Once Upon a Bride

by Jenny Holiday

  “Ahhh! Hi!” Elise’s squeals were echoed by the girls on the screen. “And!” She laughingly infused some drama into her voice. “Not only did I get the lobby job, he asked me to do his office, too!”

  “Did you get a deposit?” Jane asked. Elise’s friends knew all about her financial troubles.

  “Because if not,” Gia said, “You know I will gladly wire you some—”

  “I’ve told you guys, I can’t take your money! That wouldn’t be any different than taking Daddy’s money.”

  Wendy held up a palm. “Okay, that’s objectively not true. It would be totally different.”

  “The whole point of starting my own business is that it’s mine. It’s not propped up by family money—not that there’s any of that being offered.”

  Not remotely. Her father had been happy to give her an unlimited allowance as long as she spent it on frivolous things. He’d even been tolerant when, after graduation, she’d started working part-time helping an interior designer who did a lot of homes in their neighborhood. But that was because he’d considered it a hobby, one she would drop when she got married.

  Once Elise decided she’d had enough of Persian rugs and monogrammed towels in Rosedale and announced her plan to start her own business, the shit had majorly hit the fan. It hadn’t helped that she’d recently turned thirty and had failed to settle down with any of the entirely suitable boyfriends she’d had.

  “Right,” Gia said. “But unlike your father, we believe in you. It would be a loan. You can pay it back when your business takes off.”

  Elise grinned even as she got a little choked up. She loved her girls so much. Without them, she never would have had the guts to break out on her own. Her whole life, she’d had things handed to her: an expensive education, designer clothes, an address in a tony neighborhood. Watching her awesome friends work for what they had—work hard—had been an inspiration. Their unwavering support meant everything.

  “Anyway, I don’t need it! I’m stopping by tomorrow to sign a contract and pick up a huge deposit.”

  “So he went for your whole Toronto-themed thing?” Gia asked.

  “He did! I even kind of insulted his current décor, but he didn’t seem to mind.”

  “Who’s he?” Wendy asked.

  Elise and Gia talked or texted almost every night, so Gia knew some of the nitty-gritty details about the job that Wendy and Jane didn’t. “One of the partners. This guy called Jay Smith.”

  “Was he as boring as he looks?” Gia asked.

  Elise felt her cheeks warming.

  Tell me what you were going to say.

  Her mind had been replaying that sentence since she left Jay’s office. On the surface of things, it had been an entirely unremarkable sentence. But the way he had issued the directive—with a tone that was half impatience, half entitlement even as he’d looked at her like what she had to say was the most important thing in the world just then—had stuck with her.

  “He was…not boring.”

  The girls shrieked in unison.

  A wolf whistle rang through Jay’s office. He turned from where he was tying his bow tie in front of a mirror on the wall and grinned at his friend Stacey, who had let herself in.

  “Haven’t you ever heard of checking in with reception?” he teased.

  “Puh-lease.” She came over and finished tying the tie for him. “Reception is for keeping out the people you don’t like.”

  He laughed. “You look nice. How’s the trial going?” He knew Stacey from when she’d been working in the government, prosecuting tax fraud. They’d met when one of his clients, back when he’d been working at a big firm, had been audited. Years later, when she’d branched out to open her own tax law practice, he’d lured her to this building.

  “Terrible!” she trilled. “But there is an open bar with my name on it at the Four Seasons, so let’s blow this popsicle stand.” He glanced at his watch, and she must have anticipated an argument because she said, “Jay. You know I admire your work ethic. Your famous control over your empire and all that. But it’s time to party.”

  She smirked, but her expression quickly morphed into a more affectionate one. She was always needling him about what she saw as too much work and not enough play. But since she was a close friend, she knew that he’d worked hard to get where he was. That his legendary discipline was what had made him into the man he was: a man different from the men he’d grown up with. A man who was putting a stop to the cycle of toxicity that was his family legacy.

  “I am fully prepared to party. I just need a few minutes. We’re redoing the office, and the designer is coming over with the contract. She’ll be here shortly.”

  “Can’t you just have her leave it with the receptionist I so blithely ignored?”

  He could. There was no reason not to. He could leave the check and tell the receptionist to tell Elise he’d courier the signed contract back tomorrow. But…

  “Nope.”

  Stacey cocked her head at him.

  He couldn’t interpret her expression, which was unusual. “What?”

  Instead of answering, she performed an exaggerated sigh, walked over to the sitting area in his office, and plopped down on the sofa. Which was beige. Of course. What the hell was the matter with him that he had never really even noticed, much less taken issue with, all this beige?

  His assistant, Patricia, popped her head in. “Elise Maxwell is here.”

  “Send her in.”

  Stacey really did look great. She was dressed in a black ball gown that had a pretty, sparkly overlay of some sort. Elise, though. She wasn’t as dressed up, but she was…something. There was a put-togetherness about her. And that compelling mixture of out-there style juxtaposed with more classic, restrained pieces. This time, she was wearing a royal blue dress that buttoned up like a shirt. On its own, it was kind of conservative. But she was wearing a wide red fabric belt, and her hair was up in some kind of twist with a big red flower stuck into it. You could have told him she was going to the same gala he and Stacey were or to a board meeting at a bank and he would have believed it—she would have fit in at either setting. Well, she would have stood out at either setting, but in a—

  “Ahem.” Stacey was making a production of clearing her throat as she stood.

  Right.

  “Elise Maxwell, this is Stacey Tran. Elise is our new designer. Stacey is—”

  “Jay’s ex-girlfriend.” Stacey stuck out her hand and ignored the look Jay shot her. He’d been going to say that Stacey was a friend. Because that was true. Yes, they’d dated for two months several years ago, but they’d parted amicably and that part of their relationship was ancient history. Neither of them gave it any thought, much less brought it up—usually.

  “Oh!” Elise shook Stacey’s hand but seemed flustered. Not the same woman who’d given him the speech about how boring his office was. Her eyes flickered over to him and widened a little as she took him in.

  Right. Her appearance had made him forget, momentarily, the uncomfortable penguin suit he was currently wearing. “We’re going to a gala—a charity thing.”

  “Well.” She pulled some papers out of her handbag. “I’ll just leave this, then, and let you get going.”

  “No, no.” Grabbing a pen from his desk, he moved to the sitting area. “I’ll sign it now.” Stacey smooshed up right next to him on the stupid beige sofa, which was a little weird, and Elise took the chair across.

  “Don’t you want to read that first?” Stacey was giving him her skeptical lawyer face.

  He had flipped to the last page. But she was right. He was not the kind of person who signed contracts without reading them—normally. Stacey had been joking when she’d referenced his “empire,” but he had clawed himself out of his impoverished background and made a successful life. And he had done that by being devoted to details. You could change the course of a project—or a life—by paying attention to enough cumulative details. Some people might call it micromanaging.
Some people might call him uptight. He did not give a shit about some people.

  So he went back to the start. The document was labeled OPERATION: ABANDON BEIGE.

  He cracked up. Stacey, unapologetically continuing to invade his space, read over his shoulder.

  “Yeah, I’m just going to go ahead and sign this.” And he did, details be damned.

  Then he handed it back to Elise, who took it with one hand while gesturing with the other to the Scrabble game that rested on the coffee table between them. “You play?”

  “When I can get someone to play with me. Kent—my partner and co-founder—and I used to pull all-nighters early in the life of the company, and we’d take Scrabble breaks. But these days I can’t pry him away from his phone—it’s all Candy Crush or whatever.”

  She laughed. “Right? Why is it so hard to get people to appreciate classic board games?”

  “I take it you appreciate them?” Stacey asked, her voice and her eyebrows high. Jay kept forgetting that Stacey was there.

  Elise smiled. “I do. I have quite a board game collection, actually. But I always have to guilt my friends into playing with me.”

  Well. A gorgeous, talented woman looking for someone to play board games with her. That was…something.

  Clearing his throat, Jay stood and moved over to the desk to grab Elise’s check. “This is for you.”

  “Thanks.” She walked over and took the check and then the hand he had extended for her to shake on the deal.

  “Your hand is freezing,” he said before he could think better of it. He hadn’t meant to be overly familiar—he wasn’t one of those guys—but it had just popped out because of how true it was. It was like shaking hands with a snowman.

  She smiled. “Yeah, I’m one of those clichéd women who’s always cold.”

  He wanted to give her the coat of his tux, but that was something you did after the party. And she wasn’t coming to the party with them. Which was a little disappointing, actually.

  “So if it works for you,” she said, “I’ll pull together some more samples than just the ones I showed you yesterday—assuming you’re still good with the photographs—and we’ll start there? Maybe we can meet next week.”

  “Yes,” he said. “Definitely still good with those photos.” He turned to Stacey. “You should see these amazing photos she found.”

  “So I’ll call your assistant to set something up?” Elise said. “Same woman who scheduled the interview, right—Patricia?”

  He pulled a card out of his breast pocket and wrote his cell number on it. “No, just text me directly.”

  Stacey coughed, but when he looked over at her, she was all wide-eyed smiles.

  He turned back to Elise. “Let’s meet at your office.” It would be fun to see how the designer did her own space.

  She cleared her throat. “I, ah, don’t have a studio. I work out of my apartment.”

  “Oh, that’s fine.” But wait. Was he overstepping? He wasn’t trying to invite himself over to her house. She must have a home office, though, right? Her brow furrowed. Okay, she clearly didn’t want to meet at her place. “We can meet here. I was just thinking it might be good to get away from all this…” He gestured vaguely around the space. “Beige.”

  She chuckled and reached for the business card he was still holding.

  Her hand brushed against his as she did so. Before he could think better of it, he closed his hand around the tips of her icy fingers, struck with an almost involuntary impulse to warm her up. But as quickly as he did so, he pulled back because, hello, that was wildly inappropriate.

  “Meeting at my place sounds great.” Her cheeks had gone pink. Even though her hands were cold, her face looked…warm. “I’ll text you.”

  “Well!” Stacey clapped her hands together. “By my calculations, Jay, we only have forty-five minutes of open bar time before the program starts, so chop chop.”

  Right. Stacey. The gala. He grabbed his keys and gestured for both women to precede him out the door. No one spoke as they were waiting for the elevator. When they got on, it was occupied by a woman named Annabelle. She worked in another company in the building, and they had a friendly elevator-and-parking-garage relationship.

  “Looking good, Jay,” she teased, and he dipped his head in acknowledgement, a bit embarrassed. He’d had kind of a crush on Annabelle when he first met her, and she knew it.

  Annabelle got off on another floor. “That was another of Jay’s ex-girlfriends,” Stacey said.

  What? “That’s just plain not true.” What the hell was Stacey’s problem today? Had she gotten started on the open bar early? He turned to Elise. “I asked her out once. Years ago. She said no. And because I’m not an asshole, that was it. Now we chat in the elevator like normal people.” God. Why was this so embarrassing?

  “Okay…” Elise looked uncomfortable as the elevator hit the ground floor. And maybe he was an asshole because why had he felt the need to give her that big disclaimer in the first place?

  And why did his chest suddenly feel tight, like he was having trouble getting in a good breath? It must be the stupid bowtie. He concentrated on filling his lungs as he held the elevator door open for the women.

  As they emerged onto the street, Elise turned to him. “I’ll text you to set up the meeting.”

  “We’re going to hail a cab,” he said. “Can we drop you somewhere?”

  “Thanks, but no. I’m meeting a friend who works downtown.”

  And then she was gone. And he could breathe again.

  He turned on Stacey once they were in the cab. “What the hell was all that?”

  “What was what?” She took out a compact and examined her reflection in its mirror.

  “You’re not my ex-girlfriend.”

  “I am, though.”

  “Stacey. I’ve known you for ten years. And we dated—not very successfully—for, like, two months in there near the beginning.”

  Stacey smiled at her reflection. “I was testing the waters.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I wanted to see what the reaction would be.”

  “What the hell are you talking about? Whose reaction?”

  “Yours. Hers. Either.” She turned to him. “You like this woman.”

  He sighed and slumped against the seat. There was no use denying it. Stacey could sniff out laundered offshore bank accounts buried under mountains of decoys. She didn’t miss anything. “So? She’s way too young.”

  “She looks like she’s thirty, tops.”

  “Which is too young.”

  “Jesus Christ, Jay, for a guy who’s generally one of the good ones, you can be such a misogynistic jerk sometimes.”

  “Excuse me?” Jay would admit to his faults, but he was fairly certain misogyny wasn’t one of them. No, that was one of his father’s faults. And Jay was not his father.

  “How arrogant do you have to be to just assume that every woman you meet under the age of forty-five wants kids? To just assign that stance to her? Some women—even young ones—don’t want kids. Don’t you think it’s better to find out before you just write off—”

  “And what am I supposed to say? ‘Hello, I like you, but I don’t want kids. Might you, too, not want kids?’ That’s a great way to approach a first date.”

  “Why not? It’s not like things are working out with your chosen demographic.”

  He tried to object, but Stacey held up a hand. “Don’t interrupt.”

  Resigned, he settled in to listen to her little speech.

  “I mean, yes, you can date older women exclusively”—she gestured at herself—“but it’s not like you’ve found one of us to ride off into the sunset with.”

  “But that’s just bad luck,” he said, though it was probably useless to argue. “That’s just life.” She raised her eyebrows at him. “Anyway,” he pushed on, still knowing it was pointless, “I’m closer to forty than thirty now. The gap is shrinking.” He made a face, going for humor. “So
on I’ll be able to date women my age.”

  She was not amused. “Are you listening to yourself? Could you be any more inflexible?”

  Okay, now he was getting annoyed. What business was it of hers who he chose to date? He didn’t want kids. So he made it a priority to avoid women who were likely to want them. Women who hadn’t yet aged out of being able to have them. There was nothing wrong with that. That wasn’t inflexibility. That was honesty.

  But whatever. He wasn’t getting into it with Stacey. Arguing with a lawyer was never a good idea. So he just rolled his eyes and looked out the window.

  “Or…” She drew out the word in overly dramatic fashion. “You could, you know, actually examine this whole rabid stance against having kids and stop letting it rule your life.”

  “No.” He wasn’t going to bicker fruitlessly with her, but he couldn’t let that stand.

  “You’re not your father.”

  “What the hell, Stacey?”

  “Or Cam’s father.”

  He looked at her sharply. He’d been thinking, back in his office, that Stacey knew why he pushed himself so hard, why he maintained such discipline over his affairs. But knowing about that was different than talking about it. She’d gone too far.

  And she knew it. “I’m sorry.” She laid a hand on his arm. “I’m not trying to be mean. I just sometimes think you’re too wrapped up in a certain vision of yourself. One that is…less fulfilling than it could be.”

  The phrase abandon beige popped into his head.

  “And honestly?” Stacey went on. “I know you won’t believe me, but I think you would be a great dad. I wish you would just give yourself a chance.”

  Elise wondered if Jay had a thing for older women or if it was just a coincidence that his two ex-girlfriends—or ex-crushes, or whatever—she had happened to meet were both closer to fifty than forty.

  And both stunningly beautiful.

  And self-assured.

  There had been no aspiring with either of those women.

  They probably had proper offices that didn’t also double as their living rooms.