But those types of things weren’t the “real world” examples my parents were referring to.
Boarding school was just one of the many requirements that came with the territory of growing up rich. James understood completely, because he was raised in much the same way. The Blakneys owned a beach retreat on Blackstone Island not far from my family’s ancestral estate, Blackwater, and so our lives had been spent at the same gatherings and social functions for as long as we both could remember.
As the years went along I loved James from afar, watching him grow more serious . . . and more cynical. I think his fiancé dumping him at the altar five years ago to run away with a senior partner in his father’s law firm had a lot to do with the change in his personality. Leah Allison turned out to be a money-hungry bitch who’d left a trail of destruction in her wake. She broke my James’s heart. And she did it publicly in a way that was cruel and unnecessary, and on the very day they were to be married. With the guests already arriving at the church! I’ll never forget the look on James’s face when Caleb led him out of there.
Crushed.
I didn’t know all of the reasons for his devastation at the time. It was more than just Leah leaving him hanging at the altar. It was worse than that, I would discover in time.
I couldn’t have known all of the machinations that went on behind the scenes in our world when I was barely eighteen years old, but I’d learned enough to get an idea that a lot of it wasn’t nice.
Despicable was a much better adjective.
James had been twenty-six when he found out there were lots of secret deals and plenty of depravity in plain sight if you knew where to look.
I think that discovery was part of my interest in choosing to study Social Work at Boston University. I wanted to live my life differently than the people in my “social” circle. I didn’t desire to be impoverished, but I didn’t desire to waste my money on frivolous excess, either. I wanted to use it to help make a difference for people who desperately needed someone to care, and had no one.
No one at all.
After his wedding-that-didn’t-happen, I’d heard that James had promptly started drinking and stayed drunk for about a week before pulling himself back together. With fierce resolve to overcome the betrayal of those who’d done him wrong, a mask descended over his handsome face. James lost his carefree manner and the easy smile he’d always had for others, and most importantly, for me. He became more closed off and far less engaging in person after Leah worked him over. The change in him was permanent.
I missed the old James terribly at first, but I didn’t have a great many encounters with him during the years I was an undergrad at BU. I was busy being a student, and James was busy separating himself from his father’s firm. There was some drama over that decision at the time. I remember my parents discussing it, but in the end James made his own stamp in the legal community, establishing himself as the go-to guy for contract law in New England. James R. Blakney & Associates, P.C. was retained by my dad for Blackstone Global Enterprises as soon as James had set up on his own. Nothing had changed now that Caleb was the one heading up BGE since Dad’s death. In fact, James probated his will—a complicated undertaking for anyone faced with settling the billion-dollar personal fortune our father left to us—and he handled it all without a blip. On top of being a close family friend, James knew the conditions of my trust fund. He knew what would have to happen in order for me to gain access to it before my thirtieth birthday, too. He was the one who explained it to me and my sister at the reading of the will. Lucas and Wyatt weren’t at issue because they were already sitting only a year out from thirty when Dad passed away.
It would be fair to say I hate Leah. Not so much for being with James in the first place, but for wounding him and leaving him a changed man. For that reason alone she is on my unforgivable sinners list. But I’ve also done something to hurt James. Something that could make him hate me, even though it would kill me inside if he did.
I stole from him.
I took advantage of James in a weak moment. I knew it was wrong, and yet I didn’t care when I was crossing over a dangerous line with him. I indulged nearly a decade’s worth of craving to experience the magic of being loved by James Blakney. Loved? Probably more like fucked. But it was done in a loving way so I did not care. Carelessness indeed. I knew the risks and took my chances anyway.
Still, it was so very wrong of me to let it happen, because the circumstances were too close to how he’d been betrayed by Leah. My betrayal is even worse because the effects will be passed along onto others.
And now?
I’ll have to face up to the consequences of what I’ve done.
To James.
To us.
To our unborn child.
ONE
James
Three Months Earlier
Boston