by Lauren Layne
He was watching Claire as he said it, sensing she had the softest heart of the group, praying she’d understand. Her eyes widened infinitesimally, then narrowed. “Do you love her? Or are you in love with her?”
“Both. Both.”
Naomi and Claire exchanged a glance, but they still didn’t give him the answer he wanted. Needed. Out of the corner of his eye, Clarke saw his cousin and his wife getting out of a car, two daughters in frilly pink dresses in tow. His cousin, who was a jackass, was staring, and his wife, who was a snobby gossip, had her mouth gaping open at what he could only assume was his feral appearance, but he didn’t care about either of them.
His eyes fell on the younger of their two daughters, a small blonde with twin ponytails at her ears. She was clutching a coloring book with a kitten on the cover.
Clarke moved quickly but gentled his motions as he approached the girl, lowering slightly so he was closer to her height. “Hi. Melissa, right?”
“Marisa,” she said in a tiny voice.
Crap. Rough start.
“Hi, Marisa. I’m your dad’s cousin. You remember me from the big boat party last summer? I snuck you a Coke? We promised not to tell your mom?”
She gave him an unimpressed look. Perhaps a lot of people snuck her Coke.
“Look, Marisa, I know this is a big request, but do you think I could have a page from your book there?” he asked, pointing at her coloring book.
She clutched the book closer to her chest and scowled.
“Clarke, what the hell, man?” his cousin muttered.
“Shut up, James,” he snapped.
He saw the little girl’s eyes go wide. “You’re not supposed to say ‘shut up.’ ”
He closed his eyes. “I know. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said it, but I’m in a very big hurry to find someone.”
“Who?”
“My—”
There were no words to describe what Audrey was to him. His world. His everything. His best friend. His love.
“His princess,” Naomi said, stepping forward. “He needs to find his princess.”
The word worked like magic on the little girl, and after only a moment’s hesitation, she messily ripped a page out of the very center of her coloring book, and then, out of the tiny little purse draped over her shoulder, she fished out a handful of crayons. “What color?”
“Surprise me,” he managed on a laugh.
“Pink. Perfect,” he said, accepting the crayon and the torn piece of paper, and kissed the little girl on the cheek.
Then he kissed Naomi’s cheek. “Thank you.”
He reached out and spun Oliver around, setting the coloring book page against his suit jacket for a firm surface to write on.
Oliver, thankfully, stayed still, but Clarke didn’t need long. A few words to get the point across and a messy scrawl of his signature in pink crayon. “Here,” he said, thrusting the paper at Scott’s chest, because he was closest. “Give this to my father.”
Scott looked at the wrinkled, illegible piece of paper. “Does it come with a translator?”
“It’s my letter of resignation,” Clarke said, hearing Naomi’s sharp intake of breath as he said it. “I don’t want the company. Not like I want her.”
Need her.
He turned back to the two women who had made a pact to protect Audrey from Brayden Hayeses.
“Please,” he said quietly. “I’m not like him. I’m not Brayden.”
I was never a Brayden. I want to be the damned prince.
Clarke thought the prolonged silence would kill him, until finally Claire spoke.
“I think I know where she might be.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
SATURDAY, MARCH 28
If Audrey could have managed a smile, she would have. Not a happy smile—she was fresh out of those—but a smile at the cruel little jab of irony.
Nearly two years ago she’d walked up to a church to say goodbye to a man she’d thought she loved and ended up here instead.
Today, she’d walked up to a church to say yes to a man she did love. Yet somehow, she’d ended up, once again, on a park bench in Central Park. The same park bench.
Audrey tipped her head back up to the sky, wishing for the sun to warm the chill coming from within her body. But her wedding day was cloudy, and there was no sun to take away the ache.
She couldn’t do it. She’d thought she could, and sometime in the middle of a sleepless night, she’d even convinced herself that marrying a man for reasons that had nothing to do with love was tolerable. She’d convinced herself as she’d put on the dress, as she’d had her highlighter and lash extensions applied, as she’d sat and watched as a manicurist fixed the chip on her index fingernail. It would be enough. Even being married to a man she loved who didn’t love her back was more than she deserved.
But when she’d stepped out of that limo, it had hit her. She couldn’t get married.
Not because she didn’t deserve marriage. But because she deserved more than the marriage being offered. Audrey had been so focused on the damage she’d done to Claire and Brayden’s relationship, and to a lesser extent to Brayden and Naomi’s, that she hadn’t realized until today that none of the past two years was about Brayden.
It may have been their simmering resentment and borderline hate for Brayden that had brought Naomi, Claire, and Audrey together, but it wasn’t what had kept them together.
It had been love. Love had kept them together. Not love for Brayden, but for one another, three women who’d become like sisters.
And although Audrey cherished the love she had with her friends, she wanted real love, fairy-tale love. She was worthy of it. And she would wait for it.
Audrey exhaled and opened her eyes, taking in the fresh blooms of spring, the damp dirt from last night’s rain, even the openly curious stares from people trying to ascertain why a woman in an enormous white wedding dress was sitting alone on a park bench and not crying. She was too numb for that.
She knew that Claire and Naomi would figure out where she had gone and come for her eventually, but for now, she was glad they’d given her space to think. Or rather space to try not to think about what Clarke must be thinking right now, if he was panicked about his father backing out of the deal or wondering…
Audrey had been so studiously ignoring the people trying to pretend that they weren’t staring at her that it took her a moment to register that one person wasn’t pretending at all. He was staring right at her and began walking toward her with purpose until he loomed over her. She didn’t move, not even when he slowly lowered himself onto the bench beside her.
Audrey turned her head and met the gaze of her best friend. “Where’s your bow tie?”
He let out a harsh laugh. “I lost it. Only one of a couple of things I lost today.”
“Oh yeah?” she asked casually, proud of how cool her voice sounded and the way it didn’t waver, not once.
“Yeah.”
She lifted her eyebrows. “Let me guess. You’re missing a bride?”
“No,” he said, his eyes locking on hers. “I’m missing my best friend. My soul mate. The woman I want very much to make my wife.”
Her heart twisted traitorously in her chest at words a part of her was still thrilled to hear.
She looked away. “Right. So you can get your company?”
Clarke reached out and gently hooked a finger on the side of her jaw, drawing her face back around to his.
“No,” he said, his voice tender. “Because I love her.”
Audrey let out a small exhale.
Not enough, she reminded herself. Clarke had always loved her with the strong, everlasting love of a lifelong friend. She’d never doubted it, and she didn’t doubt it now. But she wanted more. She wanted the wild, take-your-breath-away, risk-everything love.
She knew how she felt about him, and she knew she deserved nothing less in return.
“I was looking for you last night, at the party,” she
said quietly. “You were talking to your dad.”
He closed his eyes, and when they opened, they silently begged her to understand. “I know what you heard, Dree. And I’m not going to tell you that my dad didn’t offer me the job if I married you. I’m not going to pretend that my parents aren’t completely messed up or that my mom didn’t have one up on all of us the entire time, but that’s not important right now. What is important is that the damned company had nothing to do with why I proposed to you that day in the Plaza. And it has nothing to do with the reasons I’m proposing to you right now.”
Audrey’s lips parted in shock as Clarke slowly lowered to one knee in front of her and clasped his hands around hers, his eyes gleaming with unshed tears.
“Marry me, Audrey. Marry me today, marry me next week, a year from now, ten years from now. I don’t care, just promise me someday. I need you, Dree. I need you with every fiber of my being. I’ve needed you from that very first day on the playground. I know the way you tell the story is that I saved you from a bully, but the truth is you save me from myself every damn day. Marry me because I love you, not in the way a boy loves a girl, not in the way a friend loves his friend, but the way a man loves a woman. Forever. Marry me because I just quit my job, and now I need a beautiful Instagram influencer to support my unemployed ass—”
It was a good speech. A fairy-tale speech. Too bad she had to cut it off with a fairy-tale kiss.
Clarke’s fingers plowed through her hair the second her lips pressed to his, and he kissed her like he’d never kissed her before. She kissed him back, pouring in not hours, not days, but years of love for the man who’d been her Prince Charming the whole damn time.
When she pulled back, she was a little surprised to find her cheeks wet, and she couldn’t stop herself from laughing as he brushed away the proof that she wasn’t numb inside after all.
“I love you, too,” she whispered, in case her kiss hadn’t been abundantly clear.
He let out a harsh exhale of relief.
“Marry me,” he begged, kissing her again. “Will you marry me, Audrey?”
“Yes,” she whispered against his mouth. “And if you don’t mind a tearstained bride, I’ve got just the place in mind, right around the corner.”
He smiled his familiar grin and got to his feet. She accepted his hand, letting him help her up, not caring in the least that her dream grown was rumpled and dirty.
All that mattered was that she’d found her dream man.
Epilogue
Later that day, after a father walked his daughter down the aisle and a mother in sequins bawled through the entire ceremony…
After another mother dabbed furiously at tears that wouldn’t seem to stop and another father tried to make sense of a scribbled pink note written atop a cartoon kitten that he would throw away and insist he never saw…
After a bride with a dirty hem and a groom with a missing bow tie said their vows and stole a few minutes just for themselves before joining friends and family at a picture-perfect reception at the Plaza…
After the cake was cut, the toasts delivered, the dancing begun, and the groom and two of his groomsmen stepped out into the night air…
Those three men smoked cigars and watched as the three women they loved snuck a few bottles of champagne into Central Park, sat on a bench, and made a pact.
To friendship.
To new beginnings.
And to the healing power of love.
Acknowledgments
It’s always a little bittersweet to come to the end of a series, but I couldn’t ask for a better way to say goodbye to the Central Park Pact crew than with Clarke and Audrey’s book. I know a lot of you were anxiously waiting for their love story from the very first time they appeared on the page together, and I was right there with you, anxiously awaiting the moment I could help them realize what I’d always known: they were perfect for each other.
This book was fun and easy to write, I suspect because I had an amazing support team. Editors are always an important part of the book process, which is why I was extra lucky to have the help of three on Marriage on Madison Avenue: Marla Daniels, who has been this series’ biggest champion from the very beginning; Sara Quaranta, who seemed to have a sixth sense in helping me bring out Clarke’s romantic side; and of course, Kristi Yanta, my editor for twenty-plus books now, who helped me develop this one into what she dubbed “the most Lauren Layne” of the series—and she’s absolutely right. Thanks to all the help I got on this one, Marriage on Madison Avenue is one of those books that captures all of the reasons I set out to write romance in the first place.
As always, the rest of the team at Gallery Books shows flawless expertise in taking my word jumble and making it comprehensible and pretty, as well as making sure it gets into the hands of as many readers as possible.
Lastly, to the rest of my “crew,” my amazing agent Nicole Resciniti, fabulous assistant Lisa Filipe, my author friends, my nonauthor friends, my family, and of course, you, lovely readers, for making it possible for me to continue doing what I love.
More from this Series
Passion on Park Avenue
Book 1
Love on Lexington Avenue
Book 2
More from the Author
To Love and to Cherish
For Better or Worse
To Have and to Hold
From This Day Forward
About the Author
PHOTOGRAPH BY ANTHONY LEDONNE
LAUREN LAYNE is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of more than two dozen romantic comedies. Her books have sold over a million copies in nine languages. Lauren’s work has been featured in Publishers Weekly, Glamour, The Wall Street Journal, and Inside Edition. She is based in New York City.
FOR MORE ON THIS AUTHOR:
SimonandSchuster.com/Authors/Lauren-Layne
SimonandSchuster.com
Facebook.com/GalleryBooks
@GalleryBooks
ALSO AVAILABLE FROM LAUREN LAYNE AND GALLERY BOOKS
The Central Park Pact Series
Passion on Park Avenue
Love on Lexington Avenue
The Wedding Belles Series
From This Day Forward*
To Have and to Hold
For Better or Worse
To Love and to Cherish
*ebook only
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Gallery Books
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2020 by Lauren LeDonne
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First Gallery Books trade paperback edition January 2020
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Interior design by Davina Mock-Maniscalco
Cover design and Illustration by Connie Gabbert
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Layne, Lauren, author.
Title: Marriage on Madison Avenue / Lauren Layne.
Description: First Gallery Books trade paperback edition. | New York : Gallery Books, 2020. | Series: The Central Park pact series; book 3
Identifiers: LCCN 2019025639 (print) | LCCN 2019025640 (ebook) | ISBN 9781501191633 (trade paperback) | ISBN 9781501191640 (ebook)
Subjects: GSAFD: Love stories.
Classification: LCC PS3612.A9597 M37 2020 (print) | LCC PS3612.A9597 (ebook) | DC 813/.6—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019025639
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019025640
ISBN 978-1-5011-9163-3
ISBN 978-1-5011-9164-0 (ebook)
