Agnes moved over her shoulder and looked. “That’s husband number two. Kurt. Sweet man. Died in Korea two years after we married.”
Oh. She felt a painful squeeze at the thought of the vibrant, happy couple in the photo having such an unhappy ending. “I’m so sorry, Agnes.”
“It’s all right, Marj honey. I met a lot of good men after him, including Dewey.” She beamed. “Think, we both found love on the island!”
“Not me,” Marjorie said in a soft voice. She straightened and turned away from the picture. “Mine was a liar and a bad man.”
“Really?” Agnes looked fascinated. “What did he lie to you about?”
She confessed to Agnes the truth of Rob’s business—The Man Channel, and the Tits or GTFO crew. She told her about how she’d never had a clue until the day of the rehearsal dinner, and how hurt she’d been.
Agnes simply cocked her head and looked mystified. “He said that was who he was and that was the end of it?”
Marjorie shrugged. “He said he’d change for me and asked me what I needed him to do. He was just saying whatever he could to try and get me to change my mind about how I felt about him. But there was no way I could back down after learning that about him. I felt betrayed. Especially after those awful men tried to get me to take my top off for them.” She shuddered. “And to find out that he was their boss . . .”
“Huh,” Agnes said. “That’s so interesting. Do you read tabloids, honey? I find that they have the best crossword puzzles.”
Marjorie smiled. “Do they now?”
“Well, that, and pictures of shirtless men in Hollywood. I’m only human,” Agnes said with a cheeky wink. She moved to her kitchen area, humming, and found a stack of magazines and began to flip through them. “I’m pretty sure I have something here you’ll want to see.”
“I really don’t read the tabloids,” Marjorie told her. She’d poked through a few after getting back from the island, her curiosity burning about Rob. What she’d seen there had been awful. Pictures of him partying on a yacht in Ibiza with Victoria’s Secret models. Rumors of drug-fueled orgies. D-listers sharing “sex secrets.” After that, she was done. She didn’t want to learn anything more.
All that shit is fake, he’d told her. I’m not like that.
It was easier to believe in tabloid Rob than the one she’d met on the island, though.
Agnes wagged a finger at her and continued flipping through a magazine. “I promise you, you’re going to want to see this one. Ah, here we go.” She pushed against the spine of the magazine, ensuring it laid flat, and then handed it to Marjorie. “Read that.”
A gorgeous picture of Rob in a business suit, phone at his ear, stared up at her. She couldn’t help herself, she gave a little gasp and gazed down at the picture for far too long. He looked so good. Tanned, shaved, handsome, his collar popped open—no tie for him. Sunglasses covered his eyes, and she wished she could see them.
The picture next to him was of a sheikh of some kind, and she frowned. What did these two have to do with each other? Then, she read the bright yellow headline for the first time.
Billionaire playboy sells The Man Channel and all affiliated stations to Saudi prince in billion dollar deal! There was a smaller headline underneath that read AND THEN GIVES ALL THE MONEY TO CHARITY!
Her eyes widened. She picked up the magazine and began to read, frantic.
Nothing about handsome billionaire Robert Cannon, 32, has ever been predictable . . . except for his love of partying. It seems, however, that scandal’s favorite billionaire is turning over a new leaf. Reports coming out of boardrooms state that Cannon has sold the incredibly lucrative The Man Channel and its spinoff stations to a powerful Saudi billionaire for over a billion dollars. When asked why he was getting out of the cable industry, Cannon’s reps were notoriously closed-mouthed. One source says that despite the fact that ratings have been up, Cannon was unhappy with the business itself. She said that “someone opened his eyes, and he didn’t like what he saw.” VERY MYSTERIOUS.
It would seem that our secret source has the inside track, though. Not one week after the purchase of the channel went through, Cannon met with a famous women’s foundation and donated every dollar of the sale to charity. That’s right—every dollar of his sale of The Man Channel will now go to helping battered women and victims of rape.
We’ve tried to contact Cannon’s reps, but they’re not speaking. Could there be another angle to this fascinating story that we haven’t heard yet? If there is, we’ll get the scoop!
“Oh my sweet lord,” Marjorie whispered. She blinked, and then began to read the article again, looking for additional tidbits to glean.
“I’m surprised you haven’t heard anything about it, Marj. Don’t you ever google ex-boyfriends?”
She shook her head. “No! I . . . well, I did at first. Then I didn’t like what I saw.”
Agnes tapped one long, bony finger on Rob’s picture. “Call me crazy, but I think this sudden burst of charity has something to do with you.”
Marjorie didn’t know. Why hadn’t he said anything to her? She just stared and stared.
Rob had sold his network. He didn’t keep a dollar for himself. He was broke now . . . because of her. Oh, mercy. Her stomach gave a queasy lurch. What if he resented her now because he thought she’d forced his hand? Her head spun.
“Why don’t you take that article with you, Marj honey? It’ll give you time to read it later.”
There weren’t more than the two paragraphs, but Marjorie nodded and clutched it to her chest.
***
She was terrible at bingo that night. She’d promised Agnes that she’d go, but in reality, she’d just wanted to stay home and stare at that magazine article, and google more about Rob and this sudden sale of his business. Find out more details of why, and what he was doing now . . . and how broke he was.
Marjorie was sick at the thought of someone giving away a billion dollars just to please her. It went to a good cause, of course, but it was an unheard-of amount of money. An utterly upsetting amount.
So she tried to play bingo and chat with her friends, but she missed half the numbers because she kept googling things on her phone. She ended up handing Agnes her bingo card so she could fiddle with her phone more. As luck would have it, the card ended up winning a thousand dollars on the jackpot, and Marj insisted on giving it to Agnes.
The woman had been an incredible friend to her lately and it was a small thing to do. “Buy Dewey a ticket to visit you,” Marjorie had insisted, and Agnes’s smile lit up the bingo hall.
Eventually, the night ended and Marjorie and Agnes parted. Marjorie headed up the elevator a few more floors to her new apartment. Inside, all was utterly quiet—not even her noisy neighbors weren’t making a sound. She closed the door and locked it behind her, bolted it, then dragged her small bureau in front of it, because living alone in NYC didn’t make her feel all that safe. Then, she peeled off her high heels and headed over to the closet and tugged down the bed, and then flopped down on it to page through the magazine again.
Two paragraphs. She didn’t understand it. A rich, handsome billionaire had sold his business, lock, stock, and barrel, and he only warranted two paragraphs? That was ridiculous. She had torn through the magazine over and over again, looking for additional mentions. She picked through Internet sites but all the information and gossip was well over three months old. It seemed as if Rob’s people—if he still had any—were on lockdown and nothing was leaking to the media except for a few fluff pieces about the upcoming season of The Man Channel.