“Alex!” Speaking of Cassandra…
“I’m in here!” I called to her. I was in the nursery. It was coming along beautifully.
She stepped up behind me in the room I was having made into a nursery. I heard her snort. We’d already had words about this and she didn’t know yet that he was mine. “This is a ridiculous expenditure,” she said.
“You’ve already voiced that opinion, Cassandra, but thank you. I can afford it.”
“Who does this, Alex? Who makes a nursery in their home that they don’t need for the maid’s child? If I didn’t know any better I would think she was your mistress.”
I turned to look at her. Each time I did lately and I saw the hatefulness that was set in the lines around her eyes and her mouth, I wondered what I’d ever seen there in the first place. “What makes you think she’s not?” I asked her.
She looked at me suspiciously for a few seconds and then she said, “Even you wouldn’t stoop low enough to sleep with the help.”
I let it go for now. She was going to focus on Vicki being the help. It was going to make me angry. I tried another tactic, guilt. “In my defense, I did believe at one time that I would need this. You let me believe that.”
It didn’t hit the mark. She wasn’t going to feel guilty about it. I’m not sure if she even possessed such an emotion. “Let’s not beat that old dead horse again, Alex. What time does our plane leave?”
“At four.” I had a meeting with an important client in Belize. Cassandra, of course, insisted on coming along and making it a “vacation.” I am planning on using the time in paradise to let her know about the baby. It had to be done. I didn’t want to do it here. Maybe she’d calm down before we got back.
“I don’t understand why we couldn’t have left earlier. You’ve wasted this entire day on this ridiculous project of yours when we could be lying on a beach by now.”
“I’m not going to Belize to lie on a beach. I’m going to work.”
“Of course you are. That’s all you know how to do. I’m going to lie on the beach… all day, every day.”
“We’re only staying until Friday.” It was Wednesday now. I didn’t want to be gone too long.
“Are you kidding? A day and a half in Belize? You’re crazy. I won’t have time to do anything. I want to go shopping and have dinner in that little restaurant we found last time, right on the beach. A day and a half? What kind of a vacation is that?”
“It’s not a vacation,” I said again. “It’s work, Cassie.”
“Fine. Then when you wrap up your business we can stay an extra week and that can be the vacation.”
She was on a permanent vacation. She could actually go anywhere she wanted to by herself. For some reason, she wanted me on her arm. Maybe I was the trophy and not her. “I don’t have a week to waste sitting on a beach in Belize, Cassandra. I run a corporation. I have to work. If you want to have money to go on a vacation ever you’ll understand that. We have plenty of beaches around here if you want to sit on one.”
She snorted. “Right, I’ll sit next to a couple of tattooed teenagers making out or a fat, middle-aged woman chasing her dirty little brats around down at your favorite hangout. Jesus Alex, you’re a billionaire. Act like it.” She was such an incredibly obnoxious snob that sometimes I could hardly stand it.
I turned on her and said, “Exactly how should a billionaire act, Cassandra? Maybe I should be a snob like you and talk mean about people and down to them?”
“He should act like he has some class. He shouldn’t be trolling nasty beaches and broken down piers in Seal Beach. He shouldn’t be having breakfast with his maid and he really shouldn’t be designing nurseries for her. It gives people the wrong idea. I don’t know what’s gotten into you, but this has to stop!”
“Or what, Cassie? You’ll leave me? Been there and done that, remember? You came back because you can’t live off the paltry million dollars a year alimony you were ‘entitled’ to!”
“I shouldn’t have to live off of that. I’m entitled to a lot more and you know it.”
“No, I don’t know it. You didn’t work for any of this. Hell, even as a wife you’ve been sub-par! You spend your days in pursuit of your own beauty and your own pleasures. None of it has anything to do with me or you being my wife.”
“Oh really?” she said, with narrowed eyes. “So you’d rather have some woman who let herself go? Some fat chick with dark roots and cellulite?”