Authors: Mariah Stewart
Tags: #American Light Romantic Fiction, #Romance: Modern, #Contemporary, #General, #Romance, #Suspense, #Romance - Contemporary, #Fiction, #Fiction - Romance
For the past five years, she and Emilio battled over the same ground, over and over until Dallas no longer cared who he slept with, as long as it wasn’t her. Looking back now, she realized she should have left him the first time he’d cheated on her, when the tabloids had leaked those photos of Emilio frolicking with an up-and-coming Latino actress on a sunny, sandy beach in Guatemala when he’d told her he was going to Cannes, but it had been so much easier to stay than to leave. There was Cody to consider: Emilio may have been a cheating jerk, but he did seem to love his son. Besides, Dallas’s schedule had been so hectic for the past three years that she’d barely had time to read the tabloids. She’d had the blessing—or the curse—of having had parts offered to her in several movies, wonderful parts that she’d really wanted to play, so she’d signed for all of them, and had gone from one set right onto the next, leaving her time for nothing and no one other than her son. It had only been recently that Dallas admitted to herself that she’d been deliberately overworking herself to avoid having to deal with her home situation.
Well, avoid no more
, she told herself as she dialed her attorney’s number. This time, Emilio had gone too far. When the call went directly to voicemail, Dallas left the message that she wanted her attorney to do whatever she had to do to speed up the divorce.
“And oh,” she’d added, “we need to talk about that custody arrangement we’d worked out …”
While she waited for the return call, she logged onto the computer in her home office. She searched the web for what she was looking for. The link to the video appeared almost instantaneously, along with a running tally of how many times the video had been watched. Her stomach churning, she clicked on the link and was asked first to confirm that she was over eighteen, then for her credit card number.
“Great,” she muttered. “For the low, low price of nineteen ninety-five, I can watch my husband … that is, my almost ex-husband, perform daring feats with his production assistants.”
The video began abruptly—“What, no music?”—and while the lighting could have been better, there was no question who was the filling in the middle of that particular sandwich. As difficult as it was to watch, she forced herself to sit through it, commenting to herself from time to time (“Emilio, Emilio, didn’t anyone ever tell you to always keep your best side to the camera? And, babe, that is decidedly
not
your best side.”).
When the phone rang before it was over, Dallas turned off her computer and answered the call.
“Hey, Dallas, it’s Norma.”
“Thanks for getting back to me right away.” Dallas leaned back in her chair and exhaled. Just hearing Norma’s always cool and even voice relaxed her.
“I just got in and I was going to call you as soon as I kicked off my shoes.” Norma was not only Dallas’s attorney, she was also her friend.
“So you heard …”
“Is there anyone in this town who has not? So sorry, Dallas. We knew he was a colossal shithead, but this latest stunt even beats his own personal best.” Before Dallas could respond, Norma said, “So we’re going to want to see if we can move the divorce along a little faster and we’ll file a motion to revise those custody arrangements we’d previously agreed to.”
“You read my mind.”
“I’ll file first thing in the morning. If nothing else, I think we should ask for sole custody for a period of at least six months, given the circumstances, which of course we’ll spell out for the judge in very specific terms.”
“Would it help to know that that little forty-two minute production was filmed in his house?”
“Really?” Norma made a “huh” sound. “Are you positive?”
“I picked out that furniture,” Dallas replied. “Along with the carpets and the tile in the bath and the towels that were dropped around the hot tub.”
“That was really stupid on his part. Now you can say you don’t want Emilio to have unsupervised custody because you don’t know who will be in the house or what they’ll be doing. Or who might be filming it.” Norma paused. “How are you doing?”
“On the one hand, I feel devastated. Humiliated. Nauseated. On the other, I feel like calling every reporter who chastised me for being so mean and unforgiving to poor Emilio when our divorce was announced and yelling,
‘See? I told you he was a jerk!’
”
“Anyone you want me to call for you?”
“No. I’m not making any statements to anyone. This is strictly a ‘no comment’ situation if ever there was one.”
“You know you can always refer people to me.”
“I may have Elena start doing that tomorrow. Thanks.”
“How did Cody react?”
“He hasn’t. He doesn’t know what’s going on.”
“You didn’t tell him?”
“Of course not. Why would I tell him about something like that?”
“Do you really think you can keep him from finding out? Isn’t he in school?”
“He just turned six. He’s only in kindergarten.” Dallas frowned. “How many of the kids in his class do you think caught Emilio’s act?”
“They could hear their parents talking, they could see the story on TV. It’s going to make the news, Dallas.”
“I don’t think it’s going to be a problem.” Dallas bit a fingernail. “At least, I hope it won’t be. But if he hears about it, I’ll have to tell him … something.”
“Well, good luck with that. In the meantime, if you think of anything else I can do for you, give me a call.” Norma’s calls always ended the same way, with the same closing sentence. She never bothered to wait until Dallas said good-bye. She just hung up.
What, Dallas wondered, would she tell Cody, if he should hear something?
She didn’t have long to wait to find out. When she arrived at school the following afternoon, the Cody who got into the car was a very different child from the one she’d dropped off earlier that morning.
“How was school, buddy?” she asked when he got into the car.
He looked out the window and muttered something.
“What did you say?” She turned in her seat to face him.
“I didn’t say anything.”
“Well, how
was
school?”
He shook his head but did not look at her.
Uh-oh
, she thought as she drove from the curb.
This doesn’t bode well …
“So what did you do today?” she asked.
“I don’t want to talk.”
“Why not, baby?”
“Because I don’t and I’m not a baby,” he yelled. He still hadn’t looked at her.
Oh, God
. Her hands began to shake and she clutched the wheel in an effort to make them stop.
She did not try to engage him in conversation the rest of the way home, and once they arrived, she drove in through the service entrance at the back of the property.
“Those cars out front, they’re all there because …” Cody said accusingly. “Because …”
It was then that Dallas realized he was crying. She stopped the car and turned off the ignition, then got out and opened his door. She unbuckled his seat belt but he made no move toward her.
“Cody, what happened today at school?” When he didn’t respond, she asked, “Does it have something to do with your dad?”
“They said he did things … with other ladies. Justin said his dad saw it on the computer and he heard his dad tell his mom.” Huge, fat drops ran down Cody’s face and Dallas’s heart began to break in half.
“Justin’s daddy said my daddy was a very, very bad man.”
Dallas had never felt so helpless in her life. She got into the backseat and rubbed Cody’s back, then coaxed him into her arms. How could she possibly explain this to her son?
“I’m never going back to school, Mommy. Not ever. Nobody can make me.” He hiccupped loudly. “Not even you.”
“All right, sweetie.” Silently cursing Emilio for his stupidity and his carelessness, Dallas held her son tight and let him cry it out. “It’s going to be all right. …”
But even as she promised, Dallas wondered if, for Cody, anything would ever be right again.
Coming Home
is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
A Ballantine Books Mass Market Original
Copyright © 2010 by Marti Robb
Excerpt from
Home Again
copyright © 2010 by Marti Robb
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
B ALLANTINE and colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.
This book contains an excerpt from the forthcoming mass market edition of
Home Again
by Mariah Stewart. This excerpt has been set for this edition only and may not reflect the final content of the forthcoming edition.
eISBN: 978-0-345-52034-0
v3.0
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