by Jolie Day
I finally look away from the envelope to the rain streaming down my window. Everything outside is as gray as I feel on the inside. If only I had been going to some other interview that day, and Joel could have found me on the side of the road and actually asked for my number. We could have dated the old-fashioned way, and everything might be different now.
But even if we had dated, Joel made it unmistakably clear he doesn’t want a relationship. Even in the most ideal possible circumstances, this whole situation is still a huge mess. He doesn’t want romance—I do, despite what I said to him. I’m not sure what happened or why I changed my mind all of a sudden, but I did. And now I’m screwed. And I have to deal with it. I simply made the mistake of falling for the wrong right guy and then accidentally marrying him. Stop it, Charlie. Just forget it already. No big deal. I’ll just sign the papers and put an end to all of this. What else could possibly come of it? No matter how long I sit and stare, it won’t change what Joel wants.
I lean forward and reach for the envelope and the nausea hits again. I freeze. I feel like if I move a single inch, I might throw up everywhere. For all the times I thought maybe I was allergic to marriage, now it appears I’m allergic to ending one.
Once my stomach settles, I give up and crash on the couch. Maybe I should just call Joel and talk this whole thing out. It’s not like we could fully do that while still half-drunk at the hotel right after we realized the terrible mistake we made.
I jump when my phone suddenly rings. Joel. I lunge for it with the hope that it could be him. Maybe he’s off somewhere thinking the exact same thing right now and decided to call me to talk. Oh, please, dear universe, let it be him. But then I remember he never asked for my number, so I never gave it to him. Of course he wouldn’t ask for my number. Why would he? This wasn’t supposed to be that kind of thing.
When I look at the screen, I see it’s a FaceTime invite from Nora. Oh. Oh, well. I’m still excited to answer, knowing I’ve never been more in need of a distraction.
But the moment I answer, she can see something is wrong with me.
“You look like hell,” she blurts.
I roll my eyes. “Jeez. Thanks.”
“As your BFF, it’s my job to be honest with you. So…how was Vegas?”
My face contorts into a weird expression, somewhere between cringing and a smile, which only excites Nora.
“Ohohoo. O–kay, so, obviously something unexpected or juicy happened. Preferably both. What is it?”
I consider how the hell I’m going to break the news to her. I could flash the ring and make a joke about getting engaged (“Look, bitch, Mr. Boss put a ring on it.”), but that would probably only make me feel worse when I eventually have to tell her what really happened. Besides, I left the ring at work because I considered giving it back after the annulment. Wearing or looking at it was just too painful.
“Look, there’s no easy way to explain this, so…I’m just going to say it.”
“Shoot.”
I bolt up from the couch to pace back and forth in my apartment.
“Shoot, Char!”
“Joel and I got married.”
I stop and stare at the phone, waiting for her reaction before I go any further. I got the worst of it over with first, like ripping off a band-aid. But the screen appears to be frozen with her face staring back at me blankly. For all the times technology could be glitching, it just had to be now when I’m breaking the craziest news of my life to date.
“Nora?” I scream out, shaking the phone.
“Oh, I heard you.” She blinks and shakes her head. “Sorry, girl. Not sure what happened. I think I just went into a catatonic state of shock. You did…what now? You and Joel…Joel as in your ridiculously blazing hot boss, Joel…You got married?”
My eyes bulge, because the mere mention of his name (out loud, and in such a manner) makes my stomach flip-flop. “Stop saying his name like that!”
She grins widely. “Oh, well, excuse me, Mrs. Embry—”
“Nora! Oh, my God, stop it!” I’m freaking out inside, but we both erupt into raucous laughter. Maybe that’s exactly what I need—to just laugh this whole thing away. But then I see the envelope on the table again and remember it’s going to take a lot more than laughter to fix this one.
“Well, you know what they say.” She wipes tears from her eyes after chuckling so hard.
“Big feet large…shoes?”
“Well that, and…What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.”
“Not true. I’m not there anymore, and this very much followed me home. Ugh.” I run my fingers through my tangled hair.” Now I have to sign these stupid papers.”
“Whaaat?” Nora shakes her head. “You’re crazy as hell. Please don’t tell me you plan to get it annulled. Hon, you’ve just hit the jackpot! This is not something you just give up. A sexy, hot-ass gazillionaire husband? This is what we all dream about!” I can see her flailing her arm around as she punctuates each point.
I bite my lip, wanting to say it shouldn’t be so hard, but for some reason, it is. Instead, I start from the beginning and tell her everything I can remember, which still isn’t much. I recall these moments of Joel staring at me with the strangest look in his eyes. It was almost as if he was falling in love with me, but I knew it just had to be the alcohol.
I talk until I’m out of breath, and once again, I’m left with Nora staring back at me, completely frozen and silent. I’m convinced the phone really is glitching this time, but finally she lets out a big breath of air.
“So, wait. He actually suggested that you stay married?” She wrinkles her brows at me.
“Well, not like…to be really married. You know, he offered…so I could stay in the US. It was just a friendly…gesture.” I wave my hand in dismissal. “It didn’t mean anything.”
“That’s an awfully friendly gesture. I love you, girl, and I want you to stay. But I can’t say I’d be willing to marry you to make it happen. Sorry.”
“It’s different.” I pout. “He never wanted to get married—and to him, it’s just a piece of paper. I can’t do that, Nora.”
“Uh-huh.” She’s obviously unconvinced. “Is it a nice ring at least?”
“What?” She catches me off guard.
“The ring,” Nora repeats. “Did he at least get you a nice ring?”
I’m hit with a strange feeling of déjà vu. “He asked me the same thing, oddly enough.”
“Oh, he did?” Her tone is suggestive, but I’m not falling for it.
I stammer for a moment, struggling with my defense. “Okay, just stop being ridiculous. You’re reading way too much into this.”
Nora looks at me pointedly. “Oh, and you haven’t been doing the same while you sit and stare at those papers for hours on end?”
Had I told her that part? I guess so. But I haven’t opened the envelope. So, yeah, she just knows me that well. “Even if I have been sitting here doing that exact thing, I was hoping you’d be my voice of reason here. Come on. Obviously, I cannot stay married to my boss just because of a drunken mishap out of town. I have to get an annulment!”
She shrugs. “Then sign the papers.”
I shoot daggers at her, thinking if it were so easy to do that, I would have done so by now.
“So, where is he now? Doesn’t he have to sign the papers, too?”
“That’s what’s weird about this whole thing.” I frown in confusion. “He definitely freaked out when we first realized what we’d done. But then, he was oddly calm about it. I don’t know. I just can’t read him. And now he’s taken off on another business trip. I was going to try and fax the papers to wherever he would be just to get this whole thing over with, but I don’t want to risk anyone else seeing these.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I walked five blocks to a print and copy store to have them faxed to me in the first place, just to avoid anyone in the office possibly seeing.”
“And since you were so drunk you don’t remember anything, you don’t
actually know if this whole thing was his idea…and maybe even a sincere one? What if he meant it, Char? And just really wanted to marry you?”
“We barely know each other!” I make my way into the kitchen.
“Crazier things have happened,” she shoots back. “My parents only knew each other two weeks when they got married. And they’ve been together over fifty years. Lame, I know.”
I pinch the brow of my nose. “Okay, I can’t even wrap my head around how I feel right now. I can’t start playing guessing games about how he feels, too. That’s his problem. The fact is he doesn’t want a real relationship,” I whine as I pull a pint of Ben and Jerry’s out of my fridge, “and I’m not about to be someone he’s just doing a favor for. No way. Not me. Ugh, I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
“Nothing’s wrong with you, girl. You’re sleeping with a dude who’s really hot, and you caught feelings. Of course, when you drunkenly marry him in Vegas, it makes things complicated. But anyone else would feel just as conflicted in your shoes. By the way, what’s his shoe size?”
I laugh. “You forgot the part about him being my boss.” I point my spoon in the air, talking through a mouthful of ice cream.
“Is that ice cream?”
“Uh-huh.”
“What kind?”
“Netflix and Chill’d.”
“Look at you chowing down on that,” she teases.
“Stop judging.”
“If you start wanting to mix some pickles in with that…that’s when you worry. Your whole accidental marriage to your boss really would be a big fat mess if you were knocked up.”
“Don’t you dare say that!” My eyes grow so wide I’m certain they’ll pop out of my head. We both laugh a little, but then a sinking feeling comes over me. “Hey, listen…I gotta go. I’ll give you a ring later, okay?”
She chuckles. “Get those pickles ready, girl.”
I hang up, completely ignoring her last little jab. Because now I’m spiraling into the what-if’s of being pregnant. That really would be the cherry on top of this whole nightmare. With whipped cream. It’s so comedically awful that I’m convinced it can’t be true. The universe would never decide to rain down so many accidentals on my life at once, right?
But another wave of nausea hits, and the ice cream is barely enough to keep it at bay. It’s followed by the paranoia that I might actually want pickles with my ice cream, but I don’t know if it’s real or just because Nora put the thought in my head.
My heart starts to race, and I quickly have to tell myself to let it go.
I’m not pregnant.
I’m not pregnant.
I say this to myself over and over again with every breath.
16
Joel
Eric and I feel confident as we stroll into the final IPO meeting. All the investors have submitted their bids, we’ve selected the best ones, forwarded them along to the attorneys, and now it’s simply a formality of signing everything.
It’s a relief to focus on something so simple. I’m having a hard time wrapping my head around how things in my life became so complicated all of a sudden. I hired the new procurement manager. She kissed me—no big deal. We ran into each other and had mind-blowing sex—no big deal. But then out of nowhere, we’re married, and I’m questioning everything about what I thought I wanted in my life. I even asked Anne-Louise to send me Charlie’s cell phone number from her personnel file.
I’m sure if I can just talk to Charlie, I’ll feel more confident one way or the other. Maybe she’ll say something that’s a big red flag that I’m crazy to entertain the idea that this whole thing between us could be fate. Or she’ll say the right thing that’ll make me want to dive in headfirst free of doubts.
But before I can do that, we’ve got to get this meeting out of the way. Of course, the moment we take our seats, I look around and realize something isn’t right.
I scan the empty chairs. “Where is everybody?” Eric looks as confused as I do. Only the attorneys are here so far. I check my watch, and we’re definitely on time, but not so early that it would explain everybody else’s absence.
“Slight change of plans for the day.” One of the lawyers pushes his glasses up on his nose and then frowns at the papers in front of him. “It’ll just be us meeting today.”
I groan, thinking this is a waste of time. “Why? Now we’ll have to reschedule to get everything signed with the investors.”
He clasps his hands in front of him. “Well, Mr. Embry, I’m afraid at the moment, there’s nothing to finalize with the investors.”
“What the hell?” I hear Eric mumble next to me.
I just stare at my lawyer. I must have misheard him. “Just tell me what’s going on.”
“I believe our partners mentioned in the meeting at the Vegas office something about missing financial records?”
“Yes, I told them to reach out to our finance department and get what they needed,” I explain again. Surely, this is a misunderstanding.
“I’m afraid Sheila in finance was unable to locate the records from the missing year.”
“Impossible.” I smirk, sipping my coffee, wondering why I haven’t been informed. That may have been the year my father was overseeing the business, but he did have all the usual staff behind him. Even if he did a shitty job, we wouldn’t have made it through an entire year of business without the appropriate financial records on hand.
But I can see by the look on their faces that it’s not impossible, and it’s apparently a much bigger deal than I thought it would be.
“I do apologize for you taking the time to come all the way out here. We did try to reach you all week before you came, but…I understand how answering your phone is tricky when you’re on a motorcycle.” His voice drips with condescension and judgment.
Eric chuckles. I lean back and raise my chin. Things just got interesting. I know my assistant Anne-Louise can be very insistent about things—she doesn’t take no for an answer. There’s no way she wouldn’t have made sure I knew what was going on with this meeting or about the missing records for that matter if they’d actually informed her. I imagine their call to her was more along the lines of them asking to speak with me, conveniently leaving out the details of the original agenda for the meeting being thrown out, or without requesting a call back.
The lawyer settles back in his seat with a certain smugness, and the other lawyers are quick to follow suit with their own cocky smiles and disapproving glances. I see what’s happening here now. Apparently, our whole deal’s at stake because of my father’s poor business management skills. And since I’m just a biker guy like he was, they think none of us deserve to have this go through anyway.
“Yes, well.” I clear my throat and bite back my anger. I refuse to let them put me down or get a rise out of me. “I’m sure I can locate the necessary records.” Looking around the table, I can see they’re still unmoved. “I’ll find them and piece together what’s needed. But we need full transparency here. You need to tell me what’s happening the moment it happens so we don’t drag this out any further. This is an easy fix.”
“Transparency is the issue here,” he argues. “See, Mr. Embry, to put it bluntly…the investors are retracting their bids. The missing financial records make them nervous, and it’s already a risk in the current economic environment. They’re worried Embry has already peaked and that it’s downhill from here. It’s a fair assessment considering your company’s main success came from denim sixty years ago.”
“We’ve been consistently profitable since then. More than consistent. We’ve grown steadily…”
“And a lot,” Eric adds.
“Then there’s the rumors,” the lawyer huffs. I can tell he’s getting tired of my persistence. It’s like this is a done deal in his mind, and what does he care anyway? He gets paid by the hour whether this deal falls through or not.
“What rumors?” Eric asks in an amused and dismissive tone.
The lawye
r looks at me. “I believe the investors were willing to entertain the idea of moving forward despite the missing records, but of course, they wanted to do their own research for that time period to ensure there was nothing, let’s say, unsavory for them to be worried about.”
He tosses a pen down to the papers in exasperation, seeming unwilling to finish his explanation. They exchange weird expressions and whispers among themselves. It’s enough to make my blood boil. Why couldn’t they just spit it out? And what could possibly be so bad?
Eric gives me another “What the fuck’s going on” look.
Finally, one of the female partners speaks up, almost like it was planned. Did they think making the woman break the news would get a better reaction?
“Mr. Embry.” She gives me a tight smile. “The investors are aware of your father’s gang connections—the illegal activities, mostly. He may have only headed the company for a short time, but of course, the investors are worried he was just sloppy. Obviously, with the missing records and all. They’re concerned your father’s reputation, however dated it may be, makes this deal with your company too risky. They’re concerned that you yourself, and maybe even your grandfather, are into the same nefarious activities and that it’s only a matter of time before it comes to light. No one wants to put big money into a stock that’s on the verge of a gang murder scandal.”
It’s not a gang. It’s a club. There’s a difference, but I don’t waste my breath. I can feel Eric’s eyes burning into me. This is the side to motorcycle clubs he’s never seen before. He knows the story about what happened with our club around the time my father was murdered. But not all the details like Clay. That’s why Max warns about being quick to get back into any beef with the Sons.
“The investors should have been here today,” I answer in a sharp tone. “Call them in. I want to meet with them. Everything up until now has been agreed upon between us—no middleman. If it’s going to be called off—fine, but that should be between us as well. They should have talked to me about this directly.”
The main attorney smiles—and there it is again. That look of condescension. It’s hard not to jump across the table and break his nose, even if it does confirm the investors’ worst fears about me.
