The Convenient Wife
by Kelly

chapter 25

Incoming…

Alexis saw the harpy swoop down upon them before Sonny did. But the change in her expression alerted him, and he swung around to see his ex-wife stalking up to them, eyes wild with anger.

"Calm," Alexis cautioned him. "There's an officer waiting for us by the door. Don't do anything to give him or the reporters a story about how violent your temper is. No matter what she says, don't react."

Sonny nodded as his ex drew to a stop two inches from his body, flailing a finger in his face as she spoke.

"I just want to say one thing," she said to Sonny, her voice literally trembling with her anger. "I will not allow you to see your children while you're living with her, do you hear me? Do you hear me?"

"I think probably the whole courthouse heard you," Sonny answered evenly, his arm sliding around Alexis' waist. "I guess there's—uh--nothin' I can do about that. I'll miss the boys; it'll kill me to be without them. But--you know--if you're so vindictive you can't see that this will hurt them as much as me…then so be it."

He turned to look at Alexis and she smiled widely; she had never been so proud of him. He had held himself together and had spoken with tolerance to the least tolerated woman on the planet.

But of course Carly wasn't done yet.

"Go ahead and laugh at me, you old hag," the younger woman flung at her. "But I'll get the last laugh. I always do. Sure, he'll stay with you for a while. He has to; he'll be imprisoned in your apartment by that ankle bracelet. At least, he freely CHOSE to live with me. He'd never choose you."

Alexis couldn't shield herself from the accuracy of that verbal blow.Deep in her heart there had always been a secret fear that that was true. That if she had allowed him to choose freely---between her and Carly—he still would've returned to his ex-wife.

Sonny's tightly clipped words brought her back to the present moment. "My choice is Alexis, Carly. The sooner you realize that the better."

Carly's hands found her slender hips. "Ok, you know what? Cut the crap. We all know why you're with her, Sonny."

Sonny's eyes found those of his bride. "Because she's beautiful. Because she's sexy. Because she's smart as hell. And because—nomatter what ugliness has happened between us before—she's standing by me through the battle of my life. That's why I'm with her."

Alexis' heart nearly fell out of her chest. The words…said with such quiet, sincere resolve…struck a chord in her soul and nearly erased her earlier doubt.

She caught sight of the other woman's face; the girl looked visibly shaken. Apparently, Carly believed him on some level at least.

In no time, the wounded look in her eyes faded and she shook herself back into attack mode. Her glare returned to Alexis. "He'll say or do anything to stay free, you know that. You wanna be a fool and buy his story? Fine, but just remember that in the end, Sonny tires easily of whores like you and comes right back to me."

Sonny's jaw clenched, his hand tightened on her waist, and Alexis feared the worst. But he simply turned to his wife, ignoring Carly altogether.

"You ready?" he asked her. "Cuz if she calls you that one more time, I won't be responsible for what I do. And I don't want to let you down."

Alexis linked her arm around his waist. "Yes, let's go. Kristina's temper tantrums I can comprehend…this, not so much."

Sonny nodded again to his enforcer and then turned to walk downstairs to the bail area with his wife.

***

"Did that make you feel any better? To call her names and piss Sonny off?"

"Jason, no sermon right now. I don't wanna hear it."

"Well, you're gonna hear it anyway. If you want me to stand by you…if you want me to help you through this…then you gotta stop acting on impulse, or you could send Sonny to prison."

He didn't like the smile that curled Carly's lips. "Maybe that's what I wanna do: put him in prison. At least then he'd be away from her. All I'd have to do is tell what I know. He confessed to me that this marriage is a setup to make sure Alexis couldn't testify. With one phone call to Grayson, I could end this and get my revenge, Jason."

His breath caught somewhere in the vicinity of his throat. She was dead serious. Jason grasped her upper arms in a viselike grip and turned her bodily to face him.

"If you do that," he told her, the fury in his eyes burning down into hers, "say goodbye to me here and now because I will never speak a word to you ever again. You'll be dead to me. Just like you'll be dead to him."

And after a moment of paralyzed wide-eyed shock, her whole face changed. He watched her slowly morph into her little girl persona, all innocent watery smiles and hurt eyes as she touched his jaw with her fingertips. "Of--of course I wouldn't do that. He's my children's father. I-I wouldn't send him to jail. That was stupid of me to even joke about."

"Yeah, it was," he said, his tone a little harsher than he intended, but it was time for her to smell the coffee. To face reality and deal with it head on. Instead of going off half-cocked "Carly against the World" and shooting everyone including herself in the damn foot.

He pushed her down onto a seat in the spectator's box in the now silent courtroom. "Here's the deal," he said. "You're gonna follow my lead on this."

She blinked up at him. "What?"

"I'll watch the two of them. I'll make sure she's not setting Sonny up for a fall. I'll even find out if it's—real—for him. This thing with her."

"Wouldn't that be a betrayal of your code with Sonny?"

He caught the sarcasm coating her voice. "You're my friend, too. I don't want you hurt, and I think you have a right to know the truth."

She looked at him doubtfully. "But…?"

"But I might find out somethin' you don't wanna know," he told her. "I mean, this marriage deal might have begun as a lie. But the way Alexis was looking at him in court…and what he said just now about her…I don't know, Carly. You may have to accept that it is real. And if it is…if it's love…you don't have a weapon strong enough to destroy it. It's lasted through everything else you've thrown at
it all these years."

She was silent, but he saw her throat bob.

"I made you a promise, now you have to make one to me," Jason said.

"And that would be?"

"That you won't cook up any harebrained schemes for once. Let Sonny have a fighting chance to beat these charges. And let's all deal with the emotional stuff after that."

She averted her gaze, but he lifted her chin to see her eyes. "This is serious, Carly. Promise me you'll let me handle it my way. Promiseme on our friendship."

chapter 26