The Family They Chose Read online

  Helen was drunk. Again. Come to think of it, Helen always said what was on her mind and seemed to get more brazenly outspoken with each passing year. Her drinking was also out of control, and the family seemed to be in complete denial about it.

  It wasn’t Olivia’s place to say anything about her mother-in-law’s imbibing, but these barbs…they were inexcusable. Talking as if Olivia’s father were a banker refusing to lend money rather than seeing it for the intensely painful, sensitive—and private—issue that it was.

  “Mother, stop it,” Jamison insisted.

  Normally, when Helen started with her polite bullying, Olivia didn’t let the woman’s barbs get to her—but today Olivia felt vulnerable. Fragile, almost.

  So, when Jamison put an arm around her and locked gazes with his mother, Olivia sank into him. Against her will, her body responded to her husband’s offer of solidarity and protection.

  Despite what had transpired earlier, she was glad that at least he was taking her side, as he always did.

  At least that hadn’t changed.

  Before Helen could say anything else, the uncomfortable standoff was interrupted by a ringing voice.

  “Merry Christmas, all!” Payton waddled over to them, her freckled cheeks rosy and her baby bump looking much more pronounced in the holly-green velvet maternity dress than it should for a woman five months’ pregnant. Of course, it was her fourth pregnancy.

  Fourth baby in four-and-a-half years. Olivia swallowed the lump of sad envy that had burned in her throat until it slid down, settling like a hot coal in the pit of her barren belly.

  “Payton, darling.” Helen stood and pulled her favorite daughter-in-law into a gentle embrace. “How are you feeling, love?”

  Payton pushed an auburn curl off her forehead, then beamed and rested her hands on her swollen belly. “I’ve never felt better.”

  Helen held her at arm’s length, taking in her entire being. “It shows. You are positively radiant.”

  Payton preened. “I always feel my best when I’m pregnant.”

  Of course she did.

  Lucky for her since she was always pregnant. Resentment flared inside Olivia. It seemed like Payton and Grant produced a child to commemorate each wedding anniversary.

  “Here, sit, sit. Next to me. Get off your feet.” Helen returned to her seat on the sofa and patted the cushion beside her.

  “Well, Mom, we have been in the car all morning.” She braced her right hand on the small of her back, which made her stomach stick out all the more. “But I guess I could sit a while longer while we catch up.”

  “You know, if you keep giving me grandchildren at this rate, I’m going to have to move you up here to Stanhope Manor so that there’s a place big enough to house all of you under one roof. Jamison doesn’t seem to have any interest in the place.”

  Helen shot a pointed look at her son as Payton planted herself next to her mother-in-law.

  “It would be wonderful to live with you up here. If you keep talking like that, we just might take you up on it.”

  Olivia glanced at Jamison, who was wearing an over-my-dead-body look on his face. She had a hunch that his sour expression wasn’t simply a remnant of his mother’s earlier indelicate blurting, but had more to do with the threat of his younger brother’s status-hungry wife bumping him out of his birthright with her pregnant belly.

  Maybe, for once, Payton’s selfish antics could actually help Olivia by making Jamison change his mind about holding off on having children. Even so, it seemed unlikely that an army of children could keep Helen at bay if they moved in with her.

  Payton must have sensed Olivia staring because she smiled up at Jamison and Olivia and said, “It’s been a long time. How are the two of you?”

  They made small talk for a few moments until Grant entered with an infant seat in one hand, a toddler on the opposite hip and their oldest boy trailing behind him. Grant flashed his trademark toothy, white Mallory smile, greeting everyone as he walked over to kiss his mother’s cheek.

  Grant had been a latecomer to politics, winning a New Hampshire congressional seat just last year. He and Jamison had always been competitive, but when it came to politics, there was an unwritten agreement that Jamison was the one who would make a bid for the White House. After he’d had his go, then, if Grant was game, it was all his.

  Olivia wondered if the same accord applied to Stanhope Manor or if Helen would seriously offer the home to Grant and Payton—even as a strategic move to force Jamison and Olivia’s hand. On top of everything else, the thought was more than Olivia could deal with. So she pushed it out of her mind, vowing only to worry about it if and when the crisis came up.

  “Merry Christmas, son,” Helen said to Grant. “And where’s your nanny? Surely you didn’t give her this week off? Now more than ever your wife needs the extra hands to help her.”

  Grant and Payton had imported a woman named Ingrid from Sweden to help with the kids. Payton took pride in flaunting her Swedish nanny, so it was a surprise when Grant said, “She went home for the holidays.”

  Helen shot Payton an alarmed glance. “Oh, you poor dear. However will you manage?”

  Olivia was delighted to fall off of Helen’s radar as Payton dutifully played the martyred mommy, regaling her audience with details of how it would indeed be a challenge, but that she would somehow get by.

  Anger and shame rose in Olivia’s throat like bile, as she moved as far away from Payton as possible.

  As the day progressed, Helen wasn’t the only one driving the baby train. Payton and her brood—and pregnant belly—drew inevitable comparisons and incessant questions from friends and relatives about why Jamison and Olivia weren’t keeping up with his younger brothers.

  If Olivia had been in a certain frame of mind, she would’ve taken offense at their questions. Asking a couple about when they were going to have a baby was not so far off from quizzing them about their sex life. It was a private matter. Didn’t people understand that?

  Obviously it took sex for pregnancy to happen.

  Unless the couple went the in vitro route, as Jamison and Olivia well knew. They’d tried to conceive the usual way, and when that failed, they’d opted for in vitro.

  The hormones to help Olivia produce more eggs for harvesting had wreaked havoc with her physical well-being, causing headaches and mood swings and overall malaise. She and Jamison had ended up fighting, so much so that they’d decided to separate.

  The thought of how something as wonderful as having a baby could create such turmoil in a marriage was beyond Olivia.

  She wished Jamison could understand it was the side effects of the hormones that had caused their problems. Not the possibility that their marriage was unstable. And certainly not the act of having a baby and building their family. Looking at it rationally, she could understand his hesitation. She just wished he could believe that it would be different when they tried again.

  Because it would be.

  This time she knew what to expect. This time she would be prepared.

  A new doctor had recently joined the Armstrong Fertility Institute. Chance Demetrios was one of the leading fertility research specialists in the world. Her brother Paul had hired him away from a teaching hospital in San Francisco. Olivia had seen him once, just before she and Jamison decided on the trial separation, and she hadn’t followed up when he’d said there was a slim chance she could get pregnant. Slim, but a chance nonetheless. Since the pain of their separation was so fresh, Olivia’s mindset made her question the point of following up if her husband wasn’t on board.

  But now, especially as she watched Payton, Olivia was looking at things differently. Suddenly, there was an urgency. There was no time to waste. Maybe it was Jamison’s sudden hesitation, but Olivia was feeling her full twenty-nine years. She certainly wasn’t getting any younger. Maybe, if Jamison wasn’t willing to cooperate, it was time to take maters into her own hands—even if it meant getting pregnant without her husband’s bles
sing.

  After all, once she was carrying his child, he’d come around.

  Wouldn’t he?

  Jamison retreated into the library with his glass of wine. As a kid, he’d always enjoyed the solitude of the room—the built-in mahogany bookcases and never-ending stacks of books felt like comfortable old friends. When life overwhelmed him or he had a problem that needed sorting out, he’d come here, grab a book and sit in the window seat. Sometimes he’d lose himself in a classic. More often than not, he’d lose himself in his thoughts as he gazed at the panoramic view of the mountains that stretched like a grand painting framed by the horizon of the backyard.

  Tonight, the moonless sky hid the mountains as if nature had drawn a black velvet curtain. So he bypassed the window seat, placed another log on the dying fire and settled into one of the leather club chairs in front of the hearth.

  It was late. He and Olivia really should head home soon, but he needed a few minutes alone to gather his thoughts before they climbed into the car and endured another long, silent journey.

  He didn’t blame her for being mad at him. It seemed that since he’d been home he’d committed one seemingly thoughtless blunder after another. He’d even managed to blow it with Olivia this evening after the friends had gone and the party shifted into a mode of opening Christmas presents and snapping family photos. Oh, she hadn’t said it straight out—in fact she’d barely said more than, “Thank you,” but the flash of confusion in her eyes had been unmistakable when she’d opened her gift from him and had seen the gaudy cocktail ring that was not in the least bit her style—and several sizes too big to boot.

  Crunched for time, he’d asked his mother to pick up a gift for Olivia from him—jewelry, something nice, of course. “You know Olivia. Pick out something she’d like.”

  When his tiny, pearl-wearing wife had opened the jewelers box and pulled out the multi-colored boulder of a cocktail ring, he’d wanted to snatch it back and claim that there had been a mistake. On her delicate hand, it looked like a wild, golf-ball-size piece of stained glass; certainly nothing he would’ve ever picked out for her. And that had been obvious. He hadn’t shopped for his wife. She’d been well aware of that since the ring had his mother’s signature written all over it.

  For someone who prided himself on intelligence, he felt pretty dumb for entrusting his mother, of all people, to shop for Olivia. That blunder, on top of the fact that it probably hadn’t been the best time to tell Olivia he wanted to hold off on getting pregnant. Not on the heels of disappointing her with the change of plans for Christmas week. But thoughtlessly, he’d done it. It had slipped out as they’d talked earlier that morning. They’d digressed back into the dubious tug of war over commitment and priorities, which went from bad to worse when he’d broken the news that he had to leave because he had to play host to the visiting ambassador. She hadn’t taken it well. No matter that a lot was riding on this meeting, and if he pulled it off it would be a major coup, a feather in his political cap.

  The flames crackled in the fireplace.

  The ridiculous ring felt like a third strike in a game he was already losing. He was between a rock and a hard place. Olivia knew their life would be this way and if he did make that run for the White House in 2016, not only did they need to find solidarity in their marriage, they had to be a solid twosome before they could add to their family.

  Still, it didn’t mean he loved her any less. As a matter of fact, he was standing firm on his position to hold off starting a family because he loved her. Children added a whole different dynamic to a marriage, and he wasn’t so naive to believe that a child would fix something that was broken. He’d seen plenty of evidence to support that fact as he’d watched his parents’ marriage come apart under the pressure of public office and the weight of lies and deception. The only reason his mother and father hadn’t divorced was because of his father’s untimely death.

  Well-shrouded secrets and, of course, the soft focus of layers of decades had allowed his mother the privilege of playing the well-respected, grieving widow of a political hero—a senator who would’ve been president had his life not been tragically snuffed out. But as the oldest of six boys, Jamison had gotten a first-hand look at the real life behind the gossamer curtain that cloaked political power couple, Judson and Helen Mallory.

  Jamison sipped his cabernet. He was nothing like his old man, aside from carrying on his father’s political legacy. In fact, Jamison had consciously tried to stay clear of the womanizing and scandal that not only plagued the Mallory name, but had driven his mother to the bottle and kept his family life in constant upheaval. If he’d gleaned nothing else from observing his parents’ destructive relationship, it was that he knew children could not fix a rocky marriage.

  Children simply got caught in the cross fire.

  Behind him, the library door creaked open. A slant of light yawned across the wall then disappeared as the door shut. Jamison turned around, hoping Olivia had decided to join him. Instead, his mother stood there, tall and proud and expressionless. Her angular features were rendered even sharper by the dim amber glow of the fire. She glided across the room and slid into the chair next to him.

  He could feel her gaze on him, as palpable as the heat of the fire at his feet.

  “I thought I’d find you here,” she said. “Anytime you had something on your mind, you’d always hide in here.”

  “I’m not hiding, Mother. Simply enjoying the solitude.”

  “Don’t try to fool me.” She shifted in her seat, angling her knees toward him, crossing her legs at the ankles, folding her hands in her lap. “You of all people wouldn’t leave a party unless you had something weighing on your mind.”

  Jamison took a slow sip of wine, buying time. Interesting that his mother had been drinking most of the day and she still had the uncanny ability to read him. Of course, his retreating into solitude had probably been a big tip-off. Rather than slipping off, he probably should’ve rallied Olivia and simply headed for home. But he’d wanted to think, wanted to find common ground on which they could meet as they drove home.

  “I’m exhausted,” he said. “Thanks to work and the weather, it hasn’t exactly been a jolly holiday.”

  He set his wine on the end table next to his seat, got up and stoked the fire. It flared, spit and crackled as he turned the log.

  “I can see that you’re exhausted,” she said to his back. “You haven’t been yourself all day. I do wish you would stay the night and get a fresh start tomorrow. Grant, Payton and the kids are staying.”

  He returned the poker to its brass stand. “Thank you, but we can’t stay. I have an early flight tomorrow. We really should head for home.”

  A chain of silent seconds stretched between them.

  “You always did love this room,” she said. “It’s too bad you can’t enjoy it more often.”

  He shrugged and glanced at her. “I don’t even get to enjoy my own home as often as I’d like.”

  A flash as hot as the glint of a flame lit her eyes. “Why are you going back to Washington so soon?”

  He disengaged her gaze and turned his attention back to the dancing fire. “An unexpected meeting came up.”

  “A meeting. During Christmas week.” There was a goading, knowing tone to her voice, as if she’d caught him in a lie, but was willing to keep his secret.

  Despite the pause in conversation, Jamison didn’t elaborate.

  “The one-size-fits-all excuse. That’s the one your father used to use all the time. ‘I have a meeting.’ And how was I supposed to know differently?”

  “Mom, don’t.”

  He hadn’t realized how badly she was slurring her words. He really didn’t want his mother to string together all of his father’s flaws and illuminate them like tawdry lights on a tainted family tree.

  “The wife never knows until it’s too late. When she finds out, all she can do to save face is go on pretending she’s none the wiser. It’s a miserable life, Jamison. Don�
��t put Olivia through that. I hardly think she’s strong enough to cope.”

  Was she implying that he was having an affair? It rankled him. Even so, he wasn’t going to defend himself against something he had no intention of doing. Besides, she was drunk and probably wouldn’t remember the conversation in the morning.

  “This is your house, Jamison. I know Olivia doesn’t want to live here, but she needs to understand that Mallory men…well, affairs just seem to be a way of life. If you move in here, I can help her cope. I can help her understand that it’s just something Mallory men do.”

  He held up his hand. “Mother, stop. I am not having an affair. I have no intention of having an affair. I love my wife.”

  Helen threw back her head and guffawed a most unladylike sound. “Oh, Jamison, you can level with me. I’m not going to tell her.”

  She was talking utter nonsense. It was definitely time to go.

  He stood and walked toward the door.

  Helen’s body swiveled as she followed him with her gaze.

  “Where are you going?” she demanded.

  “Home, Mother. It’s late, but I thank you for a wonderful evening. Merry Christmas.”

  “Jamison, don’t walk away from me. I need to ask you a question.”

  He stopped, his hand on the doorknob.

  “Seven generations of Mallorys have lived here, son. How much longer are you planning on allowing that woman to deny you what’s yours? You need to set your wife straight. Tell her it’s time.”

  “It’s not time, and it won’t be until and unless Olivia is ready.”

  Helen made a clucking sound and stood up, wobbling as she did.

  “You’re just like your father, Jamison, always letting a pretty face cloud your judgment and sway your decision. Stand up and be a man, son.”

  Jamison shook his head. “Oh, Mother, what you don’t understand is that the main difference between Dad and me is that I am being a man. The pretty face that influences me is my wife. I’m sorry he never showed you the same courtesy.”