by Lizzie Shane
Something that might have been disappointment moved behind her eyes, but it was gone so fast he was certain it was a fabrication of his incoherent mind.
“No,” she said. “Nothing like that.” She stood, moving to the dresser. “I’ll just get dressed and then we can return you to your own world.”
“You’re a life saver.”
If she was bothered by his casual tone, she didn’t show it as she gathered up some clothes and moved to the bathroom to change. He’d seen her naked dozens of times, but he was glad she didn’t do anything as intimate as dress in front of him this morning. That was too relationshipy.
He hadn’t intentionally used the coffee as a shield, but it had been a convenient prop. The lack of kissing had been intentional. In part because he probably had the world’s most revolting hangover breath and in part because waking up in her bed, after she saw him at his worst the night before, he needed to put some boundaries back up.
Friends with benefits was one thing, but they were crossing all sorts of lines lately until he wasn’t sure where they were anymore. Distance was best. At least in the harsh light of the morning after.
He had no idea what he’d said or done the night before—and he wasn’t going to ask. This was fun and chemistry. Nothing more. And it was past time he remembered that.
*
Sidney frowned at Josh’s gorgeous muscular back until it disappeared inside his Beamer, trying to figure out exactly why she felt simultaneously better and worse about being his secret mistress than she had just twenty-four hours before.
She pulled out of the parking lot on auto-pilot, headed back north toward Eden as Josh headed back to the apartment she’d never seen and whatever he had planned for the rest of the day. He didn’t share his life with her. He wasn’t opening up. If anything, this morning he’d been even more distant and standoffish than ever.
But last night…
Last night he’d said the L word. Twice. Admittedly he hadn’t said it quite the way a girl dreamed of hearing it. As in preceded by I and followed by you. But it was a start. A step. Some little indication that told her she wasn’t alone in getting caught up in whatever it was they were doing together.
She’d liked having him wake up in her bed far too much. She’d liked everything he said to her the night before—when he was rambling incoherently. But was it in vino veritas? Or had he not been himself?
If this morning was anything to go by, it was the latter.
He didn’t seem to remember anything he’d said the night before. Or if he did remember, he was doing an excellent job of pretending he didn’t.
But a man didn’t just throw around the L word if he wasn’t feeling something. Even if he was drunk out of his mind.
Did he?
She needed to stop thinking about it. She needed to forget the L word accidents and remember how cool and businesslike he’d been this morning. And most of all she needed to remember that regardless of his feelings or hers, he would still lose his job and she would lose her reputation if anyone found out they were sneaking around together.
Secrecy might be exciting, but it wasn’t true love.
Those words became her mantra as she drove home to start her day.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
The road to hell was paved with high-end travertine pavers, Sidney thought as she pulled into her parents’ driveway, pausing at the gate to punch in the code. She’d originally planned to spend this Saturday—a rare non-wedding weekend—with Josh.
Two days after The Incident, as she’d started thinking of the night he showed up at her place drunk, he’d called her and asked her to meet him on the weekend to look at more houses in his seemingly never-ending quest for someplace livable with a killer view, but fate had intervened in the form of a contract issue for Marrying Mister Perfect. So she still hadn’t seen him since That Night and now he was down in Los Angeles negotiating terms while she prepared for an even more arduous experience—having lunch with her mother at the Dewitt Estate.
Thank God her brother Max would be there to take some of her mother’s microscopic focus off her, though her father was once again traveling for business. No surprise there.
Sidney pulled past the gate and up the long winding drive, parking her SUV beside the latest in her brother’s ever-changing sequence of muscle cars. She let herself into the house, unsurprised to find her brother alone in the sunroom when she arrived—their mother doubtless delayed by some urgent work matter, even though it was Saturday.
“Ahoy, Maximus.”
He looked up from his phone, pocketing it as he stood. “Well, if it isn’t little Sidney. I hear you’re poised to become the next big thing in reality television wedding planners.”
She went in for a hug, swallowed up by his massive frame. “Where did you hear that?”
“Oh, I have my sources.”
She didn’t doubt that. For the last couple years her brother had been making his living providing specialized bodyguards for celebrity clients. And celebrities loved to gossip. They traded in hearsay like it was currency.
Her brother released her and flopped back down on the overstuffed sofa, his muscular bulk taking up most of the space. Sidney perched on a chair opposite, keeping her back straight in case her mother appeared unannounced.
It should have been easy to hate Max. He was her opposite in every way. Favoring their father with his darker coloring and slate colored eyes, he also favored their father in that success seemed to follow him wherever he went.
Where Sidney struggled and flailed, Max moved through life with easy purpose, achieving anything he wanted. While she worried about what others thought, Max was blithely unconcerned with the opinions of others—not that he had anything to worry about. Everyone adored him. Especially Parvati, who liked to offer herself up to Max as an egg-donor if he should ever decide to reproduce. Not that he would lack for volunteers. Even as his sister, she could acknowledge—in a purely platonic way—that he was a handsome devil.
Max was the golden boy. And she would have been bitterly jealous if he hadn’t also been the best brother on the planet, staunchly taking her side without question and loving her without condition. He never made her feel judged, even when she’d felt like the rest of the world looked down on her for her size.
They approached life in opposite directions, but somehow he always managed to find her in the middle. If only things were so easy with her mother.
“How’s the business?” she asked him, offering the typical Dewitt greeting.
“Busy.” Max beamed, flashing bright white teeth offset by his tan. He launched into a description of his two most recent hires, glowing with pride that his business was expanding yet again, and waxing poetic on the joys of success until a voice sharp with disapproval heralded their mother’s arrival.
“That isn’t how a gentleman sits, Maximus.”
Max rolled to his feet, grinning his charming get-away-with-everything grin, and went to the doorway to hug their mother. “What’s for lunch?” he asked her, completely unfazed by her scowl—which was already fading into an indulgent smile.
“Lamb,” she replied. “A specialty of my new chef. She’s a treasure.”
Sidney stood to greet her mother, standing straight for her perusal. “Mother.”
“Sidney, you’re looking slim. It must be a relief to have that whole Marrying Mister Perfect business behind you.”
Sidney held onto her brittle smile and hummed something noncommittal as she followed her mother toward the formal dining room, Max trailing in their wake. She’d avoided her parents since the show began airing—which had proved easy to do since they both worked eighty-hour weeks and traveled constantly—but she should have known she couldn’t avoid it today. Of course it would be her mother’s first topic of conversation. Or interrogation, as tended to be the case when they had lunch.
The pretty new chef had barely set the soup course in front of them before her mother asked in her coolly judgmental w
ay, “Have you seen an increase in traffic through your little shop since you put yourself on display on national television?”
“Some,” Sidney admitted. “And I expect there will be even more after the wedding special airs.”
Her mother looked up from her bisque. “What’s this? You’re not going back on television, are you?”
“Actually we start filming in a couple days. It’s a special about the planning of Caitlyn’s wedding. I’ll be front and center, advertising Once Upon a Bride. You can’t buy exposure like that.”
“I can’t imagine why anyone would want to,” Marguerite said dryly. “Those shows are the lowest common denominator of entertainment. Are those viewers really your target demographic?”
“Romantics who might be looking for ideas for their own weddings? Yes. That’s exactly my demographic, Mother.”
“It just doesn’t seem very dignified.”
“Well, your company’s erectile dysfunction commercials aren’t very dignified either, but they get the job done.”
“Sidney.” Disapproval saturated her mother’s tone.
Sidney found herself ducking her head and staring at her bisque contritely. The silence lasted only a few seconds before her mother embarked on another delightful conversational foray.
“Did that show at least help your romantic life as you’d hoped it would?” her mother prodded. “Are you seeing anyone?”
The show had certainly helped her love life—or at least her sex life—but she couldn’t tell her mother that. And she didn’t even want to hint vaguely at someone special when things with Josh were so unsettled. “No one serious.”
“I am entirely single. If anyone was wondering,” Max chimed in helpfully. Her mother’s personal chef had returned to clear their bowls and Max winked at her as she took his, earning a glare from their mother.
“Don’t flirt with my new chef, Maximus.”
He dimpled for their mother, completely lacking contrition. “I can’t help it if I’m irresistible.”
“You’d better help it if you ever want to dine here again,” Marguerite threatened.
Max’s reply was typically unrepentant, but at least it took the conversation away from Sidney and her lack of love life, among other shortcomings.
Somehow with Max running interference they made it through the rest of lunch without a reappearance of the Spanish Inquisition. After they polished off the raspberry tarts, their mother excused herself with a brisk apology, retreating back to her home office, and Max walked Sidney out.
“Thanks for heading off the interrogation in there,” she said as they stepped out into the sunny afternoon. “I couldn’t handle her judgment today.”
Max frowned, hesitating on his way over to his Mustang. “I know it’s none of my business and I try to stay out of it, but has it occurred to you that maybe she isn’t judging you when she asks you all those questions? That maybe she’s just curious about your life?”
“She has a funny way of showing it.”
“She doesn’t know how to talk to you. And you aren’t exactly forthcoming. How else is she supposed to find out about what you’re up to if she doesn’t ask? And yes, I know she sucks at asking tactfully,” he said before Sidney could complain about her mother’s manner. “But she’s used to being the boss of everyone and demanding answers. That’s just who she is. But at least she’s trying.”
“Easy for you to say. You’re the golden boy. They never interrogate you.”
“I talk to them,” he said flatly, leaning against the side of his car and folding his arms. “I know this might shock you, but they don’t need to grill me because I actually like telling them what’s going on in my life. I like asking them for advice about the business and running things by them when I want to make a big decision like where to live or what to do with my life. You just spring things on them after the fact and get defensive when they ask questions.”
“So you’re saying it’s my fault I have a shitty relationship with my parents.”
“Don’t be a brat,” Max said with typical older brother bluntness. “I didn’t say that. And it isn’t all your fault. Mom doesn’t understand you at all and has no freaking idea how to talk to you without coming across as a disappointed dictator—that’s on her. But you aren’t making it any easier for her and that’s on you.”
“So I’m supposed to just smile and nod when she says I’m pandering to the lowest common denominator by trying to promote my business on national television? I’m supposed to ignore the fact that the only compliment she ever gives me is that I look thin—which just makes me angry because her love is conditional on my size.”
“Her love isn’t conditional—”
“Of course not. That’s why she was always trying to fix me. Always putting me on another diet and heaping on another helping of guilt.”
“I know that was awful for you, growing up. And you’re right, she is always trying to fix everyone and everything. But she’s also proud of you for losing the weight. And she wants to talk about the things that are important to you, but she doesn’t know how. So she says stupid shit because she’s trying to help. She knows you want to get married, so she asks about your love life and you get prickly. She worries about you. She worried about you going on the show because she didn’t want you to get hurt.”
“Then why was she so disappointed when I quit?”
“Because she doesn’t understand why you would. I think you mistake her confusion for disappointment.”
“And I think you’re assigning shiny happy motives to everything she says out of wishful thinking. She treats me like I’m a failure in everything I do, Max. Like I will always be the pudgy girl who wasn’t worth showing off to her friends. That isn’t in my head.”
“Do you think you are?”
“What? Of course not.”
“No one can make you feel inferior without your consent. So are you?”
“Are you quoting Eleanor Roosevelt at me?”
“If the shoe fits.”
She glared at her brother. “It’s easy for you to talk about failure and inferiority. You’ve never failed at anything in your life. Some of us aren’t perfect, Max.”
He laughed. “You seriously think I’m perfect? I fail all the time, Sid. But I don’t define myself by the mistakes I’ve made.”
“And I do?”
“You tell me.”
She locked her jaw. Not wanting to examine whether or not he was right.
She hated when he was right. But this was more than that. She didn’t want to admit that all of her fear of failing her parents stemmed from a feeling that she thought she wasn’t good enough. And she never had. She’d lost the weight, but she was still the disappointment.
So who was she trying to prove herself to? Them? Or herself?
Max seemed to realize he’d pushed her as far as she was willing to go today. His easygoing demeanor returned as he rocked back against his car. “Hey, what do I know? I’m just the hired muscle.”
She lunged for the change in topic with undignified speed. “You’ll be at the MMP wedding, right? Like we talked about?”
“Of course. We’ve gotta make sure you’re a paparazzi free zone.” He straightened, pulling his keychain out of his pocket and jangling it. “Don’t worry. I’m bringing two of my guys and the MMP people are letting me boss around their guys too. It’ll be Fort Knox.”
He turned to get into the car and she stopped him. “Max. Thanks.” She wasn’t even sure what she was thanking him for—the security? Telling her to get her head out of her ass and stop feeling inferior all the time?
He shrugged, hauling open the door to his car. “What are brothers for?”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Her brother’s words—and Eleanor Roosevelt’s—haunted her for the rest of the weekend. It had always been convenient to blame her mother for her feelings of inadequacy—she was such a handy target—but it wasn’t her mother’s goals that she was failing to achieve no
w. Her mother didn’t care if she was married. Her mother didn’t care if Once Upon a Bride made some list. Sidney did. Her mother cared about success in general, but those particular metrics, the ones that always made Sidney feel like she had come up short in life—she’d come up with those all on her own.
But the trouble with coming up with your own definition of success was that when you failed you had no one to blame but yourself.
She should have made being on television one of her life goals. Then at least she’d be succeeding in that.
Today was the first day of filming for the Wedding Special. Which meant she would see Josh, but with camera crews present she wouldn’t be able to clear the air about any residual weirdness lingering after That Night.
She was due at the estate at nine, when she and Josh would be filming their “first look” at the venue. Later in the week they would be filming a few less suitable venue options, which would be edited into a Goldilocks-esque montage before they found the one that was just right. But today her job was to guide Josh through the beach house, explaining her vision for the wedding—flowers here, altar there, reception here, band there—with Josh providing color commentary.
The producers and camera crews would already be on site when she got there. This afternoon they’d film at Once Upon a Bride. Victoria had elected to make herself scarce rather than sign the waivers to appear in the special. She seemed convinced she would say something she shouldn’t on national television and she didn’t want Lore on television, so the two of them would be avoiding the main showroom at Once Upon a Bride for the next few days while Sidney and Josh shot all the preliminary interior footage—essentially explaining to the cameras over and over again where they would be going and what they would be doing.
And throughout the week they had appointments to revisit all of the vendors hired for the wedding. Eager for the free publicity, the caterer and bakery had both agreed to do a special round of tastings just for the benefit of the camera crews. Then they would visit the florist, make a show of picking up the invitations and designing the programs, and even pretend to audition a handful of bands before “finding” the one they had already booked.
