He’d never been ashamed of his poor country roots, the roots that made him strong, though Candra was embarrassed enough by his origins to insist he say only that he was “from Virginia.” If he had let her, she would have invented an antebellum mansion in his background and had one of his ancestors signing the Declaration of Independence.
He had taken steps to ensure he was never poor again. His investments were varied, to weather the hiccups and burps of the market, and he had put money into gems and precious metals as a hedge against a market crash. It was a high, a challenge, a game, to gather tiny details of information and decide which stocks would increase in value and which were in trouble. He seemed to have a sixth sense for it, and he had long ago gained the amount he had set in his mind as “enough,” but he kept playing the market, and kept getting richer.
It was eating at Candra’s soul that she couldn’t get a bigger share of his wealth.
The thought of her brought a bitter taste to his mouth. He supposed he had loved her, in the beginning, though she might have been just a challenge, like the market. From a distance of over ten years he couldn’t remember exactly how he had felt about her, though he knew what had attracted him. Candra had been—still was—very attractive, with impeccable social credentials backed by old money, and blessed with an outgoing, friendly personality. If anything, she was too friendly, especially with other men.
Their marriage had already been in trouble when he first learned about her affairs, and by that time he simply hadn’t cared enough about her infidelities to do anything about them. She thought he knew about only one lover, but he was far from a fool. He had made it his business, over the years, to find out about all her lovers. He knew about Kai. He knew about Carson McMillan. He knew about all the artists she slept with, which social acquaintances found their way into her bed. After he stopped caring, he used her occasionally for sex, and used a condom, even though she was on birth control pills. She had never asked why. He supposed she knew.
Unfortunately, condoms sometimes tore. Two years ago, one had, and combined with some antibiotics she had been taking, that had been enough for her to get pregnant. Not that she had told him, not at the time. Instead she had gotten an abortion.
He wanted children, had always wanted them. When they were first married, Candra had wanted to wait, and he had agreed because his financial position hadn’t been as strong as he wanted it to be before he had any children. By the time he felt prosperous enough, Candra had already begun taking lovers and he had lost all desire to have any children with her. But when she told him what she had done, threw the words at him like weapons, everything inside him had hurt at the thought of that small lost life, and from that second on he hated her.
He hadn’t spent another night under the same roof with her, but packed her bags and carried her to a hotel, with her crying and cursing, and swearing that she hadn’t really done it, that she had only said so because she wanted to hurt him. And he had rousted a locksmith out in the middle of the night and had the locks changed on the town house.
Candra had been forced to make appointments to pick up the rest of her belongings, a humiliation that had galled her soul.
He knew she had told all her friends and acquaintances that the decision to divorce was mutual. He didn’t care what she said. All he wanted was to get the divorce finalized and never see her again. This was something he should have done years ago, rather than burying himself in the pursuit of wealth. He had known for quite a while, in the back of his mind, that the time would come when he would look at her and realize he couldn’t bear living in their sham of a marriage a moment longer. He had stayed with her for his own reasons, using her sexually with little emotion, as if she were a stranger, and because of that his child had died. He should have left her long before that tiny lost life had been conceived.
Lately he had been restless, consumed by the sense it was time to move on. He had made his millions sifting through stock information, but he sure as hell didn’t want to spend the rest of his life staring at a computer screen analyzing profit margins and product demand. There was no challenge in it any longer, and he was a man who thrived on challenge. He had enjoyed his army years because of the sheer challenge of the specialized training in the rangers, the sense of testing himself in life-and-death situations. He could have made a career of the military, if he hadn’t been driven by the need to make a lot of money, enough so his mother and grandfather would never have to worry about money again.
Mission accomplished. It was time to move on.
Sweeney’s face flashed in his mind, and he leaned back in his chair, grinning. Now, there was a challenge.
After Candra’s laxity in the morals department, Sweeney’s refusal to go out with him because the divorce wasn’t final and he was still legally married gave him the feeling of having held something clean and fresh in his arms. His mother and grandfather had possessed that same stringent attitude, seeing behaviors as black and white. The concept of doing whatever you wanted, because you wanted, was foreign to them. That was common enough in their generations, in that part of the country. How had Sweeney come by those standards?
Because he wanted to know everything about her, he’d had a copy of her application for the apartment faxed to him. Paris Samille Sweeney, age thirty-one, artist. She hadn’t lied about her name, though he bet she cringed at the pretentiousness of being an artist and having Paris as a first name. Anyone else would have played it up for all it was worth, but instead she ignored her given names, to the extent that she was known exclusively by her surname.