CASE AND GEMMA

Chapter 6: Things Will Be Different

Case's PA Rhiannon was a she-devil, and he was now well aware of all of the ways she'd been a total, complete and utter bitch to me.

Case's mother and sister also were stone-cold, heartless bitches. Fortunately, I was done hiding things from him, trying to protect him so that he didn't have to wage war for me against his family, trying to avoid arguments with him where he advised me that I would learn to ignore them with time and maturity.

But Case's ex-wife Erika was in a completely different league of bitch because she was the only one of the Four Evils that had been married to Case and knew what his orgasm face looked like. Knew what he looked like naked. Knew that he could wring four or five orgasms from you in an hour. The man was nothing if not dedicated to his woman's pleasure.

In bed, anyway.

Outside of it was another story completely.

Because when you're twenty-three, no matter how much of an old soul you are, you still aren't a thirty-three-year-old woman who's scary smart, can talk to your husband about business on a very detailed level, and has ten-plus years of history with him. Even assured of your husband's love, that's the kind of history that's intimidating and can make you go from a pretty self-assured person to a quivering mass of nerves who's constantly second-guessing everything.

Why did he marry me? I'm the total opposite of this woman he spent more than a third of his life with. She is short, sleek haircut and I'm long curls that tend to frizz, even when it's not humid. She's a short powerhouse in heels and tailored suits and I'm a short disaster in running shoes and jeans.

I imagined Case and Erika as having had a very sophisticated, very mature marriage, both of them understanding that the business was at the center of their union. I also imagined them thinking love was for teenagers and once you grew up, priorities shifted and it became about shared goals, networking and the bottom line.

In short, about the polar opposite of the marriage I wanted and had enjoyed -- to some extent -- the first year of our marriage. But I wasn't sure about many details of their marriage because Case was one of those men who moved on and felt the past should stay firmly in the past.

"We had business in common, and that was it," he'd told me on one rare occasion. "I literally woke up one morning, realized I couldn't recall the last time I'd talked to Erika about anything more than ROI and potential acquisitions and decided I needed more. So I told her I wanted a divorce and she agreed. It was friendly and completely without drama because we just weren't in love. It was mostly a business friendship at that point and had been for years. And maybe," he said with a sweet smile, "I had a premonition that I needed to be free so I could pursue you when you appeared on a certain park bench."

I'd liked that last part and had rewarded him for his whimsy.

But that was the most he'd ever said about Erika, so when she appeared at holiday parties or more intimate holiday dinners at his mother's house, I couldn't understand why she was there.

"Don't feel threatened by her," Case had said. "There's nothing between us but MartinCorp. No feelings, Gem. Those are only for you."

But every time Erika greeted us, she smiled slyly at me when she pressed her cheek to Case's. And it only happened once, but he slipped and called her babe. I rationalized it as nothing but habit since he'd called her that for more than ten years.

On several occasions, she and Case would dive deep into mind-numbing business conversations, and she'd shoot me a fake sympathetic frown. "We should take this conversation onto the deck," she'd say to Case. "Leave everyone else free to talk without having to try to puzzle out a business conversation that's only meaningful to us."