Episode TWO – Two and a Half Women
AN: The title bears no connection to the TV series "Two and a half men". I don't even know what's about it. I just thought the title fitting – Siobhan, Bridget, Oliva: the women in Andrew's life (from his point of view, but I will comment on that more in depth in ep 9, I think), though I do find Olivia to be a beautiful woman with a far more interesting face than the twins. And if I could choose, I'd rather have Olivia's body than Shivette's, to be honest.
I'd like to thank you for the kind and encouraging reviews. I hope I will satisfy the high expections expressed by my cherished readers.
Oh, and I admit this chapter is rather short, but there really wasn't that much to say. The other ones will be longer, I promise.
At least he had thought he had got out of the deal, he had negotiated with the Baruso Family. He'd do a bit of money laundering; they'd do a bit of killing: a win/win situation, minimal risk. But then he heard the story when he had listened in again the night after the cocktail party. Bridget had killed in self-defence and learnt by doing so that Siobhan had been the intended victim. It had given her a possible motive for her otherwise so incomprehensible suicide - fear. And it was somehow fitting, that the formidable Siobhan chose death on her own terms, if she saw no way out anymore, instead of waiting for it like a sacrificial lamb. But it had also given her the clue that there had been something seriously wrong in her sister's life. And that someone else was now after her as Siobhan. It must have made her feel even more cornered and scared. She had no place safe to go anymore. She had to stay and fight it out.
Just thinking about the night of the cocktail party he breaks into a sweat and makes him want to have another drink. If he had known then Bridget had killed the man in the loft…. He would never ever have thought about hoisting the party there. They had come so close that night to losing everything. But Bridget had saved them. And all he had been thinking about had been testing Bridget to see what she would do, if she could handle the pressure of being a high-profile wife. It had been a stupid move. And unnecessary. He had been playing games, while she had been fighting for their lives.
But he likes to think this was the last time he had let her deliberately down. He stopped playing petty games with her. With her a fugitive from Macawi, the FBI and the mess with Gemma and Siobhan, he knows they have to stick together. They depend on each other. And he rather likes the thought to stand with her like she promised to stand with him. Now they're truly married. For better, for worse, for richer, for poorer. But that night, he hadn't known yet.
When the Amandar Soho had been flooded, he had immediately set things in motion, thought about an alternative location, made sure the hotel would still provide the catering, contacted the event manager and the building manager. Only then he called Bridget to put the pressure on her, certainly not without having a back-up plan, if she crumbled. But she didn't. She handled the event people, the caterers, got a dress, made up her hair and all this in less than three hours. She had been fabulous and pulled nothing short of a miracle out of her invisible bags of tricks. She had passed his test with flying colours.
He remembers watching her carefully but unobtrusively the entire evening. He watched her through his gentle flattering of bored wives and super rich heiresses, when he deflected politely the occasional pass on him, which seriousness always depended on the lateness of the hour and the amount of alcohol consumed and through the moments, when he buttered up potential investors trying to convince them that Martin/Charles were the best choice to multiply their millions.
Olivia is the financial genius of Martin/Charles, but he is the strategic mastermind that guides her instincts and the Brand. He makes women feel appreciated and men comfortable by being on par with them. And he handles the ones, who might have a problem to do business with such a power woman like Olivia. Her height, austere beauty and statue, her upper class Queen's English, her intelligence, her drive, her ruthlessness: all this tends to intimidate lesser men, while it also makes the alpha males want her, tame her and subdue her. It's a dangerous cocktail of primitive emotions she invokes in men as well in women and he takes the heat out of it by attracting the emotional attention towards himself and by extension towards Siobhan.
He knows now, having watched Bridget in comparison, that Siobhan had never able to really cope with it. Her own ambition to stand in the spotlight had always collided with Olivia's sheer presence in a room. More often than not he had felt like a referee between the egos of the two women in his life. Siobhan had never been fully satisfied to be the wife in the background. His non-committal, very mild flirting, while necessary, hadn't helped. Somewhere down the road it got to her to have to stand by and watch Olivia reeling in powerful men, while she had been relegated to entertain the unimportant trophy wives. And finally one day she had stopped trusting him to stay faithful despite all, maybe because she had projected her own infidelity onto him.
Bridget on the other hand is satisfied to stand at the sidelines. While Olivia and he landed six new investors that night, who would bring another 45 millions to the company, she had provided the perfect background. She had created a gentle atmosphere of general well being, being catered to and taken care of. What Bridget lacks in experience and education she makes up with her natural charms and an honest smile.
She made her rounds, looked after their guests, talked to everyone, created amused laughter here and there and left people with a sincere smile on their faces, which was the hardest thing to do for such an audience of overfed, bored and jaded high society members. And she had taken care of the larger and smaller problems such an event always came with. She had held up against Olivia's usual nettling and sparing. She had been unconditionally on his side. Not being able to remember when that had been the last time with Siobhan, she had blown him away. Bridget would be able to walk in Siobhan's shoes. She would be able to replace his wife in the eye of the public. He was sure of it.
Besides, staying with him was the sensible thing to do for her, he concluded. Siobhan was dead, Bridget was the carbon copy of her. No one would ever suspect a thing as long as no one else knew that they were twins. Bridget was nowhere else safer than at his side posing as Siobhan. She had to know that! Then why did she want to leave? Where did she go at nights? To be with Malcolm? And who was this Professor Malcolm Ward from Rocky Springs Community College anyway? What exactly was their relationship like? He was her sponsor and her friend. What did she need a sponsor for? Siobhan's son had been killed while Bridget had been driving drunk. Had Bridget an alcohol problem? If so, she had it far better under control than Siobhan, who had tended to overindulge when she had felt bored or he hadn't taken the glass out of her hand in time. The entire evening he had seen her with a glass of champagne in her hand, but never had he watched her drink from it, not once. So how much was Malcolm responsible for that?
In any case, it was an unusual close relationship between them, if the man, who promised to be whatever she needed him to be, was prepared to leave everything behind to help her. Had there once been more between them? Was still more between them? Had it been more for Bridget? Was it still more for her? If he was the father of Bridget's child, then why hadn't she told him yet? Wasn't that a woman's first impulse? Didn't she tell him, because this impersonation of Siobhan was only temporary for Bridget? And she rather told him in person than over the phone?
That night he had told her how pleased he was with her and how grateful. In not so many words he had told her he needed her. Not in the least to keep the Baruso Family and their demands in check and the police out of his hair. He told her he wanted her to stay when all she wanted to do was run.
And when he saw her holding Juliet in the bathroom he felt the first flutter of hope that maybe he could even regain with Bridget, what he had lost with Siobhan. That it could become more than a business arrangement to redeem him. That it would possibly be even better. She took care of Juliet, had dumped Henry and she fought to keep the FBI out of their lives...
It felt not only the Siobhan he had fallen in love with had returned, this was somehow even an enhanced version. And then he heard it from herself. She would stay for the sake of Siobhan and because she felt needed. He knew he had already considerably softened towards her as herself against his will for the things she was doing to improve their lives. Softened enough to have Claudine arrange a personal fitting with one of Siobhan's favourite designers as a reward...and as an attempt to wow Bridget, to show her what it meant to be Mrs. Andrew Martin, so she had truly no reason anymore to run away to Malcolm, but stay with Juliet and him.
They needed her more than he did.
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