For a while, I thought the luxuries of the penthouse—a private gym and pool, heated bathroom floors, a separate dressing room, and a library with a wood-burning fireplace and an incredible view—would be distraction enough, but after only one month in the place, they failed to excite me. I’d grown accustomed to Sebastian’s lavish lifestyle. To the emails from famous designers in my inbox. To seeing my face on tabloid covers that were discussing our “illicit affair.”
I tuck my phone in my clutch and exchange it for my red lipstick. Sebastian hates it. He’s never said so to my face, but every time he sees me pull the tube from my purse or reach for it while getting ready in the bathroom, he grimaces. So now, I wear it like an armor. Plus, the merlot shade perfectly matches my gown for the evening, which was designed and tailored specifically for me. It cost more than three months of rent on my old apartment, and yet, I long for my worn pair of jeans and leather sandals.
My clutch buzzes. I drop the lipstick tube back inside for touch-ups throughout the night, grab my phone, and read the text.
“Downstairs.”
When I was a teenager, my dad refused to let me leave the house on a date unless the boy came to the door to pick me up, and that was in high school. Now, as a grown woman, I’m responding to single word text messages while he waits in the car.
I can almost see my dad standing next to the elevator doors, arms crossed over his chest, shaking his head as I step inside and push the button for the basement level where Sebastian and his driver will be waiting in the off-street entryway.
My heels click across the cement as I make my way towards the car. The windows are tinted, so I can’t see Sebastian inside, but I can picture him—head down, scrolling through his phone looking at emails or text messages or stock prices. He probably doesn’t even realize I’m headed his way. And even if he did, he wouldn’t get out and open the door for me. “That’s the driver’s job,” he said when I mentioned it on our “first date.” I’d thought it would be a good shot for the press waiting outside the restaurant opening we were attending, but apparently, Sebastian Wayde serves no one. Not even the woman he supposedly loves.
I smile at the driver, a uniformed, gray-haired man in his sixties, and gather the bottom of my dress to one side as I slip into the back seat. Sebastian doesn’t look up from his phone as I sit down.
We are two city blocks away from the building before I say something. “Did you solve the problem at work?”
He looks up like he’s startled to see me, his dark brown eyes hazed over, lost in whatever was on his phone screen. “What?”
“The emergency at work,” I remind him.
Part of me wonders whether Sebastian’s “emergencies” aren’t less of the work variety and more of the sexual variety. He told me up front that he had no plans to stop sleeping around with as many women as he wanted, but one month in, I haven’t seen a single woman coming or going from his room. But he does slip away to “work” regularly. As I agreed to the arrangement, him being with another woman wouldn’t be a betrayal, but the thought of him being caught with someone else when he’s supposed to be engaged to me is embarrassing. Could we truly make this arrangement work for two years?
“Did you get it taken care of?” I ask.
“Oh, yeah,” he says, nodding and turning back to his phone. “All squared away.”
The twenty-minute drive from Manhattan to the reception venue in Brooklyn is quiet, the silence broken only by my meager attempts at conversation. I comfort myself with the idea that we will become more friendly over time. It is only the first month. Things are bound to be awkward until we find our rhythm.
“Whose wedding is this again?” I ask.
Sebastian doesn’t say anything, and I have to clear my throat for him to look up. “Oh. I’m not actually sure. You put it in my calendar. It’s your job to remember the details.”
Of course. Even though I’m now his fiancée, I’m still his assistant.
I pull my work phone out of my bag and scroll through his calendar.
“Alessia Pagonis and Giorgio Ricci.”
“That’s right,” Sebastian says. “Giorgio’s a prick. I slept with Alessia five years ago after another wedding. I don’t think I’ve seen her since.”
I can’t decide whether it’s more surprising that we’re going to the wedding of a man Sebastian dislikes or that he can remember the approximate date he slept with the bride. Sebastian makes little effort to remember things that don’t personally benefit him. Apparently, however, he keeps a running list of his conquests.
Sebastian still doesn’t open my door when we arrive at the venue, but he does pause on the curb long enough for me to move beside him and twine my arm around his elbow. His smile is wide, and he waves to the assembled press as we move down the white carpet leading to the solid wooden doors with tarnished metal handles.
I don’t have to pretend to cling to him like a woman in love. I may have become accustomed to the luxury of Sebastian’s life, but I don’t think I could ever get used to people wanting to take my photograph. My skin crawls when we stop and pose for a picture to go in the society pages of the paper, and I don’t relax until we step through the doors and blend in with the other guests.
The building is an old warehouse that has been remodeled into an industrial-chic event space complete with a salvaged wood dance floor, glass skylights, and exposed brick walls. Gauzy drapes and fairy lights hang from the walls and tables, stone fountains sit in each corner and the center of the room, and greenery and peonies flow down the centers of every table and pour off the ends and onto the floors like wax running down the side of a candle. It’s gorgeous. Any little girl’s dream wedding.
“I should make a round,” Sebastian says, dropping my arm and straightening his suit. “Will you be okay?”
Before I can answer, he walks away and disappears into the crowd.
I don’t know anyone except for Sebastian, and no one knows me, so I grab a flute of champagne from a passing waiter and take a walk around the room, admiring the décor. I amble along with no rush, catching snippets of conversations that inform me Alessia and Giorgio were married in Paris last month, and are having a reception on each coast for their friends and family to celebrate with them.
I can’t imagine having enough friends to fill up a reception guest list once, let alone twice. But then I remember Sebastian is at their wedding, and his only connection to them is hating Giorgio and having slept with Alessia, and I feel better. I look around the room at the smiling, well-dressed guests, and wonder how many of them even like the celebrated couple.
I’m on my third lap of the room and halfway through my second flute when my clutch buzzes. I dig my phone out: a text from Myla.
“So bummed I can’t see you tonight. Make sure that fiancé takes you somewhere nice. You deserve it, girl. Happy birthday!”
I’m too embarrassed to tell my best friend that the man I’m engaged to doesn’t know when my birthday is. It’s my job to remember those kinds of details for him, anyway, right? And I’m afraid responding to Myla will bring up a lot of emotions I’m not prepared to deal with in a public setting. So, I swallow my tears, drop my phone back in my clutch, and toss back the last of my champagne.
I look out over the crowd and spot the bride and groom. Alessia is tall and slim with glossy brown hair twisted in a loose braid. Her dress looks like something out of a fairy tale. As in, something an actual fairy would wear. It is low cut, draping across her chest and exposing most of her back. She looks radiant, and Giorgio can’t seem to look away.
Giorgio is radiant in his own right, cutting a fine figure in his designer suit. He has a mane of dark black hair fit for a shampoo commercial, and I’m positive their children will be born with full heads of hair more luxurious than mine. The couple are smiling from ear to ear, embracing their guests as they float through the room.
Then I see Sebastian. He cuts through the crowd like a Messiah figure parting the waters. Like cattl
e sensing a storm, people feel him coming and move out of the way.
He throws his arms wide and hugs the couple at the same time, ruffling Giorgio’s hair and planting a kiss on Alessia’s cheek. If there is any bad blood between them as Sebastian hinted at, I can see no sign of it. They look like the best of friends. It seems impossible that in less than two months, Sebastian and I could be hosting our own wedding reception; hugging people we don’t know or like, all the while not really even liking each other. It will be the sham of all shams.
A waiter passes by, and I strike out like a chameleon catching a fly, grabbing another glass of champagne and walking in the opposite direction towards the open bar. It’s my birthday, after all. I deserve to celebrate.
Chapter 2
Leon
I love weddings. A collection of wealthy people drinking free alcohol leads to many a questionable-but-entertaining decision. At the last wedding I attended, I saw two CEOs get in a fist fight over who deserved to take home the pretty cocktail server who had only been flirting with both of them for better tips. While they bloodied each other’s noses—a story each had to pay handsomely for to avoid being written about in the papers and discovered by their various girlfriends—I complimented the woman’s cool, collected attitude in the face of their brutishness and she gave me her number. We got coffee twice and slept together once before parting ways.
Alessia and Giorgio’s wedding promises to be just as eventful. I’ve only just walked through the door, and I’ve already rubbed shoulders with three of the wealthiest men in the city.
Giorgio is a finance guy, so his side of the guest list involves the same tired list of men who are at every party I attend—including the two men who came to blows over Carrie—but Alessia is a model. Pictures of her in lingerie and swimsuits are plastered on the sides of buildings all over the city, and I saw her in a perfume commercial last night between reruns of some sitcom from the eighties. She’s a famous model, but more importantly, she invited all of her famous model friends. If Dan and Edward fought over a cocktail server, I can’t wait to see what they’ll do for an underwear model. Maybe we can clear the dance floor and have a good old-fashioned joust.
“Sebastian!” someone behind me shouts, waving their hand over their head.
I follow their line of sight to see Sebastian Wayde, standing in the middle of a small crowd. He’s delighting the shameless ladder-climbers around him with what is no doubt an asinine story he’s told a hundred times before but keeps repeating because people are afraid not to laugh. I barely refrain from rolling my eyes and move in the opposite direction. The longer I can avoid the unavoidable confrontation with him, the better.
I turn around and run directly into the bride and groom. They are standing face to face, noses pressed together, whispering to one another, and I almost feel bad for interrupting them, but not bad enough not to do it; the sooner I offer my congratulations, the sooner my duties as their guest are through.
“Giorgio. Alessia.” I place a hand on each of their shoulders, turning their private moment into a group hug. “Congratulations!”
Giorgio looks up, startled, and then smiles. “Leon. How are you?”
“Boring,” I say with a laugh. “I’m not the one who just got married to the most beautiful woman in any room.”
Alessia presses her lips together and gives me a shy smile that I know is forced modesty. You don’t become a model without being the prettiest woman in the room, let alone a world-famous model. Still, admitting as much would be vanity, and Alessia knows that.
“You’re such a charmer,” she says.
“One of my many flaws.”
“I don’t think so,” Alessia says. “You are still single, aren’t you?”
I clutch my chest like she’s wounded me.
Alessia laughs. “I have a lot of friends here. Many of them would enjoy a charming, handsome man.”
“I’ll be sure to let you know if I see one of those around.” I slap a laughing Giorgio on the back. “Congratulations again, you two. Beautiful party for a beautiful couple.”
They raise their glasses to that, and I lift an empty hand. “I need a drink!”
I’d like something harder, but when a waiter passes with a tray of champagne, I can’t resist grabbing one. Neither, apparently, can Sebastian Wayde. His hand wraps around the same glass as mine, and we both pull away, similar looks of both shock and disapproval on our faces.
I recover faster than he does and grab the glass and hand it to him with a tip of my head. Sebastian narrows his eyes and bypasses my outstretched hand to grab his own drink. The waiter, to his credit, spins on the spot and flees the confrontation as quickly as possible. Good survival instincts, that one.
“Leon,” Sebastian says. He must have used up all of his party charisma because his voice is flat, nostrils flared.
“Sebastian.” I raise my glass in both a toast and a farewell as I turn away.
“Nice suit,” he snaps, walking around to block my escape, eyes assessing. “Did you get that from your father’s closet?”
The suit is new, and Sebastian knows it, but he can’t stop himself from picking a fight. He is a bully and the entire world is his schoolyard. The options are to worship him or face his wrath. I made my decision years ago.
“Yours is nice, too,” I say with a smile. “Well, good chat. Enjoy your evening.”
Sebastian stands to his full height and steps forward so he is towering over me. He wants me to cower or step away, but instead I take a casual drink of champagne and grin dumbly up at him.
“What? No comeback?” he says. “I thought being witty was your trademark?”
I’ve never been a violent man, but every time I see Sebastian Wayde, I want to punch him in the jaw. The moment I met him five years ago when we were both moving our way up the ranks of our respective companies, I knew I hated him. Something inside of me—an evolutionary instinct used by cavemen to detect assholes, perhaps—was repelled by him. I wanted nothing to do with him, and Sebastian never forgave me for not fawning all over him because of his last name. It certainly didn’t help that my leadership as CEO has made FutureTrust one of Wayde Bank’s biggest competitors.
So now, as if we are in some hip-hop dance movie, Sebastian wants to throw down every time we are in the same room. But I don’t have the same desire. In fact, I’d like to carry on as if he doesn’t exist, and I tell him as much.
“It is, but we all need a night off, and I suggest you do the same,” I say, stepping around him and patting him on the shoulder.
Sebastian jerks away from my touch, his lip curled up like I just gave him leprosy.
I suppress a laugh. “Hang up the burden of being the biggest dick in the room for one night. You deserve a break.”
Before he can say anything, I step into the crowd and strike up a conversation with a bald man and his wife who I’ve met before but whose names I can’t remember. Too afraid to reveal his true personality to the general public, Sebastian stalks away to no doubt find another group of men lower on the totem pole to stroke his ego.
I discover the bald man is Giorgio’s private accountant, and he offers me his business card three separate times before I can’t refuse again and accept it. I shove it in my pocket as I walk away, knowing I’ll forget it’s there and find it in six months when I wear the suit again, and head towards the bar.
The bartender makes me a quick rum and coke, and I make sure he sees me drop a fifty in the tip jar to ensure I receive expedient drinks for the rest of the night. Then, I turn back towards the dance floor, and almost like a curtain opening before a play, the dancers part, and I see a beautiful woman sitting alone across the room.
She’s perched on a tall stool, legs crossed delicately at the ankle, and wearing a stunning red dress. It’s open-necked, a thick band of fabric wrapping around one of her shoulders while the other shoulder is bare. It fits tightly across her chest but flares out at the waist. Between the silhouette and her long brown
hair that is pinned over her right ear and tumbling down her back in thick waves, she looks like a fifties pin-up model. I check several times to be sure she is truly alone because the fact that every man in the room isn’t flocking to her doesn’t make any sense to me.
When she wraps her dark red lips around the rim of her glass and tips her head back to take a drink, I quickly swallow back my own drink and cut across the room to the dessert table. I ask the server to cut me two slices and check over my shoulder to be sure the woman is still sitting alone. I’m almost surprised when I realize she is still there and not a figment of my imagination.
Cake in hand, I cut across the dance floor, dodging one couple who are a few thin layers of clothes away from procreating in public and a man who—either in jest or all seriousness, I can’t tell—is attempting to breakdance. Finally, I stop a few feet away from her.
It’s been a long time since I was last nervous about speaking to a woman. Wooing women has always been a gift. A mix of self-deprecating humor and God-given charm has served me well, and I’ve never had reason to doubt my abilities. However, this woman looks out of my league. The closer I come to her, the more I feel like it would be better to walk away and pretend both slices of cake were for me. But before I can make the decision to step forward and introduce myself or run away, she looks up at me.
Her green eyes are sparkling emeralds under the string lights, and I can see a smattering of freckles across her cheeks and shoulders. She raises her dark eyebrows in surprise, and then she smiles. The movement creates a small dimple on the right side of her pointed chin.
“Hello.”
I’ve never been attracted to a woman’s voice before, but apparently, there is a first time for everything. There is a lulling melody to the single word. Like the opening line of a ballad. It stirs something inside of me, and I step forward, one plate extended.
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