Chapter 12
Chapter Twelve
EMILY
Two days later…
What am I doing?
Seriously.
What?!
“I have no idea,” I mutter as I wait for Maya to get back on the line after the “two seconds” she said she needed to find a private place to talk at the office.
It’s still afternoon in New York and Maya’s working through the weekend, along with two of our most loyal support staff, preparing a killer pitch for a new corporate client nearly as big as Titan Media. They’re doing their best to save our business.
Meanwhile, I’m…
Well, I’m also doing my best to save our business.
But I should be working harder! So hard, I wouldn’t have time left over to watch holiday movies with the funniest, sweetest, sexiest man alive.
Or to notice how amazing he looks in linen pajama pants—and nothing else—first thing in the morning.
Or to spend magical afternoons with him at museums, or ice-skating, or catching West End matinees, or riding historic carousels, or falling madly in love with the way he makes even a trip to the grocery store feel like a fabulous adventure.
Heck, just falling madly in love with…him.
No!
I’m not falling in love.
I know this because I’ve been in love, and this isn’t the way love goes.
Love starts slow, like easing into a pool of perfectly warm water.
Love sneaks up on you, step by gentle step, until all of a sudden, you turn around one day and realize that the guy getting toast crumbs all over your table is someone you’d like to keep around for a long, long time.
Or…at least that’s the way love worked with Gabe and Stephen.
But Gabe and Stephen didn’t stick around for a long, long time.
Gabe met someone he liked banging more than me—while we were still dating—and Stephan and I just…
fizzled out. First, our Saturday mornings lost their shine, then our date nights and evening walks.
Soon, we were both finding excuses to spend time apart.
I stayed late at the office and joined a book club.
Stephen signed up for a pickleball league, got a second job walking dogs uptown, and eventually decided a WhatsApp message while I was out of the country was the best way to end things.
Which was hurtful, but still a relatively peaceful way to end a love affair.
As peaceful as the way we fell for each other…
So, maybe you’re ready for something less peaceful, woman!
Maybe it’s time love threw you into the back of an unmarked van, drove you out into the middle of bumfuck Swoonville, and dumped your body in a boiling hot spring of emotions, with no time to ease into your feels—or a commitment—at a leisurely pace.
“Stop. Please, stop,” I beg the Inner Voice.
I can’t let myself be kidnapped by a love van right now, not with so much on the line.
Even if I land the Fletchers’ gig, Darling Events isn’t out of the woods.
If Maya can’t land this big fish, we’ll need to book at least five major events this year to make up for the drop in revenue from losing Titan.
And that’s just this year.
Come next year, we’ll have to do it all again, to keep going big or go home.
And I know myself. I can’t grow a business from low six figures to mid six figures while juggling a long-distance relationship.
Olly and I are just five days into this…
whatever it is, and I was already missing him like crazy this afternoon.
I couldn’t wait for him to get back from running errands for reasons that had nothing to do with our West End matinee plans and everything to do with the way Oliver’s blue-gray eyes light up when he sees me coming.
And that was after just four hours apart!
After two weeks, two months, I’d be a wreck.
A pining, sad, moping, low-functioning wreck, incapable of holding up my side of the business.
Even if Darling Events were solely mine, I wouldn’t want that to happen.
But it’s not, it’s Maya’s, too. She’s depending on me.
She’s been my friend since we were in junior high, and helping to grow Darling Events into a power player in the party planning scene for almost four years.
I can’t let her down.
Not even for a man who might actually be my perfect match if he didn’t live half a world away…
“Okay, I’m back!” Maya breathes into the phone, making me flinch and start pacing again. “What’s up, buttercup?”
I’ve been dressed for Oliver’s Grandmother’s party for a while now, but left my heels by the door—the better to comfortably wear a hole in the carpet while having an emotional meltdown.
“I’m freaking out, that’s what’s up,” I whisper-hiss into the receiver, glancing at the clock on the nightstand.
Eighteen minutes until we need to leave.
Eighteen minutes to get my head on straight before I have to pretend to be Oliver’s girlfriend in front of his entire family, his grandmother’s friends, high-profile society mavens, a Duchess, and an Earl who might be stopping by for Christmas pudding.
No pressure or anything.
“I’m starting to think this was a bad idea,” I whisper. “Maybe even a really bad idea.”
“What? Why? And why are you whispering?” Maya’s voice crackles through my single earbud.
I left the other one out, the better to hear the stupidly hot man singing in a husky baritone in the shower down the hall.
“And why are you freaking out? You calmed the waters at Fletchers, have two incredible caterers on board for them to choose from, and are well on your way to being besties with Belinda Moore. As far as I can tell, everything is coming up roses, baby. White roses with little sprigs of fir tree tucked around them for the holidays.”
“Yes, but I’ve also made four appearances in the British tabloids in five days,” I remind her. “The paparazzi doesn’t seem to be losing interest. They sneak shots of us every time we leave Oliver’s apartment.”
“But you look adorable in most of them, especially the carousel shots from yesterday,” she counters. “And so happy! I haven’t seen you smile like that since we ditched school to go to Coney Island senior year. It looks like you’re having the time of your life being a pretend girlfriend.”
“I am, and that’s the problem!” I agree with a flop of my arm.
“Why?”
“I’m not supposed to be having fun! The fun is supposed to be fake. Just like the kisses and the laughter and the…other things. And Oliver is supposed to be a stuck-up snob who lied to me at a pub, not silly and sweet and hot and…perfect.”
I pause at the window, staring at my reflection in the darkened glass.
The green dress Oliver bought me for the luncheon looks even more elegant and festive paired with dangly pearl earrings we picked up at a Christmas market stall.
My hair is cooperating for once, falling in smooth curls around my shoulders, and I nailed the smudged gray eyeliner look all the cool South Korean girls are doing.
I look like someone who belongs at a fancy Christmas party with a member of the aristocracy.
Which is another part of the problem.
My outside doesn’t match my insides.
Not at all.
“Seriously, Maya,” I add, my throat tightening as I turn away from the window. “I think Oliver might be perfect. Like…for me. And that he might think so, too.”
Maya makes an appropriately concerned sound, before ruining it with, “Oh, no, Em. A kind, funny, sexy as hell man with a panty-melting accent and ridiculous amounts of money wants to date you for real. How awful. Let me go fetch the world’s tiniest violin.”
“Maya, I’m serious,” I say, flopping back onto the bed with a huff, staring up at the elegant crown molding on the triple-trayed ceiling. Even his ceiling is ridiculously fancy.
As fancy as I am not.
Not really. Not in real life.
“So am I,” Maya says. “Hold on, I’m putting resin on my bow now.”
“Seriously, this can’t happen,” I push on, ignoring the screechy “tiny violin” sounds she’s making on the other end of the line.
“Our business is hanging on by a thread, I’m already on the edge of burnout, and this is just the beginning of the marathon.
We have miles to go before we rest, and I can’t bring that level of hustle to my professional life, while navigating a high-profile, long-distance relationship in my private one. ”
“Okay. So?” she asks, thankfully ceasing her painfully squeaky version of “What Child is This.”
I blink. “What do you mean, so? So…I can’t date him. That’s it. Even if he actually wants to, and I’m not being crazy. I just can’t. We’d be doomed from the start. The business has to come first.”
“Why?”
My heart record scratches to a stop in my chest, only to start pounding harder again a second later. “What?” I croak out, panic fisting around my throat. “What does that mean? You don’t want to give up, do you?”
“No, of course not,” she says, sending my breath rushing out in a huff of relief. “But that doesn’t mean we have to let work take over our lives, either. I’ve been talking to my mom a lot the past few days, Em.”
“Oh yeah? And what did the doc have to say?” I murmur. Maya’s mom is a psychiatrist, the only nice psychiatrist I’ve ever met, actually.
Most of the other ones I’ve encountered give strong sociopath vibes, but maybe that’s just a New York City thing. You have to be pretty crazy to practice psychiatry in one of the biggest, more feral cities in the world.
“She said that the years go by way faster than you think when you’re young,” Maya says. “And that, looking back on my life when I’m her age, I’m never going to wish I’d worked more. I’m going to wish I’d played more, dreamed more. Loved more.”
My ribs squeeze around my fluttering heart. “Yeah. That sounds right, doesn’t it?”
“It does,” Maya murmurs. “And true. So…I say we keep pushing hard for the next few weeks, book what we can book, and if we aren’t in a better place by the end of the year, we talk to the management company about breaking the lease.”
I bite my bottom lip. “They could go after us for 22 months of unpaid rent, Maya. All at once. We’d be ruined.”