I bared my teeth at her and she laughed again. I could only watch her, fascinated by the color of her skin, the texture of her hair, the charmed loveliness of her face.
“How do you do it?” I said.
“Do what?”
“I don’t think I had this kind of stamina even when I was eighteen. You’re a magician of the highest order.”
She smiled and softly bit her lip, a tendril of shyness touching her manner, which made me smile.
“Don’t even pretend to be shy, sweetheart. You know you’re a genius at this.”
“Am I?” That half-bashful grin. She rolled on to her side and reached out, tracing a finger across the line of my jaw, softly playful. “I wouldn’t know. It’s all new to me. I have no basis for comparison except you, my wild animal of a man.”
I rolled to face her, touching her hair. “You are incredibly beautiful,” I whispered. The silky strands were so soft they could have belonged to some mythical creature, as though she’d just swum up from Atlantis, or ridden in on a pure-white unicorn. “When are you going to marry me?”
Her eyes rounded. Her smile was still there, still playful, and something more. “I already said I’d marry you. Any time you want.”
I had never, ever thought of myself as having even a single romantic bone in my body, but now I was so lovestruck my heart skipped a beat. “I had thought to ask you if you wanted to do it on Saturday. At the beach house in Water Mill. It’s close – only an hour – and it’s still warm enough to have a wedding outside, if you wanted to. We’d have time to get you a dress. A cake. Whatever you want. Absolutely anything you want.”
“A dress,” she mused, like she’d never considered her own wedding dress before. This was typical of Lila. When other little girls were busy daydreaming about their fairy-tale wedding Lila had been otherwise engaged. Keeping warm or sewing patches over the holes in her clothes or trying to hide from predators.
I was going to buy her the most exquisite, expensive wedding dress in the world.
“After work today,” I said. “I’ll book us an appointment at Saks. I’ll tell them to bring a selection of their best. Twenty-five maybe. Only top designers, new season. You can pick whichever ones you want to try on.”
Here we went. “Alexander. You don’t have to do that –”
I put my finger on her lips. “Shh. Wrong. I have to buy you the most beautiful dress in the world since you’re the most beautiful woman. It’s only right.”
She held my finger and kissed it. “You’re so nice to me,” she whispered, as though awed by it, still.
“Are there some people you’d like to invite?”
She frowned a little. “I don’t …” The sentence lost its momentum almost before it began.
“I doesn’t matter,” I said, understanding immediately. She’d been too busy studying and hiding from her past to accumulate a long list of friends. She had one friend I knew of. The only one she’d ever mentioned to me. “Eva. That’s enough, if you want. You’ll need a maid of honor. And I’ll have Jake as my best man, and we’ll have a minister – or priest or rabbi or shaman whatever it is you require – and that’ll be all. Okay?”
“I’m agnostic,” she said.
“Really? I never knew that about you.” I didn’t care if she was a devil-worshipping fucking Martian. I mean, I was glad she wasn’t, but nothing would have swayed me at this point.
“I tried praying a couple times when I was younger. It didn’t really work out so I kind of gave all that up.”
“I guess that’s fair enough.”
“What about you? Are you religious?”
“No.” Not since I started worshipping at her altar, that is. “I went to a fancy Catholic prep school when I was very young but that all came to a screeching halt when my father went bankrupt. And then died. I haven’t stepped foot inside a church for at least twenty years.”
“Let’s do it on the beach,” she said, rolling onto her back, looking up at the ceiling. There seemed to be a sadness creeping into her manner. Some memory, maybe. Some regret.
I moved over her, crouching on all fours. I looked into her eyes. “We’ll do it by the water. We’ll have lanterns and lots of candles. White roses. Flowers everywhere. What’s your favorite flower, Lila?”
“Peonies. Pink ones.”
“We’ll have a thousand pink peonies. We’ll have a band and good food. Wine. Music. We’ll invite my neighbors – they’re a bunch of twenty-something musicians who love a party. We’ll dance and laugh and we’ll say our vows and have a beautiful night. And then we’ll be married and I’ll take care of you for the rest of our lives. I’ll love you every day and night and I’ll make all your dreams come true.”
I watched that sadness in her eyes melt away, for now. I watched her smile. And I vowed to never, ever disappoint her.
I hoped to God I could keep that vow.
Lila
The week passed quickly. I continued to work with Ashley and was so busy I barely had time to think.
Shawna did not return. Apparently, she had a three-day shoot in Paris and would be back at Skyscraper on Monday. By then, I’d be working over in the Arts department. Alexander had suggested I do a week in each department (except Political Affairs, it was implied) so I could get a glimpse into each. After that, I’d “create my dream job.” He wanted me to invent the job I felt would fit my skills and my aspirations, as I saw it. I want you to wake up each morning excited to be alive and in love, and go to bed each night so happy and satisfied and secure that you can only smile at your devoted, besotted husband. I wasn’t sure exactly how to thank him for all his generosity and even more importantly, for his love. Actually, there were a few things I knew he liked – loved, in fact – so I could do my best to make sure he was as happy and satisfied as I was.
After work on Tuesday, Alexander and I drove in his limo to Saks Fifth Avenue, where we was greeted by a team of wedding dress salespeople in a private fitting room. I was shown twenty-five new-season designer gowns, all exactly my size, miraculously, like they’d been made for me or something. I chose a Vera Wang that was the most perfect thing I’d ever laid eyes on. It fit me like a dream. I’d never been terribly prone to princess fantasies but this dress made me feel like the most beautiful woman who’d ever walked the face of the earth, and Alexander made a point of confirming this not once or twice but at least a dozen times. After Saks, we drove directly to Tiffany & Co., where we were again taken to a private room. Alexander had already chosen a ring, but he wanted to make sure I was pleased with it. The sales guy, all decked out in Armani and suave subservience, presented twelve other diamond wedding bands, just in case I didn’t like the first one. (I liked the first one.) And after work on Wednesday, the limo again escorted us around town, first to a high-end wedding cake baker, then to a florist, and finally to a caterer, all of which presented us with and promised to deliver only the finest money could buy.
I had no idea about the price tag of anything. Alexander must have ordered all the salespeople to never, under any circumstances, mention money. Everything was paid for invisibly, as though this fabulous dress, this solid gold band with embedded diamonds that matched my engagement ring, this five-tier cake (decorated with pink peonies) and seven-course meal, to be served with top-rated French, Californian and New Zealand wines (Alexander, as it turned out, knew his wines) were free.
Eva had agreed to be my maid of honor and Alexander even called her – she told me this after the fact – and basically commanded her (she said) to go to Saks and pick out any dress she wanted and put it on his tab. She’d literally screamed in my ear before giving me a ten-minute description of her dress – a pale purple Zac Posen – and its price tag: four thousand eight hundred dollars. “I’ve never owned a dress this expensive. I haven’t owned a car this expensive. I’ve never owned anything this expensive,” she’d said.
Yeah, I wanted to say, it takes a little getting used to.
So go ahead and judge
me. Oo, it’s so hard, you’re thinking. It’s so tough to be engaged to a billionaire. To be lavished with expensive gifts and jewelry and clothes and trips to Paris. Houses all over the world. Luxury beyond belief. And a car that I’d never even seen. A Porsche or something.
It wasn’t tough. It was just weird. Different. Liberating and at the same time scary, in a strange, intangible way. Like I was bartering pieces of myself I wasn’t sure I wanted to part with. There were actually times I wished Alexander was poor, like me. Just for a while. Just so we could be on equal footing for a time, to see what it felt like. But I was only human. Sure, most of the time, I just appreciated the plenty and the opulence and counted myself lucky on every imaginable front.
My deep-dark reservations were lingering symptoms of my upbringing, I knew. Little corners of my soul hated vulnerability. I’d been forced to stop relying on other people when I was seven years old. Always, I had to have an out, an escape route that I could control. It was the escape routes that had kept me sane, and alive.
With Alexander, I could let my guard down, though. Or at least try. Some days it was easier to do this than others.
It was Thursday night. I looked at my watch: 7:22. I was supposed to be meeting Alexander upstairs in his (our) apartment at 7:30. I’d worked late with Ashley, preparing a shoot she was calling “Hell’s Kitchen Hobo” that would be published in the November issue. The photographs were of models dressed to fit the scenes of a Hell’s Kitchen background: surrounded by kids playing baseball on the street, busking in the subway, playing chess against an old-man opponent in a back alley, ordering food at a deli counter. All supremely stylishly done in a way I could never have guessed at. It had been fascinating watching her put it all together. She was an absolute perfectionist. And she had a definite vision, which, after a lot of hard work, was beginning to shine through. It had been a long day.
As I stepped into the elevator my phone rang and I fished it out of my bag, hoping it was Alexander. I hadn’t talked to him since this morning. But the screen read Eva.
“Hey,” I said. I’d seen her only once since Alexander and I had returned from Paris, for a quick cup of coffee, but I’d spoken to her several times during the week about various details relating to the wedding.
“I was thinking.” Eva always did this. She never bothered with a greeting. She just launched into whatever it was she had on her mind. “Since you’re not having a formal rehearsal dinner or anything, I thought we should at least do something casual. Tomorrow night. I want to take you out. To celebrate your last night as an unmarried woman. We’ll hit the clubs and have a little fun.”
“I think we were planning to meet Jake for dinner tomorrow night.”
She was already acclimatizing to my attached-to-Alexander-at-the-hip mentality and she’d given up trying to recruit me for a girls’ night out. I’d be doing exactly the same thing if I’d landed that billionaire beefcake, was what she’d had to say about that. “He can come too. We’ll make it a double date,” she joked, adding, “Is he cute?”
I wasn’t sure how to reply to that one. Actually, yes, Eva. Jake’s not only cute but totally drop-dead gorgeous. He’s also a sweetheart. And, well, we’ll find out the length of his prison sentence tomorrow morning. Let me set you up. Personally, I thought Jake Wolfe was one of the most caring, gentle souls I’d ever known. But that soul just happened to be all wrapped up in crazy turmoil and rough edges and a badboy veneer.
Now that she mentioned it, I felt a little hesitant to even introduce them. I wasn’t sure why. Maybe because I knew – I knew – that as soon as she met him, Eva would want to hook up with him. She was a fun-loving girl and Jake was, well, hot. I wasn’t sure if I was looking after her best interests or his, but I could already see the writing on the wall. She’d flirt with him, he’d take her up on it in a casual I’m-about-to-go-to-jail-so-might-as-well-have-fun kind of way. She’d fall for him because he’s a hunky, sensitive badboy with a heart of gold. He wouldn’t return her phone calls because he’s distracted by, well, jail and she’d end up getting her heart broken or some such. I just had a feeling.
But it wasn’t up to me to control other people’s lives. They were both consenting adults who knew how to handle themselves. I should leave other people’s love lives up to them and concentrate on my own. Which was, to put it mildly, intense. I’d hardly slept last over the past few nights – who am I kidding?: over the past few months. At least in Paris we’d been able to sleep all day if we chose to. Now that we were back at work the schedule was getting a little gruelling. And Alexander had mentioned some secret, special plan for tonight that I was half-excited about and half-ready to tell him I just wanted to go to bed – to sleep.
I left out the part about Jake’s looks. “That sounds like fun. Where do you want to meet?”
We made a plan and I hung up. The elevator doors binged open and I stepped out to the penthouse apartment lobby. I found my key and let myself in, wondering if he’d be home yet.
It was quiet. Claude must have left already, and Alexander wasn’t in the living room, or kitchen.
The apartment was perfectly lit, styled, arranged. Ambient lighting complimented the night sky of the city down below. An open bottle of red wine, two glasses and a large, freshly-prepared antipasto platter sat on the coffee table. I took off my shoes and poured myself some wine. And I cut off a slice of brie and scooped a tiny silver teaspoon of caviar onto it. Then I ate a few olives. I took a sip of the wine.
The only sound was that silent whitenoise of a cocooned, perfect safety. We were sealed away in this high-up opulence. No one could touch us here.
I felt good. Happy. That this was my life. I could appreciate every twinkling light, every morsel of food, every sip of the silky, tannic wine, with the gratefulness of someone who had always, before now, gone without.
I wanted Alexander. Now that I was away from the bustle and rush of Skyscraper, I suddenly missed him with a ferocity that washed over me. I wanted to tell him how safe he made me feel. I wanted to show him and share with him and lavish him with my love, to make sure he knew. That was the thing about us: we had filled a void in each other and this new feeling of completion was more addictive than any drug.
I walked up the stairs. The bedroom door was closed and I opened it quietly. I could hear him talking. On the phone. He was sitting in the alcove off his room, a roomy space which he used as a private office. Before I could even hear what he was saying, I could tell by his tone he was pissed off about something, and agitated. He was making an effort to placate whoever it was on the other end of the phone.
“Don’t say that. I’m not listening to that kind of bullshit. I mean it. You don’t know her. You don’t know anything.” Instantly, I knew exactly who he was talking to. I could sense it, and it became clear soon enough that my instincts had guessed right. “I know you don’t want to accept it but you have to,” he said, gruffly. “I’ve already told you: it’s over. I don’t know what else I can say to you to get you to understand –” A brief pause. “No. It wouldn’t change anything. There’s no point. Meeting with you won’t change my mind. I made my decision and I’m – ” Another long pause, into which he sighed heavily. “Look, crying’s not going to – No. I can’t. I won’t. You have to accept it, Shawna. Deal with it and move on. It’s over.”
I could have felt angry. I could have walked out. I could have stood there and listened, since he was still unaware of my presence, to hear how the conversation played out. To see if he would put a foot wrong, if he would waver it his commitment to me, if he would agree to see her and hear her out. I could have cringed at the thought of her accusations. Her name-calling, which I had no doubt she was laying out to Alexander in all their gory details. You gold-digging fucking whore. I know your type. You’re just after him for his money.
I felt like taking his phone and calmly saying into it, No. I’m not after him for his money. I’m after him for his heart and his head and his hands. His arms. His eyes.
He’s mine.
I did none of those things.
Instead, I walked over to where he was sitting.
At first he didn’t notice me. His focus was still out across the night-lit horizon as he carried on his frustrated conversation. I could see that his clenched fist was resting on his thigh.
I touched my fingertips to his hair, smoothing along the side of his head. He looked up at me, and his eyes widened when he saw me. I leaned over him, gently, silently kissing his cheek. Then I pulled back.
I didn’t say anything and neither did he. But her voice was there, between us. This seemed to aggravate Alexander beyond belief.
“Look,” he said brusquely into his phone. “I have to go now. I’ve told you how it is. It’s over. There’s nothing more to say. Goodbye.” With that, Alexander ended the call, muted his phone, and tossed it aside. “Hey,” he said to me, his voice dark-edged, unsettled.
He was in a volatile mood, I could see this. I knew this mood. I’d seen it before. And the feverish glint in his black eyes was enough to pique a tiny, suppressed sense of self-preservation in me. He stood up. He looked huge, hulking, strong. He was shirtless and the play of his muscles, taut and powerful, was riveting. If I didn’t know him so well and trust him so implicitly, I could have allowed a whispered thread of intimidation to settle. Just from the size and obvious strength of him. As it was, I let the feeling slide, and forced it to fall away.
I concentrated on his beauty. The waved flicks of his thick dark hair. The heavenly shape of his mouth, even as he sneered. “I suppose you’re mad at me, are you?” he scowled.
“No, not mad. Other things, but not mad.”
“I’m done answering her phone calls. She keeps asking to see me, but I’ve told her no.” He went silent, like he was waiting for an emotional outburst.
“Okay,” I said.
He stared down at me, as though challenging me.
HONEY GIRL: BILLIONAIRE (Book 2) Page 8
