An Underestimated Christmas (Underestimated 3) Read online

  That was the point Morgan and I were at in our marriage. Sex was no doubt the best thing we had going for us. It’s where we both released life’s stresses. Sex had become something we did out of anger. It was amazing, great, and always full of emotion, but nonetheless, it had become something that came natural after a bad day, which was most days anymore. Moving to Los Angeles would be good for us. Hopefully, the way it was when we first made Rodanthe our permanent residence.

  Having two boys put a strain on our marriage for sure. I’m not blaming it on my kids by any means. I just mean, there didn’t seem to be time for Morgan and Drew anymore. Nicholas had a breakdown every time we left him for more than a couple hours. It became easier to stay home. And yes, I knew I had to stop enabling him and make him listen. It was just extremely hard for me. I didn’t want to be that dad. I wanted to be the cool dad, the one your kids come to when they need something. I didn’t want my boys raised the way Morgan and I were. If I could just get her to understand that part of it.

  I get her being pissed about the store and the move, but I didn’t get why she thought being mean to him would make it any better. I didn’t want to be mean to him. I wanted them to always be happy. I never wanted them to feel like they weren’t loved, not for one second of their lives.

  We were right back at it the following morning. Celeste and Alicia weren’t out of the driveway before we were bickering.

  “I’m not saying one word, Drew,” Morgan lied.

  “Fine, Morgan. Don’t say one word. Let him watch his movie and—” Morgan and I both darted to the kitchen when we heard the glass break. I grabbed Tadpole and Morgan tossed a towel over the broken wine glass.

  “That’s nice. That would have been great, Morgan. Let’s take our son to the ER because he was cut on mommy’s wine glass. What’s that saying about you, Morgan?”

  “It’s not saying anything, Drew. It’s saying I was too drunk to care about putting it in the dishwasher. He didn’t get cut and we’re not taking him to the ER,” Morgan yelled right back. I carried Tad out and sat with Nicholas on the sofa. Watching the construction of the Clifton Suspension Bridge was safer than helping Morgan clean up shards of glass.

  This move had to be better for us.

  Los Angeles took a lot of getting used to. It was nice getting away from my mom, but I missed my little sister like crazy. Caroline and I had really gotten close after we made the beach house our perpetual dwelling. I missed the close proximity of our house, too.

  This house was so big, too big. I couldn’t watch the boys play while I made supper anymore, and what used to take me a couple hours a week to clean, now took twice that long. Drew offered to hire a housekeeper, but that wasn’t what I was complaining about. Not really. I was merely stating the fact that I missed my house. He didn’t get it.

  The house was beautiful. I loved it as much as I hated it. It just felt a little too much, like we were better than the rest. I didn’t like that feeling, and it quickly became the norm. Drew entertained high-class clients for major purchases and quickly made a name for himself around Hollywood. His store was even mentioned during a red carpet event when one of the actresses confessed that her new engagement ring had come from Drew’s store.

  Although it helped Kelley Elegance get its name out there, Drew told me why she did it. It had nothing at all to do with the store, but the price. The price of Milan Sterling’s new ring was all over the net within hours. Drew loved it. Everybody wanted their rings from the jewelry store that Milan Sterling got hers from.

  He did keep us by the beach and it was nice, just not the same as the one back home. We had a pool with a bridge going across it in elegant stones. Nicholas loved it. He spent hours hopping from one squared marble stone to the other. Back and forth. Back and forth. Never in my life had I seen someone so into something the way Nicholas was with bridges. I swear he never shut up about it.

  I blamed it on Drew. He egged on Nicholas’s obsession with bridges. He had every DVD he could find on bridges. Drew spent at least an hour a week looking for new bridges for Nicholas to learn about. The kid was a genius, too. He didn’t forget. Drew proudly asked him questions every night about them. I learned a lot from Nicky, too, but I wanted Drew to turn him on to something else for a change. Maybe a baseball or something.

  I could put Nicholas in front of the television with a DVD on the construction of some bridge and never worry about him getting into anything. The Golden Gate Bridge was the best babysitter for Nicky ever, especially when Drew left me with them all day.

  I didn’t mind living in Bel Air. The beach was nice, and it was nice living next to Chelsea Wrangler. She had two kids about the same age as mine, only they were girls. Having a friend to talk to about everyday life was very nice. I had Alicia, and I talked to her on a daily basis, but Chelsea was a different kind of friend. She taught me the ropes, let me in on what schools were the best, what sluts from the weekly playgroups to keep away from your husband, and the best places to shop.

  Drew couldn’t stand Chelsea. He hated her with a passion. It was rather stupid. He didn’t like me running around with her and having a life outside of him, that was the problem. He begged me ever since we had Nicholas to get a nanny and once I did, he bitched about it. Sometimes he would purposely sabotage my plans. Like when he would call me to come and meet him at some fancy restaurant. He only did it when he knew I was doing something with Chelsea.

  It wasn’t even like we did much. We shopped on Mondays, had lunch with a few other girls that I now called my friends on Wednesdays, and Chelsea and I had our hair and nails done on Fridays. That’s about it. We did eat at Marbet’s House on Fridays. The fact that it was a high-class establishment for a lot of cheating businessmen was the reason Drew didn’t want me there.

  We were hit on, yeah, but that’s not what we were doing there. We liked the atmosphere and Toni, the female bartender, was nice. We sat on the end of the bar and talked to her, that was it. Had it been something I was concerned about, or thought Drew had a good reason for not wanting me there in the middle of the day, I would have stopped going. There was no reason. He could stop in there anytime he wanted and I would be where I always was. We had a nice meal and one drink. That’s it, and then we left. I wasn’t hurting anyone by doing that. And I wasn’t letting Drew dictate what I could do.

  As much as I missed my little beach house by my mom, I was happy where we were, thankful that I let Drew talk me into coming. I did more living in Bel Air than I ever had. I liked feeling as if I were part of something, even if that something was a bunch of snotty high-class bitches. I fit in as if I was truly one of them, and I had fun outside of my home. What is so wrong with that?

  I guess that’s when things got a little shakier for Drew and me. He didn’t like me wanting something more than him and the boys. He didn’t understand why they weren’t enough and I didn’t know how to make him understand that they were. I just needed something besides them, too. So every other day, we argued.

  “You don’t want me to meet you, Drew. You know I am planning to go get my hair and nails done, and then going to Marbet’s for lunch. That’s the only reason you’re calling me,” I accused, spinning to look at my ass in my new designer skirt. Damn. That Pilates class was paying off.

  “Yes I do. Come to the store and we’ll get lunch together.”

  “You come to Marbet’s for lunch. I’ll meet you there.”

  “And then you’ll leave with me?”

  “Are you coming home?”

  “Yeah, I thought we might fly to the beach house this weekend. Get away and maybe go find some sea glass.”

  “I can’t. Mary Alice is having a birthday party for her daughter Saturday. She’ll be devastated if I don’t bring Nicholas.”

  “Who the hell is Mary Alice? And I’m sure she won’t be devastated.”

  “She’s one of the girls in our mommy group. I already told her we would be there.”

  “We’ll send her a gift. Let’s g
et away, Morgan. I miss you.”

  I rolled my eyes at Drew on the phone while I applied bright red lipstick. “You’re the one that works all the time. I do my stuff around you. We’ll go next week. Are you meeting me for lunch or not?”

  “Maybe. What time are you going to be there?”

  “Usually around one.”

  “I love you.”

  “Love you, too, Drew. I’ll see you later.”

  After a full day of hair and nails with Chelsea, I was famished.

  I knew it was going to end badly when the two guys sat beside us. One on each side. If Drew showed up and saw me talking to this hot younger guy, shit would hit the fan. I tried my best to get rid of the guy before I saw Drew, but Chelsea wasn’t helping. She was having a full-blown conversation with the other guy.

  It didn’t matter that I excused myself to go to my husband as soon as I saw him. He was already furious.

  “Was he hitting on you?”

  “No, let’s get a table,” I said, pulling the sleeve of his suit jacket.

  “Who is he?”

  “Drew, I have no idea. He just started talking to me. I can handle myself. Stop acting like a jealous little boy.”

  “I am a jealous little boy. That right there is exactly why I don’t want you in here.”

  “Sit down,” I ordered, sliding into the black leather booth.

  Drew took one more glare over his shoulder and sat across from me. “You’re not coming in here anymore without me. Why are you dressed like that in the middle of the afternoon?”

  “I don’t know what you want. You’re driving me crazy. You used to force me to look like this. Remember that, Drew?”

  “Yeah, and as soon as I started letting you be you, I fell madly in love with you. I don’t like this Morgan. I don’t like your hair that light and I don’t like my wife hanging out in bars.”

  “Does this really look like a bar to you? This is one of the most prestigious restaurants in Hollywood.” Drew just wanted to be a dick. Dying my hair blonde was the first thing he ever did after buying me to be his wife.

  “That’s what I am talking about. I don’t want my wife to care about prestigious restaurants. I want to see my wife in shorts, wrestling around on the floor with my boys.”

  “I do that all the time. You want me to leave the house looking like that?”

  “Jean shorts, no makeup, and a shirt that covers your tits? Hell yeah, I want you to leave the house like that. Better yet, don’t leave the house with that cunt and we won’t have to worry about it.”

  “You’re a hopeless case. I give up.”

  “I want you to act like the Morgan who I lived with back in Rodanthe.”

  “No, you don’t. You think these are new problems, but they’re not. They’re the same ones that followed us here.”

  “You didn’t go out like this back in Rodanthe,” Drew pointed out the fact that I had to elaborate on.

  “Only because Alicia lived so far away, or I didn’t have girlfriends to do anything with.”

  “I would still rather have that Morgan.”

  “Then you shouldn’t have brought me here.”

  “Fine, let’s go back. This is going to destroy us, Morgan. We don’t need this added stress on top of what we already have.”

  “You mean Nicholas? You mean the fact that you let him stay up until one in the morning to watch a stupid documentary?”

  “It was one time. He has been seeing the commercials for it for weeks now.”

  “You put it on DVR. He’ll watch it a thousand more times. When are you going to set some rules for him? When are you planning on teaching him about authority?”

  “He gets plenty of that from you.”

  Oh boy. And we were in public, too. Damn. “I’ll have a glass of wine and a shot of Gray Goose, please,” I said, shutting up long enough to speak to our waitress and calm my adrenaline rush. Drew gave me a dirty look, ordered a glass of wine, and canceled my request for a shot. I shook my head and rolled my eyes, livid that he just treated me like a child in front of the waitress.

  “Did you come here to start a fight?” I asked, crossing my arms in a standoffish way.

  “I didn’t come here to catch my wife talking to another man.”

  “Drew, just shut the hell up. Nothing intelligent comes out of your mouth. You have one way of seeing things, and that’s yours.”

  “I could say the same thing. Why am I the only one seeing anything wrong with my wife sitting in a bar while my kids are at home with a nanny?”

  “It’s not a fucking, BAR!” I repeated again, purposely raising my voice a little. That pissed him off. The waitress turned and left with our wine and all heads turned our way.

  “I’m the one that has nothing intelligent to say?”

  “I’m not saying another word.”

  That’s what life had become in the Kelley home. Nicholas was his own little person with the strongest will I’d ever seen, Tad was pushing two and into everything, and Drew and I seemed to fight on a regular basis. Of course, we made up every night. Literally. Drew didn’t understand I needed my time away from the boys. He didn’t like Chelsea, and there was no changing his mind. He wanted me home like I had always been before.

  I can’t explain how I felt. I guess I felt like I had a life with Chelsea. My own life, and not one that consisted of Drew, Nicky, or Tad. I liked my friends and I liked doing things with them. We weren’t doing anything that we shouldn’t have been doing. Chelsea was a flirt, no doubt, and I may have even batted an eyelash or two. But, I would never cheat on Drew, and Chelsea would never cheat on Cody.

  We were just having fun. Innocent fun. It felt nice to be noticed by someone else.

  Not that Drew didn’t do that. Drew always told me I looked nice, how beautiful I was. He was always giving me complements. And I always appreciated them. That doesn’t change the fact that it makes a girl feel like a million bucks when she turns heads in a room. Drew didn’t understand that, either. His head was the only one that needed to turn when I entered a room.

  By the time Drew drove us home we were both pissed off. We argued all the way home and it continued well into the evening. I finally took a pain pill and stayed in a hot bath until the water cooled just to get away from him.

  “I’m not kidding, Morgan,” Drew started again as soon as we went to bed. “I don’t want you going to Marbet’s with that skank anymore.”

  “Don’t talk, Drew,” I said, crawling into my side of the bed facing away from him. I knew he wasn’t going to let it go at that. I was hoping he wouldn’t.

  I was right and Drew’s hands were on my bare ass in a half a second. Caressing my ass, he slid his fingers between my legs and rubbed my already wet pussy. I rolled to my back and let my knee drop to him. Drew kissed me, finger fucked me to orgasm, and fucked me crazy. We didn’t talk we fucked. That was the best way for both of us to let it out. Don’t talk about it, just fuck.

  The summer before Nicholas turned five was when our foundation began to crumble. Celeste and Alicia met us at the beach house in Rodanthe for the Fourth of July. That weekend was interesting to say the least. They arrived a day before us, because Drew was closing a big deal and needed to wait.

  Nicholas was driving me crazy, whining about not going. He didn’t want us to go there for whatever reason. I think he was just screaming for attention, but nonetheless, he was wreaking havoc on my nerves.

  Nicholas just wouldn’t quit. This was another reason why we stayed true to his routine. He literally whined the entire weekend, wanting to go home. He was fine during the day. It was at night that set him off the most. He wanted to be home in his bed. He wanted us to take his little brother and get on the plane.

  Celeste had to go and run her mouth about Nicholas the first night there. That pissed Drew off, and he was like a lion with a thorn all weekend. He took Nicholas and spent a lot of time on the beach, leaving the entertainment to me. I didn’t mind. At least I told myself I didn’t min
d, but for whatever reason, I couldn’t tell Drew that. I had to let him think that making me go there and leaving me at home with Celeste and Alicia made me mad when it really didn’t.

  Drew got up and walked down the steps when Celeste came out to the deck with a cup of coffee.

  “We can leave,” she offered, sitting across from me. I didn’t want them to leave. I wanted us to have fun the way we used to. I wanted it to be the way it was before life got in the way.

  “I don’t want you to leave. I want you to stop picking on my kid. The only thing wrong with Nicholas is his dad. Drew needs to step up and be his father and quit trying to be his friend.”

  “I think it’s more than that, Morgan. I think you need to get him checked out by a professional. I’m not trying to pick on Nicholas. You know I love that kid. I’m telling you as a friend, and the sooner he gets help, the better he’s going to be.”

  “Help for what, Celeste? He’s not even five yet. He’s a spoiled little rich kid wrapped so tight around his daddy’s finger it has cut off the circulation to his brain. I know Drew lets him get away with murder. We fight over it all the time. I can’t change Drew. You of all people should know that.”

  “I don’t think Drew is the problem. I think you’re both in denial.”

  Celeste was really crossing lines and pushing buttons. I was just about to go off on her when Alicia joined us. Christina slid to my lap and I kissed her dimpled little cheek. Why couldn’t I have gotten girls?

  “Morgan, will you just look into it? We’re not trying to upset you or Drew. We see something in Nicholas that we’re both familiar with.”

  “Not you, too?” I questioned Alicia. Now she was ganging up on me, too. Great.

  “Just check into it. If we’re wrong, then you can say you told us so and move on. If we’re right, you can start getting him the help he needs to be getting.”

  I ignored both of my irrational friends. The friends that needed to mind their own business. The friends that needed to go home now. I never looked forward to their departure more than I did now. I didn’t like Alicia’s comments about Chelsea, or my new hairstyle. What was it to her if I wanted to go blonde? She just didn’t like me having a friend besides her. That was what that was all about.