A/N Thanks to everyone who has reviewed my other works. It's what keeps me going! This one is just a little bit out of my norm, well at least the prologue is, and so is the M rating for chapters a little further along. Please bear with me as going for the M rating is pushing my comfort zone a bit. As always, please review. I am open to any comments and especially love constructive criticism.
Dedicated to my brand new grandson, Tristan Joseph, who made his appearance in the world November 3rd, 2009 at 12:25 am at a whopping 8 pounds, 8 ounces and 20 and ½ inches long.
Disclaimer: I do not own "Ouran High School Host Club" or any of the characters in this wonderful manga/anime in any way.
A New Family
Prologue
It was a familiar scene, of sorts. A limo pulled up to the hospital entrance and the driver got out and began putting the bags in the trunk. The nurse helped the lady into the limo, along with her extra special package. They rode to the house where she was greeted by the house staff. Her husband would not be home today, as he was out of town on business. She would have visitors, though. There would be one visitor or maybe more if she brought their mutual friends, whose visit was especially bittersweet. She had grown to love this particular visitor. But that was part of the problem. It was hard to not love her even when this visitor was the one woman that her husband still obsessed over. So much so, that the baby girl they just brought home from the hospital was named after the woman. The new mother went upstairs and placed her newborn daughter, Haruhi into her crib. Then Mitsumi made her way back to the living room. Her uninvited, although not unexpected, guests would be arriving soon.
The woman that the child was named after showed up bearing many gifts. She would spoil this child, simply because she was friends with the father. She didn't know that the child was named after her because he still held her a place in his heart as more than a friend. If the truth be told, she still held a bigger part of his heart that his own wife and child's mother, not that he would ever admit to it. Mitsumi knew that arranged marriages sometimes were loveless marriages, but her experience with others who were in arranged marriages showed that usually it was because one or the other of the partners did not know how to love. It was rare that the reason for there to be no love to be because one of the partners put all of his love into a love that was one-sided love.
They had been friends in high school. Well maybe 'friends' wasn't the correct term. He had been her senpai and the vice president of the after school club that she was forced to join. When Mitsumi first heard the story, she thought it was rather cute how this lovely lady had been forced to work at the school host club as a boy because she had broken a vase. At that time, however, she didn't know how much her fiancé at the time loved the other woman. Her story made you want to root for her; her personality made you care for her. Even if she was your rival, you still couldn't help but care about her. Not that she ever saw herself as Mitsumi's rival. No, she never saw that any of those young men cared for her.
She had that whole club in love with her, but she never realized it. In fact, there were more than just the club members that loved her. She had boys from her old middle school who still longed for her as well as boys that she met when they went out on what Suou Tamaki called "commoner expeditions". But still, she made it through the whole three years of high school as well as most of her six years of college before ever really dating anyone. How the hell she did that, no one could ever figure out.
Mitsumi had one thing that she could thank Fujioka Haruhi for, and that was her daughter. It was the celebration that Fujioka-san threw when she won her first court case. She invited all of her old friends that she kept in touch with regularly. That included Mitsumi's husband. They drank until the wee hours of the morning, each drink stronger than the one before. When her husband arrived home that night, or rather just before dawn it was the first time in their marriage that he initiated sex for a reason other than because he was angry at his father or work. It was also the only time they ever had sex without contraception. Even while she was pregnant, he still used protection. Of course, it pained her to know that it was also the night that her husband called out another woman's name while they were being intimate. Normally, he would not call her by name or even pet name. The one time he ever uttered a name, it wasn't hers.
Mitsumi didn't know how to cope. She didn't expect life to go the way it had. She had fallen in love with a man who, even though they were married, had told her that he would never love her the way she wanted to be loved. It was an arranged marriage and was only useful to help out the standings of the family business. If she wanted love, he told her, she would have to find it on the side. He didn't care, as long as she was discreet, because his family doesn't tolerate such unforgiveable acts as cheating. But in this case, he didn't care. He would never be able to love her, so if she wanted love… he didn't care where she found it. He had been more than clear.
Of course, after telling his wife that she could cheat as long as she was discreet, he doubted that her pregnancy was his fault. He had been so drunk the night it happened, that he didn't even remember getting in the limo to go home. He had blacked out from drinking so much. He had not told his wife why he had so much to drink. She knew that it wasn't in his nature to do anything in excess, so she had no idea that he was in the condition to the extent that he was. It would never be information that she would find out, but he had chosen to kill the pain with the alcohol that was flowing freely at the party because not only had Haruhi won her court case, but she chose that time to announce that she was seriously dating a co-worker.
His daughter was two weeks old when he first met her. His wife had done what he told her to do. She had named the baby after the only woman he had ever loved. The first time he saw the child, he fell in love with her. He would never admit it to his wife, though, because it wasn't his wife that he was in love with. He doted on his daughter. Anyone who thought him a cold, calloused, and hardened man would have thought differently to see him with his child.
When his daughter was exactly ten weeks old, he became a single parent. The authorities say that it was because of post-partum depression. Her friends say that it was because she was married to a cold hearted bastard who didn't love her. His friends say that she was a kook from the beginning, and they still couldn't figure out what the hell was going through his father's head when he set up the arranged marriage.