The Bride (The Boss) Page 33

  “Sophie and I are engaged.” Still not an answer to my question, but I would rather choke on something sharp than admit we were having troubles in front of Valerie.

  Neil accepted the congratulations of his brothers, and their wives cooed over my ring, and all the while I wanted to sink to the floor and never have to make eye contact with any of them again. It was a relief when my phone rang.

  “I have to take this,” I lied. It was my mother, and I didn’t have the strength to talk to her right now. But she’d provided me an out, bless her.

  “The reception in here is awful,” Michael called after me.

  I raised my phone as if in another toast. “I will try the street.”

  When I exited the dining room, I made a sharp left and headed for the bathroom. I needed to sit and carefully dab at my eyeliner and practice my ecstatic-twenty-five-year-old-fiancé-of-a-billionaire face. It was going to take a lot of work, in the mental state I was in.

  The bathroom was brick-tiled, the walls cream stucco. Maybe it was supposed to make patrons feel like they were whizzing in Tuscany. The bathroom stalls were standard, though, and there wasn’t an attendant, so I didn’t feel bad about slipping into one of the cubicles, barring the door, and leaning against the wall for as tearless a cry as I could manage.

  I remembered the conversation Holli and I’d had after we’d shared news of our engagements. That seemed a lifetime ago. Time passed oddly without my best friend. And I’d sacrificed her for what? For a man I loved, but who possibly was done with me?

  I pulled up the browser on my phone and, with shaking thumbs, entered, “signs not get married” into the search bar. There, three links down, was the article I’d forced myself to not look at that day.

  Without really knowing what my expectation was, I found myself relieved when the first items had to do with unfaithfulness, substance abuse, and differing religions. Neil had never, to my knowledge, cheated on me; our fairly open relationship should have meant he never had to go behind my back in the first place. We both kind of abused substances, like when we drank or smoked the occasional J, but it didn’t seem like a problem to us, and it had certainly never caused problems between us. As for religion, maybe his Protestant upbringing against my Catholic one would have been an issue if either of us hadn’t been atheists, but there we were.

  The rest of entries in the list were things like, “You fight constantly,” and “He tries to control you.” While Neil was awfully bossy in the bedroom, he wasn’t consistently so outside of it. If anything, his lack of input was more frustrating than any need for control he might have had. Sometimes, I just wanted him to be the proverbial coin flip when it came down my life decisions, and he was maddeningly neutral until pressed. Other times, he couldn’t resist micromanaging our lives, but he never told me what to wear or eat.

  Although he did have an annoying habit of trying to decide what was best for me when he thought he was ruining my life.

  I saw nothing on the list that would make me hesitate to marry him. But there must have been something about me that had changed his mind.

  The bathroom door opened, and I hurried to turn off my phone, like I’d been caught committing a crime.

  Pamela’s voice drifted into the echoey room. “I can’t believe he has the nerve to bring her,” she said, and there was a laugh. A laugh I recognized.

  Valerie.

  “I know. It’s so pathetic,” she said with a resigned sigh. “But that’s Neil for you. The man’s arrogance knows no bounds.”

  “It’s Emma I feel badly for, poor dove,” Pamela replied, just as I, quietly as possible, put one foot, then the other, on the toilet seat to hide my feet below the gap in the stall. “Imagine how awful that must be for her? To have her father’s practically teenage mistress at her wedding?”

  “I know, I know.” Valerie sounded like she was consoling Emma, despite the fact that she wasn’t there. “She handles it well, but she is so uncomfortable with them. Apparently, they go at it like rabbits. Emma was afraid to move from room to room when she was still living with them.”

  I peeked over the top of the door and caught a quick glimpse of Valerie applying lipstick in the mirror.

  This was just like a teen movie. And I was the lovable nerd hiding in the bathroom stall while the popular girls bitched about me.

  Well, apparently not too lovable, listening to them.

  “He’s making a fool of himself,” Pamela went on. “Why do men always do this in middle age?”

  “This is Neil we’re talking about. He started going through his midlife crisis the moment Emma was born,” Valerie snarked. “I’m sure this one will be the same as last time. Her biological clock will start making unreasonable demands, he’ll panic, and she’ll be gone.”

  My anger boiled up inside me like some horrible, hot, nasty thing. I wanted to storm out and punch her, and I was pretty sure that the only thing holding me back was that Emma wouldn’t want her mother to have a black eye in the wedding photos.

  “If she’s anything like the last one, the wedding alone will be an expensive lesson to learn,” Pamela mused.

  “Oh, no. I don’t think the wedding is going to happen.” Pride dripped from Valerie’s voice. “I’ve been…gently steering him in the wise direction. ‘She’s so young, you two must have so much in common to overcome that,’ ‘it’s amazing you can keep up with her,’ that type of thing.”

  “You can’t tell them anything directly, can you?” Pamela clucked her tongue as though they were talking about a naughty child and not a grown man.

  “No, you really can’t. Especially Neil. He just doesn’t listen. I tried to warn him about the last one, and look where that ended up.”

  “Hopefully, this one doesn’t take him for as much alimony,” Pamela snorted. “I’m going to the alley for a cigarette. Are you coming?”

  “No, I’ll be along in a minute, I should get back out there. I just need the toilet.”

  When I heard Pamela leave, I stomped down from the toilet seat and flung open the stall door.

  For a second, I worried Valerie might have a heart attack, and not in a metaphorical sense. Her eyes flew open, her face went pale—I swear, if she hadn’t been wearing coral lipstick, her lips would have been blue—and her body jolted. Maybe it was because she was shocked at being caught. Maybe it was just the loud noise of the door banging on its hinges and ricocheting back into the latch, which was, admittedly, alarming. But she took a step back, so I knew I did not look happy.

  When I spoke, it sounded like some inhuman being had inhabited me. Having been raised extremely Catholic, I did worry for a moment that I might have been possessed, but I think the only thing truly controlling me was my incredible willpower to not knock her down and jam my Stuart Weitzman pump down her throat. “Let me be clear. There are two reasons, two reasons, I am not resorting to physical violence right now, and those are that Emma wouldn’t want your hair to be all ripped out in the wedding pictures, and I don’t think you’re worth a night in jail.”

  “How dare—” she tried, but I was on a roll.

  “I am not finished speaking!” I nearly shouted, but I didn’t want anyone to overhear. I wanted to have this moment uninterrupted, because I didn’t want anything misconstrued. I didn’t want Valerie to think she had an inch of wiggle room, or a drop of sympathy from anyone for the shit she’d been pulling.

  I lowered my voice to a deadly whisper, and the ice in my tone matched the ice in my veins. “I am tolerating you right now for Emma’s sake, and for Neil’s sake, but I don’t have to tolerate being spoken of in that way. I let it go when I heard you trying to get Neil to dump me the very first time you met me. But this is getting fucking ridiculous!”

  Valerie’s neck seemed to take a step back while her head stayed perfectly in place. “I’m allowed to express myself freely to my friends. If you don’t like it, perhaps you should break your nasty eavesdropping habit.”

  “You aren’t allowed to sabotage
my relationship with Neil. Say what you want about me, but that’s where it ends!” I clenched my hands to fists at my side. “If I ever hear you talking about Neil like that, like he’s an infant you have to raise, if I ever hear you suggest you have even a hint of say over our lives again, I will cut off your access to him faster than you give me one of your stupid fake apologies.”

  She laughed haughtily, but it was so obviously forced as to highlight her sudden fear. “Neil and I have a daughter together, Sophie. He couldn’t cut me out of his life, even if he wanted to.”

  “Your daughter isn’t five, Valerie. He doesn’t ever have to be in the same place with you ever again.” Except for work. Shit. I decided to bluff. “He’s retired now. He could ship you off to the London office in some kind of restructure.”

  She didn’t have anything to say to that.

  So I added, “How do you think he’s going to react when he finds out that, after a year, you’re still trying to break us up? Because I have this crazy feeling that you know exactly what he would think. And you also know what he would do, if I asked him to.”

  She did. I saw it in the watery gleam along her lower lashes.

  Good. She deserved to cry. She deserved to feel like shit, if that was how she was going to treat Neil, and me. “Toe the fucking line, Valerie. Step one centimeter out of bounds, and after the wedding, I’ll tell Neil that you think you’re pulling the strings. You know control freak Neil would just love that, don’t you?”

  Valerie went so still, I thought she might have stopped breathing.

  “Cross me again. I dare you. You piss me off, and I ask him to cut off all contact with you, indefinitely.”

  In the stunned flicker of her eyelashes, and the slowly bleeding edge of her eyeliner as a tear escaped, I saw that she’d been confronted with her worst fear. That Neil really would choose me over her, and that there was nothing she could do to stop him from turning his back on her if he wanted to.

  I stormed out of the bathroom. My hands were still shaking. I was kind of worried that Valerie might come at me Dynasty-style and cause a big public scene, but she was too smart for that.

  I was angrier than I think I’d ever been at anyone before. Valerie didn’t have to like me, but why did she feel the need for petty, vicious gossip about me? If she was such good friends with Neil, why couldn’t she be happy that he’d found someone who loved him and who loved her daughter? Why did it have to be such a played-out competition, the ex versus the new woman? There were times I genuinely respected and admired Valerie. Then I felt betrayed when she ruined it all in a single asshole moment.

  I didn’t want to do this. I didn’t want to be jealous of her, or threatened by her. I didn’t want to have an annual falling out with her. And I really did want her out of Neil’s life. He counted her as a friend, but she treated him like garbage. Why did he let her? Because they had a child together? Emma was grown, and Neil couldn’t reasonably expect that we’d still be having joint Christmases when Emma was thirty. All I could figure was that he still felt so guilty over breaking her heart twenty-five years ago, he couldn’t bring himself to build normal boundaries.

  But I couldn’t live like this. I couldn’t be around someone so toxic, someone who continually targeted me for passive -aggressive attacks; who made me the subject of malicious gossip at every chance she got, and who was perfectly comfortable slandering someone who was supposed to be her friend in order to do it.

  I couldn’t feel any sympathy for her. I just couldn’t. Neil’s sudden waffling on our engagement had one hundred percent to do with her, I was sure of it. Not because I thought Neil was easily manipulated, but because I knew Valerie had the advantage of time to hone her manipulations. I also knew that Neil was at least somewhat aware of them; Emma had told me that her mother had outed Neil to his ex-wife, though Emma didn’t know the truth about her father’s bisexuality. Valerie’s meddling had made Neil furious. There was precedence set for bad Valerie/Neil’s girlfriend behavior, so I had no doubt he would believe me.

  I just didn’t want to be that person, though. I didn’t want to ask my boyfriend—hopefully still my boyfriend, if the damage hadn’t already been done—to cut someone out of his life for my convenience. But there was no way I would face the rest of my life knowing I would be fighting with Valerie every step of the way.

  I swiped at my lower eyelids with my thumb, hoping the fact that I’d been crying wouldn’t show. I wasn’t about to go back to the bathroom while Valerie was still in there. I lifted my chin, set my shoulders back, and went to fake happy for the rest of the night.

  Walking into the dining room, I caught Emma in a moment when she thought no one was watching. Her eyes were downcast, and she pushed her salad around her plate with the enthusiasm people reserved for root canals and paying taxes.

  I wasn’t the only one faking happy tonight.

  * * * *

  After the torture of dinner and speeches and watching as Emma painfully tried to maintain her smile despite whatever was eating at her—and hoping it wasn’t really, as Valerie had claimed, discomfort at my presence—I was glad when all the guests had left and the only thing remaining was to make our escape.

  “Where’s Emma?” Michael asked, frowning as he scanned the banquet room. “She was just here a moment ago.”

  “Probably off to the ladies’,” Pamela said airily. “Well, Valerie, shall we?”

  “Are we going as well?” Neil asked, sliding his arm around my waist. I wish I could have felt as confident in his touch as I might have before our fight, but I leaned into him, because Valerie would no doubt be watching for any chink in my armor to exploit.

  Michael’s phone rang, and he checked the screen. “It’s my mom and dad. They must have forgotten something. I’m going to take this. If you see Emma—”

  “I’ll wander off and find her,” Neil offered.

  Valerie and Pamela both gave him a warm goodnight and promises to see us all in the morning. When he left, they shot me cold looks and said nothing more before leaving. So, I guessed Valerie had found a moment to fill her fellow mean girl in on what had taken place in the bathroom.

  I waited in the small foyer, casting the occasional look to the hostess who walked around checking on various things she had already checked on a dozen times and impatiently waiting for us to leave. It seemed unlikely that Emma had gotten so lost in the narrow hallway that Neil hadn’t found her yet. Antsy under the increasingly hostile glances from the hostess, I went off to find them.

  In the hall that led to the bathroom was a small, empty coat room. From inside, I heard Neil’s voice and…Emma? Crying?

  I stood with my back against the dark paneled wall and listened to Emma’s sobs, muffled in her father’s jacket.

  “I don’t know what I’m doing,” she sniffled. “Daddy, I don’t know what to do.”

  My heart broke for her. She had last-minute jitters. That was totally normal, wasn’t it? It seemed to be, in all the movies.

  “Emma, you love—” Neil muted “horrible” from his sentence. “—Michael. From the first time you brought him home, I could see that.”

  “Is love a good enough reason to marry somebody? You loved Mom. You loved Elizabeth. Look how those ended up,” she reminded herself, in the guise of arguing with him.

  There was so much pain in Neil’s voice when he spoke again, I wanted to burst into the room and hug him. I didn’t, of course; this was Emma’s moment with her father. But it was difficult to hear Neil work through this moment with his daughter, as difficult as it was to know that Emma was unhappy on the eve of her wedding.

  “You are not me, Emma. No matter how alike we are. I’ve made stupid mistakes in my past. You’re much smarter than I am.”

  “You don’t like him,” she protested.

  “But you do.” He made a noise of helpless frustration. “My sweet girl, do you really believe you could cancel this wedding right now and walk away from him forever?”

  “I don�
�t want to walk away!” She protested through audible tears. “I just don’t want anything to change!”

  Neil didn’t answer right away. I imagined the two of them standing, staring miserably at each other, until he said, “I understand that. Too well.”

  “You don’t want to get married to Sophie?” she asked, and my heart lurched. I almost turned and ran. I didn’t want to hear his answer, unless it was going to be the one I wanted to hear. And if it weren’t… Well, I wouldn’t know, unless I heard it.

  “I want to marry her. More than I wanted to marry Elizabeth, to be perfectly frank. I don’t feel like there’s an expiration date on our relationship. I don’t feel…pressured,” he said, and the knot in my chest, that had cinched up tight a moment before, untangled a little. “But that doesn’t mean I’m sure that everything is going to be all right once we are married. And I’m afraid, Emma. I’m as nervous as you are that something will change, that we won’t be the same people we were before we were married. But I’m not willing to lose her now because I’m afraid that I might lose her later.”

  Emma’s breath was a shuddering sob. “Do you want me to marry Michael?”

  Oh, Neil. Please, please answer this one correctly, I prayed.

  “I do. I want you to marry Michael.” Surprisingly, he didn’t sound pained or resigned at all, but earnest. He even went on, “He’s very smart, he has a successful career ahead of him, but most importantly, he treats you well and he loves you. I can see that every time he looks at you.”

  “Daddy…” Emma’s voice was nearly a whisper. “I can’t—”

  She was going to tell him. And it was going to destroy him.

  “We can’t… I’ve been seeing everyone. Specialists. They all say I can’t have a baby.”

  A rustle of fabric told me that he’d swept her up in a hug. If it hadn’t, the sound of his voice muffled by her hair would have. “Oh, my sweet girl. I am so, so sorry.”

  “I can’t do this to him!” Emma was sobbing hard now. “I can’t take that away from him. He wants children so badly… I can’t condemn him to…”