chapter 14

On Wednesday morning, right after Lila’s very grateful customer picked up his stealth replacement wedding ring (“This is great—thank you . . . and don’t tell anyone, okay?”), a deliveryman arrived at the Naked Finger requesting Lila’s signature in exchange for a big white carton.

“Ooh.” Lila scrawled her name on the clipboard and seized the package. “Must be your dress for Friday.”

Brighton looked up from the marquise-diamond cross pendant she was designing. “Already?”

“This is my mother working her magic,” Lila assured her. “This is what she does. It’s her love, it’s her life, it’s her job. That’s why she wanted me to text her those photographs of you.” She grabbed a pair of scissors and carefully sliced the packing tape. “I guarantee you that the gown in this box will flatter your body type and skin tone.”

“She can get all that from a few cell phone snapshots?” Brighton marveled.

“Heck, yeah. Oh, and you better accessorize exactly the way she tells you, or I’ll never hear the end of it.” Lila dug through multiple layers of tissue paper to reveal a dainty black floor-length gown with a wide square neckline and black Chantilly lace cap sleeves. The label said Estevez, a designer Brighton had never heard of.

“It’s from the 1950s,” Lila explained. “Check out the back. Sexy.” She pointed to the lace panel that would show most of Brighton’s back.

The dress was beautiful but appeared so delicate, Brighton was afraid to touch it. “How am I supposed to wear a bra with this?”

Lila was still admiring the stitching. “You’re not.”

“Uh . . .”

“Have no fear.” Lila glanced up with a reassuring smile. “My mom knows all the tricks that models use to look perky in backless dresses.”

Brighton rubbed her forehead. “This is going to involve duct tape, Krazy Glue, and tears, isn’t it?”

“Let’s figure out what to do with your hair.” Lila plucked a folded sheet of paper out of the box. “Oh, never mind. My mom included detailed instructions. With diagrams.”

Brighton scanned the step-by-step “hair staging” manual with a mounting sense of panic. “This looks complicated.”

“It’ll be fine,” Lila assured her.

“You know what’s not complicated? A basic, bra-friendly little black dress from Ann Taylor. I could still go to the outlet mall—”

“No outlet malls for you.” Lila cut her off with a shake of her head. “You need to step up your game.”

“I have no game,” Brighton pointed out. “Ask anyone.”

“Sweet pea, you’re Mrs. Sorensen now. You’d better start acting like it.”

•   •   •

Wednesday night at the Whinery started out pretty much like every other night at the Whinery—lots of loud music, free-flowing cocktails, and women looking to shake things up.

“Now, remember,” Brighton instructed Kira as they approached the entrance. “Your job is to talk to Jake and then give me your honest, unbiased opinion.”

“Got it.” Kira fluffed her bouncy blond hair and adjusted the straps of her black sundress.

“Profile him,” Brighton urged.

“I think you’re mistaking me for an FBI agent on a network crime drama.”

“Don’t play coy,” Brighton said. “I know you do personality assessments.”

“Yes—in my office. With standardized assessment instruments that have been statistically normed and validated. And also with informed consent.”

“Can’t you just ask a few leading questions?” Brighton begged. “I’m counting on you to snap me back to reality here.”

“I’ll do my very best.”

Brighton leveled her gaze at her friend. “And if you see the merest hint of pathology or a personality disorder—”

“Hi.” Jake was waiting for them at the front door of the bar, wearing a black T-shirt and jeans. He turned to Kira with a smile. “You must be Kira.”

Kira shook his hand and turned to Brighton. “I approve.”

“What?” Brighton hissed. “You haven’t even asked one question!”

“Don’t need to.” Kira gave Jake a thorough once-over. “Have fun, you lucky girl.”

“Hey! You’re supposed to be objective! Interrogate him! Profile him!”

“You didn’t tell me it was karaoke night. I’m going to ask if they have Jewel’s ‘Foolish Games.’ That’s my go-to karaoke jam.” She dismissed Jake with a friendly wave. “Delightful to meet you.”

“You, too,” he replied.

Kira practically skipped into the bar, humming the Jewel tune as she went.

“And there goes my sensible therapist friend, Kira.” Brighton moved closer to Jake and let all her hesitation and worry evaporate in a cloud of dopamine. “Why do you smell like dust?”

“I was working on-site all day.” He brushed her hair back from her face. “I showered, but the grit clings to your hair.”

She glanced at the jeans. “You were working on-site? Like, hard labor?”

“Yeah.”

“But why?”

“It’s fun. Sometimes a man needs to work with his hands.”

She considered how she felt when she became absorbed in the process of creating designs and pouring wax molds for new jewelry pieces. “But aren’t you the CEO or whatever?”

“That’s what’s great about being CEO. I get to stack cement block if I want to.”

“Living the dream.”

“Every day.” He took in her black pencil skirt and lace-trimmed blue top. “You look great.” He ushered her inside, where groups of tourists, local residents, and bar-hopping college kids were laughing and talking at deafening decibels.

“We can go somewhere quieter,” Jake yelled into her ear. “Like a shuttle launch or a prison riot.”

“No, let’s stay.” She pointed out a table in the corner. “Lila’s coming later and she’s going to introduce me to some of her friends.”

As they approached the bar, a gorgeous, buxom blonde who looked about twenty-five years old wrapped her hands around Jake’s forearm.

“You’re Jake Sorensen,” she announced. Brighton could smell a hint of wine on the woman’s breath. “I was wondering when you’d show up.” She used her shoulders like a fulcrum to wedge Brighton out of the way.

Jake gently but firmly pried the blonde’s hand off his arm and stepped back to steady Brighton.

Undaunted, the blonde resuctioned herself to him. “I’ve been waiting all night for you to show up.”

Brighton couldn’t help herself. “Do you two know each other?”

“No.” It was like the blonde could hear Brighton but couldn’t see her. She focused completely on Jake. “But I know who you are. Everybody knows who you are.”

Jake turned to Brighton. “Last chance for that shuttle launch.”

The blonde finally deigned to acknowledge Brighton with a nod. “Listen, I see that you’ve already staked your claim or whatever, but I just need to borrow him for a few hours. It’s an emergency.”

The woman’s words were flippant, but her eyes were melancholy. Brighton felt a twinge of sympathy. People who had just had their hearts broken didn’t always act reasonably—especially around Jake Sorensen. She’d learned that firsthand. “Bad breakup?” she asked.

“Gut-wrenching.” The blonde gripped Brighton’s arm with the same intensity she’d gripped Jake’s. “I feel like my heart’s been ripped out of my chest, flung on the ground, and run over by a bus. Twice.”

Brighton jerked her chin toward the bartender, who was mixing up a fresh batch of pink cocktails. “You know what helps with that? A little champagne, a little vermouth, and a lot of singing Nancy Sinatra at the top of your lungs.”

“Yeah, no.” The blonde released Brighton and sank her manicured fingernails into Jake again. “I’m way past vermouth and Nancy Sinatra. I need this guy.”

Brighton instinctively stepped away from his side. This was the natural order of the world. Who the hell was she to compete with a twenty-five-year-old who probably had several Maxim shoots on her résumé?

Jake shook off the blonde and reclaimed Brighton’s hand. He told the other woman, “This is my wife, Brighton.”

The woman’s glossy pink lips parted in horror. “You’re married?”

Jake nodded. “It’s a recent development.”

And all that anguish turned into frustration. “But . . . but I drove all the way from New Hampshire to find you!” She glanced at Brighton, her eyes wild and desperate. “Heart. Bus. Twice.”

Brighton went up on tiptoe and whispered to Jake, “It’s okay, you know. If you want to go with her.”

His brows snapped together. “What?”

“Well, I mean, it was bound to happen.”

His shoulders tensed under her fingertips. “What?”

“Just because I got pissed at my fiancé and ran off to Vegas doesn’t mean I expect you to—”

Jake rested one hand on the nape of her neck and hustled her past the blonde, past the bar, through the stock room, and out the back door of the building.

“What was that about?” Brighton asked as they arrived in the dimly lit alley lined by brick walls and Dumpsters.

He just stared at her, his arms folded, and she finally glimpsed the ruthless, cunning CEO who had built an empire from the ground up. He was using silence as a power play. She knew the appropriate counterstrategy was to stare right back and wait him out.

“You are my wife,” he finally said. The planes and angles of his face looked sharper in the shadows.

The grimmer his expression looked, the more nonchalant she felt. Inexplicable but undeniable—kind of like everything else between them. “Yes, I’m your wife—for now—but I’m not your warden. If you want to go make out with some heartbreak tourist in need—”

“I don’t.” He was clearly struggling to keep his temper in check. “While we are married, I am not going to make out with anyone other than my spouse. And, so we’re clear, neither are you.”

Her eyes widened. “I had no idea you were so old-fashioned.”

“Now you do.”

They faced off for a moment in the dark, damp alley.

This time, she broke the silence. “I don’t understand you at all.”

“I don’t understand you, either.” He took a step toward her. “Why would you want me to go off with another woman?”

“It’s not that I want you to.” She struggled to explain. “I just don’t want to tell you that you can’t.”

He slid his hands around her waist and down to her hips. “I’m with you.”

“For now,” she murmured.

He leaned down and brushed his lips across hers. “Right now, I am yours and you are mine.”

And his tongue was in her mouth and she was tugging up his shirt and a few minutes of making out, neither one of them was in any condition to go back inside and pretend to be having a civilized evening.

“Back to my place?” he murmured as he kissed his way from her earlobe to her collarbone.

She closed her eyes, breathing in his scent and reveling in the feel of his body against hers. “You’re very persuasive.”

“Say yes,” he urged.

She felt so close to him, so swept up in the urgency of the moment, that for a moment she forced herself to detach. This euphoria wasn’t going to last. Someone was going to get hurt soon and—spoiler alert—it was going to be her.

Because she was getting attached. She was breaking her own rules. And soon, she’d have to pay a steep price for that. Soon . . . but not yet.

“Yes,” she whispered in a rush of recklessness. “Yes, yes, yes.”