Page 92 of Her Billionaire Boss
“Here’s the part I don’t get.”I picked up the marker on the coffee table and handed it to her.“You’re with Scott, now.You’ve chosen to be with him, despite all of your worries about money and losing face among the Connecticut set.So, why not get caught cheating with him, rather than cheating on him?”
“We weren’t together at the time.”She neatly printed PARLOR across the side of the box.
“But you knew he was in love with you.You knew that it would hurt him.”
“As I said, we weren’t together.How he felt about me sleeping with another man was totally inconsequential.”She cast her gaze around the room, looking for something.
Looking for a distraction, I realized.She wanted to be doing something, to be busy, so I would feel my imposition on her and cut my visit short.
But she wasn’t getting out of this.Maybe I didn’t deserve answers, but I wanted them.Scott had fallen hard for her, at a vulnerable time in his life.Catherine wasn’t capricious, so this sudden change in her alarmed me.It didn’t seem like something that could last.I needed to know how to be there for Scott when the other shoe dropped.
If it dropped at all.Maybe I wasn’t giving my sister enough credit.Maybe she did have a heart in there, somewhere.
“Everything I’ve known about you for the past three or so decades points to you...not doing any of this.”Especially not the manual labor she was engaged in now.“You’re the last person I ever imagined choosing love over status.”
“Oh, but not the last person you’d expect to have an affair?”Was that a sarcastic smile threatening the corners of her mouth?
I shrugged.“No, I could totally see you doing that.I assumed it would happen after your fiftieth birthday.And with a gardener or something.”
“That old socialite rite of passage: slumming it.”She chuckled, and though it was bitter and slightly unsettling to hear my sister express anything genuine, it made the tension in my neck loosen.“You think that because I wear designer clothing and go to fundraising dinners, I’m incapable of loving someone?”
“You love your children.”I assumed.In the way that one could love the reincarnated souls of stone-cold sociopaths.
She nodded.“And I never wanted them to be hurt by this.That’s why—”
I waited for her to finish.When she didn’t, I prompted, “That’s why you...?”
She sat on the sofa across from me.It was a low, uncomfortable-looking thing, more of an art piece than functional furniture.She slumped forward, elbows on her parted knees, hands dangling between, and for the first time since we were very small children, Catherine looked like...
A person.A real, human person.Not a society robot.
“That’s why I fucked that asshole at mother’s birthday party.”She shuddered.“Believe me, it wasn’t due to any sort of attraction.I needed to convince myself that I didn’t love Scott.That I’d had a fling with him, that was all.If I had sex with someone else and it felt the same, if I felt the same as I did with Scott, I would know that it wasn’t love.It was infatuation or naturally releasing chemicals from my brain.I could walk away from him and be happy.”She reached up and wiped at her eyes.
She was crying.My cold, heart-of-stone sister was crying.
“And that didn’t work out, huh?”I asked, stating the obvious.
“It reinforced the fact that not only did I love Scott, but I also never loved Jackson.”Another bitter chuckle.“I wish I would have figured that out long before we signed the marriage license and got joint bank accounts.Which he’s drained, by the way.Moved to other accounts I don’t have access to.”
“That motherfucker.”Yes, his wife had cheated on him, but it was still financial abuse, and there was no excuse for it.“I can pay for—”
She held up her hand.“Don’t.I have friends who are sympathetic.”
“I’m also sympathetic,” I assured her.“Look, I know we’re not close.God knows we don’t like each other.But you’re still my sister.If you need help, you can get it from me.No judgment.”
“I certainly won’t be getting it from mother,” she said bitterly.
“Oh no, that you will not.”Although, she had softened up about the ring.“I assume she’s already told you that she’s cutting you out of your inheritance.”
That got a big laugh from Catherine.“For the seventieth time now.I quake with fear.”
Mother did have a flair for the dramatic when it came to the dissolution of her fortune after her death.
I gestured to all the boxes around us.“Is that why you’re doing all of this packing yourself?Because of money?”
How much could movers cost?Ten, twenty thousand?
She shook her head.“No.I don’t want people in my home, pawing at my things.And I need something to do.Something tangible to make this whole transition seem real.”
