Billionaires, Bad Boys, and Alpha Males (144 page)

“I’ve been there,” Nicole said.
 
“It will get better, I promise.”

“Really?
 
You think so?”

“Yeah, I do.”
 
She forced a smile.
 
Sure, things got better.
 
Then they seemed to get worse
again—best not to mention that part.

“Enough about me,” Danielle said.
 
“I need to focus on something else,
something fun.
 
Tell me about your
wedding.
 
What’s going on with it?”

Nicole felt her stomach clench like a
fist.
 
“Nothing much is happening.”

“What?
 
But you told me how busy you were going
to be planning everything.
 
If I
were you and I had a chance to have a big, fancy wedding with all of those
famous people, I’d take it.
 
But
Kane would never show me off to the world the way Red does you, because Kane is
ashamed of me.”
 
Danielle’s
expression was positively bitter.
 
“You got the good one, it turns out.”

 
“Don’t say that,” Nicole said.
 
“I’m sure Kane loves you more than
anything.”

Danielle shrugged and screwed up her
face.
 
“Tell me something about the
wedding.
 
I need to live vicariously
through you.”

“There’s nothing to tell.”

“Oh, come on, Nic.
 
Did you at least decide on a date?”

“Seriously, Danielle.
 
I don’t really want to get into it right
now.”
 
Her tone was harsher than she
intended.

Danielle turned away from her.
 
“Okay.
 
Jeez.
 
Sorry I asked.”

Nicole got up and folded her arms.
 
“Are you feeling better?”

Danielle looked up at her.
 
“I don’t understand why you’re being
like this, Nicole.
 
Suddenly I’m not
good enough to discuss your wedding with?
 
Why, because I’m not some hoity toity wedding planner?”

“That’s got nothing to do with it,
Danielle.
 
Why can’t you just let it
go?”

“Because, I don’t get it.
 
What did I do wrong?”

Nicole looked at her.
 
“Well, for starters, you’re way too
interested in the finer details of my wedding.”

Danielle’s face registered shock—as
if Nicole had actually slapped her.
 
“What?”

“You know what I’m talking about, don’t
act like you have no idea.
 
The
tabloid that your husband owns and runs just did a nasty story about Red and I
getting married.
 
Almost nobody knew
about it but you and a very few other people.”

Danielle stared at her in awe.
 
“You think I gave them a story about
your wedding?”

“No, I think you probably blabbed about
it during pillow talk with Kane, but there’s no difference as far as I’m
concerned, because anything I tell you ends up in his ear and then he’s
probably on the phone with Anderson from The Rag about five minutes later.”

“That’s ridiculous.
 
I don’t tell Kane about your wedding and
he doesn’t have the least bit of interest in it.”
 
She got up.
 
“I can’t believe that’s what you think
of our friendship, Nicole.”

“I don’t know what else to think.”

“Maybe it was your mom,” Danielle
replied.
 
“You know she’s just as
likely to do that as I am.”

“Don’t try and tell me about my mom.”

“Well don’t blame me for your problems,
Nic.
 
Jesus, who even cares if
someone knows when your stupid little wedding is?”

“And who really cares if Kane tried to
teach you how to make an omelet?
 
Maybe he’s better at it than you are,” Nicole sniped.

“I’m so out of here,” Danielle replied,
starting to walk down the private road in her bare feet.

“Tell the guys at The Rag that I say
hello,” Nicole yelled after her.
 
Danielle just kept walking.

Nicole considered going after her,
especially knowing that Danielle didn’t have a cell phone or money or
anything.
  
Instead, she called
down to the front gate and alerted them that Danielle was walking on the private
road and asked that they arrange for a cab to bring her back to her home.
 

A few minutes later, they called back and
said it had been taken care of and she was on her way home.

Nicole was so upset that she didn’t even
know what to do.
 
Why couldn’t she
have taken the high road with Danielle instead of sinking to her level?
 

She needed to talk to Red right
away.
 
Nicole needed a calming
voice, she needed her husband.
 
She
picked up her cell phone and called him, her heart racing.

“Come on, please just pick up,” she
prayed.
 
“Please.”

Finally, mercifully, the line was
answered.
 
But it wasn’t Red.
 

“Hello?”
 
The perky, female voice said into
Nicole’s ear.

For a split second, she thought she must
have dialed the wrong number.
 
But
then she looked and realized it wasn’t the wrong number at all.
 
“Hello, who is this?” Nicole asked.

“My name is Gia.
 
And who might I ask is calling?”

Nicole felt a surge of new, fresh hatred
coursing through her veins.
 
“Gia,
this is Nicole Masters, Red’s fiancé and I’d appreciate it if you’d put him on
the phone immediately.”

Gia’s voice became positively
chipper.
 
“Oh, Nicole.
 
Yeah, he’s in a meeting right now so I’m
taking messages for him.”

“I understand he’s busy, but I need to
talk to him.”

“He gave me strict instructions.
 
Sorry.”
 
She drew out the last syllable of the
word sorry so that it sounded gleeful rather than apologetic.

Nicole could feel her blood pressure
rising.
 
“That’s good that you
follow instructions,” she said in a measured tone.
 
“Thanks so much for your help, Gia.”

“Your wel—“

Nicole hung up the phone.
 
Her jaw was so tight that she thought
she might grind her teeth to dust if she wasn’t careful.
 
She couldn’t believe the nerve of that
girl, nor could she fathom that Red was allowing her to handle his cell
phone—something Nicole never even did!

This was too much.
 
And now she was supposed to sit and wait
like a good little girl for her man to come home and give her his excuses
again, and again, and again.

No.
 
She was really and truly sick of being kicked around today.
 
Nicole walked upstairs with a purpose
and grabbed the stack of papers that Red had printed out and left on the
desk.
 

Next, she went to the office and began
faxing them over, en mass, to Marcie.
 

 
Nicole called Marcie a few minutes later
and left her a voicemail.
 
“Hey
Marcie, it’s Nicole.
 
Looks like the
wedding is going to be quite a bit bigger than originally anticipated.
 
I’m faxing you Red’s guest list now and
it’s quite extensive.
 
I’ll be
sending you a follow up email with my list attached.”

She got on her laptop and spent the rest
of the afternoon adding every single friend and family member to her list.

Pointedly and with great
self-righteousness and indignation, Nicole left Danielle off her guest
list.
 
Danielle would not be receiving
a wedding invite.
 
Nicole knew it
was a loud an irrevocable message on the state of their friendship, but at that
moment she didn’t particularly care.

Marcie called back soon after and said
that she was sending it all over to the vendor who was handling the printing
and mailing.
 
It looked like there
would be just over four hundred people invited to their wedding now.
 
Of course, many of them wouldn’t be able
to attend on such short notice.
 
Marcie said that they should plan for something on along the lines of
three hundred guests.

***

Red texted her once, around six o’clock
and said that he loved her and that he’d be home in the next two hours.
 

She didn’t respond.
 
It was too little too late, as far as
she was concerned.

Instead, Nicole made herself dinner
(steak and corn and potatoes), drank a glass of wine, and settled down on the
couch with a book.

At just past eight thirty, Red came
home.
 
“Nicole?” he called,
wandering through the house until he found her in the living room.
 
He smiled warily.
 
“Hey, didn’t you hear me calling you?”

She looked up from her book briefly.
 
“I heard you.”
 
She went back to reading.

“So, I brought home food from a great
burger joint and I figured we could make it a working dinner.
 
I’m ready to hammer out this guest list
thing.”

“It’s already done,” she said, still not
taking her eyes from her book.

“What do you mean, it’s already done?”

“I sent out the list to Marcie hours
ago.”

“But how?”

“I just sent it.”

“Nicole.”
 
His voice grew firm, insistent.
 
“Nicole, look at me.”

She looked up at him, defiant.
 
“Yes?”

“I want you to tell me just what’s going
on right now.
 
I see that you’re
angry with me, and I understand why.
 
But you need to communicate to me what’s going on.”

She put the book aside and sat up.
 
“It’s really simple, Red.
 
You kept pushing me aside over and over
again, and you refused to help me.
 
So I just did what I needed to do to get these invitations out.
 
I used the list you’d printed and we
went from there.”

He shook his head in disbelief.
 
“How could you possibly do that?
 
There were hundreds of names and
addresses in that list and we’re only having fifty people in our wedding.”

“Not anymore.
 
I decided to change that.”

Red’s expression changed, darkened.
 
“You just made a unilateral decision?”

“Just like you do all the time.
 
Leaving the house when something’s more
important, even though you promised to be here for me and discuss our
wedding.
 
Putting your assistant on
your cell phone so I can’t reach you.
 
There’s lots of things you do that I don’t understand or like very
much.”

“Gia was answering my phone today for
about half an hour when I couldn’t, and she never told me you called.”

Nicole shrugged.
 
“That’s some assistant you’ve got
there.”

“You hired her.
 
Or did you forget that part?”

“I don’t want to argue, Red.
 
I made a judgment call.
 
I just went with your whole list and I
invited everyone on my side.
 
So now
we’re having a very large wedding.”

He stared at her, incredulous.
 
“Nicole, that’s not going to
happen.
 
We cannot send out all of
those invitations.
 
There are people
on that raw list that would be totally inappropriate to send an invite to.
 
Clients, friends I haven’t seen in a
dozen years, vendors that work with Jameson International, you name it.
 
That’s why I wanted to sit down tonight
and go through it with you.”

“You want me to cancel the damn invites?”
she said, her voice rising.

“Yes.”

“Fine.”
 
She grabbed her phone and called
Marcie.
 
Of course, it went to
voicemail.
 
“Hi Marcie, it’s
me—Nicole.
 
I really need to
make a change on those invites, so could you call me back as soon as you get
this, please?”

When she hung up, Red began pacing.
 
“This is totally ridiculous.
 
I wish you would have told me you were
so upset, Nicole.”