9. Tristan
Chapter 9
Tristan
A few days after we agree with Penelope to do this marriage, I am in the back of my car with Jonas driving. Jonas handles getting us to wherever it is that Penelope lives, and I stare out the window, lost in thought.
As much as I’m someone who generally likes to handle things alone these days, I can admit that the merger between three companies into one was a smart move. It changed the landscape of the tech world in one fell swoop and gave Dominic, Xavier, and myself more power and leverage than we would have had separately. For all we can’t seem to stop butting heads, it’s still for the best to work through it.
But this new agreement? Getting married? Forming a proper pack with a wife? It’s so far beyond anything I could have imagined would happen after this merger, and it feels like my life is about to spiral into chaos.
Xavier is usually easy enough to get along with. He walks the midline, remaining cool and charming while Dominic and I butt heads over every little thing that needs to be done. Sometimes Xavier and I switch positions, and I’m the middle ground between him and Dominic, but there is always someone on the other side of the conflict. Dominic is headstrong, stubborn, and too used to getting his own way. He charges through life and arguments like he expects everything around him to fall in line the way he wants them to.
I’m still getting used to their personalities and figuring out where to take our newly formed conglomerate, and now this.
Now we’re a pack. Now we’re going to have a wife.
Just the word ‘wife’ makes me tense, and I have to force myself not to clench my jaw.
“We’re here, Mr. Blackwell,” Jonas says, and I blink, shutting down that line of thinking.
I focus on where we are, noting that we’re not that far from the Vantage offices, but we might as well be in a completely different city for how different it looks.
Where our building is in a thriving downtown area, with coffee shops and trendy little shops lining the streets between office high rises and apartment buildings, this area is much less developed.
There’s a convenience store advertising cigarettes and half price six packs of some off brand beer on the corner, and people hanging out in front of the rundown apartment complex Jonas has pulled us into.
The pavement is cracked, a massive pothole at one end of it, in front of an overflowing dumpster. Laundry and bicycles hang from fire escapes and balconies. The whole thing seems to be held together with cracking plaster and peeling paint.
Three buildings make up this area of the complex, with concrete breezeways between them. A group of teenagers hang out in one of them, smoking and laughing. A woman walks by, pushing a stroller, and she dodges around a smaller pothole in the parking lot to get to the stairwell that disappears around the back of the building.
A door opens at the middle building, and a familiar figure steps out, walking down the crooked stairs to the parking lot.
Penelope.
I watch her through the tinted window of the car, taking in everything. The way she carries herself, glancing around the parking lot like she’s checking to make sure it’s safe to keep walking before she leaves the dubious safety of the building’s awning. She’s breathing slightly harder, like she rushed out of her apartment to meet us, and she takes a second to collect herself.
Her auburn hair is pulled up into a high ponytail, sending the thick locks cascading to her shoulders as she walks. When she gets closer, I can see she’s dressed nicely in a sage green dress that hugs her curves and falls to her ankles. The neckline is wide enough to show just a bit of her shoulders and good stretch of her chest, but it’s modest enough that it’s just a glimpse. Just enough to keep you looking.
I can see when she notices the car, and it must stand out in the parking lot full of cars at least fifteen years older than this one is. She hurries over, her teeth sunk into her bottom lip.
There’s a pull as she comes closer, like something in me wants to meet her halfway. I ignore it and stay in the car.
She’s attractive, that much I can admit to myself. Her skin is soft, her face is intriguing, and she smells edible. But it’s irrelevant to what we’re here for. Irrelevant to everything, really. So I try to push it away, ignoring the pull that makes me want to be closer to her.
We’ll be close enough when she gets out of the car.
Jonas hops out of the driver’s seat as soon as Penelope approaches the car.
“Ms. Dalton?” he asks, smiling at her.
Penelope smiles back, a little caught off guard. “That’s me,” she says. “But please, just call me Penelope. We don’t have to be so formal, right?”
“If that’s what you want,” Jonas says, and I can hear the surprise in his voice. He’s been a driver for long enough that he knows this isn’t how it usually goes.
Most people wouldn’t even bother to address him beyond telling him where he needs to take them.
“It is,” Penelope says. “You’re doing me a favor anyway.”
“I’m just doing my job,” Jonas insists. He opens the door to the backseat for her, and she slides in.
Up close, her scent is distracting. Lemon, lavender, vanilla frosting. It should be sickly sweet and cloying, but somehow it’s light enough that it works for her.
“Thank you,” she says to Jonas as he closes the door and gets back in the car. Then she turns to me and her smile dims a little with what are obviously nerves.
In the time she’s worked at Vantage, we haven’t had a reason to be alone together. She’s dealt mostly with Xavier if she needs to deal with any of us, and I can tell she’s not sure what to make of me.
“Hi, Mr. Blackwell,” she says, sounding almost shy.
I just incline my head to her as Jonas starts driving.
“I didn’t keep you waiting too long, did I? The elevator is out in my building. Again. So I took the stairs as fast as I could.”
I grunt in answer. That explains why she seemed slightly out of breath as she got to the car.
“Um… this is a nice car. Is it yours? Or the company’s?”
I don’t even respond to that, going back to looking out the window.
“This is one of Mr. Blackwell’s personal vehicles,” Jonas says from the front seat. “The company cars are only for business things, and there’s a fleet of drivers that handle getting the higher ups from point A to point B.”
I glance at Penelope, wondering if she’s thinking that this should fall under the category of ‘business things’ technically. Dominic did call it a business arrangement, after all.
But she just smiles and leans forward to speak with Jonas. “I’ve organized some of the drivers as part of my job,” she says. “It must be exciting, getting to drive all the important people around like that.”
“It can be,” Jonas replies, sounding amused. “It depends on who you’re driving.”
“Oh yeah, that makes sense. I bet some of them are real divas.”
Jonas can’t even hide the laugh when she says that. “Present company excluded of course, but… yes. Some of them can be.”
“What’s your favorite place you’ve ever taken someone to?”
I narrow my eyes as Penelope and Jonas engage in this conversation. The car was silent before she got in, the way I usually prefer it, but now they’re chattering back and forth to each other like old friends.
Something hot flashes through me, and I realize it’s irritation. The two of them are in their own little world, talking about the nice restaurants and theater premieres Jonas has taken clients to in his career, and there’s interest and excitement in Penelope’s voice as she answers back.
It’s easy between the two of them. Comfortable. Familiar.
It grates on me as they continue.
“Are you excited about all of this?” Jonas asks her. ‘This’ meaning going to meet with the wedding planner to make some preparations for the wedding.
“Sure,” Penelope says. She glances at me quickly and then away just as fast. “I mean I was definitely one of those little girls who daydreamed about her wedding day when I was a kid.”
“My niece is the same way. She throws weddings for her stuffed animals all the time. I just attended the nuptials of Mr. Hedgehog and Mrs. Dinosaur last weekend.”
Penelope laughs at that. “An unconventional couple for sure. I didn’t go that far, but I had some ideas about what I wanted, even if I was pretty sure it wasn’t really going to happen. I just wanted there to be fairy lights, twinkling and beautiful. It seemed a little bit magical to me, you know.”
“This must be a change from all that,” Jonas replies.
“It definitely is. I never could have imagined it would be like this.”
Finally, we arrive at the wedding planner’s office, and I can only say I’m relieved to be there. Jonas gets out of the car and opens the door for Penelope first, giving her a little bow as she steps out of the car.
“Good luck, Penelope,” he says, winking at her before he comes around to open the door for me as well.
I have just enough time to see Penelope give Jonas a nervous little smile before she looks at me and tries to project confidence.
“So… I guess we’re doing this,” she says.
I just nod and jerk my head in the direction of the building.
None of us know anything about planning a wedding, so the logistics are being outsourced to someone with the experience to make it something it needs to be.
Fletcher McDonald is a tall man with pale blond hair and bright eyes, and he meets us at the door with a smile on his face.
“Ms. Dalton, Mr. Blackwell,” he says, shaking each of our hands in turn. “Welcome. I’ve already told the other two members of your little wedding party how excited I am to plan this wedding for you, but it can always be said again.”
“Hi,” Penelope says. “It’s nice to meet you…”
“Fletcher,” he fills in. “Come in, the others are waiting.”
Dominic and Xavier are already seated in a comfortable waiting area, both of them already with drinks in front of them.
“Can I get either of you anything?” Fletcher asks. “Water, wine, soda?”
“I’ll take a ginger ale if you have it,” Penelope asks. “If not, water is more than fine.”
“A ginger ale for the lady. And for you, Mr. Blackwell?” He looks at me expectantly, and I just lift an eyebrow and then go to sit in one of the arm chairs in the waiting area.
Fletcher doesn’t seem shaken by my lack of response, and I imagine he’s dealt with all manner of bridezillas, horrible mother in laws, and men who want to be doing anything other than planning their own weddings. He doesn’t seem fazed by anything, and it makes me glad we went with him out of the long list of candidates who would have been chomping at the bit to plan this wedding.
“Hey, Penelope,” Xavier is saying, grinning at her. “Come sit by me.”
She smiles back at him and goes to do so, smiling at Dominic as she passes. She seems nervous, and I can’t say I blame her. This is the last thing she probably could have ever guessed she’d be doing on a Sunday afternoon, and with the last people she probably ever expected to be doing it with.
But she’s holding her own well enough.
“I’ll be right back with your drink, Ms. Dalton,” Fletcher says, ducking out of the room.
Once we’re alone, Xavier smiles mischievously. “We have something for you,” he says to Penelope. “Something from all of us.”
Penelope looks between the three of us, and I nod to Xavier. He pulls a ring box out of his jacket pocket and sets it on the table, pushing it toward Penelope.
“What’s this?” she asks, looking down at the box and then up at Xavier.
“Open it and see,” he replies, winking at her.
She picks up the velvet box, holding it like it’s something precious as she lifts the lid. I already know that inside are three rings, each one nestled in a soft satin lining.
Each one is thin, made of pale gold. Instead of all three having a stone set in the center, each one has a slightly different shape, so that when worn together, the three will make a stack that looks like an elegant, cohesive unit.
Penelope’s breath catches as she gazes at the rings in their box, and her fingers shake slightly as she reaches in to trace the delicate oval cut diamond in the center ring.
“This is… oh my god. This is so much. Too much.” She looks up at each of us in turn. “You didn’t have to do all this.”
“Yes, we did,” Dominic says. “It has to look real.”
“But these can’t have been cheap,” Penelope argues. “You could have just gotten something that would pass as a wedding ring and left it at that.”
Dominic scoffs, folding his arms. “And have people say we’re cheap and don’t take care of our wife? That wouldn’t work at all. The three of us have set a standard for the way we live, and there’s no way we wouldn’t carry that standard when it comes to giving a ring to our wife.”
“Imagine all the articles about how cheap the CEOs of Vantage are if we gave you something cheap,” Xavier says. “That would piss off the investors as much as our bickering.”
Penelope glances at me, and I just nod to the box, drawing her attention back to the rings.
“I guess that makes sense,” she says, swallowing hard. “I just… Thank you. They’re beautiful.”
“I thought you’d like them,” Xavier says cheerfully. “We made our best guess at your ring size, so if anything needs to be resized we can do that.”
“I’m sure they’re perfect,” she says quickly. Instead of putting the rings on, she closes the box and folds her fingers around it, holding on to it like it’s something precious to her.
Fletcher comes back in with her ginger ale and a water for me, placing each drink in front of us. “Now,” he says. “I’ll get some input from the grooms eventually, but for the first part of this, I want to hear what you have in mind for this wedding, Penelope. Will you come over here with me?”
She blinks in surprise, but gathers her drink and the ring box and goes to the other side of the room with Fletcher.
Xavier watches her go, a little smile on his face, and I force myself not to do the same thing. To watch her go, not to smile. I can control my face better than Xavier can on my worst day.
“All right,” Dominic says, leaning forward. “There’s more than the wedding to plan along with all this.”
“Right,” I reply. “What do you have in mind?”
“We have to sell it, really sell it, if we’re going to get the board and the investors off our backs. A year will be enough time, but only if we make it look convincing.”
“There’s only so much prying into our personal lives they can do, legally,” Xavier points out. “As long as we make it look good when we’re out in public and keep the bickering to a minimum, I don’t see any reason why we can’t sell this.” He gives Dominic a look when he mentions bickering, and Dominic just looks back at him.
“I don’t know why you’re looking at me,” he says. “You might seem like you’re the agreeable one, but arguing pleasantly is still arguing.”
“Don’t start,” I cut in before they can get going. We have to at least make the wedding planning look like a cohesive thing.
On the other side of the room, Fletcher has pulled out binders and a tablet and is showing Penelope pages and pages of wedding ideas.
She looks wide eyed, like she had no idea it was going to be elaborate, and I watch as she touches the page of one of the binders looking entranced by whatever images she’s seeing.
“We could do something like that,” Fletcher tells her with a smile. “This time of year, we can get away with pretty much anything, and your coloring would work with a good variety of colors. It just depends on what you want.”
“Oh,” Penelope says. She pulls her hand back from the binder and looks down at her lap. “I mean, I don’t have the first idea about this kind of thing, and I don’t…” She bites her lip, tugging it into her mouth, then glances back up at the wedding planner. “Whatever you think is best is fine. It doesn’t have to be too elaborate, you know? Just… something simple.”
It’s easy to tell that she’s doing her best to not be a bother, and I wonder if we should impress upon her that her wants are important in this too. She had so much confidence before, when she was in my office laying down her ground rules for this whole thing, but now she seems to be shrinking into herself.
I drag my eyes away from her and her conversation with Fletcher, and focus back on what the other Alphas are saying.
“We need to figure out where we’re going to live,” Dominic says. “Space will be a concern, and Penelope needs to be comfortable.”
Xavier nods. “We should get her input. And I guess we have to debate the merits of living somewhere big enough for her to have her own floor, versus people talking about how we clearly don’t all want to live in close quarters, which must mean that we hate each other or something.”
Dominic rolls his eyes. “People are going to talk regardless. And I’m sure most of them will just chalk it up to us being eccentric and rich and let it go at that. Why not have the space if we can afford it?”
“Maybe the public will think that, but will the board? The investors?”
“I have had it up to fucking here with the board and the investors,” Dominic mutters. “I’m more inclined to care about Penelope’s feelings than theirs, since she’s going to be our wife.”
There’s that word again. I can’t help but glance over at Penelope, just in time to see her tuck a loose lock of hair behind her ear and nod at something Fletcher is saying.
My chest tightens just a bit, enough to be noticeable.
“I still don’t think this is a good idea,” I tell the others, even though my eyes are still on Penelope.
Even though she’s in conversation with Fletcher, I can tell the second she hears my comment. She glances over at me for just a split second, long enough for me to see the hurt flash in her eyes, but then she’s forcing a smile, laughing at something Fletcher says. Determined to make it seem like it doesn’t bother her.
The feeling in my chest morphs into a pang of guilt. I didn’t mean to hurt her feelings, and it would have been better if she didn’t hear what I said. At the same time though, it’s probably better if she hates me. If we keep as much distance between us as possible. I’ll never be able to love her, not after everything, and this isn’t real anyway. She doesn’t have to care about me, and I shouldn’t want her to. After a year, we go back to our lives, and I’ll probably never have to see her again.
“It’s going to be a pleasure working with you, Ms. Dalton,” Fletcher says, getting to his feet and holding out his hand for Penelope to shake.
“Please call me Penelope,” she says, shaking his hand. “And I’m really looking forward to seeing what you come up with. All your work is so beautiful.”
“Well, thank you. I hope you and your grooms will be happy.”
We all stand up to file out, and once the others have left the room, I glance back at Fletcher, who is scribbling in a notebook.
“I have one request,” I tell him.
He looks up, surprised. “Of course, Mr. Blackwell. Your input is also important here.”
“Make sure there are plenty of fairy lights during the ceremony. And the reception.”
“Fairy lights. I can do that. Something classy, but fantastical at the same time?”
“I trust your judgement,” I say, and then step out with everyone else.