Cathedral (Cradle of Darkness 1)
“You know I can’t—”
“No. I don’t know that. All I know is that you want your girlfriend to house your pregnant fucktoy.”
“Stop calling her that.”
“I didn’t even know her name.” Which made this all the more humiliating considering my unseen audience. “Why you think I’d be invested in hiding your love child from Senator Parker, I cannot begin to understand.”
Gritting his teeth, jaw working, Ethan set aside the charade. “She was a stripper, Jade. A nobody. I can’t take that home! Imagine the scandal.”
Reaching for my phone, going through the motions as if this conversation were a quick chat about the weather, I shrugged. And I felt angry.
I’d never been angry with Ethan.
“Look. You have plenty of rooms here and the green guestroom already has a bunch of her clothes in it. You’re never home and you won’t even notice she’s here. We’ll get a nanny to keep the baby quiet.”
Pinching my brow together, I turned on him, as if such an idea were totally absurd. To say I wish I had not charged from my room like a disgruntled lover to find that my expectations were not reality was an accurate statement. I should have been embarrassed; instead I was totally baffled upon arrival to the green guestroom.
Just as Ethan had said, feminine shit was everywhere. The bed had been slept in. Even dirty clothes were on the floor. Most of the scattered couture was mine—borrowed without permission by an interloper.
I’d known she’d hung around. I’d known she’d eaten my food and fucked my lover when I was too busy to do it. But this… carnage. She’d been living here, and I hadn’t deigned to notice.
Abashed, when he found the stricken look on my face, Ethan offered, “I’ll have her clean this up. We can set the rules. Manage her allowance.”
Why did that hurt so much?
Like the viper I was—a true daughter of the king of deceit—I let anger, hunger, and humiliation wash away reason. “You are extraordinarily out of line. My answer is no.” I lifted a finger when it looked as if he thought to interrupt. “This relationship has been taken for granted far too long for you to expect my feelings about a stranger living in my house would be blasé. A stranger, it would seem, who already is living in my house… I don’t mind sharing you; I like fucking other people. But they are just faces, and pussies, and cocks. We are not a ménage.”
And there it was, a flash of shame in his desperation. “I love her, Jade.”
He couldn’t. He was supposed to love me.
“No, you don’t.” Softening the blow, I put a hand to his arm and gave a gentle squeeze. “You may like her a lot, but she’s no different than any of the other blondes we’ve tangled with. They all look alike. They all laugh the same. Each of them fawn over you. That’s what you love. The only reason Kitty, or Polly, or whatever her name is seems special, is that this one got pregnant. Most likely on purpose. Cut her loose. We’ll find a new one. A better one.”
It was as if someone had told the spoiled boy he couldn’t have a new kitten for Christmas. All frowns and hurt feelings, he said, “Kitty and I have gotten to know each other. I mean it when I say I love her.”
Lacking my father’s skill at making people dance on my stage, I tried my damnedest to take that lie straight out of his mind. “No. You don’t.”
If he’d loved her, he would have taken this Kitty home, and not tried to hide away his massive fuckup at his conveniently non-jealous girlfriend’s penthouse.
Lifting the cellphone clutched near cracking in my grip, I dialed security before I might do something I would always regret. When the officer answered, my voice didn’t waver in the slightest. “I’m going to need my locks changed and codes reprogramed within the hour. Ethan Parker is no longer cleared to enter. He’ll need to be escorted off the premises immediately.”
The line clicked, Ethan raising his voice to me for the first time ever. “Jade!”
“You need to leave now. I’ll have your things sent over in the morning.” I’d barely finished the sentence before there was a loud knock on the door. “Be happy with your Kitty. Congratulations on the baby.”
Angry, flabbergasted he was not getting his way, he sneered. “Don’t make me choose between you!”
He’d have to learn this lesson the hard way. Just like me, he had no choice in this.
He’d be made to marry me. There would be no more blondes. This Kitty, Ethan would keep her as a novelty for a little while, and then he’d start to chafe. He was right; he couldn’t take a stripper on his arm to the Met. He couldn’t take her to gallery openings, or to the fine restaurants his kind populated. She’d be out on the street with a baby he’d conveniently forget he’d fathered before the year was up. Then he’d be back at my side, loving and funny, and everything that kept my nightmares away.