CH 114
Calvin
He focused on the twins. Marilyn was still not interested in interacting with him and once the ice was broken with the boys, they were quite animated and very energetic. They ran around that table and then were up and running about the room. He got up to play with them and also tried to contain them to the part of the room that they were in where there was not many sitting around, but he’d noted they’d gotten several annoyed looks from those in here.
He’d verbally apologised to them, and managed to get them back to the table. Marilyn was of no help, obviously used to their behaviour, or he could supposed watching to see what he would do about it. Though she appeared to be more than comfortable over there just chatting to Wil. He’d made no progress with her at all, but Wil seemed to have managed to connect with her and build trust.
All he could do was show her his family side while they were all in the room together. He’d always enjoyed being an uncle. Still tormented his nephew quite a bit. He didn’t think that he would be any different with his own children. He wasn’t trying to be, was in fact just being himself as he played and contained his own boys.
He did manage to wrangle them and get them back to the table. They’d polished off their milkshakes and were sitting eating from the loaded trays. Were he though currently settled for the time being, chatting away. Marilyn then informed him that things would be staying formal between them for as long as she deemed fit, and he sighed internally, that could be for the rest of her life for all he knew.
He really did need to find a way to break the ice with Marilyn herself. But he had no idea how to go about doing that, if he was totally honest with himself. She had all the facts about them laid out for her. She knew
everything on paper, but that didn’t override the only memories she had of him, how he’d been towards her.
Wil was likely going to be right. He may never be able to win her over and bring them back together.
Calvin tried to interact with her and she kind of just stared at him, and then answered him with
monosyllables for the most part. Yet if Wil asked her anything she answered in full sentences, which showed him just how little progress he’d made with her and he now knew he thought exactly where he stood with her
as well.
“Marilyn.” He addressed her after the boys settled down completely and were just sitting playing games on their tablets. “May we discuss the upcoming holiday?” he asked.
“I don’t want you at my house, Mr Reeves.” She answered straightforwardly.
He had to hold onto the heavy sigh that was trying to escape him, and he’d actually been prepared for her to say ‘no‘ as well. No one in his family and not even Wil thought that Marilyn was going to want him encroaching on such a big holiday. But he had to address it because he was the boy’s father, and he did want
to see them on that day.
“I would like to discuss it. Perhaps I could stay here in this hotel, and you could see your way to bringing the boys here to me for a little while./So they and I can spend some time together. If you’re not comfortable with me coming to your home?” he offered up a compromise instead. He did understand why it was a no after all he’d done.
He watched as her eyes moved towards the twins. They’d gone quiet, he now realised and were looking at their mother, with what he thought were hopeful eyes, and he understood it was something that they also
O
wanted. That warmed his heart.
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“I guess that could be arranged. I’ll, however, want a signed agreement that if I drop them off to you here for a few hours, that you won’t just put them on your plane and take them away from me,” Marilyn stated.
He blinked at her words and asked, “Drop them off?” with a frown. “I was thinking you’d stay with them the
entire time as well.”
She leaned back in her chair and stared right at him, and he got Déjà vu. As he saw Marrin in that tiny office with her girls when he’d been there to buy them out, and they’d been discussing numbers, numbers she’d been unhappy with, he had to stop and shake it off, and not think like that. She was not Marrin, even if she did have some of those mannerisms shining through.
“What makes you think, Mr Reeves, that I would want to spend Christmas Day in your company? I understand you wish to see the twins, and I know that is also what they want as well. But I have no inclination to get to know you on a deeper, more personal level. Nothing about you or what I know of you, appeals to me,” she stated and sipped her coffee.
His frown deepened with those very words, as he didn’t know how to take them, although he understood it was à full dig at him, but was it aimed at what he’d done to her, what she knew about him and that contract marriage or his looks even. He knew most women found him attractive and she too had done so once herself. He let that one go and put it down to how he’d treated her. “I’m sorry, Marilyn, for all that has transpired between us, and I do understand it was completely my fault. But I think it would be best if the day was spent with all of us together.”
“Why?” she asked.
“Why?” he frowned and then did sigh “Because, as you stated, you don’t know me and I could put the boys on my plane and take them home with me. I don’t want you to be concerned about that happening. So the easiest way to do that is for all of us, you and I and the twins, for us all to be together on the day.” He put to her in the hope she’d see her way to also joining them and not just dropping them off.
“I can have Cameron or Heath stay with the boys,” she stated with a shrug. “You may not see them right now, but do you honestly think they’re not here somewhere? That I would be this relaxed around you if they weren’t here, and I didn’t have insurance, I wouldn’t come to harm.”
“Mum!” both their boys hissed at her.
“It’s fine boys.” He stated before she could say anything. “Your mother may have whatever security detail she likes around her, if she feels the need to have one. I don’t take offense to it,” though he’d not seen either of her bodyguards.
But he could suppose that if they were nearby it could account for why she had just walked into this restaurant without issue. He’d also not been expecting her to come without them, and had been surprised not to see them.
“What would be appropriate in your eyes, Marilyn?” he asked instead. “I can only imagine you will have breakfast and do gift opening in the morning when the boys get up.”
“Yes,” she nodded, “you could have them from, say… 12 to 3. I’ll have them back for dinner, Wil and I can work something out formally over the next few days.”
He was more than willing to sit and talk it over with her now, sort it out right this very minute, but it seemed
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CH 114
she only really wanted to deal with Wil. There was not going to be any room for negotiations at all between her and him spending the day with the boys together at this time. He may never get that family Christmas moment with her and the boys.
“I would be happy to pick them up and drop them off to you, so your day is not interrupted.” He offered with a smile, trying to show her he was flexible and willing to see as little interruption to her day as possible.
She shook her head and sighed at him. “You haven’t thought that one through yet, have you. If I’m willing to give you three hours with the boys, and you’re willing to pick them up and drop them off, that’s 40 minutes per trip inside those three hours. By the time you get here to the hotel, you’ll only have an hour and 40 minutes to spend with them.
“I did say three hours, Mr Reeves, not four and a half hours. Don’t try and wrangle more time with them, that will not go in your favour.” She shook her head as though dismayed with him.
“My apologies. I guess I didn’t think about that at all,” and he’d not. “I’m not trying to overstep. Would you be amenable to it not being just myself on the day then, seeing as you won’t be staying.” He finally accepted that she wasn’t going to be spending time with him and the boys together.
“I’m not interested in you introducing the twins to your current girlfriend, or fiancé. That’s a no from me,” she
stated flatly.
“W… What?” he blinked in complete shock. “I would not do that.”
“What Calvin is trying to say is that he does not currently have a girlfriend, fiancé or wife.” Wil interrupted him and he realised what he should have stated himself.
“No, I don’t. I am currently single,” he told her as he realised what she was looking for with that very
statement.
“I can see why you’re single. With the way you treat women,” Marilyn nodded.
Calvin refrained himself from responding to that comment. He knew she was trying to provoke him now, so he blipped over it and stated, “I meant would you mind if my family were here with me? My parents and sisters etcetera.”
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