And, of course, there was my debt, too. Adam had the normal type of commercial debt associated with running a big company. He had no personal debt whatsoever, aside from the obnoxious mortgage on the house.
Me? I had medical school debt accruing. In fact, Adam was footing that bill, too, without a word—and likely would be upset to hear me refer to it as a debt to him. But I’d always fully intended to repay it. I’d be adding that to the prenuptial documents as soon as I met with the lawyer I’d retained.
But for now, per her instructions, I was supposed to read through all of this and highlight any items I wished to know more about.
The more I read, the harder I was finding it to breathe as I sat at my desk in my study and pored over the seemingly endless list of assets.
The gaming company, the virtual reality hardware company he had recently acquired, a heavy chunk of investment in a firm called XVenture—aa private space agency that intended to send astronauts on manned missions soon. He had partial ownership in hospitality industry properties, like Emerald Sky in St. Lucia, among others.
It went on and on.
Jesus. He wasn’t even thirty yet, and he owned half the country, it seemed.
“How’s it going?”
I jumped almost out of my skin. Adam’s bearded face hovered about a foot from mine, leaning over me to see where I was in the document.
“Shit, you scared the crap out of me.”
“Sorry.” He frowned. “I thought you heard me come in. I wasn’t trying to sneak around.”
“You’re getting too stealthy. Might have to consider working for MI6 on top of all this other crap you’re involved in, because clearly, you need more projects.”
“Huh,” he said, still reading over my shoulder. “You’re still only on page four. Everything okay?”
I flipped back a page to point to a highlighted line item. “Sure. But I want to know why my future husband owns the complete licensing rights to PuffPuff the Pink Poodle.” I tapped at the item with my pen. “This might be a deal breaker for me.”
“What?”
“What what? PuffPuff the Poodle? Seriously?”
“Hello Kitty got popular again, didn’t it? And the Smurfs? Why not PuffPuff?” I stared at him wide-eyed, and he continued, albeit slightly self-consciously, “It was a sound investment. Those are the full rights, movies, merchandising, video games, everything.”
I snickered at him. “Are you going to write a new game? Retro games are all the rage. Maybe square-shaped PuffPuffs to incorporate into Minecraft? Maybe PuffPuff Pokemons to capture with your Poke balls?”
He pointed a long finger at me. “Someday, you’ll eat those words, young lady, and I’ll be laughing all the way to the bank when PuffPuff makes a comeback.”
I grabbed his finger and wrapped my hand around it, making a fist. “Them’s fighting words.”
His dark eyes got that familiar gleam. “Wanna wrestle?”
I let go of his hand and waved at the tome in front of me. “I’d love to take you up on that, but some douchebag rich guy dumped this big old encyclopedia of his immensely huge and girthy assets in my lap, and I have to handle it.”
“Ohhh…handling immense and girthy assets in your lap.” He laughed. “I love it when you talk dirty to me.”
“Especially when everything I say to you is taken in the dirty way.”
“I can’t help it.” He bent over, planting a kiss on my cheek. “You’re too sexy.”
I swatted the hand that was now groping my boob. “Go away before I start demanding half of the licensing rights to PuffPuff the Pink Poodle and foil your attempt at world domination.”
He straightened, laughing. “Just you wait. You’ll see.”
“I’m sure I’ll be eating those words.” I sighed, giving a dismissive wave of my hand.
“And a whole lot more.” He leered before vanishing out of the room again.
“No workouts. No working—not even phone calls,” I called after him.
“Blah blah blah,” he replied from down the hall.
Ahh, conjugal bliss. We were already enjoying it without the obnoxious over-the-top wedding and ridiculous paperwork.
As the night passed, I made it deeper and deeper into the document. I found no lurid surprises, no secret support payments to illegitimate children, no illicit hideaways for kept lovers, no secret bribery or blackmail payments or the like.
But reading through Adam’s accomplishments made me feel like I’d been standing still during these six years of my adult life. He was on a single-handed mission to change the world—investments in leading-edge and green technologies dominated the list. And space exploration.
All this money. And all these decisions…no wonder he was so goddamn busy all the time.
Cora, our housekeeper, brought me my dinner in my study instead of calling me down to eat. She told me that Adam was sleeping and gave me our chef’s instructions on how to heat his dinner when he woke up. I nodded.
I’d mentioned to Chef the needed increase in his protein and caloric intake, and she’d said she’d noticed his weight loss as well. “We can’t have him not properly filling out that tux for the wedding.”
Somehow, her words had caused a lump to form in my throat. Oh yeah, the wedding. I wanted to forget about it. Just jitters. Like the other night after the Real Housewives had triggered my freak-out.
I picked at my dinner and, though it was good, couldn’t bring myself to finish it.
Feeling the need for some fresh air, I took the disclosure document with me out onto the deck that wrapped around the back of our house.
I snuck down the length of the deck and sank into the lounge outside our bedroom door. Adam had pulled the French doors ajar, like he often did, to bring in some fresh air. I kept quiet, continuing to plow through the damn paperwork, wishing the mounting uneasy feelings away.
About an hour later, the natural light of the day was dying in a golden blaze, and my attention had been drawn away to the beautiful sunset. I became aware of the sound of stirring from inside the bedroom. The door to the deck swung open, and Adam stepped out onto it, wearing only a t-shirt and his underwear.
He did a double take when he saw me there. “Hey. What are you doing out here?” His eyes flicked to the disclosure document lying open across my lap. “It’s getting dark. Still reading all that? How has it not put you to sleep?”