would she be thanking him? His first thought was to deny everything. “What do you mean?” he asked, prepared to lie like a dog if necessary. There was no way he’d allow her to walk away with the notion that he’d run off and got married, even though he had.

She reached up and grasped his cheeks, smiling into his eyes, and the warmth in them made him feel like a young man again, hurting over the loss of his mother and grateful for the love this woman had showed both him and his dad. “I mean, thank you, Dustin. For all that you have done. For being there for us, before and after the accident. For helping this family pick up the pieces after we lost your father. And seeing us through this awful, awful time with Arabella.”

He felt his body relax a little, suffused by relief. She didn’t know. His secret was safe. “It’s nothing, Kim,” he began, but she cut across him.

“It’s not nothing, Dustin. What you’ve done is nothing short of heroic. You were here for me when my life fell apart, when I lost the man I loved, even though you were grieving for your father, too. You stood by me when I struggled to overcome my injury, to get used to life in a wheelchair. You moved into our home to take care of us. Don’t pretend you haven’t given up everything you owned just to help pay Arabella’s bills. All those side jobs and the tattoo parlor. I know about the second mortgage, Dustin.”

He knew the surprise registered on his face. He hadn’t told her about it because he didn’t want her to feel bad. He opened his mouth, but she shushed him.

“Not many men would have done that.”

“And I would gladly do it again. You became my best friend when you married dad. You and dad gave me siblings. Something I’d always wanted. I love you guys.” He felt her emotions spill over into him. He thought of that cold, soulless marriage contract he’d just entered into, and the near year of his life he’d just signed away, and then thought about Arabella, whole again, healthy again, with her young life stretching out before her. He knew he’d done the right thing. “And would do anything for you.”

She pulled him closer and pressed her lips against his cheek. “And you have.” Then, releasing him, she leaned back in her chair, face serious again. “But it’s time for you to give that up.”

“Huh?”

“Our Arabella will be fine. With your dad looking over us and that donation, she will have her transplant, and all her bills paid off. There’ll be lots left over for you to pay off that mortgage—”

“I don’t—”

“Hush. You pay off the mortgage, and you seize back the life we stole from you.”

“You can’t steal what’s willingly given,” he reminded her softly.

“Again, hush.” Kim pressed her fingers to her lips. “When all is done, I need you to do something for me.”

“What’s that?”

“Go back to your life. Call Jen….”

The name alone was enough to make icicles form in his blood.

“Don’t look at me like that. I know you love her—”

“Loved,” he reminded Kim. He’d loved Jen, his ex-fiancée. Loved her until he thought he’d die. And then she’d thrown him away. The mention of her name was like a kick in the gut. He shook his head. “You don’t know what you’re asking.”

His phone was his saving grace. It vibrated in his pocket, still silenced from being in the hospital room earlier, and he looked down at the text message coming up on the screen. He felt the blood drain from his face.

“I have to go,” he said to Kim, looking back at her. “I’ll take you back to Arabella’s room.”

“What is—” she began.

But all he could do was shake his head.