Greer was at Jill’s apartment on Society Street helping her decide what to wear when she saw her business mogul ex-lover in New York.
“This one or this one?” Jill held up a black polka-dotted dress and a red floral A-line skirt and peasant blouse.
“I think you should wear whatever makes you feel most confident,” said Greer.
Jill stared long and hard at her closet. “Then it’ll be this.” She pulled out a pair of soft cotton trousers with a wide black-and-white pinstripe. She paired them with a fitted gray tank top, black lace-up sandals, a wide-brim black felt hat, an oversized gray handbag, and super-chic sunglasses.
“This is my late grandfather’s hat,” she said. “He wore it in Sicily. It’ll give me courage.”
“You’ll look amazing in that.” And it was true. Greer was getting so excited. “Let’s go over my rules for getting through a flight without losing it. It works for me every time.”
Jill sat next to her on the bed. “Okay,” she said tentatively.
Greer had just finished advising her, and they were rolling Jill’s two bags out of the apartment, when a red Corvette with a dent on the side pulled up at the curb.
“That’s Aunt Rosaria’s car!” Jill said, shutting her apartment door behind her. They kept rolling. “I wonder why she’s here? She’s usually at work.”
“It’s lunchtime. Maybe she left for a little while and has come by to say hello.” Greer searched down the street for their cab, which should arrive any second.
“I don’t know,” Jill murmured. “She’s never done this.”
“Do you want to go back inside?”
Jill shook her head. “Let’s see what she says first.” And then she gasped.
Greer’s heart started racing. “What?”
But before Jill could answer, Aunt Rosaria walked up the sidewalk to them.
“Jilly?” Aunt Rosaria said. “You make bedrooms for sex. It’s not what your nonnas expected you to do, a good girl like you.”
“I know, Aunt Rosaria,” Jill said.
“We hear you are losing money,” Aunt Rosaria said.
“How?” Jill’s face paled. “I’ve never told a soul I was. Except for Greer.”
Aunt Rosaria waved at Greer. “We have our ways.” Greer didn’t say a word. “Okay, you left your checkbook on the kitchen table, and your nonnas grabbed it and looked.”
“They did?”
Uh-oh! Greer glanced at Jill, who was pale. Her hands gripped the handle of her luggage tight.
“Yes, they did,” Aunt Rosaria said, “and they have decided they want to be your silent partners. I want to be one, too.”
Jill bit her lip. Her face was scarlet. “I couldn’t ask that of them or you, Aunt Rosaria.”
Aunt Rosaria nodded so vigorously that Greer thought she’d shake her head off. “Yes, you can.”
“No,” said Jill. “It’s so sweet of you all. But I need partners who believe in my mission.”
Aunt Rosaria drew herself up tall. “We do. Jilly, you must make my living space my loving space. I ask you with no shame. Woman to woman.”
“Oh.” Jill gave a short, surprised laugh, her cheeks flushed. “You mean for you and Uncle Phillip?”
“Yes, Jilly,” Aunt Rosaria said, leveling a look at her niece, who dropped her eyes to the pavement.
“It would be my great honor, Aunt Rosaria,” Jill said quietly.
“Hmm.” There was an agonized silence. Then Aunt Rosaria spoke. “I want my bedroom painted gold. With a beautiful canopy bed that has draping red velvet curtains.”
“With gold tassels on the corners,” Jill exclaimed, then started to cry.
Aunt Rosaria took her face in her palms. “We believe in you. Your nonnas like your spunk. They always knew you were an artist inside. As did we all.” Her smile was tender. “Your late father’s tremendously talented daughter has found her calling, and he would be very proud to see you embrace it.”
Jill swiped away a tear, and then she flung her arms about her aunt’s neck. “Thank you. And I’m so glad you and Uncle Phillip are still interested in romance.”
Aunt Rosaria laughed. “Of course we are, snookums. And soon all our friends will be calling you, too. Wherever you going with that luggage, have fun! And remember you’re a Mancini and a Romano. You tell yourself that whenever you need courage, bella.”
“I will, Aunt Rosaria!” Jill called to her, and waved like a little kid.
When they finally got in the cab, happiness and relief were written all over Jill’s face. “I don’t have to hide anymore. I never did. I’m a Mancini and a Romano. I forgot how powerful that combination is.”
“This is your time,” Greer said, hugging her friend hard.
“I’ve got goose bumps,” Jill said, holding out her arm.
Greer had them, too. “Hey, can I call your sister? Prep her a bit for what you’re about to do? And then put you on the phone to finish up with her? Don’t you want her to be rooting for you?”
Jill looked at the ceiling of the cab and bit her lip, then back at Greer. “Okay,” she said. “She’ll be shocked.”
“And she’ll also be proud,” Greer said.
Jill wiped at her eye. “She will, won’t she?”
“Can we also let Miss Thing and Macy in on it?”
Jill nodded.
Greer got the ball rolling, very diplomatically but also with faith that she’d be given the benefit of the doubt for keeping Jill’s secret, and handed the phone off. By the time Jill had finished talking to Ella, she’d said, “Heck, tell Momma, too. And the nonnas. And the sisters. I want everyone’s good vibes. Love you!”
On Interstate 26, right before the airport, Greer received a text from Ella: Thank you for helping my sister, was all it said, with three heart emojis. She couldn’t help smiling to herself. All was well. Her colleagues—her best friends—were the best.
An hour and a half later, she and Jill were in their seats in coach on a Delta flight to JFK. Jill had done beautifully with Greer’s instructions. Greer had told her that every time she walked onto an airplane, she looked left into the cockpit and silently urged the pilot to fly them safely to their destination. And if the pilot wasn’t there, she then had to look at the flight attendant and say, “Please tell the pilot I wish him or her a very pleasant trip.” And if the flight attendant wasn’t available, she had to stop at Row 2 in first class and say hello to whomever was sitting in the right aisle seat. Once, she told Jill, it had been Sylvester Stallone.
“It works, my method,” she reminded Jill at the last minute when they were walking down the ramp to board the plane, and Jill started humming too loud, so loudly that her fellow passengers looked at her strangely. “I’ve never been in a plane crash. And you know seeing Sylvester Stallone in the second row that one time proves it’s effective. He’d never let a plane go down. Everyone knows that.”
“Right,” said Jill, her lips white.
“Don’t forget you’re a Mancini and a Romano,” Greer added.
That last bit seemed to do the trick way more than Greer’s OCD crash-avoidance strategy. Jill cried only during take-off and when the wing flaps came up and the wheels came down right before landing at JFK Airport. By the time the wheels hit the ground, she was fine.
“I think I can do this,” she said. “Usually, they have to knock me out.”
“The more you do it, the better you get,” Greer said. “And it helps, too, if you travel with someone who’s scared to fly. Like I wasn’t afraid even once, because I was worried you’d be.”
Jill brightened. “Then that means I’ll be fine a lot,” she said. “My nonnas hate flying. I’ll take them with me wherever I go. And when I teach them how to not be afraid, I’ll bring Momma. She hates flying, too. I have a whole list of people I can take with me.”
“And you can help them all get better,” Greer said. “By the time you’re finished with your list, you won’t need anyone with you at all. You’ll be awesome.”
The rest of their day was filled with spa and beauty appointments in Manhattan. Jill had decided to go after her man the following morning and tell him she loved him. The day dawned bright and sunny, and after a small breakfast which Jill only picked at, Greer walked her nervous friend into the Jacob Javits Convention Center. She would leave her outside the room where a conference lecture was streaming live. Her business mogul was in there. He was sitting on a panel, so if Jill interrupted, at least the whole presentation wouldn’t fall apart. He could excuse himself for a moment.
And if he got angry at Jill’s interruption, that was Jill’s answer: She wasn’t really the woman he loved.
Jill put her hand to her mouth. “Oh! I hear him!”
Greer laid a hand on her arm. “Just speak from your heart.”
Jill nodded. “You’ll be watching on livestream?”
“Yes. I’ll do it right from here. Give me a minute to get my laptop set up.”
So Jill waited. She was practically quivering. Greer worked as fast as she could. Thirty seconds later, her screen was bright, and she was linked to the workshop inside.
“Oh, my gosh,” said Jill, almost crying when she looked at the screen. “There he is! What a hunk!”
Greer smiled. He looked like a very brainy nerd to her in his jeans and with the pocket protector in his white button-down shirt and freshly parted, wet hair. But he was adorable in his own way. There was a soul mate for everyone. Jill’s just also happened to be a billionaire.
“You look fabulous,” Greer reminded her.
“I’m ready,” Jill said, her voice firm again.
“Good luck,” Greer said. “I’m proud of you.”
“Thanks,” the youngest Mancini sister said, and then with one last look over her shoulder at Greer, she opened the door to the room and was gone.
* * *
Another door opened at the same time in Charleston, South Carolina.
“Sorry,” Miss Thing said at the fourteen-foot-high entryway of Two Love Lane. “She’s in New York. She’s with a client.”
Ford had gone straight to Two Love Lane from the airport. “And she’ll be back when?” He tried not to be agitated.
“Tomorrow night.” Miss Thing smiled. “Come in and have some tea, hon. I have cookies, too. Almond poppyseed thumbprint with raspberry jam.”
“Thanks for the kind offer,” he said, “but I’ve got to get to New York.” He pulled out his phone to call a cab but hesitated. “I mean it,” he added. “I appreciate your not slamming the door in my face.”
The stylish if offbeat office manager came out on the porch, resplendent in another matronly high-end sheath dress, this one brown silk shot with gold thread. She had a demure matching feather fascinator perched on her curls. “We don’t treat people that way at Two Love Lane,” Miss Thing drawled. “Especially a potential soul mate for one of my girls.”
He put his phone back in his pocket. “You think I might be Greer’s soul mate?”
“I think there’s a strong possibility.” She shot him an affectionate smile. “The fact that you came back to win her speaks volumes. That’s why you’re here, isn’t it?”
“Yes, actually,” he said, “it is.”
“Are you in a huge rush?” Miss Thing indicated the porch swing. “I wanted to tell you something that might help you.”
“I’d love to hear it,” he said.
They sat on the swing.
“Greer called her parents a couple days ago,” his elegant companion said. “She told Macy, Ella, and me that she’d had a very eye-opening conversation with them. She asked them if they loved each other. She mentioned that she never got the feeling that they did when she was growing up.”
“And?”
“Her mother said that she was right. Theirs was an arranged marriage. They had tremendous affection for each other that some would call love. But it had never been the romantic kind.” Miss Thing made a sad face.
“Poor Greer, hearing this after all these years,” he said.
His companion sighed. “Greer told us it was freeing, in a way. Her parents both assured her they were happy and would always stay together because they couldn’t imagine life without each other.”
“Ah.” He wasn’t sure what to say. If they were happy, who was he to judge?
“They also said that having Greer was the best thing in their lives they’d ever done, and they didn’t want her to marry anyone she didn’t love. They apologized for always pushing Wesley on her, and her mother in particular said she never should have chastised Greer for not marrying him, which she did not long ago, the morning of the auction.”
They were swinging fairly high now. The longer she spoke, the more Miss Thing pushed her feet hard against the porch floor.
“I hope her mother’s apology helped,” he said.
“It did. But the kicker was that”—Miss Thing paused—“the kicker was that they’d both heard of her wedding gown contest. They hadn’t called her because she hadn’t called them about it, and they assumed—rightly—that she was worried they’d be worried.”
The swing slowed down.
“How did they hear about it?” he asked.
“Through Wesley’s parents. Anyway, they thought it ironic that she was technically engaged for a while to a man she didn’t know. And they prayed it would end. They didn’t want her falling into the same trap they did.”
Ford sighed. “So they were happy when she told them it was over?”
Miss Thing looked at him for a few seconds. “She didn’t say that. She told them she loved you desperately and wanted to be with you. And she asked them to come to Charleston to help her get through the heartache of your breakup that wasn’t even really a breakup. Because, you know, your engagement wasn’t really an engagement. It was a convenience. She said she only wished they were coming down for her wedding. With you as her honest-to-goodness groom. She didn’t care about the gown anymore. All she wanted, she told them, was you.”
“Good Lord.” He sighed. “I really messed things up, didn’t I?”
Miss Thing allowed him that small interjection but then continued her smooth narration of events. The swing stayed stationary. “So Mr. and Mrs. Jones are arranging for someone to take care of the dairy herd and will soon be on their way. They’ll get here about the same time Greer does tomorrow night, and they’ll ride home from the airport together.”
Ford looked at the plank porch floor, then back up at his seatmate. “Thank you for telling me that.”
Miss Thing’s eyes shone with tears. “You’re welcome.” She held out her hand.
He lifted it and kissed it. “You’re a true lady,” he said.
She inclined her head and said, “And I believe you’re a true gentleman.”
“I’m going now,” he said, and stood. “Back to New York. I only landed there five hours ago from Gatwick. Would you mind giving me Greer’s hotel information?”
Miss Thing paused. “You know, I think it best you stay here. At the moment, she’s fully engrossed in working with her client, and who knows how available she’ll be? You may stay at my apartment—”
“That’s all right, thanks. I can bunk with my old mates if I have to. They already know I’m here. But I really want to go to New York.”
“All righty.” Miss Thing smiled. “Not to say you’d be an unwelcome distraction there, Lord Wickshire”—she paused, knowing full well he’d be taken aback at her calling him by his title—“but I really do think so much could be done here. In Charleston.” She lofted a brow. “Do you get my drift?”
He paused. “No. Sorry. All I can think to do here, while she’s gone, is sock Pierre Simons in the jaw.”
Miss Thing looked both ways, as if someone were listening. “I really should have been a matchmaker myself,” she whispered. “Let me say it again: There is much you could do to prep for Greer’s homecoming. Apart from socking Pierre in the jaw. In fact, you might enlist his help. He owns a women’s clothing store. It might come in handy. It’s where a certain gown—” And then she waggled her penciled-in brows.
He finally figured it out. “You’re saying—” The more he thought about it, the more he loved the idea. “You’re brilliant.”
She nodded vigorously. “Yes, Lord Wickshire. I admit that sometimes I am. But time is of the essence. I’ll do anything, and so will Macy and Ella, to help you.”
He stood stunned for a second, and then he took off down the steps. “Thank you, Miss Thing,” he called over his shoulder.
She blew a kiss at him. “You’re welcome, darlin’!”
He got on the phone and called Anne right away.