The Senator's Hispanic Bride (9 page)

“What the hell is this all about?” the strange voice said.

“It was a plan that I came up with and Michael agreed to it,” Glenn said miserably.

“So it’s true?” the strange voice said even louder.

“Most of it is true. I had studied the demographic of the state to a fault, looking for the best way to get Michael elected, looking for votes. The Latin American community was all angry with the current senator and he was losing their backing left and right. I found out that Michael had met Isabella and it just clicked,” Glenn explained.

“What just clicked?” the strange voice said.

“The plan I came up with for them to get married, a marriage that would swing the vote to him with a large and loyal sect of the population; a convincing reason for the people who were angry with the current senator to give their vote to Michael. We would make it completely public and use the engagement and wedding as extra publicity to bring in more voters. Most people don’t like politicians, but Michael is a good looking man and hitching him to a beautiful Latin American woman was a shoe in for positive publicity. It was like someone was handing him the keys to Washington. We couldn’t pass it up. He almost screwed it up, but luckily he managed to save it in time,” Glenn continued with a long sigh.

“And you agreed to this, Michael?” the stranger’s voice sounded appalled.

“I did.” Michael’s voice sounded miserable.

As the words were spoken, Isabella felt like everything inside her had been destroyed and every cell in her entire being had exploded simultaneously. Kelsey had been right. Marisol had been right. There had been no love all along. Her heart vaulted to her throat and she almost choked on it and on her tears. She could barely believe what she was hearing, and she wouldn’t have believed it, except that she clearly heard Michael admit to it and there was no way to not hear what he had said.

“Who else knew about this?” the strange voice asked.

Glenn answered him. “No one else knew about this except Michael’s ex-fiancée Kelsey. She’s a piece of work.”

“This news is going to destroy the entire campaign! All of the money I’ve invested in you both will be gone! I am your biggest contributor, Michael, and now I find out about this underhanded and low brow deal? Who the hell spilled it to the press?” the strange voice was a stranger no longer. Isabella knew just who it was. The man was one of the most successful businessmen in all of Manhattan, who just happened to be Puerto Rican. No wonder he was so put out about all of it.

“Kelsey let it out. She came to talk to me about Michael a couple of times recently, and she kept telling me she wanted to be with him and that she would be such a big help to his campaign. I told her that she couldn’t be around him and that we already had the campaign plan well underway. She wanted to know all the details and I refused to tell her but then she talked me into it, and now she shared all of the news with the media. Now everyone knows the plan.”

The campaign supporter spoke again. “How did she get such important information out of you, Glenn?”

“She screwed me,” he said as if she had brought him a cup of coffee.

“For crying out loud!” Michael shouted at him. “What the hell is wrong with you? You slept with my ex? Are you sick?”

“She’s a hot woman. I didn’t think she’d tell anyone. She said you were her first priority,” Glenn continued in his monotone voice.

“I am her first priority, Glenn, she wants me back! That’s why she came to you in the first place! Now look at the mess you’ve gotten us into! Everything I have done to make sure that this election is won is out the window!” Michael was still shouting, and Isabella had decided that she had heard enough.

Her heart could not handle being ripped to further shreds. She walked to Jean’s desk and wrote a note to Michael. It read, ‘Give this ring to some other Latin American woman.’ She took one long last look at the beautiful ring on her hand and thought of all the dreams she had that were gone now. She slid it off and set it with the note, and then walked out of the door, closing it behind her.

Chapter 7

Michael looked at Carlos and Glenn as their conversation escalated, and raked his hand through his black hair in frustration. “I can’t believe you slept with my ex, Glenn! I should fire you right now! What the hell am I paying you to do? You’re ruining my life!”

“I’d say that he’s ruining Isabella’s life!” Carlos said with obvious disgust.

“I’m not trying to ruin anyone’s life!” Glenn shouted back at both of them. “This is just an unfortunate turn of events! That’s all!”

“It is not an unfortunate turn of events, Glenn, it is a bombshell that I may not be able to recover from! What am I going to do when Isabella finds out about this?” He threw his hands up in the air and glared at Glenn.

“What do you care about what Isabella thinks of it?” Glenn asked with equal frustration.

“I happen to be in love with her! I want to marry her and spend the rest of my life with her, and I have already lost her once, I can’t lose her again! She made it crystal clear to me that I couldn’t screw up again and here I am in the biggest screw up of my life! I can’t believe you did this to me or to her!” Michael shouted angrily.

Carlos looked hard at him and then raised his eyebrows. “You really do love her!” he exclaimed in amazement.

“You’re damn right I do. She is the love of my life. She is my family. Her family is my family. She is everything to me and now there’s a good chance that I’m going to lose her! Glenn, I’m done with this. I cannot let you ruin my life any more than you already have. You’re fired. Pack your desk up today and get out.” Michael shook his head angrily at Glenn.

Glenn stared at him. “You must be kidding. You can’t do that! You can’t fire me this close to the election! We’re almost there! I got you this close! I can get you over the finish line!”

Michael jumped to his feet. “Don’t you get it, Glenn? I don’t give a damn about the election! All I care about is Isabella, and you’ve just created a problem for me that I may not be able to recover from. I cannot have you around anymore. I don’t need you around anymore. You’re out. If you say one word to anyone about anything that we have done in the work of this campaign… or rather,
anyone else
… I will sue you.”

Glenn’s jaw fell open in shock. “But I’m… you can’t…”

Michael glared at him and spoke in a low tone. “I just did. Leave.”

Glenn stood up and walked out of the room. Carlos looked at Michael and smiled.

“Michael, that was the best thing you could have done. I was about to pull my funding and backing from you, and you would have been on your own.” A smile grew across Carlos’ face and he laid his hands down on his knees.

“I hate to let him go, but too much of what he has done has cost me my ethics and morals and I can’t keep letting him run my campaign like that or he is going to wreck my career at some point in the future. He may have wrecked my relationship. I need to try to get a hold of Isabella as quickly as possible. I don’t know if she has seen anything yet, but I can’t take the chance that she’ll believe any of it. Carlos, I am so sorry that it went the way that it did and that I ever agreed to that plan of Glenn’s in the first place, but I want you to know that that isn’t how I’m going to run the rest of my campaign or any of my business in the future. I would like to keep you involved in my bid for the senate, if you are comfortable staying with me.” Michael looked at him in earnest.

Carlos nodded. “I’ll be glad to stay with you; I like your platforms and your plans. I like how you think and what you do, but I want to ask you to be much more careful in your choice of campaign staff in the future. That Glenn Todd is far too jaded, and anyone else like him wouldn’t be someone I wouldn’t want to be associated with. If you think you can get this mess cleaned up, then I’ll stay with you. If you don’t get this mess cleaned up, then I’ll be withdrawing my support from this and all future campaigns.” Carlos told him with a serious tone, his eyes steady on Michael.

Michael stood up and reached for Carlos’s hand. Carlos stood up and closed his hand firmly around Michael’s. “I’ll clean it up. I promise you that. I am running for office so that I can win the seat, not so that I waste my time and resources messing around on the way. I will fix this situation for myself and for everyone else. It’s paramount that I undo the damage that Glenn has done.”

“Thank you, Michael,” Carlos said with his kind smile. “I really hope it is fixed soon. I’d like to keep our association.”

Michael nodded, and Carlos walked out of the room. Michael picked up his phone and called Isabella, but there was no answer, it went straight to voicemail. He left her a message telling her that he needed to talk with her and that whatever she might read in the newspapers, it was not the truth.

Jean, his secretary, walked into his office with a heartbroken look on her face. She walked up to his desk and set the note Isabella had written on it, and then held her hand over the note and when she moved her hand, Isabella’s ring was lying on the note. Jean turned silently and walked toward the door, shaking her head.

“Jean!” he called out, and she turned around to look at him.

“I let Glenn go,” he said quietly.

“I know,” she said in a low voice. “It’s high time he was out of here,” she stated shortly and smiled a little, and then turned and walked out of the room.

He looked at the note. He knew what it would say before he read it. He closed his fingers around the ring and held it tight as his chest felt like it was cracking right in half. The ache that burned in his heart grew rapidly and overtook all of him, tearing him apart from his core. Tears stung his eyes and his breath burned in him. He tried to call her again and got no answer. He knew there was no way that she would answer her phone. He could hear the phone ringing off the hook in the font office, and he could hear Jean fielding his calls, taking messages and telling people he would call them back.

He buried his face in his hands and let the stress that had bound him so tightly break away from him, and all the emotion he had pent up in him rushed out. Tears rolled down his face and he let quiet sobs erupt from him as the knowledge that Isabella was gone tortured him.

When he had collected himself, he determined he was going to have to do all that he could to find her. He left his office and headed to her house, but it was locked up and no one was there. He realized he was going to have to go the family restaurant and ask them about her.

***

Isabella left Michael’s office and headed straight for her house. She packed her suitcase in record time and called Marisol, asking her to come pick her up. Marisol was there right away and didn’t ask any questions either on the phone or when her sister climbed into the car with her suitcase.

“I need a ride to the airport, please,” Isabella said quietly.

Marisol pursed her lips. “Okay.”

There was silence for a few miles and then Isabella spoke. “I’m going to Papi and Nanna’s in Florida. You were right. I went to talk to Michael about the newspapers and I overheard him talking to Glenn and one of his campaign supporters. They were talking about how they had planned it all, how Glenn told him to get engaged to me so he could swing the Latin American vote to him, how they planned the wedding so soon because I was going to guarantee the Latin vote for Michael, how they planned the engagement and wedding as publicity stunts to get Michael into the news in a positive way before the election rather than as just a politician running for office. They wanted us to be a popular celebrity couple in the news so people would want to vote for him because of that.” She felt like her heart had broken in two, and saying the words out loud actually speaking them, seemed to give them more life, and it was one of the hardest things she had ever said.

Marisol shook her head and said softly, “I wish I hadn’t been right. Of all the times in my life that I have been wrong about things, I wanted this to be the biggest one. I’m so sorry, Isabella.”

Isabella closed her eyes for a moment to hold back the tears that threatened to fall again. “I’m sorry, too. I wanted you to be wrong. I wanted him to be the person I believed he was… the person I fell in love with.”

“How long are you going to stay with Papi and Nanna?” Marisol asked quietly.

Isabella covered her mouth with her hand for a moment and then closed her eyes. After a long minute, she opened her eyes back up.

“Until it doesn’t hurt any longer, until he isn’t the only thing on my mind. Until I can come back to Manhattan and people don’t look at me and bring him up, when I can be here and they will only think of me as an individual when they talk to me or see me.”

Marisol wiped tears off of her cheeks. “That’s going to be a long time. I’m going to miss you more than everything.” She spoke softly and wiped another tear.

“I’ll be in a good place where I can heal. It’ll just take a long time.” She wove her fingers together and clenched her hands tightly.

They drove in silence a while until they were almost at the airport.

“What do you want me to tell Mama and Papa?” Marisol asked.

“Tell them the truth.” Isabella sighed, leaning her head back against the seat. “Just don’t tell them where I went. I don’t want anyone to know where I am for a while.”

“Okay,” Marisol said softly.

They reached the airport and Isabella hugged her sister tightly, thanked her and took her bags to the ticket counter. She bought a one-way ticket to Florida and a few hours later, she was on a plane, leaving the north and all of her problems behind her.

When she landed in Miami later that evening, she ran into her grandparents' arms, and then they tucked her safely into their car and drove her to their sweet little house on the beach in the Florida Keys.    

She was exhausted when they finally got to the house, and she was grateful that her grandparents hadn’t asked her anything other than whether or not she ate, and they were quick to give her food they had brought with them to the airport on the chance that she would probably arrive hungry.

Isabella slept deeply that night and woke up to a peach colored sunrise. She walked out to the beach in back of her grandparent’s house and spent the day under an umbrella, soaking in the relaxing, healing salt seawater and air.

She went into the kitchen later in the afternoon and helped her grandmother cook dinner. They were slicing, dicing and spicing when her grandmother brought up the reason behind her visit.

“M’hija, what is it that brought you here?” she asked, not looking at her granddaughter directly.

Isabella had known that it would probably be coming, and she took a deep breath and kept her answer short. “I just needed a break. Things in New York are so crazy right now. I needed to spend some time with my Nanna and Papi.” She wrapped her arm around her grandmother’s shoulder and kissed her cheek, then went back to the fish she was preparing on the counter.

Her grandmother looked sidelong at her. “Aren’t you supposed to be getting ready for a wedding? You don’t have time for a nice long visit with us if you are trying to plan for a wedding,” she said simply.

“Nanna,” Isabella said, taking another deep breath, “there isn’t going to be a wedding.”

Her grandmother looked up at her and raised one eyebrow. “Really? Why is that?”

“Because I don’t want to marry a man who doesn’t really love me,” Isabella answered her.

Her grandmother nodded and made a thoughtful humming noise. “What is it that makes you think that he doesn’t love you?”

Isabella finished the fish she was working on and reached for some fruit to make a dessert with. “I heard him talking to his campaign manager about the plan he had to marry me so that he could use my ethnicity to gain all the Latin American votes in the state. He said he’s been in on the plan since the very beginning. I can’t marry a man like that.”

“What if he really loves you?” her grandmother asked softly.

Isabella put the back of her hand up to her mouth to hold back her emotions and then took a deep breath. “I wish he did, Nanna, but he doesn’t. It was all about votes and not at all about me.”

“He was going to marry you, my darling, do you think that he would marry you if he didn’t love you at all?” she asked, reaching for her granddaughter and placing her hand on Isabella’s shoulder.

“I thought he loved me. I believed him when he told me that he did, but when I heard him talking, I knew that he was telling the truth, that more than any other reason, he was marrying me for the votes.” Isabella could not stop the few tears that escaped her eyelashes and traveled down her warm cheeks.

“Sometimes,” her grandmother said, “when we believe the worst about a situation, we can lose sight of what is really important, or even what is the most important. We can lose sight of the love that we should be looking at every situation with. All love is real, my dear, because love does not lie, love cannot lie. There is oftentimes too little love, and so the love that was once there may vanish and go away, but when we really care about people, then that isn’t a lie. Even if it was only a little love, it’s still real love. You had enough love in you that were willing to spend the rest of your life with that man. He had enough love for you that he was going to do the same. You felt love when you were with him, and that wasn’t a lie. That was real. I wonder how much of his plan was political and how much of it was real love. You have to look at all of it, preciosa, or you may lose the most important love you have ever known.”