“For the tenth time, I made it quite clear earlier this week that my date and I wanted to be seated near Mr. Burke’s table. That was the whole reason we bought tickets. We were assured by someone in your office that would happen, and if we can’t sit near him, I want a refund!”
This last bit was so loud that several guests waiting in line for registration looked to see what was wrong. Chad’s ears perked up, wondering whether he would be called in to the conversation. Of course, he was the only “someone” in Suzanne’s office and he knew for a fact he had made no such assurance to Mr. Basille, but how should he say that if Suzanne called on him?
Suzanne listened intently, but from where Chad was standing, her gaze seemed to travel from Mr. Basille’s eyes to his hands, feet, and finally, to his date. She placed a hand on his forearm as Chad had seen her do countless times with angry patrons. She dipped slightly at the knees so she could look up at the rather squat man. “Now, Mr. Basille,” she trilled. “Please don’t leave us! Let me find out what’s going on. It’ll take two seconds. What are you two drinking?”
She directed this question at Mr. Basille’s date, who replied with a haughty, “Pinot Grigio.”
“For you as well?” She turned to Mr. Basille, who nodded reluctantly.
That was his cue. Chad stepped forward. “Chad, honey,” Suzanne said. “Go grab the seating chart for me, and ask Ramon to get Mr. Basille and his date a chilled bottle of their best Pinot Grigio, immediately. Tell him to add it to my tab.”
“Now, that’s not—” Mr. Basille started.
“Of course it is. It’s my pleasure.” Suzanne’s eyes twinkled up at him, almost flirtatious, for a long second. Finally, he smiled awkwardly in return, and his date shifted her weight behind him, irritated. Chad slid off to get the seating chart, stopping a passing waiter to send over the wine.
By the time he returned, Mr. Basille seemed far more at ease. His date, on the other hand, seemed anything but amused, despite the fact that she had already drained her glass. Chad handed Suzanne the seating chart, and she pretended to study it intently. She gave several “Hmms…” while she looked at it and Chad noticed that she bit her lip suggestively as she thought. This had the desired effect: Mr. Basille was clearly entranced.
“There’s no other way,” she announced to Chad finally. “There’s obviously been a big mistake in our office and we didn’t properly assign Mr. Basille to VIP seating. Let’s move the Bickersons to another table, here in the back, and put Mr. Basille and his date here. Mr. Basille, please accept my apologies for the inconvenience and enjoy ten free casino chips on me.”
She fished a sachet of casino chips out of her handbag, and gave them to his date rather than Mr. Basille. The former smiled perfunctorily and tucked them away in her clutch.
“Thank you,” Basille said, unable to find any continued reason to be angry. “I didn’t mean to yell at you. It’s just—”
“Not at all,” Suzanne stopped him, polished fingers brushing lightly across his arm once more. “Just have a wonderful evening and do make sure you bid on something fun for me at the silent auction, okay?” She glanced back at Mr. Basille’s date, who looped her arm through his and squeezed territorially as she looked down her nose at Suzanne.
“How do you do it?” Chad asked her as the couple walked away.
“That’s what the Bickersons are for,” she answered with a shrug. “You know that.”
Of course, Chad knew the Bickersons didn’t really exist. They were the fake couple assigned seating at every event, usually in or near the VIP section, in order to provide wiggle room for just such emergencies. “That’s not what I meant. I mean, how do you…how do you turn them around so quickly? That guy was livid when I got over here.”
Suzanne looked at him, her eyes tired but sharp. “Well, it’s all about what you can learn about people just by paying attention. Start with his suit. Expensive, but didn’t fit perfectly. New money.”
Chad glanced at the retreating Mr. Basille and confirmed that his suit hung off his shoulders just a bit. Suzanne went on, “His shoes were black leather, conservative. No scuffs. I’m thinking he’s not a Dylan Burke fan. You’ll notice there are many tuxedos wandering around with snakeskin boots underneath, but Mr. Basille isn’t that type. His date, on the other hand—too much makeup and a cheap spray tan. That dress was too low cut for an evening at the High. She’s more the right age, too. For Dylan, I mean…”
Suzanne looked a bit dreamy for a second in spite of herself. Don’t like him, my ass, Chad thought.
She snapped out of it quickly and went on with her tutorial. “He had a pot belly and bags under his eyes. There was still a little indentation on his left hand where a ring used to be. So I figure: recently divorced, newly rich entrepreneur-type trying to impress his younger date, who is a big fan of Dylan Burke. A guy like that wants to appear powerful. It didn’t matter that he didn’t talk to anyone in our office; he wants her to see him make a big deal about getting the best. For her. He wants to show her that he can get his way. For her.”
“So that’s why you made a big deal about not wanting him to leave.”
“Right.”
“But, why the…well, please don’t be offended, but the fairly obvious flirting?”
Suzanne grinned. “Rivalry. Quickest way to a woman’s heart. If that guy doesn’t get laid tonight, it won’t be my fault. Plus, now he’s all pumped up to bid high on the auction items.”
Chad had to smile. She was brilliant, in her way. This was what David didn’t understand. She knew that happy people spent more at the auctions and the bar, and she knew how to make them happy and set them free to spend. It’s why she was the best event planner in the city.
Two volunteers from opposite ends of the museum arrived almost simultaneously, each brimming with a separate crisis. One of Dylan’s sisters had brought three people who weren’t on the guest list and there wasn’t enough table space available. Elsewhere, the bathrooms on the main floor of the museum had all been inadvertently locked and no one could find a member of the cleaning staff to unlock them. Suzanne was walking away to deal with the second issue when Chad remembered, and called her back.
“Don’t forget this,” he said, pressing the pain pill into her hand. He caught a passing tray and grabbed a goblet of wine.
“Already?” she said absently, popping the overlarge pill into her mouth and swigging from the wine glass in one smooth motion as she headed off in the direction of the main building. Chad watched in admiration before returning to the seating chart to try to solve the extra-guest problem.
“Shit,” came a wheezing voice behind Chad, and he turned to see Marci looking flushed and out of breath. Clearly she had rushed over from a good distance for some reason.
“I tried…” she panted, “I tried…to get here…before…can’t breathe!”
Jeez. If that girl’s not pregnant or something, she’d better start working out more, Chad thought, trying not to stare at Marci’s robust figure in a pretty royal blue dress that was perhaps a half-size too small. He waited for her to take a big gulp of air and finish.
“I tried to stop you,” Marci managed finally. “Suzanne had already taken a pill tonight. I gave it to her at six. And she’s not supposed to drink with them.”
Chad looked after the rapidly retreating form of his boss, which had reached the main doors to the museum and was graciously holding one of them open for a cluster of partygoers to enter. He thought with trepidation about the large size of the pills in comparison with the tiny size of Suzanne. She had to be a hundred and five pounds, tops. He was no pharmaceutical expert, but that couldn’t be a great combination. He looked at Marci’s worried face and decided that short of locking Suzanne in a closet or having her stomach pumped, there wasn’t much they could do about it. Best to be reassuring.
“Eh, I don’t think it’s a big deal. They always set those doses conservatively, and Suzanne has a great metabolism.” He surprised himself a little w
ith how quickly he came up with this. Maybe he was learning from her after all. “I mean, she can handle anything, and if it knocks her out or something, you guys can drive her home and I’ll handle the rest of the event.”
He said this with a conviction he did not quite feel, but his bravado seemed to lessen Marci’s panicked look. He patted her on the arm and added, “Seriously, Marci, you worry too much. What’s the worst that could happen?”
Chapter 7
Whoever invented those lovely white pills knew quite a bit about pain relief, Suzanne decided, but not nearly enough about navigating the world in four-inch heels. She had been walking in heels on a regular basis since she was eleven, after months of practicing in her parents’ hallway with a book on her head, under her mother’s watchful eye. In recent years, heels had become such an integral part of her wardrobe that she didn’t feel fully dressed without them.
Tonight, however, she felt wobbly—more like Bambi on ice than Ginger Rogers on stage. Her head was spinning a bit, too. Perhaps her lack of sleep was finally catching up with her. The normally soothing lights of the High Museum seemed oppressive and glaring. Having solved the locked bathroom crisis with a call to Betsy Fuller-Brown, she had made her way up the circular ramps to the third floor of the rotunda, where she took off her shoes and sat on the floor at the top of the deserted ramp.
From here, she could look down to the other two floors and hear some of what was going on below without being noticed herself. She rubbed her tired feet and called Chad over the radio to talk about accommodating the three surprise guests at the Burke table.
“Are you okay?” he asked when they’d solved the problem.
“Sure. Why?”
He hesitated. “Um…no reason. Why don’t you come sit down for a bit? You’re exhausted.”
“I am sitting.”
“Okay, good,” he said. His voice sounded oddly far away and a little too sweet. This was not the usual Chad.
“Why are you talking like that?”
“What do you mean?”
“You know what I mean. Like you’re the grownup boss of me, instead of I’m being the boss of you.” This did not come out the way she intended, so she repeated the main point. “You know what I mean.”
Now it was Marci at the other end of the radio. “Suze, why don’t you tell me where you are and I’ll have Jake come for you?”
“Marce, I’m fine. Quit being so overprotective. You’re the one who needs protecting. You’re prego! Pregnant. With child. Con bambino. Pregno-protecto!” This last bit sounded very funny to Suzanne. Like Harry Potter.
“Shh…Suzanne, that was a secret, remember?”
“Oh, sorry!” Suzanne said. She meant it, too. Though at this point she was having trouble holding on to what she meant. “Sorry, sorry, sorry.” Her thoughts and words seemed to be slipping through her fingers. Out they went, almost as though she could see them, through the white metal grid separating her from the empty air beyond the railing and down, down, down to the ground below. People—lots of people—were down there, milling around. She could see the tops of their heads and black suits or bare shoulders, depending on gender. Holy shit, I’m far up. How have I never noticed how high up this is? Has anyone ever fallen from here?
“Well if it isn’t my favorite Southern belle,” another voice came through the radio, surprisingly crisp and audible. That was odd. She held the radio out from her face to examine it.
A good-natured laugh sounded from her left. “I’m over here, Miss Scarlett.” She turned to see her most famous client standing a few feet away from her on the landing.
Even had she felt her normal clarity, it might have taken a moment to recognize Dylan Burke. He wore the perfectly-faded blue jeans and black boots that were his standard uniform, of course, but with a pressed white shirt, soft charcoal vest and a wide, tasteful maroon tie. The most surprising thing, though, was seeing him for the first time without his trademark camouflage cap. His hairline was slightly receded, as she had wondered, but the rest of his hair was thick and had been expertly tousled into a sun-streaked, light brown mess on top of his head. He wore glasses—round black frames that were thick on top and thin as wire on the bottom. In spite of her addled state, she couldn’t help but notice that he looked amazing. Sexy, even.
“Looks like you’ve been busy since I saw you last,” he said.
This brought her out of her reverie and she realized she’d been staring at him. “What?”
“Your cast,” he said, nodding at her arm. She’d almost forgotten it. “What happened? Some other poor bastard question your encyclopedic knowledge of baseball?”
“Accident,” she said. “Weird, though, because I’m not the accident-prone one. Marci, though, Marci is a klutz.”
“And Marci is…?”
“My best friend,” Suzanne said, sounding annoyed that he didn’t already have this information. “Do try to keep up.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said. His smile broadened, but Suzanne got the feeling he was smiling at her rather than with her. “Listen, can I walk you back down?”
“For the last time, I don’t need anyone to walk with me. I’m fine!”
“It’s not for you,” he said. “It’s for me. If I walk down there by myself, I’ll be drawn into a hundred different conversations and requests for autographs and I’ll never make it to my table. I’m hungry. You’re my event planner. Walk with me.”
She stood, still rather wobbly, and he extended his arm. Suzanne took it, feeling ridiculous. “Thanks,” he said benignly.
Walking seemed to help her confused state a little. “I can’t figure you out,” she said to the young country star as they descended, slowly, down the curving ramps to the main floor.
“What’s to figure out?” he said. Then, with a wry smile, he added, “I’m just your average Tennessee boy with a crazy family and a private jet.”
“I don’t know,” she said, ignoring the joke. Somewhere in the deep recesses of the medication fog, a tiny but reasonable voice screamed at her to be quiet. Be professional. Shut the hell up before you say something stupid. “Honestly, I don’t want to like you.”
“Thanks,” he said drily.
“I mean, I don’t love country music in general, especially that oversimplified hokey stuff about farms and tractors. No offense.”
“None taken,” he said with a surprised laugh.
“And you seem so obnoxious in the press. And in person.”
“Again, thanks,” he said. “Do I have to pay you extra for all this honesty?”
“You’re a womanizer, too,” she said accusingly.
“Ah,” he said. They had reached the bottom of the last ramp and he stood back to let her enter the lobby first.
“But you know what’s weird?” she asked over her shoulder.
“I bet you’re about to tell me,” he said.
“I like you anyway.” She turned to face him momentarily. She couldn’t tell whether he was amused or annoyed. “I don’t want to, but I do.”
He opened his mouth to speak, and then closed it again. He seemed to be trying to decide something. After a moment, his puzzled look changed to concern. Only when he grasped her elbow did she realize she’d been teetering dangerously to one side. “Don’t take this the wrong way,” he said, “but you don’t look so good. I really think you should sit down.”
Suzanne was searching for an appropriate response, and thinking that Dylan was probably right, when the tiny bleached-blonde from the baseball game, now in a skin-tight fuchsia cocktail dress, came from nowhere and flung her arms around him. She leaned close and cooed in Dylan’s ear. “Come on, baby. You promised you’d buy me something from the auction before you go on stage.” Suzanne must have made an involuntary noise, because the girl wrinkled her nose. “What’s the matter with her?”
Focusing on the girl’s face was difficult, swimming as it was in Suzanne’s vision, with the stark white walls of the main lobby behind her. But she tried to smile
anyway. “Oh, nothing,” she heard herself say. “I’m fine. You guys enjoy the auction. Have a great time.”
Dylan looked unconvinced. “You need to sit down, Miss Scarlett,” he said. “I’m going to get you some water. Misty, stay with her.”
They sat on a bench, and Suzanne tried to apologize to the girl in fuchsia for the disruption of their evening. “I’m so sorry. I don’t know what’s happening,” she started.
But Misty was in no mood for conciliation, apparently. “Listen,” she said harshly, in a far more country-sounding accent than she had been using moments before. “I know what you’re doing and you can just go ahead and give up. No matter what kind of stupid game you’re playing to get his attention, there’s no way I’m letting him go. Besides, if you were half as smart as you think you are, you’d know that Dylan never dates older women.”
“What?” Suzanne said, thoroughly confused. Before she could defend herself, however, Dylan had returned with a bottle of water and suddenly Misty was dragging him away.
When they were out of sight, Suzanne stood, threw away the water, and flagged a passing waiter. She downed a flute of champagne in seconds. She heard it: the tiny warning voice, screaming that this was a bad idea, that something was seriously wrong and she ought to find Marci and a place to lie down. But the voice was so muted, it was as though it were coming to her through ten feet of solid concrete. She talked to herself instead.
Head up. Keep smiling. On with the show.
It took some time to get to the main tent area. Suzanne had to stop once or twice to sit down, she was so dizzy. By the time she got there, she was sweating and her cocktail dress clung to her. To avoid being pressed into problem-solving service by her staff, she veered along the edge of the seating area against the white canvas to the back, where she could check the status of the event undisturbed.
The Christmas lights and tiny mirrors Jake and Chad had so painstakingly draped as a backdrop to the stage had been worth every minute of their time. They twinkled behind Dylan, sitting on a leather and chrome barstool with his guitar, singing something soft and low. Among the soft lights, the jarred fireflies, and candles scattered around the tent, the whole place looked magical, and everyone seemed rapt by the performance.
Regrets Only (Sequel to The Marriage Pact) Page 6
