A Family Affair - First Born (18 page)

“We should have insisted on meeting him before now,” Ken said to Janet. “I would never have thought this was possible.”

Jack suddenly spotted Kane in the distance. He and Nikki were talking together near the champagne table. Why hadn’t she come over yet? Something about their body language bothered him... but there was no reason to feel jealous, so he stopped worrying. He and Nikki were in love, and he was not going to have the relationship ruined by the girl’s parents. “I made a mistake. I admit it, but my marrying Nikki is hardly related to an error of judgement on my behalf twenty-eight years ago. I love your daughter. I am committed to her one hundred per cent. You don’t need to question that.”

Ken only shook his head in response.

Jack kept going, “After Sarah’s passing, you obviously moved on with your life. You married Janet here, and had Nikki, so everything has worked out in the end.”

“Let me tell you something. That pretty little picture you just painted isn’t how it was. You caused havoc in our lives.”

“No, Ken. Now is not the time,” Janet pleaded.

“He needs to know the pain that he caused. I tried to help Sarah. I was there for her. She got pregnant again a few years later, but she wouldn’t marry me. She couldn’t trust anyone after what you did. I told her I loved her but she didn’t believe me. She was convinced that I would leave her. She ended her life shortly after giving birth. She felt alone and unloved even though I was there. Her heart couldn’t heal.”

“What are you saying?” Jack asked. Did Kane have another brother or sister?

“I’m saying that she couldn’t even feel love towards me or her own two children after what you did.”

“What happened to the second child?”

They both stared at him dumbfounded. It was obviously not something that Janet wanted to hear, as she was shaking her head at Ken.

Ken lowered his head, and whispered. “I was drowning after Sarah died. Janet was there for me. She wasn’t able to have her own children, so it all made sense.”

“What did? What are you saying?”

“Janet has always loved Nikki as if she was her own flesh and blood.”

Nikki hadn’t mentioned that her biological mother wasn’t Janet. Was it possible Ken had just told him something that Nikki herself didn’t know? “Is Nikki Sarah’s second child?” They stared back in silence. Words weren’t needed though as their expressions gave the answer loud and clear. This news meant that Nikki and Kane were related as half-brother and sister. They were both children of Sarah with different fathers. “So Nikki has a sibling,” he concluded.

Ken leant against the wall, consumed with his story and the emotions that had resurfaced along with it.

Janet stood up straighter, and took charge of the conversation. “We don’t know what happened to Sarah’s first child, and we don’t care to be honest. And listen up - we don’t want our daughter knowing any of this. Ken shouldn’t have said so much. It was all so long ago. I’m her real mother in every way that counts. Do you understand what I’m saying? If you tell her, we’ll never forgive you.”

Jack thought over all the information he had just been told. He had cared about Sarah, but he hadn’t had the strength to leave Margaret. Now he was married to Sarah’s daughter. Nikki would not be happy to learn this. In fact, she would probably walk out on their marriage the moment she found out. It would be devastating for her. Perhaps, it was fortunate that Nikki’s parents wanted the secret to remain. Jack was now as committed to maintaining the secret as they were. It was all so long ago in any case. The biggest downside was that Nikki now had a half-brother and wouldn’t be allowed to know that fact. But it was a small price to pay.

“I won’t tell her,” Jack promised them.

“Thank you, Jack,” Janet said, taking her husband’s hand. “We won’t be staying.” She headed for the front door, and they left without another word.

Kane walked around his father’s party in awe. Jack was certainly splashing the cash around. The waiters were serving truffles and black caviar, and he tasted things he had never even heard of. There was a cocktail bar serving one hundred-year old whiskey, and a champagne station popping two hundred dollar bottles of champagne as if they were going out of fashion.

Many of the people were over sixty with grey hair. The odd young person, he imagined, was a friend of Nikki’s, but no one particularly interested him. Jack’s friends were probably from the exclusive golf club where he was a member – the club where Kane had been reintroduced to the woman he couldn’t get out of his head.

Ellen – he breathed in her name. She was a goddess to him. She was the girl who haunted his conscious and his dreams. He could smell her scent when he closed his eyes, and felt disappointed each time he opened them to see her not there. Ellen. She was the girl who would rather sleep with his aging brother than with him. As much as he wanted to get her out of his head, he couldn’t. Her presence wouldn’t leave him, despite the fact that she wouldn’t even look at him now.

Nikki Lucas, on the other hand, was more available to him. He was going to meet her properly tonight, and would try to understand his father’s choice to marry a girl he hardly knew; a girl who was younger than Kane himself. She was well known in the music industry apparently, but he hadn’t heard of her. Had she bewitched his father, or tricked him into marriage? Nikki had sung at Tom and Ellen’s wedding, but he hadn’t taken much notice of her then. It had been a surprise to hear that she and Jack had gotten married shortly after. As far as Kane knew, they hadn’t known each before that night. It was a bizarre sort of decision to rush off and get married, obviously one that no one understood, given the mutterings Kane had overheard around the room.

Kane caught the eye of various women as he walked around the party. It was mostly bored housewives on their husbands’ arms who noticed him. He was used to attention from these sorts of women. Sometimes he played with them, and sometimes not.  In trying to deal with Ellen’s rejection, he had bedded more of these women than usual recently. But it didn’t seem to be helping. The more women he seduced, the more he wanted the one girl he couldn’t have.

Kane looked to see what she was doing, and not surprisingly, he saw her on Tom’s arm, laughing heartily while chatting to another couple. She seemed genuinely happy, he had to admit. Sometimes he wasn’t sure whether he wanted her to be happy or miserable without him.

Family parties were now the only opportunity Kane had to be close to Ellen. If he called her phone from his own phone, she refused to answer. If he called from a public phone, she would hang up as soon as he spoke. It was literally killing him to see and feel her rejection so often.

He knew if he approached her at this party, she would make polite small talk with him, but actively avoid being alone with him.

Kane compared Ellen to Nikki again. They were both young and vibrant women, and had both chosen to marry old men. In Nikki’s case, it was almost disgusting to imagine her shacked up with Jack. He was more than twice her age. Kane supposed that money must be an important factor to both women. Certainly looks and personality were not strong points in either his brother or father.

Kane suddenly noticed that Nikki was walking in his direction. She was obviously heading back to Jack who was regularly looking in her direction. This was his opportunity to understand exactly why she married his father. He stepped directly into her path, forcing her to look at him.

“Oh, my God, you must be Kane,” she squealed. “Jack told me how good-looking you are.” Her spoken voice was expectedly high, and sounded nothing like her singing voice.

“How do you do?” asked Kane, putting his hand out to shake hers.

“I’ve been meaning to introduce myself to you,” Nikki said, ignoring his hand and pulling him in for a hug. “It’s great to meet you... finally. The two of us are new to this family, so we need to stick together.”

During the embrace, Kane’s attention was diverted to Ellen across the room, whose hands suddenly rested on her small rounded bump. She wasn’t far enough along for other people to notice, but Kane couldn’t take his eyes off it. How he wished it was his child inside her. Things would be so different.

“Jack was telling me how Tom and you found each other after all these years. It’s the most amazing story. Boy, I... I just can’t believe how good looking you are,” Nikki continued, looking him up and down. “Sorry, I know I already said that.”

That comment seemed more than a little inappropriate coming from his new stepmother. He was already bored by her.

“You must have a girlfriend, Kane. Is she here?” Nikki asked, looking around.

Kane shook his head. “No girlfriend.”

“Really? Well, I have some fabulous girlfriends who would love to meet you.”

“Uh, huh.” Kane wasn’t at all interested.

“Jack says you are a personal trainer. Is that right?”

“Last time I checked.”

“I would love it if you could train me. I’ve been meaning to improve my fitness, and it will give us a chance to get to know each other better.”

Kane hated these conversations where people tried to get free training. “Of course. It will need to be out of hours though, as I’m not supposed to train people for free. The gym doesn’t like it.”

“Oh,” said Nikki, looking embarrassed. “I didn’t mean... I’m happy to pay you, of course. Money is not a problem.”

Kane supposed it wasn’t, now that she was married to Jack Bradley.

“Well, sure. Give me a call sometime, and I’ll line something up.”

Kane was suddenly aware of Jack’s conversation with two middle-aged people he didn’t recognise. It looked tense. “Who’s Jack speaking to?” he asked.

Nikki turned around. “My parents. They are meeting him for the first time tonight.” Perhaps she was seeing what Kane had noticed. Jack was looking more and more uncomfortable by the second. “I should go and rescue him.”

Nikki’s father seemed especially angry about something, and Kane wondered what was being said. However, Jack’s attention wasn’t solely focussed on Nikki’s father. He was also closely watching Nikki and Kane talking, with an odd expression on his face. Was Jack jealous that his new wife was talking to another man?

“Well, it was great to meet you, Nikki.” Kane leaned in closer to his newest family member and kissed her on the cheek slowly. Jack’s nostrils flared. He was jealous. How ridiculous! What kind of marriage were they celebrating here exactly?

“You too, Kane,” Nikki said, looking flushed. “I’ll see you around, I’m sure.”

Kane watched her leave. Jack needn’t worry. Nikki was of no interest to him. Although attractive enough, she seemed sort of vacant. What sort of woman would marry a seventy-year old man in any case? Obviously Jack’s money was important to her, but the question hadn’t been answered by meeting her. He guessed there would be ample time to learn more about his new stepmother if he chose.

When Nikki first met Kane at the party, she had felt overwhelmed by an attraction to him. In trying to hide it, she had asked numerous mundane questions, and must have seemed like a lunatic. He had probably seen straight through her. In any case, she wasn’t much of an actress. There was no denying it; he was the kind of man that you wanted to pull into a dark closet and have your way with.

Nikki shook away that thought and tried not to think about doing inappropriate things with her husband’s son. Such thoughts were a betrayal of her marriage vows, and wrong on so many levels.

However, the first seven weeks of her and Jack’s marriage were not going well, she had to admit. Her parents were furious that she had married an older man. In fact, Nikki didn’t even have a chance to say hello to them at the party - they stormed out within five minutes of meeting Jack, and had refused all contact since that day. It was unlike them to be so stubborn, and Nikki could not work out what was really going on.

Jack had seen three doctors now, and had tried numerous medications – all to no effect. They were newlyweds who had not consummated their marriage after seven weeks. Nikki was desperately regretting the decision to get married so quickly. If only they had waited a few more weeks, she would have changed her mind. Neither Jack nor she had raised the topic of an annulment, but it was surely on his mind as well. It was hard to understand how things had gone wrong so quickly; there had been so much chemistry initially.

At the party, Nikki’s eyes had followed Kane for the remainder of the night. Within a few days, she had started personal training with him. It was wrong to spend so much time with a man like Kane, a man whose clothes she wanted to tear off. But she just wanted to be close to him, regardless of the personal cost, and her time with him became an outlet for her marital frustration.

Kane usually trained her in his gym or sometimes in the nearby park. But today was different - he was coming to Jack’s apartment to demonstrate how to work out at home. Jack was playing golf and would be out for most of the day. She would have an hour alone with Kane, to fantasise about him while building up a sweat. After he left, she would have enough time alone to imagine how their time together could have been spent differently, given certain constraints were not in place. It was a dangerous sort of fantasy, but one that Nikki didn’t seem to be able to stop enjoying.