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“I told you why. It’s mainly for Gramps.”

“And is it also for you if this marriage of ours doesn’t work out?”

Joy didn’t know how to respond to that. “What do you want me to say, William? I’ve been poor all my life. All my life. Then I get that job at SPR as a junior executive, making a decent salary for the first time ever, and I felt some kind of way. I felt that yes, I had to secure Gramps and I had to secure myself. You don’t let me pay for anything. You take care of me. It makes sense for me to have a savings account.”

“If it makes such great sense,” he said, “why did you fail to mention it to me? I’ve already made provisions in my will that you would get the bulk of my estate.”

“But folks challenge wills,” Joy said. “And if God forbid something happens to you, there’s no way a parent like your mother is going to allow me to inherit anything. She’ll kill me first. Yes, I said it!”

Then she just couldn’t keep explaining herself. She did what she did and she was going to continue to do it. “I view it more as Gramps account than mine,” was all she was going to say about it.

“Uh-hun,” William said, and that was all he was going to say about it too. He understood the concept. It was a good idea to him actually. But the fact that she kept it from him concerned him. It concerned him mightily. But he kept it to himself.

In that respect, they were so alike.

CHAPTER FIVE

ONE MONTH after that weird visit to Scarsdale, the dawn of a new day hung over the horizon like a tapestry of grays and blues and bright-whites all mixed together. Like a painting in the sky. Like the very opposite of William’s dark mood.

Seated on the balcony off from his bedroom with a fat cigar in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other hand, his morning ritual, he was enchanted by the view. But he knew it was no ordinary morning. For one thing, he had a woman sleeping in his bed. Which wasn’t particularly unusual for him. He’d had his fair share of women-in-bed mornings all his adult life. But this particular woman, in this particular bed, was his wife.

He married Joynetta two months ago, with one of those months spent on their honeymoon. Now that the honeymoon was over, the reality was setting in. Now that he was doing life as a married man, the shock that he was no longer free to do whatever the hell he wanted to do, when he wanted to do it, and with whomever he wanted to do it with was sinking in. For a man like him, who suffered his entire life from commitment phobia, it was an astounding turnaround.

From where he was seated on his balcony lounger, he could see the woman he gave it all up for sleeping peacefully. She looked so small and frail within the confines of such a large bed. And she was all his. She belonged to him. Nobody but him. Not since his daughter had he felt such an emotional attachment and such an awesome responsibility. A responsibility he wasn’t sure he could manage. A responsibility he wasn’t sure he even wanted. But he had it now. He said I Do of his own volition. Which meant that she not only belonged to him, but he belonged to her. Exclusively her. It was a heady realization.

His phone buzzed. He looked at the Caller ID. It was yet another one of his lady friends. Like the others, she knew better. She heard the news of his nuptials. A billionaire getting married never went unnoticed, and especially when he married someone so much younger and so far outside of his social circle that it automatically invited scrutiny. She knew he was no longer available.

But he understood that she wouldn’t believe it.

He was just beginning to believe it himself.

And he also knew that marriage, in his social circles, wasn’t a chronic condition, but more of an acute one. A situational one. A transactional one. The moral core of his friend groups didn’t scream stop. It was more of a yield, wherein they could proceed cautiously. That was how it had always been, and those ladies assumed he was still down like that. They still expected to be with him.

But did he still expect to be with them?

Was that why, instead of answering the call and making his position clear, he sent the call to voice mail?

Was his moral core such that he was unwilling to give up the entirety of his former life?

Emotionally, he knew the answer to both of those questions. He was with Joynetta now, and she wasn’t sharing him any more than he would ever share her. He was all-in or all-out. His intention was to remain all-in. His intentions were good.

But the road to hell is paved with good intentions…

And why on earth was he having second thoughts now?

It wasn’t as if it was the day before their big day. It was two months after their big day. Second-thought time had long since passed.

The only other person he’d ever felt fully and completely responsible for was his daughter. But his daughter died. His four-year-old died after he won a bitter custody dispute and was able to take custody of his baby girl.

He picked her up from her mother’s house and then, just three hours later, she was dead after a foiled kidnapping attempt. His ex-wife had begged the judge not to grant him custodial custody. He was neglectful. He was a workaholic who wouldn’t be there for their child. She would be raised by nannies and governesses, not by him. He was ill-suited to look after anybody but himself, she told that judge.

His ex-wife hailed from one of the richest families in Westchester county. But he hailed from a richer family. And he was even richer than his family. The judge easily sided with him. Damn him.

He won.

His baby lost.

That was why he was having second and third and fourth thoughts!