Lawrence Shapiro looked over at Kevin Richardson. Help me out here. Kevin just shrugged and shook his head. You’re on your own here, Dawg. I’m just the go-between.
Lawrence had been talking to Abby for nearly an hour and wasn’t getting anywhere. After the initial get-to-know-you chitchat, Lawrence had brought up the stories. He said he’d read them and enjoyed them and his company would like to publish them.
Abby said that she was flattered but that she really knew nothing about publishing. Lawrence started explaining things and the only word he seemed to hear after that was ‘no’.
No. She would not go on a book tour to promote the stories.
No. She would not allow a picture of herself on the back of the dust jacket.
No. She would not allow the word Backstreet to be used anywhere in any kind of promotion, ergo no picture of Nick either.
No. She would not consent to a quota…a specific number of stories to be delivered by a certain time.
Lawrence Shapiro was getting very frustrated. These stories were wonderful and he really wanted to publish them. But…
“Don’t you want these stories published, Mrs…?”
“Fremont-Carter,” answered Abby, making her mind up in that second what she wanted to be called. She smiled over at Kevin who grinned and nodded. “Actually, I don’t really care. I haven’t really thought about it. This all came from a different direction.” She looked over at Kevin.
“But…”
“Mr. Shapiro, if you want to publish these stories, you may. But they are mine and it will be done the way I want it. I wrote these stories for my own…” ‘Pleasure’ didn’t seem to be the right word. Peace of mind? Fun? Why did she write these stories?
“I understand that, Mrs. Fremont-Carter, but…”
“The stories write themselves. An idea comes and I write it down. Maybe it’s good and I go with it. Maybe it’s not and I leave it. But I don’t sit down and say, ‘Okay, today I’m going to write a story.’ It all depends on Princess Penelope and when she comes to visit.” Abby stopped, thinking that she might have just sounded like a complete mental defective. But Lawrence Shapiro had met with many authors and he knew what she meant. A sidelong glance at Kevin assured her that the handsome green-eyed man understood the creative process as well.
When Lawrence tried to come at it from another angle, the financial one, he got the same response. No. She wasn’t interested in how much money was going to be made. It was all going to charity anyway.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~“Hey D. Have you heard anything from Angie about DLF lately?” Brian tucked the cell phone back into his pocket, as he walked into the workout room. He looked around. This was so cool. Madison Square Garden had everything. He guessed with three major teams playing out of it that a workout room would be an essential, but this was the best one he’d ever seen.
“I got a message to call her. What’s up?” Howie stopped working the machine he was on, pushing with his forearms pressing two pads in from the side to meet in the middle. Strengthening his arms and upper body.
“That was Brandon. The Healthy Heart Club just got a donation from Ms. Abby Fremont.”
“Cool,” said Howie. “I wonder if that’s what Angie wanted to tell me. That’s nice of Brandon to call.”
“Oh, he thought I should know. It was for $50 000.”
“Fifty…what?” Howie’s jaw dropped. He calculated in his head. “Do you think she did that for all of us?”
“I don’t know,” said Brian. “Do you think we should mention it to Nick?”
“Mention what to Nick?” Nick and AJ came through the door.
Howie walked over to a corner and pulled out his cell phone. He whispered into it. AJ plopped down on the seat that Howie had just vacated. He tried to press the pads together. His eyes bugged out and the pads didn’t move. Jeez, he thought. Remind me not to arm wrestle with Howie.
“Um…does Abby have any money of her own?” Brian said slowly.
“Yeah,” said Nick, picking up a weight and doing some bicep curls. “She has a little trust fund and she gets the interest from that. It was enough for her to put a down payment on the condo.”
“Hmm…” mused Brian. “And that’s all?”
“Well, she gets the whole trust fund now that she’s married,” said Nick, absently. “You know…the principal. Why?”
“Well, she seems to be spending it,” said Howie, coming back to the middle of the room. “She’s made some generous donations to all our charities.”
“How generous?” asked Nick. He’d been impressed by the ten thousand dollar donation from her parents for their engagement. And gifts from the party-goers had provided an almost equal amount.
“Fifty thousand dollars,” said Brian, raising his eyebrows at Howie in question.
“Each,” said Howie, nodding.
“Holy crap,” said AJ, “That’s a quarter of a million dollars. We can’t let her do that.” He strained to make the vinyl covered pads meet…with little success.
They all looked at Nick. He didn’t know what to say. “Maybe…” he began and then paused. After a minute, he started again. “Remember back when we started and we finally hit and we got that first big cheque. Remember how we all wanted to rush out and buy a bunch of stuff…stuff we’d never had.”
“I got my purple Corvette,” said Howie. They all nodded. They got what Nick was saying.
“Maybe that’s what she’s doing. Maybe she’s never had control of money before. Like…I mean…everything was provided for her.” He paused. “I don’t care. I mean, I’ve got lots of money. She can spend the whole damn trust fund if she wants. I just want to be sure she knows what she’s doing.”
“Are you going to talk to her about it?” asked Brian. The four men looked at each other. They didn’t envy Nick at this moment.
“Shit, you’d better talk to her about it,” said AJ. “’Cause after she goes through all her money, she might start going through yours.”
“Abby would never do that,” said Nick.
“Abby would never do what?” drawled Kevin from the doorway.
“Spend all Nick’s money,” said AJ straining at the machine. And then he turned around. “Aw, shit,” he said. “Hi, Abby. How did it go at the publisher’s?”
Abby looked from one to the next. She’d never seen four more sheepish-looking men in her life. “What’s going on?” she asked. No one would make eye contact with her, even her husband. “Nick?”
“Um…the guys…were just telling me…they said…I mean, it’s really generous and all…but they said you gave a bunch of money to their charities.”
Abby smiled. “Oh, good, that got through. I’m glad.”
“Um…Abby…” Nick didn’t know how to say this. He didn’t know if he should have this discussion with her in front of the guys, but he didn’t want to do it on his own either. Maybe they could help out, convince her to slow up a little. “Abby…that was so generous of you to give your trust fund away, but don’t you think…I mean, it doesn’t matter, I’m happy to help out, but don’t you think…that money might be better used for the mortgage…for the condo?”
“There is no mortgage, Nick. I paid cash for the condo.”
Now Nick was confused. “I thought you didn’t get the money from the trust fund until after you got married.”
“I didn’t…I mean, I don’t. I told you before, Nick, I got the use of the interest. Since I was 21. Three years.”
“But Abby, that apartment, the size, the location…it had to be 750…800 thousand dollars…”
“Eight hundred and thirty four to be exact,” said Abby, getting a sinking feeling in her stomach, the one she always got when men and money came up in the same sentence.
Nick couldn’t get his head around it. The other guys were keeping absolutely still and silent. Nick grinned over at them. “Wow! I know you didn’t have a lot of expenses and stuff, what with living at home and all, but to save almost a million dollars in just under four years.”
Abby sighed. “That wasn’t all of it. There’s lots left. Nick, what’s going on?”
AJ stepped in. “Nick seemed to think that you were giving away your…what did you call it, Nick?...your little trust fund.”
“I never said it was little.” Abby’s voice was a whisper.
“But you never acted like you had a lot of money,” said Nick. “I mean, I know your family’s rich and all, but you never buy a lot of stuff or flaunt it or…hell, I don’t know. I figured…I guess ‘cause you lived at home and didn’t travel or anything…I figured you were on kind of a tight budget or something… that you didn’t have any money of your own.”
Abby just shook her head. No, that wasn’t the case.
The question hung in the air. How much? No one was going to ask it.
“Are you worth more than me?” Nick asked. Abby flinched like she’d been struck. “I mean, like money. Do you have more money than me?”
“Why does that matter?” asked Abby, thinking this was a situation she never thought she’d run across…where a man thought she had too much money!
“Because I want to be the breadwinner.” Nick went pale and turned to look at Howie. Oh, shit! “How rich are you, Abby?” He really, really needed to know this.
“I guess you should have paid more attention to the pre-nup discussions,” she said, pain in her voice and tears in her eyes.
It was all spinning out of control for Nick, but for the life of him, he couldn’t figure out how to stop it. And the guys weren’t being any help at all. Howie and Brian were staring at the floor, sorry that they’d brought it up in the first place. Kevin was standing behind Abby, shaking his head slowly at Nick like he thought he was a complete idiot. And AJ seemed to be enjoying himself immensely, if the smirk on his face was any indication.
“Nick,” Abby said softly. “Don’t you see? You earned your money. You worked for it. I didn’t work for mine. My grandfather did the work. And he didn’t even leave it to me for good reasons. He left it because he had no faith in me. It was husband bait. Me and Aunt P. He figured we were a couple of losers.”
Nick knew all about Aunt P. She was forty-five years old and had never married. She traveled constantly, seeing the world, living off the interest from her trust fund and income from articles she wrote for travel and adventure magazines.
“I hate it, Nick. That’s why I try to give it away.”
“And we’re still talking about the interest here,” said Nick, not really understanding why he was so upset about this. Abby nodded. Nick was afraid to ask, so he just walked past her out of the room.
Abby didn’t know what to do. She felt trapped in this room and this awkward situation. Kevin’s arm around her shoulder was meant to comfort her, but it almost broke her. AJ saved the day for her.
“So…like, are you…stinkin’ rich or filthy rich or…?” he said, laughing, trying to ease the tension and make it less of an issue.
Abby tried to laugh, but it was a weak, feeble sound. “I guess now isn’t the time to talk about my company stock,” she said. Then she turned and walked out of the room, to go and talk to her husband, to try and apologize for having so much money. Now that was irony, she thought!
