The Bride (The Boss) (14 page)

“Well, the date will largely depend on the availability of the venue, won’t it?” Neil gently eased me off him and sat up.

“I guess I hadn’t thought of that.” He had a point. “Where do you want to get married? Besides ‘not Italy.’”

He thought for a moment. “Well, let’s narrow down the continent. We could get married at Langhurst Court. It’s a popular wedding venue. I’ve seen some of the photos in the brochure, though obviously our wedding wouldn’t have to follow the tourist package at all—”

“You let strangers get married in your house?” I shrieked. “Neil, that is incredibly weird!”

“It pays for upkeep,” he protested. “All right. You have a large extended family. Perhaps we should do the wedding here, in New York. The travel would be less complicated for them.”

“Good plan. Get married in New York. A lot of your business friends are here, too.”
 

A New York wedding. Since I’d never seriously planned to get married, I’d never fantasized about such a thing. Besides, I doubted I could ever imagine anything on the scale that Emma had dreamed up. I knew I should be the stereotypical New York bride and demand the Plaza, but it seemed clichéd. “Do you have anywhere particular in mind?”

“The Plaza is quite nice,” Neil said, almost too quickly. At my raised eyebrow he said defensively, “Look, it isn’t that I’ve never thought of marrying you. I’d like to see you walking down the aisle in the Terrace Room. In your beautiful white gown—”

“Whoa there, partner. That much white would wash me out. And it buys into that whole purity culture bullshit. Nuh-uh.” I shook my head firmly. “But we can put the Plaza on the list.”

“What about St. Patrick’s? That would please your mother,” Neil suggested. “We could do the reception at the rooftop gardens at Rockefeller Center.”

“There is no priest in his right mind who’ll let us get married in the church. I’m your second marriage, you’re not Catholic, and I haven’t been to mass in seven years. Oh, and we had that abortion, which you know, Catholic Church, not huge abortion fans.”

“Hmm, and the ‘no sex until after the wedding’ clause is probably non-negotiable?” He frowned. “There’s the Mandarin, they have a lovely ballroom. It’s very modern, if that’s what you’re going for.”

“I suppose we’ll have to really look at our options, huh?” My excitement deflated at the thought of going through what Emma was going through. Then I brightened. “Well…more of a reason to set the date then.”

He winced.

Okay, that wasn’t cool. “Um…is there something you want to tell me?”

“No, it’s not…” he sighed heavily. “It isn’t that I don’t want to get married. I do. I wouldn’t have proposed to you if I didn’t. I’m just not looking forward to the wedding. I’m looking forward very much to being married to you. But the last time I did this, the wedding marked the beginning of the end. Now that I’ve actually proposed, it’s all much more real to me.”

After they’d returned from their honeymoon, Neil’s ex-wife had revealed that she’d stopped using any form of birth control, despite their agreement that they wouldn’t have children. That had fractured the trust between them to an extent they’d been unable to repair, though they’d spent two years trying before calling it quits. In my excitement over my impending marriage, I’d forgotten about the painful details of Neil’s disastrous one. It was only natural—if completely illogical—for him to be nervous.

“I’m not comparing you to Elizabeth, or expecting you to do what she did. Contrary to what I might express in frustration at counseling, I do feel that I can trust you to come to me with important things. Most of the time.”

“And you know I’m not going to sabotage my IUD or something,” I assured him. “And I’m not going to turn into a bridezilla.”

He raised an eyebrow.

“Okay, fine. There will probably be some bridezilla antics, but I promise, they’ll be low-level.” I shook my head. “Ugh, we should not be talking about this. I’m going to sub drop like a bastard.”

Neil grimaced. “You’re right. I’m so sorry. We’ll save it for therapy. Come here.”

I scooted up against him and laid my head on his shoulder, and he threaded his fingers in my hair to rub my scalp as he spoke. “Let’s talk about the honeymoon. That’s what I’m looking forward to.”

“We’re taking a honeymoon?” I gasped in mock surprise. “I didn’t think you’d ever take a day off work again.”

“To go somewhere preferably tropical, where you’ll wear tiny bikinis and I’ll get to slather sunscreen all over you? You’re out of your mind if you think I’m going to miss a chance at that.”

“I heard Belize is nice,” I suggested, imagining hot sand on my toes and crystal blue water stretching toward the horizon.

Neil made an approving noise. “Or Fiji? I have a friend who owns an island in the area. I’m sure he’d let us rent it.”
 

“Or the Marquesas!” I could really get into this whole tropical vacation thing.

“I’ve always wanted to go, and I’ve never done.” He paused. “Did we…did we just plan a part of our wedding?”

“The Marquesas it is.” I picked up his hand and shook it firmly. “What do we decide on next?”

“Dinner.” He patted my hip with the arm wrapped around my back. “Shall I cook something, or do we order take out?”

“Neither. You just worked all day. I’ll cook.” I leaned up and kissed him, then rolled away.

“You know, I could get used to coming home from a hard day at the office to find my wife has made me dinner,” he said, watching me as I headed off to the bathroom.

I paused by the dressing room door to give him my most good-natured knock-it-the-fuck-off-right-now look. “I assume that in this scenario, we’re talking about your third wife.”

India Vaughn was the kind of woman who looked way meaner than she was. This was due in part to her ice blue eyes and the stern set of her mouth. She used to be a heavy smoker, before New York became “a socialist state,” in her words. So, whenever she was sitting with nothing to do, she looked miserable and resentful. Probably longing for the days of giving the public the gift of COPD.

She was tough and mildly abrasive, like a sandpaper that would wear down the soft wood of pine boards, but oak probably had nothing to fear from her. I liked to think that if I wasn’t oak, I was at least walnut. She might scratch me up a bit, but only just the glossy finish.

I walked into the restaurant she had picked, a lovely, unpretentious bar with gourmet pizzas. I loved lunch meetings with India, because she always knew the best places.

“Sophie, good to see you! How was Christmas?” I lifted my left hand, the weight of my newly-sized ring reminding me of its presence once more. I held my fingers lax at the knuckles and slowly swayed my wrist.

She grabbed my hand and practically jerked me across the table as I sat down. “Good lord. I suppose it was a very good Christmas. Is this meant to be your bonus?”

I laughed, even though I felt a little bad for finding that quip funny. “It’s an engagement ring.”

“I gathered that,” she said dryly. She was almost more British than Neil. “But quite seriously, congratulations. This is a bit like a prize at the end of the cereal box, isn’t it? If the cereal was full of leukemia.”

“Absolutely.” I picked up the menu and scanned for the vegan symbol. Lots of offerings, because India was a goddess like that. I ended up ordering a six-inch soy cheese, spinach, and pine nut pizza, and when the waiter had gone, I shrugged and smiled at India. “So…what did you want to see me about?”

“Well, I have very good news on the initial print run, based on early orders. They’re very good for a debut.”

“Oh. Great!” I’d been hoping this meeting would be about the
Wake Up! America
audition, but I didn’t want to sound desperate.
 

“And the publicist from M and R called. She says they’ve expanded the launch. It’s going to be more like a cocktail party with a brief Q and A for the press. I haven’t had a chance to check the attachments she sent me yet,” India admitted. “Things at work have been hectic.”

India wasn’t only my agent or manager or whatever it was she was doing for a cut of my sales. She still worked at
Porteras
, Neil’s magazine, and walked a very fine line trying to pull off managing my career as a debut author. Neil hadn’t been thrilled, in light of how I’d left his company, that India was working with me. He’d set some very strict parameters regarding the work she did at the magazine and didn’t want to see evidence of the beauty department slipping due to her attention being focused elsewhere.

“I completely understand.” I couldn’t really complain. For a first time author, I was getting a pretty amazing roll out. Granted, most of that was because the book was about a high-profile one-percenter. Because he worked in media, enough people knew of him to make his incredibly personal details a desirable thing to read about. Though the book was my memoir, they would be reading it for Neil Elwood.

“There was another reason I wanted to see you in person today,” India said, and the hopes about audition news that I’d just set aside returned and immediately plummeted. India nodded, as though she saw my disappointment as a physical symptom. “
Wake Up! America
passed.”

“Oh.” I had the strangest feeling that I’d been punched in the chest, and the wind had been knocked out of me. I’d never been great at dealing with rejection, but I’d never been given a thumbs down like this before. “Did they say why?”

“They just wanted to go with someone who had a bit more broadcast experience.” She shrugged. “We knew we were a long shot, but we gave it our best.”

Though I appreciated the plural possessive, India hadn’t missed out on a job. I’d only been turned down from an interview once in my whole life. I hadn’t liked it then, and I didn’t like it now. Especially when it was too easy to pin the blame on things like my looks or my height or my weight.

Good lord, this was what Holli’s entire job was. How did she survive?

“I think this will be good for you, in the long run,” India went on cheerfully. “You can concentrate on writing. M and R will want a follow up, once they know you’re engaged. Any chance you’d want to write about planning your multi-million dollar wedding?”

“Yikes, is it going to be that expensive?” I tried to laugh, but it sounded slightly hysterical. I was working so hard to keep myself together, and even though I thought I was doing a good job of it, I wanted to die from embarrassment. Maybe India had sensed how vainly excited I’d been over the audition. That would have been terrible. In the face of rejection, I wanted to be cool, like it didn’t matter to me.

I really hated the fact that it was affecting me this much. I’d always had a little bit of disdain for people who wanted to be on television. When Holli would go stand outside the
Today Show
windows, trying to get “discovered” when we were in college, I would roll my eyes and silently congratulate myself on how above it all I was. If I saw a movie being filmed on the street, I didn’t go out of my way to try and insinuate myself into the background, the way some people—mostly tourists—did. I was happy being mostly anonymous.

But all of that would change soon. People were going to read my book. They were going to know things about me. I’d been all right with that for a while. As it got closer to becoming a reality, though…

“Are you all right?” India looked alarmed. “You’re absolutely colorless.”

“I’m sorry, I just had a thought about what’s going to happen when I marry Neil. That’s going to be kind of public news, isn’t it?”

“It will run in all of the social columns, yes.” Her forehead creased. “Sophie, you didn’t think of this at all?”

“No… Where I come from, when you get married, you put an announcement in the local paper. Maybe get a ‘congratulations, Sophie and Neil’ billboard put up, if you’ve got money and want to show off. Maybe he goes out with his friends and spray paints your name on a rock by the highway.” I thought I might hyperventilate. “Seriously, people are going to care?”

A smile tugged at the corner of India’s mouth. “There are a lot of very wealthy women in New York who are going to be fuming mad over your engagement. Prepare to be hated.”

“He hasn’t told his ex-girlfriend yet. I think she’ll be the lead pitch fork holder.” I groaned and slumped down a little in my chair. “Do you really think I’m going to be enemy number one?”

“No, honey. Far from number one. But you just wrote a book about the well-known and influential bachelor you landed. You already put yourself out there.”

“I would have much rather put myself out there as a four times a year beauty segment host on a morning show.”

“Well, it fell through. Be disappointed about it. Drink and cry and listen to sad music and pretend no one understands you. But in the morning, get your ass out of bed and start coming up with an idea for a follow up book. People are going to ask about that when you do press.” India’s practical response was strangely soothing. She gestured to the waiter and said, “Look, I think we’re going to need some drinks here. Scotch. Doubles, neat.”

“Oh, I don’t think—”

India gave me a look that would have stopped a charging elephant. She leaned forward and fixed me with a hawkish gaze. “We’re going to start brainstorming. Right now.”

And I was way too frightened to say no.

* * * *

India’s method of making me feel better by steering me toward the future was well-meaning, but ultimately I left our lunch feeling worse than I had over the rejection. I was beginning to feel like it was a mistake, leading off with the cancer in my very first book. It was difficult to top.

Was every job I had going to be a one-hit wonder? Would I just flit from industry to industry until I was completely unemployable?

My pity party continued on the cab ride home. To add insult to injury, when I arrived at the apartment, Emma’s mother, Valerie, was there.

Over the past year, Valerie and I’d had our rocky moments. She believed I’d tried to sabotage
Porteras
, and I believed she was trying to sabotage my relationship with Neil. After I had put my foot down about the strangely close relationship she’d still had with Neil, we were on more even footing.