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Eric’s lawyer faced Bree’s team. “Your client was smart enough to deal in cash, so we have no paper trail linking her to Chambers. What we do have is the photographer, Belka’s, corroboration that he and Chambers were both hired by Mrs. Laine to frighten Jenna Black and her daughter. Powers, the detective, refuses to talk right now, but we have a flight manifest that puts him on the same plane with Chambers. The police seized a rental car with both Powers and Chambers’ prints. We have a waitress in a diner who saw them together, and a motel clerk who remembers both Powers and Belka. We also pinged calls from a burner phone we confiscated from Belka to the Laines’ New York apartment building. Security cameras place Mrs. Laine there.” The lawyer turned toward Bree. “We can connect a hundred dots of circumstantial evidence against you. My client’s daughter will never have to testify.”
“Circumstantial,” Bree repeated. “Good luck.”
Eric removed papers from the second envelope and slid them across the table to her. He immediately drew his arm back so his hand wouldn’t graze hers. He’d never in his life touch Bree Davis again.
“This is a very different offer. In it is enough cash for you to live pretty well for a few years and the deed to a nice two-bedroom co-op in Brentwood. You can keep all your jewelry.”
Bree turned to her attorneys. “Tell my husband he and his circumstantial dots can go to hell.”
Eric took out a solid gold pen from his pocket and signed both divorce agreements. He made his way to the door. “I’ll be back in ten minutes. That’s all the time I’m giving you to decide which papers to sign.”
With a tap of his finger, he flicked the glossy Mont Bleu pen so it rolled toward her. “One agreement will make you comfortable…the other, undeniably wealthy but with a giant lawsuit that will wipe you out hanging over your head.”
Eric opened the door, turned, and smiled. “Millions of dollars in damages are awarded every day because of circumstantial evidence. There’s no reasonable doubt in a civil trial. Ask your lawyers.”
Bree turned, and her mouth hung slack. The unflappable head of her legal team was suddenly pale and sweating.
Eric’s smile stretched even wider. “You can keep the fucking pen.”
Chapter Forty
Spring cleared a path for summer. Untethered and financially unscathed by his divorce, Eric returned to Cromline to celebrate his daughter’s ninth birthday. Janie had a simple sleepover with friends from school and her gymnastics’ teammates. Anne came to help dole out cake and ice cream and to keep the noise down to a dull roar. With Eric in attendance, most of the moms lingered a bit, gushing, blushing, and acting more like adolescents than their daughters.
Cheryl Baldwin, Jenna’s newest “best friend” brought Janie a gift in a large box that housed God only knew what. Tiffany and the three Britneys had suddenly developed a new-found fondness for both Janie and Riley. The girls, though neither cared, were finally on Cromline Elementary’s A-List.
For Jenna life continued as usual. She ran the store and stayed active at Janie’s school to help with all the year’s end functions like field day events and class trips. She had regular luncheon dates with Anne and talked endlessly on the telephone with her parents and Randi to assure them she and Janie were fine. A security detail hovered nearby if needed.
Reporters who had clamored for stories about Eric Laine and Jenna Welles seemed to be satisfied for the moment. New scandals from the entertainment world replaced the saga of Angel and the “Busboy.” It was at long last a story with finality.
Alan Stark tried to lure Jenna back into his fold of clients, but she declined. She had no interest in acting or singing professionally, at least not for any time soon. After all that had happened, life was peacefully and thankfully returning to normal with one small exception.
She was pregnant.
****
Randi’s voice was a firm decree coming through the phone line. “You have to tell him.”
“I know, I know,” Jenna answered. “I just have to find the right way.”
“Well don’t wait five years this time.”
Jenna took a long breath. She was almost two months along and in the full throes of midday sickness. “I need to lie down.”
“You need to tell him!”
Slumped on her couch, the phone was at her ear. “Randi, if I tell him he’ll—”
“He’ll what? Marry you? The rich, gorgeous, famous father of your children will marry you? I’ll think of you when you’re sipping champagne by your infinity pool, and I’m grabbing a wine cooler from the ice bucket on my pressure treated deck.”
The memory of two teenage girls fresh from a small-town graduation and arguing about red-carpet galas versus frat house beer pong flashed in Jenna’s head. She smiled at how grateful she was to have Randi for a best friend.
“Listen to me, Jen. You tell him, and when you get married this time, stay that way. I can’t go through another ten years of this shit.”
Exhausted and fully settled in the down filled cushions, Jenna put her phone on speaker. “I thought you didn’t even like him.”
“Ididn’tlike him when he was married to that bitchy vampire-woman. I like him just fine now.”
Jenna sighed into the receiver. “If I tell him and we get remarried, I’ll never know. I’ll never know if he came back out of love or responsibility.”
