Mergers & Acquisitions: 10 Years

(This story is written with the extremely gracious permission of USAFTNT, who was kind enough to not only allow me to follow-up his story but encouraged me to write it anyway I thought it should go.

Quite a while ago, I read a story titled "Mergers and Acquisitions" by USAFTNT. Briefly, a rich man named Ron became infatuated with Toni, who was married to Stephan, one of his employees. Getting him out of town, he drugged Toni at a party and had sex with her. In spite of that, she was quite taken with him and agreed to spend a week with him. During that time he whisked her around the country and wined and dined her. At the end, she chose him and never went back to her husband.

I didn't like the storyline itself. However the author obviously wrote well enough to leave an impression deep enough to make me want to write my idea of what might have transpired after the end of his story. We never found out what happened to Stephan, or them. This is my idea of what MIGHT have occurred.)

*

"Hi. Can I help you?"

The blonde woman standing on the steps, with her finger still poised over the doorbell, hesitated. With a look of surprise on her face she replied, "I was looking for Stephen."

"Oh, he's not home yet," the attractive woman, also a blonde, standing in the doorway said. She noticed, but avoided commenting on, the mingled look of surprise, sadness, and even a slight hint of relief on the other woman's face. "Please, come in. I'm sure he'll be back anytime now." She ushered the visitor inside the spacious, airy house and led her to a comfortably furnished family room.

"Have a seat. Would you like something to drink? I have some lemonade in the refrigerator but I was in the process of making ice tea if you'll give me a moment." The hostess smiled. "Can't have a proper visit in the South without ice tea, you know. By the way, I'm Stephanie."

The visitor hesitated again. "Tanya, I'm Tanya."

"Pleased to meet you Tanya." Stephanie extended her hand and appeared not to notice Tanya seemed reluctant to shake it. "You make yourself at home. I'll be right back." she bustled through the archway to one side of the room. The sounds of glasses clinking together came to Tanya's ears.

The visitor moved slowly around the room. She paused to examine her surroundings. There were plaques and photographs scattered all over the walls. Her breath caught in her throat as she stopped in front of a picture of the man she had come to see. It was a casual pose. He was leaning over a railing on what looked to be a deck, or perhaps a dock. His hair was ruffled as though the wind was blowing. He smiled broadly, as though he had not a care in the world. His arm was around the woman who had let her in.

The jangle of a phone interrupted her thoughts. She could make out Stephanie's voice but not what was being said. She inched closer towards the kitchen, only to hastily turn her attention back to the wall, where her eyes fixed on a framed certificate.

"Hey, sorry about that." Stephanie came into the room with a tall glass pitcher and two glasses filled with ice. "Little brothers," she shook her head in mock disgust. "They're a pain when they're tag-alongs at 10 and even when they're grown up they're still always checking on you." She set the tray down and poured two glasses full. "I hope you like it sweet, Tanya. I'm afraid that's the only way we drink it here."

"That's fine," replied Tanya as she accepted the glass. Her eyes remained on the wall. "I thought doctors put their diplomas and such up in their offices."

"Well," Stephanie smiled. "I would if I had an office. I'm an emergency room doctor. To me, the office is the couch in the doctors' lounge." She ushered Tanya to a pair of overstuffed chairs, placing the tray and pitcher on a small table between them. "Its where I first met Stephan, in fact," She added as they both sat down.

"The doctors' lounge?"

"No, the emergency room. He was brought in after a car accident. A woman swerving to miss a dog had plowed into his car. He had a broken arm and a nasty gash on his leg. I was lucky enough to be the one to patch him up."

Tanya nodded absent-mindedly "What," she stumbled and started over. "What are you to Stephen? If I might ask."

"Oh!" Stephanie seemed nonplussed. "Why, I'm his wife. Have been for 5 years now." She set her glass down and looked in surprise at Tanya. "I'm sorry, I thought you were someone who worked with Stephan. May I ask where you know him from?"

The other woman hesitated visibly and then said "I knew him from a company where he used to work. I had heard he was living here now and thought I might look him up for old times sake."

Stephanie sighed. "Then you know about his former job then, and his employer, and," her face tightened visibly," and that whore he was married to at one time."

Tanya looked shocked. "Did Stephen tell you that?"

"Oh my goodness no. I found that out on my own. Or rather my family did."

"Your family?"

In response Stephanie handed Tanya a framed picture that was on the back of the table between their chairs. Tanya looked it over. It was full of people, including Stephanie and Stephen. There were eight others there. Five of them wore police uniforms. Of the other three, one was a red haired female in her mid 20's and the other two were teenage boys.

"My mother and father, my sister and her husband, and my brother. Two inspectors, two sergeants and squirt finally a detective now. All they had to do was hear a whisper that I thought this guy Stephen was cute and they were digging into his past. Add my sister-in-law to that," Stephanie pointed at the redhead. "She's a writer for 'Rolling Stone' and has some very interesting connections with several government agencies. It took about three days and I had all the information about him."

"I guess if you worked up there with him you're familiar with the whole sordid story. No point in going over it again in detail. His boss, Ron, decided he was in love with Stephan's wife, Toni. He got Stephen out of town and drugged and took advantage of Toni. And she apparently thought it was great. She went back to see him. He wined and dined her and in less than ten days she left the man she had been married to for five years. Imagine Stephen's surprise and shock when he got home to discover what had happened."

Tanya took a deep breath. Before she could speak, Stephanie went on. "Did you know that the bitch didn't even tell him face to face? She sent him a note, a fucking NOTE, telling him that she was sorry but she had realized she had found the true love of her life. She hoped it wouldn't hurt him too much, but that was the way things had turned out and he should get on with his life like she was getting on with hers."

"There's two sides to every story," Tanya interjected.

"I don't care. As far as I'm concerned she was a slut, and she definitely was a whore." When Tanya gasped Stephanie looked the other woman directly in the eyes and asked, "What would you call a woman who fucked a guy for pretty toys and trips to Vegas?"

"She was in love."

"She said that before, to Stephen, when they dated, when he asked her to marry him. She had said it for years and it evaporated in a heartbeat."

"He could have tried to do something, anything," Tanya burst out. "He could have fought for her, not just rolled over and given up. He didn't even try to see her. He just let her go."

"Oh, he did try to see her." At Tanya's startled look Stephanie nodded vigorously. "He tried to get into the mansion where Toni had taken up residence. A couple of security guards caught him and beat him pretty badly when he tried to get past them."

"That was a great excuse for Ron. Before that day was over he had Stephen fired from work and filed both charges of Criminal Trespass and got a restraining order against him. Ron was rich and money can buy a lot of things, a judge and justice included. When Stephen persisted in his attempts to see Toni, well, his car was burned, his house was vandalized and he was brutally 'mugged' by several unknown assailants one night.

"The divorce went through while he was in the hospital recovering. I'm almost amused that she charged him with 'Mental Cruelty'. She has an affair, runs off with her lover in the space of a week, and HE was cruel."

"Oh," Tanya blanched. "I, I didn't know about that. About the grounds for divorce, I mean. I just knew they were divorced."

"He didn't have a job, a wife or much of anything else to hold him where he was. He scraped together enough to get a car, loaded what was left of his stuff and hit the road. He wasn't going anywhere, just wandering. Fortunately, by the whim of fate, or an act of God, he stopped here."

Stephanie sat back in her chair, remembering. "It was a slow night when the ambulance brought him into the ER. I had been chatting a bit with the other paramedics. I used to be an EMT before I went to Med School and I am still fascinated by what they encounter on a routine basis. Well my encounter that night changed my life."

"The responders had called the vitals in on the two people they were transporting. I was ready. The man was hurt worse, so I took him first." She smiled. "My first impression of him was I thought I was going to have to sit on him. He kept insisting that he was alright and that I should look at the woman first. I finally lost my temper and told him I was the damn Doctor and I would make the judgments about treatment." She laughed merrily. "That may be the last time I ever managed to shut him up so completely."

"So that was how the whole thing started?" asked Tanya, her eyes wary, but strangely curious.

"Well, 'started' may be too strong a word. I really was intrigued by him. He was worried about the other woman, worried about her car, even worried about the darn stray dog. But he didn't seem to care anything at all about himself. Add to the mix he was a handsome, sexy man and well, I guess that's what I get for being into 'Wuthering Heights'. If he had been named 'Heathcliff' I would have swooned at his feet."

Tanya gave an uncertain smile. "He was always a sexy guy. I remember..." She suddenly sat up. "That is, I saw him at work, you know." She floundered, "He always seemed to look really good. You could tell he stayed in shape."

Stephanie seemed not to notice Tanya's confusion. "Oh yeah. That's how I started my pursuit. I discovered he belonged to a gym and joined it. Then I found out when he worked out and started exercising at the same time he did."

"It sounds like you found out a lot in a hurry," the other woman said.

Stephanie smiled. "I'm a respected member of the community. My family has been here since the early 1800's. And my well known parents don't hurt either. The county may have grown over the years but in some ways its still a small Southern country area. People gossip."

"Oh, he was polite, unfailingly courteous and a complete gentleman. He was complimentary and his smile never went past his lips. It was his eyes. You couldn't see anything in them. Just a reflection of what was around him. No warmth, no laughter. Cold and dead. My father told me he remembered eyes like that from his active service in the Marine Corps. Men who had seen too much and locked their emotions away because their souls hurt too much."

I finally got him to say 'Yes' to a dinner date." Stephanie smiled. "I had asked him out more than once before he gave in. I think my persistence wore him down. I was careful though. I could sense that I would have to take things very slow, give him a chance to relax and be himself with me." She paused and sighed. "Give him a chance to trust me."

"I was falling in love with him anyway, in love with a man who's emotions were locked so tightly that I don't know if he even realized what I felt. After several months I was getting desperate. I didn't know how to find the man I was sure was under that shell."

"How did you do it?" asked Tanya quietly. Her hands were clasped together in her lap and the knuckles were white.

"By pushing him until he broke. I led him on one night. I got enough alcohol into him to relax him. Then," Stephanie's eyes filled with tears, "Then I was horrible. I talked about 'Her'. I rambled on, making comparisons about him and the lover. I commented on what must have transpired. God I've never hated myself as I did that night. I knew it had to be done, but I was dying inside every time I mentioned her name. But I'm a doctor. When something is infected you have to cut it open and drain the pus.

"I can't even tell you what the final remark was that pushed him over the edge. All of a sudden he was shouting. He had me by the shoulders, gripping me so hard he left bruises, which thank GOD he never saw. He raved, he yelled, he finally let all the pent-up bitterness out in a flood that almost washed me away.

"Finally by the end he was on his knees sobbing and I was on my knees sobbing with him. Don't hand me crap about 'real men don't cry'. I know better than that. He was torn up inside and he had blocked it for too long.

"I took him to bed that night. I just held him and he held me. We didn't make love for weeks after that night, even though I spent almost every night with him" Her face relaxed and she almost giggled. "Thank you Lord that when we finally did, well, I don't care how rich or hung or whatever that other man was. Toni was a FOOL to let a lover like Stephan get away."

"Maybe she was," Tanya said softly. She shook her head. "So then, you lived happily ever after, at least until now?"

Stephanie ignored the undercurrent in the other woman's words. "Oh no, it wasn't that easy. Even after we had moved in together it wasn't smooth sailing by any means of the word. Stephen, like me, is the kind of guy who believes in 'ever-after'. But what had happened to him made him suspicious, paranoid even. He would unexpectedly come by work, or call me. I knew he was checking up on me. Once I had gone out with my former EMT partner and his wife and my cell phone had gone dead. He quizzed me for hours when I got home. I know darn well he went back and checked out my story."

There was a lot of what the shrinks call 'performance problems'. After a while I could sense it coming. He would close his eyes, seeing her instead of me and he would start to go away from me, both mentally and physically. I got damn good at oral sex. Of course," Stephanie grinned naughtily, "He did too."

The worst thing was that he found it so hard to open his heart completely to me. He held a little back for the longest time. That's what took the longest. But persistence and love will wear down the hardest wall. There were times though it really hurt when he would shut me out. But I held on. WE held on. He wanted someone he knew he could trust. I knew that, and knew that he had troubles trusting. So when he tested me I didn't let it get to me."

"With all that, I'm amazed you stayed with him."

Stephanie gave Tanya a look that could have frozen the tea in the pitcher between them. "I learned when I was a girl you don't give up on someone you love just because things are rough."

"My parents taught me that. No one would have given extreme odds that they would have ever got together, much less stay together and still be so much in love. He was a widower still in grief from the loss of his first wife, his high school sweetheart. She had been cruelly betrayed by her lover, who not only cheated on her but rubbed it in her face. Add on top of that her lover was a woman..."

Tanya interrupted "Your mother is a lesbian?"

"And with five kids too." Stephanie replied. "No silly, she wasn't, and isn't, a lesbian. She looked for love in more than one place before she found my dad. Love with another woman happened to be one of those places."

"Perhaps we all look in different places," Tanya said sadly. She lifted her head and a sudden defiance shone in her eyes. "Perhaps we realize that we were wrong and that the greatest thing in our life is what we left behind."

"I suppose that could be true." Stephanie's gaze hardened to match Tanya's. "But sometimes its too late to go back. Sometimes someone else has found that discarded thing and made it her own. Here, let me show you something else."

Stephanie took Tanya's elbow and guided her down the hallway. She pressed her forefinger to her lips in a gesture asking for silence, before leading the other woman down the hall to peek into an open door.

Tanya froze. The room was filled with toys and games and decorated with posters of all kinds. But the crowning touch was the little boy asleep on the single bed, curled up on a Chicago Cubs spread. Tanya drank in the sight of the boy, probably about four.

"He looks just like Stephan," she whispered.

Stephanie nodded, leading Tanya away from the room. "He's the spitting image of his Father. I think the only thing he seems to have got from me is my temper. He CAN stir up a fuss. But he's our angel."

A look of longing swept over Tanya's face, sweeping the determination away. "Yours?"

"Ours," Stephanie confirmed. "Mine and Stephan's. And he doesn't even know yet..."

"What doesn't he know?" Asked Tanya

"He knows I took the day off to see MY Doctor today. What he doesn't know is why." She nodded towards the bedroom. "Stephan, Junior there is going to have a little brother or sister."

"Oh," was all that the stunned Tanya could manage. She swept her eyes around the house, looking down the hallway and then at the woman in front of her, who looked back at he with the light of knowledge in her eyes.

"I think," Tanya swallowed hard. "I think I really need to be going. I think I'm out of time."

"I think you are too," Stephanie said calmly. She followed Tanya to the front door. The two women looked at each other. Neither spoke. Then Tanya almost rushed to her car, started the engine and pulled out of the driveway. Stephanie saw the other woman rest her head on the steering wheel for a minute. Tanya finally lifted her head, wiped her eyes, and drove away.

Stephanie stood on the front steps and waved until the car had disappeared. She turned the other way and waved again. A solid color Ford LTD started up and the driver pulled up and waved back, before turning around and heading off the opposite way.

"That's my little brother," Stephanie said out loud. "Always looking out for me." She watched fondly until the unmarked sheriff's department car rounded the corner. Once more she turned back in the direction Tanya's car had gone.

"I guess you didn't realize, 'Tanya', that the moment you reached town and started asking about Stephen that same family of cops would hear about it and go immediately into high gear. I knew who you were before you even found our address.

"Stephen's not here because I made sure he wouldn't be. If you thought for a second that I was going to let a pathetic bitch like you make any attempt to hurt my man and my family, after all you did to him, you were sadly mistaken. I don't care that you 'didn't know'. I know damn well that you didn't give a shit.

"Yeah, its too bad. I don't know why you would have been surprised that a man who drugged and raped one man's wife would do that to another. I don't know why you wouldn't have known that Ron would come to the realization that if you would run off from one husband just for a big cock and expensive toys that you might again. I know he didn't trust you out of his sight and its almost delicious that you didn't know that. You'd already proved that to you 'Love' and 'Faithfulness' were just words.

"Well, he 'fell in love' again didn't he? Only the climate had changed a bit and when that wife didn't respond and he tried hard ball again that this time there were Sexual Harassment charges and lawsuits and then a rape complaint. He managed to escape prison but it about destroyed his empire. Then your wandering eye caught hold of someone else. I bet Ron wasn't surprised at all but you were when he held you to that pre-nuptial agreement. Shame that other guy turned out not to have any money and he didn't even bother to drug you before raping. Not that you would have needed drugging.