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While Roz packed up her clothes and personal items, Hendrix elected to be somewhere other than the house. He drove around Raleigh aimlessly and somehow ended up at his mother’s curb on Cowper Drive, where she lived in a gorgeous house that he’d helped her select. It was Saturday, so odds were good that she was at some event cutting a ribbon or kissing some babies as she rallied the voters. But he texted her just in case and for the first time in what felt like a long while, fate smiled on him. She was home.
He rang the doorbell. Brookes, the head of his mother’s security, answered the door. Hendrix nodded at the man whom he’d personally vetted before allowing him anywhere near Helene. Brookes had checked out in every way. On more than one occasion, Hendrix had wondered if there was something a little more than security going on between Brookes and his mom, but she’d denied it.
Given his reaction when Helene and Roz had lunch, he wouldn’t have handled sharing his mother in that resp
ect very well, either. He made a mental note to mention to his mother that he’d recently become aware that he was a selfish crybaby when it came to anyone intruding on his territory, and that maybe she should think about dating anyway despite her son’s shortcomings.
“Hey, you,” his mother called as she came out of her study wearing a crisp summer suit that had no wrinkles, a feat only someone as stylish as Helene could pull off. “I’ve got thirty minutes before I have to leave for brunch. Unless you want to be my plus one?”
He shrugged. What else did have to do besides watch the best thing that had ever happened to him walk out of his life? “I could do worse.”
Her brows drew together as she contemplated him. “What’s wrong, sweetie?”
“Why does something have to be wrong?”
She flicked a subtle hand at Brookes, who vanished into the other room. “Not that I don’t enjoy seeing you, but when you come by on a Saturday and start talking about a date with your mother like it’s a good thing, I’m concerned. Spill it. Did you have a fight with Roz?”
“No fight.” There would have to be a difference of opinion for there to be a fight and he’d agreed with every word she’d said. There was no point to continuing this farce of a marriage. “You said yourself that things were fine with your campaign. You even went out of your way to tell us both that. So what else would be the natural conclusion to a fixer marriage but a fast, no-fault divorce once the problem is fixed?”
Besides, he was pretty sure the black swirl in his gut that wouldn’t ease meant he’d been right all along to never have a woman in his bed twice. Better all the way around not to fight Roz on her insistence that it was over. What was he supposed to do, open himself up for exactly the same kind of rejection that had devastated Marcus?
His friends wouldn’t have an ounce of sympathy for him either, not after he’d violated the pact. Jonas at least might have had some understanding if Hendrix had managed to find someone who loved him back like Jonas had. Warren wouldn’t even let him get the first sentence out and would get started on his own brand of rejection. Hendrix would be dealing with Roz’s evisceration and lose his friends.
Thankfully, he hadn’t even tried.
His mother cocked her head. “So, what? You’re done with Roz and thought you’d hang out with your mom for the rest of your life?”
“Sure. What’s wrong with that?”
He and his mother were a unit. The real kind. Maybe not peanut butter and jelly, but better because they’d been there for each other over the years when neither of them had anyone else. His mom would never reject him.
Nor did she have a life of her own with someone great who took care of her. Guilt swamped him as he wondered if he had something to do with that.
“For a Harris, you’re being a moron,” she said coolly. “I told you and Roz that my campaign was fine because I wanted to take that out of the equation.”
“Well, congrats. You did and now we have no reason to be married. What else would you have expected to be the outcome of that?”
“A marriage, Hendrix. A real one. I didn’t come up with the idea of you marrying Roz solely to save my campaign. It was a great benefit and I genuinely appreciate it. But I want to see you happy. She’s it for you, honey. I could see it in the photograph.”
“What you saw was chemistry,” he countered flatly before the hopeful part inside could latch onto the idea that he’d missed something crucial in this whole messy scenario. “We have it. In spades. But there’s nothing else there.”
“That’s ridiculous. You might have figured out a way to lie to yourself, but I have thirty years of practice in reading you. I saw you two together. I listened to Roz talk about you. There’s more.”
On his side. Sure. Not hers.
“Doesn’t matter,” he growled. “She’s out. She told me straight to my face that it was over. Unless you’re suggesting that I should resort to chaining her up in the basement, I have to accept that it’s indeed over. I wasn’t given a choice.”
Clearly exasperated, Helene fisted her hands on her hips and despite the fact that he’d been taller than her since he’d turned seventeen, she managed to tower over him. “So, let me get this straight. You told her that you were in love with her and that you might have married her to fix the scandal, but now you’d like to see what it looks like if you stay married because you want to. And she said ‘forget it, I’m out’?”
He shifted uncomfortably. How had his mother conjured up the perfect speech to describe the things in his heart when he couldn’t have spit out those words at gunpoint? “Yeah. Basically. Except not quite like that.”
Or at all like that. He hadn’t given her the opportunity to hear those things because it was better not to lay it all out. Saying that stuff out loud meant Roz could counter it easily. Who wanted that kind of outright rejection?
“You didn’t tell her, did you?” His mother’s gentle tone still had plenty of censure in it.
“I don’t deal well with rejection,” he mumbled.
“Call Channel Five. There’s a newsflash for you.”
