Marriage of Convenience (27 page)

Malcolm did not hear the key turn in the door.

A sniffle from the door surprised them, and they sprang apart.

They both turned toward the open door.

“I guess this would explain why you haven’t answered my calls.” Caroline stood in the doorway, looking thoroughly beat. Malcolm gaped at her. Her hair was matted, and her face was streaked with dirt and dried tears. Her clothes were stained, and a shoulder seam was torn open. Her legs were crusted with dried blood. The way she leaned against the doorjamb led him to believe something was wrong with the heel on one of her shoes.

****

“I should have known after the way you behaved the first time that you wouldn’t be able to let go of her.” Caroline shook her head. The day weighed heavily on her shoulders, and the scene in front of her simply capped it all off. “You promised.” She shook her head, her shoulders slack and her eyes wide with sadness and disappointment. “Of all the things to have taken on a leap of faith.” With agony and indecision etched across her face, her voice was low and forced. Backing out of the door, she let it close softly behind her. Would he come after her? She wasn’t sure if she wanted him to or not. She didn’t know what else to say. Could she walk away from him? Did she have a choice? She had a terrible feeling she would yearn for him for the rest of her life. Every man she met would be compared to Malcolm and be found wanting.

Their penthouse apartment opened up into a small landing. Directly across from their door was the penthouse with the eastern views. In between on the right was the elevator, and opposite it were the fire stairs. The last thing she needed was to be cooped up inside a box. She pushed the doors open to the stairs and stepped inside. Walking stiffly to avoid reopening the gashes on her knees, it seemed to take forever to descend the twenty-three flights. Breathing only a little heavily as she exited the stairwell, she pushed through and into the lobby. It was deserted. It was just as well—she couldn’t think of anyone she’d like to see at the moment.

Pushing through the lobby doors, she thought about hailing a cab but turned away instead, and headed south, walking to nowhere in particular.

“Fuck!” Malcolm stalked to the couch to get his phone. After some searching, he found it under the chair that sat across from the couch. In his hurry to get to the door, he’d tossed the phone. It must have bounced off the leather topped coffee table and onto the floor. Under the chair, and distracted by Elsy, he hadn’t heard it. Tapping the screen, the message center showed two missed calls. Each one was a different local number. Caroline had stopped twice on the way home and used payphones to call him. Turning back toward the entrance way, he stopped suddenly and stared at Elsy.

“Ask her how she feels, huh? Did you have anything to do with this?”

Elsy merely returned his stare. “So help me, Elsy, if I find out—”

“Don’t you dare threaten me!” Esley spat the words, her face red and twisted around the mouth.

“Elsy, get out.” Passing by her, Malcolm pulled her by the arm toward the door. She dug her heels in.

“No way! You owe me this. I’m not leaving until you choose me.”

Stopped in his tracks, Malcolm rounded on her and stared in disbelief. “Choose you? Elsy, I’ve already chosen. And I need to follow through with this. I want to follow through with this. You and I are over. We have been over for months. Why are you doing this?”

Tears sprang to Elsy’s eyes, and Malcolm cursed again. “It isn’t fair!” She screamed. Her face was red, and her hands were clenched into fists at her side. She raged on. “I found you. I trained you. You owe me. You have to divorce her and marry me! I should get the reward, not her. Not anybody. Me!”

Malcolm was stunned. “Elsy, listen to yourself. You don’t want to marry me. You can’t stand me. You said so yourself. I spend too much time at the office and not enough with you. I spend too much money on charities and not enough on you. You tried to convince me to see your way of living, but nothing has changed. I’m not the man you want me to be. I never will be.” Malcolm found himself pleading with her. As he tried to reason with her, his love was hobbling around in the dark again. What the hell had happened to her? Where was she going? What would she do?

“No, no, you need to give us another chance. We’ll create a budget, so you can do whatever you want with your part and I can do whatever I want with mine. We’ll schedule date nights. I won’t accept no for an answer. I’m not leaving.” Elsy placed her fists on her hips and widened her stance as though preparing to take a stand against an attack.

Malcolm shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t want to hurt you, but I don’t have time for this right now. I’m going to leave, and I will have someone come up and help you get home.” Without another word, Malcolm pulled open the door and slammed through the fire door. He could smell Caroline’s perfume. It spurred him to move faster.

He stopped at the security desk on his way out the door.

Pushing through the lobby doors, he turned left as Caroline had. Running down the street, he tried to think of where she could have been going. He pulled out his cell and clicked through the screens to the texting tool. To Denzel he typed: Are you guys in the City tonight? Almost immediately there was a response: On our way. Ballet at 8pm. Speed demon is driving. Be there in no time. What’s up?

Malcolm shoved the phone back into his pocket. If Gloria wasn’t in town, there was only one other place Caroline would go looking as she did. He ran off the curb and into the street, hailing a cab. Shouting the address as the adrenaline pumped through his veins, he slumped heavily into the seat, willing the traffic to part.

Scrolling through his contacts he found Sarah’s number. He pressed “send” with unnecessary vigor, cursing when the phone did nothing. Holding the phone to his forehead, he closed his eyes and took a deep breath, praying for calm and tried again.

“Hello?”

“Sarah. It’s Malcolm. Have you spoken with Caroline? Is she with you?” He tried to keep his tone even, but the nature of the questions attested to the urgency he was feeling.

“No. Why? What’s happened?”

Fuck. If she wasn’t at the shop or with Gloria, and she hadn’t contacted Sarah, Malcolm was hard pressed to say where he should search next.

“Malcolm? You there? What’s going on?”

“Nothing. Everything. Look, she’s—” A vibration interrupted his train of thought. Malcolm pulled the phone away from his face to see the call screen. It showed a City prefix, but he didn’t recognize the number.

“Sarah? Let me call you back.”

“What? No! Wait—”

Malcolm clicked over, ignoring her protest. If Caroline was calling, especially from another payphone, he didn’t want to miss it.

“Hello?” He hadn’t intended to bark, but he was losing what little patience and cool he had left.

“Dr. Fowlkes?”

Oh, God. She’s hurt. Someone’s found her. Malcolm couldn’t find words. He swallowed and tried again, but his mouth merely opened and closed like that of a gasping fish.

“You there? This is Clive Hawthorne. I’m the attorney—”

“I know who you are. Have you spoken with Caroline?” Knowing it wasn’t the police or paramedics eased the pressure on his chest, but raised an entirely different set of questions. How did her father’s attorney fit into this?

And he knew the answer before he finished the thought.

“I won’t agree to a divorce. Not now, not ever.” Damn her! Did she really have so little faith in him, in them, that she couldn’t even bother to talk with him first?

Malcolm rapped his knuckles on the divider, signaling the cabbie.

“Pull over.”

“But we’re not—”

“Pull over!” He couldn’t think with the lights zipping by. He needed peace to calm down. If he was in her shoes, what would he do? She was pregnant. So seeing Elsy in their home, especially after the day it looked like she’d had, must have sent her right over the edge.

“Divorce?” The attorney spoke quizzically in his ear, confused. “No, I’m not calling about divorce. I need you to come to my office to provide a signature. I understand it’s late and this is very short notice, but it’s quite urgent, if you don’t mind.”

“Is Caroline with you? What is this about?”

“Yes, she’s here. And I’ll be happy to explain when you arrive. Would you like to speak with Caroline?”

“She’s safe?”

“Quite. A bit frazzled, but otherwise fine. She has her father’s constitution.” He said it wryly as though it explained everything.

Now that he knew where, and to a lesser degree how she was, Malcolm breathed a little easier. And suddenly had no idea what to say to her.

“Where is your office?”

Malcolm relayed the address to the cabbie and sat back, slouched into the vinyl bench. A moment of truth was imminent, and he felt confident in his position and yet desperately sad at the prospect of losing everything.

Could she say anything that would convince him that she loved him simply for who he was, not what he could give her?

Caroline watched Malcolm emerge from the cab from Hawthorne’s office window. Even from this distance she could see the grim set of his mouth, the tension in his spine. She clutched her hands together in front of herself and willed herself not to shiver. Yes, the next few minutes could make or break her marriage, but she was prepared to do what she could to save it. She knew she owed Malcolm a lot more than an explanation. She hoped he would allow her to make it up to him.

A quiet knock at the door interrupted her thoughts, and she stiffened involuntarily. Hawthorne’s secretary announced Malcolm’s arrival, but she didn’t turn toward the door. She couldn’t. I’m such a coward.

She heard Hawthorne greet Malcolm and offer him a beverage. He refused. The carry of Malcolm’s voice told her he was looking at her back. She raised her chin, but still couldn’t turn around. This was a mistake. I should have found some other way of handling it.

“Dr. Fowlkes, if I could direct your attention to the documents on the table? This won’t take but a few minutes of your time.” Caroline heard them cross the carpet to her side of the room.

“This document merely requires your signature to release to Caroline monies from her father’s estate. You will owe nothing. It was bequeathed to her, but the will does stipulate that if she is married at the time of the request, her husband’s signature is required.”

“Why does Caroline need money?”

Hawthorne’s eyebrows rose, and he looked over the rim of his glasses to Caroline’s back. “Perhaps I ought to leave you two alone for a few moments.”

Caroline turned at that. She wasn’t sure that was a good idea. But before she could say so, Malcolm nodded and thanked him. She watched Hawthorne pick up his calendar from his desk and head toward the door. He stopped in front of it, his hand on the knob and said over his shoulder, “Simply knock when you’re ready.” He exited without looking at either of them.

Caroline drew in a deep breath. Here we go.

“What the hell is going on, Caroline?” Malcolm’s voice was quiet, intense. He’d shoved his fists into his pockets and regarded her almost hostilely.

“It’s nothing. If you’ll sign, we can talk later.”

A white line appeared around the shape of his lips as he compressed them. “We’ll talk now. Tell me what happened today.” Malcolm rounded the table and stood in front of one of the windows. The move closed the space between them ever so slightly.

“What do you mean?” Caroline was deliberately obtuse.

“Caroline!” Malcolm turned from the window and growled. “I am losing patience. I want to know what is happening to us and why. I understand we may not have come together in the traditional way, but I thought we’d reached a level of respect and love that many people never do.” He took a deep breath and closed his eyes briefly. When he reopened them, he simply stared at her.

Caroline took a deep breath.

“The shop was vandalized last night. He broke out the all the glass, destroyed all the furniture, and stole my invoices and calendar.” She made the statement matter-of-factly, no emotion in her voice. Malcolm took a step toward her, but before he could say anything, Caroline held up her hand to keep him where he was as much to keep him from interrupting. If she didn’t get the whole story out now, it might not come out.

He stepped back, a scowl on his face, and his arms crossed angrily over his chest.

“The police were at the shop when I got there this morning. I—”

“Why the hell didn’t you call me?” Malcolm burst out angrily.

“I didn’t want you to worry!” Caroline yelled back. “Malcolm, you’d have dropped whatever you were doing and come right over. You’d have smothered me with attention and then solved the problem. I love and appreciate that about you, but you would have started cleaning it up and insulating me from everything before I even got a chance to survey the damage.”

“What the fuck is wrong with wanting to comfort and to protect my wife?” Malcolm’s voice was hard. His lips were pulled tight, and his fists were clenched. The tension in his body seemed to challenge her to question his interpretation of their wedding vows.

Caroline softened her voice. “Nothing, Malcolm, nothing. But I got myself into this mess. And it means a lot to me to be able to put some of the pieces back together myself. So once I decided I just needed to get focused and stop whining about my bad luck, I threw myself into getting things put back together. I didn’t stop for a minute to think about anything until almost 5:00.”

Malcolm fumed silently and then asked, “What did the cops say?”

“Nothing. But they didn’t need to. He came back.”

“What? Caroline, are you crazy? Why did you stay there? Did he do this to you? How—”

“If you’ll stop interrupting, I’ll tell you.”

Malcolm began pacing in front of the window.

“He attacked me in an alley on the way to subway station.” She said it like it was an everyday occurrence. No big deal. Just one of those things.

Malcolm stopped pacing, his shoulders sagging. He stepped toward her and held out his arms. “Caroline. To hell with the shop. Why didn’t you…? Baby, are you all right?”