Chapter 10 Mila
Chapter 10
Mila
“What the hell do I know about that?” The phone still glued to his ear, Fin pauses in his pacing to slide me a reassuring half smile. One that seems at odds with his conversation. “Yeah, well,” he adds, his attention sliding away, “that’s why I pay you. Fine. Sure.” His brows pinch, at odds once again as he glances down at the certificate in his hand. Our wedding certificate.
I wish he’d taken this call out of earshot, because it’s doing nothing good for my anxiety. I’m married. I can’t believe I’m really married. And that the object of all my recent fantasies is the man I’ve plighted my troth (troths?) to.
Fin turns away, allowing me a minor (unobserved) perv of the delectable rear view. His T-shirt stretches tight over his broad back, the short sleeves clinging to the rounds of his biceps. Can’t say I blame them.
The universe has a wild sense of humor, marrying me to him—a virtual but much crushed-on stranger—on the very day I was supposed to marry someone else. I still can’t make sense of how he’s here, all the way on the other side of the world at the same time as me.
Six days. I’m stuck here for six more days. With Fin. More specifically, more worryingly, we’ll be sharing this space. The bridal suite, with its one bed, thanks to the arrival of a prominent Saudi prince to the resort this morning. His family and his entourage have taken over all the private villas; one each for his four wives and the fifth, the largest of the lot, booked for his own use.
I wonder if the Saudi prince would mind if I bunk with him?
I tip my head into my hands as I try to ignore the feelings, thoughts, and sentiments rioting through me. Conflict seems to be the driving sense, shortly followed by a mixture of nervous excitement. My stomach is a mess of tangled knots, and my nipples are so hard I could probably put someone’s eye out.
I still can’t believe Sarai gave me an illicit substance. Yet at the same time, I totally can. When she said she’d get me something to settle my nerves, I thought she might bring me back a Xanax or something. Come to think of it, Xanax and vodka wouldn’t have been the best pairing either.
When she’d prized me from the bathroom, she was holding a tiny glass bottle with a dropper set to the lid. I just assumed it was the local equivalent of Rescue Remedy.
It’s not all Sarai’s fault. I should’ve asked exactly what I was dropping into my mouth.
Of course, topping me up was reckless, and it probably had less to do with the holy man’s sensibilities than the money Oliver promised her. But I can’t even blame her for that, and on some level, I’m relieved she did microdose me. Because if the priest had walked away, I would have precisely zero to show for my efforts.
Except an annoyingly handsome husband. Or an annoying handsome husband.
Either way, I would’ve needed to invest in a decent sleeping bag and find myself a bench.
“You okay?”
I spring upright like a jack-in-the-box, yanking my false fingernails from my mouth. “Absolutely!” I reach for my evil eye pendant and rub my thumb over it. I am absolutely a lot of things. Absolutely losing my marbles. Absolutely losing the plot. Losing my shit. All of it. Especially as the images that keep coming back to me are snapshots of our wedding night, and they’re so freaking tempting. “What did they say? Your legal people?”
Remember that. Remember the mess you’re in. Fin the hot husband is a complication you don’t need.
He drops his phone onto the oatmeal-colored ottoman, taking a seat in the middle of the long sofa. Not so close as to make me feel uncomfortable but not so far away as to allow my complete ease.
“Just that the state offices are closed but that they’ll try to find out who Oliver dealt with. The thing is, I don’t want to call him and ask.”
“Oh, no. You definitely can’t call him,” I say, my words falling quickly. Oliver Deubel seems like the kind of man with very exacting standards (and possibly a vengeful streak), and I desperately need my payday. “You shouldn’t text. Or email. In fact, you shouldn’t bother him at all—it is his honeymoon.”
A faint smile curves on Fin’s lips, and my body seems to intuit exactly what he’s thinking. Heat kindles in the pit of my stomach. We’re both thinking of our own short but seemingly thorough honeymoon.
Did I really call him daddy ? Fin teases so much it’s hard to tell. I mean, it’s entirely possible. I do seem to have developed a thing for being slightly dominated recently. Not in real life, just in my ... special alone time imaginings. With Fin.
Earlier, when he whispered daddy in my ear, heat pulsed through my body. So much so that, when I pulled away from the arm he’d hauled around my waist, I half expected to find my skin seared to his.
“Also,” I say, returning to the topic of not contacting the Deubels. “What if they can listen in?” I glance in the direction of the huge wall of window and the bay beyond. “That’s a thing, isn’t it? Phone tapping?”
“An illegal thing.”
“What about seeing in?” My gaze swings back. Do we have to sit together? Cuddle up? There’s no way I’m going to voice any of that.
“It’s privacy glass. You can see out, but you can’t see in. The garden is private too. I guess there’s just the pool area we’d need to be careful about.”
“Right.” I give a nod. “That’s good.” And mildly disappointing. I was looking forward to swimming. “It must be an awful way to live.”
“It has been pretty hard for them.”
“I can’t imagine having my private life splashed across the internet.”
I dread to think what the headlines would read for my own wedding fiasco.
Delusional Wedding Planner Preps for Big Day While Groom Puts on His Running Shoes
At least Evie got to leave her cheating fiancé. Mine left me. And she did it in style. And while the press may have made her life hell, women everywhere rallied to her defense. I loved reading their supporting comments and laughed so hard at the article that told of her idiot ex suffering a modern-day pillory experience when he was bombarded with rotten fruit in Brick Lane Market.
I would’ve liked a little support, some female solidarity when times were tough. I give myself an internal shake, moving my mind forcibly back to the present.
“Evie bears the brunt of it.” Fin stretches his neck, tilting his head left, then right. Not that I’m watching closely or anything. “Oliver has much thicker skin.”
I still feel a little dirty that I watched that awful Pulse Tok video. “If this got out, things would be much worse for her, don’t you think?”
“Don’t worry. My legal team are on it.”
As he lifts his hand to rub the back of his head, my eyes follow the taut line of his bicep. My insides clench, overcome by a wave of sensation as I seem to remember how soft his hair feels. And ticklish. So many taunting fragments of memory. I wish I could remember the whole of it, because then I could move beyond it. Maybe?
“Time zones notwithstanding,” I murmur, dragging my gaze away.
“Someone will be hauling their ass out of bed and getting into the office to make that call at the appropriate time.”
I send my silent commiserations to whoever is making that call. I remember the pain of Zoom calls at odd hours as I liaised with the resort’s event staff during the planning of Evie and Oliver’s wedding. Or Mr. and Mrs. X, as they were referred to: a high-profile but otherwise unnamed couple. But Sarai seemed to know who they were when I arrived. Then again, she is the GM’s daughter. Also, she’s not exactly risk averse.
“And we’ll take it from there.” He stretches out his long legs, propping his heels on the ottoman.
I cross my fingers and send a silent plea to the heavens that I don’t end up with my own headline.
Wedding Planner Hits the Husband Jackpot
My stomach lurches. It might be bad for Evie if the news of this fiasco gets out, but it would be ruinous for me. What bride would want me near her wedding after learning I bagged Fin, one of London’s most eligible bachelors, by getting high and super slutty? A one-percenter was how Sarai described him. People will automatically assume I married Fin for his money, when in fact, I married him for Oliver’s money.
I fold in my pretty gel nails against the instinct to gnaw them. No one will ever take me or Trousseau seriously if even a hint of this is whispered about.
“Do you think we’ll get an annulment?” I ask suddenly. “It seems a bit extreme that we might need a divorce for a wedding that was a mistake, doesn’t it?”
“I guess we’ll find out Monday. The good news is, according to my lawyer, a divorce means you can take me for a lot of money.”
“That’s not why I asked,” I retort, stiffening. “This not only has the potential to ruin my business, but I could end up with people running after me like they do poor Evie. Only they’d be throwing fruit at me instead!”
“Fruit?”
“Like they did her ex—I would be hated. Vilified!”
I find Fin’s hand suddenly folded around my thigh, and heat flashes through me. It’s not like he’s touching me inappropriately—his hand is halfway between my knee and my knickers—but it might as well be inside them for my body’s reaction to it.
“I’m sorry I said that. It was a joke.”
“A bad one.”
“Maybe.” His fingers flex a touch.
My skin prickles, and I want to move away. Or climb on top of him. This is such an odd place to develop a new erogenous zone, I think as I pause to untangle a clumsy tongue.
“We have to be careful, Fin. What we did yesterday must stay secret.”
“Which part of yesterday?” His words end in a playful curl.
“Please be serious. None of this can come out. Not the fact that we may or may not have faked a wedding ceremony. That we might actually be married—that we’ve potentially consummated that marriage.”
“Well and truly,” he adds.
“It could look like a stunt—like I’ve married you purely for the publicity. It would ruin my business, Fin.” Once and for all.
“Do wedding planners take a vow of celibacy?” he asks, not quite giving up on his amusement. He just doesn’t seem to get it. “Do they swear to remain single?”
“I know it probably looks like I’ll do anything for money, but that’s not the case.” I lift my hand, thinking to move his away, but it would be too obvious—I would look too obviously bothered by it. So I scratch my nose instead.
“I know that.” At last, his tone turns serious.
“But how can you? You don’t know me. I have my reasons for agreeing to this, not that I ever thought we’d be married for real, but—”
“You don’t think I get what kind of person you are?”
I duck my head and give it a short shake. “You barely know me.”
His hand slides away, and breath whooshes out of me. And because I can feel him looking at me, I suck another in. I’d rather him think I have asthma than realize I like his hands on me. That I’m half turned on already.
“I know enough,” he says, his tone serious. “I’m a good judge of character.”
I think it’s probably more the case that Fin just sees the good in people. He seems the type. To him, everything is easy breezy and nothing is truly serious.
“You don’t believe me?”
I make a careless gesture. What do I know? Just that he’s a raging flirt and has a black belt in teasing. I also know, according to his best friends, the people who know him best in the world, he’s a player. He’s super hot and super wealthy, and I’m reasonably sure his tongue game would impress even the most hardcore lesbian. My flashbacks are very comprehensive. If not in length, then in sensory detail.
Any of that, never mind all of that, would make him popular. And greedy, I suppose. But beyond all that playboy stuff, I sense Fin DeWitt is essentially a good human. I mean, he’s no saint, but at least his life isn’t falling apart. And that’s sort of attractive.
“I wonder if Evie and Oliver got married,” I say, changing the subject. No need to dwell on how not awful he is. Or how his cologne makes me want to bury my nose in his neck to discover its notes.
“They’d better be, after the trouble we’ve gone to.” He pauses, and I feel his eyes on me. “It’s been a good kind of trouble. After that night in the closet, I wondered if I’d ever see you again.”
I like the sound of that. Him thinking about me.
“I’ve thought about you,” he adds. “Wondered how you were after, well, everything.”
I turn to face him, curling my knees onto the seat, pulling a throw pillow into my chest. “You must’ve thought I was unhinged.” My words feel flimsy and inconsequential.
“No. You were just too lovely to be crying. I wanted to make you feel better. Cheer you up, I guess.”
“You certainly did that,” I murmur, plucking at the edges of the pillow. Until I find the crook of his finger under my chin.
“Just you and me, locked away from the world.” He lifts my gaze to his. “I hope you know that moment meant something to me. It was so special.”
Oh, Fin, I think about the experience more than the reason I was in there.
“And I’m sorry he did that to you.” He briefly cups my cheek, his tone warm but firm. “Hurt you like that.”
“I couldn’t tell you why I was really upset. It was too humiliating.”
“Worse than . . .”
I nod.
“You can tell me now,” he says, his voice as soft as an April shower.
I angle my head, and his hand falls away, moving to my shoulder instead. “The party was in full swing, and I was in the hotel kitchen grabbing a coffee when one of the chefs mentioned Adam. He’s a wedding photographer, you see, but we’d decided early in our relationship to keep our professional and personal lives separate. Part of that was not broadcasting our relationship at work. We didn’t want our clients asking questions, maybe asking for a joint discount, or potentially worrying about us working together after an argument, or whatever. Same goes for the venues.
“Or those were the reasons I thought. As it turned out, Adam’s reasons were multifaceted. Anyway, the last time I’d worked at that particular hotel, he’d been the wedding photographer. I suppose that’s why the chef thought to mention he’d heard Adam was getting married at all. My heart sort of stopped at the news. I almost told the chef it was old news—that we’d broken up. But then he said something about Adam’s fiancée, Rachel, and what a lovely girl she was. Apparently, she used to be one of the hotel’s duty managers.”
I shrug as I recall how the news had felt like a blow to my chest. I’d suffered the hollow aftermath for months.
“Oh, Mila.” Fin’s hand tightens as though he’d pull me closer, but it turns to comfort when I resist. “I’m so sorry that he didn’t have the balls to tell you himself.” His hand slides to the sofa back, his fingers drumming there. “Did you confront him?”
I shake my head. “It’s not like we were on speaking terms.”
“You don’t keep in contact? Not at all?”
“Do you keep in contact with your exes?” I ask pertly.
“Some. But then, I never loved any of them.”
“Well, I don’t want to speak to him, and I’d live quite happily never setting eyes on him again.”
“I hope you told them all what an asshole he really is.”
I shake my head.
“Then I hope you slashed his tires or keyed his car.”
I almost smile. It’s what Ronny wanted to do. And worse.
“I told myself that the best form of revenge would be to live well.” But then things started to fall apart.
“Living well,” he repeats. “That certainly happened in that coat closet,” he teases. “Stolen champagne always tastes better.”
I tsk. “How would you know?”
“I might’ve appropriated a bottle or two in my time.”
“When you’re feeling hard up?” I say with a chuckle. “Or when you’ve left your wallet in your other ermine cloak and your diamond shoes pinch, so it’s too painful to backtrack?”
“An ermine cloak.” He nods. “I should get one of those.”
“Because you fancy someone chucking a red pot of paint over you?”
His expression suddenly turns serious. “You deserved better. I wish you would’ve told me.”
I shake my head as though it doesn’t matter, when the truth is I’ve reached my limit for sharing. And for feeling like an idiot. “I couldn’t.” I can’t quite bring myself to tell him the whole story now. “I just had to hide. Compose myself, I suppose.” I swallow and paint on another smile. God knows what this one looks like. “By the time you showed up, I was angry. As evidenced by the bottle throwing.”
“I think you left a dent.” He grins. “You left your mark on me too.”
“I wasn’t drunk,” I offer quickly. Not because the hot man said a nice thing but because I’d be a fool to believe him. Fin is a decent human; that’s all. And decent humans have empathy. I could be anyone recounting this tale to him, and he’d listen. Say the right things.
“Me neither. Except maybe drunk on you.”
I say nothing but feel everything .
“I’m sorry you had to go through that but happy you’re out of it now.”
“I don’t think anyone has said that before now.”
“About breaking up?”
I shake my head. “No. I mean sorry .”
“Maybe you weren’t listening. It’s hard to see the bigger picture, to pay attention to what’s going on around you, when you feel like your heart is breaking.” His expression barely flickers, but I sense some history in that statement.
“Are you speaking from experience?”
“To be human is to suffer.”
“That’s deep but not really the answer to my question.”
“Have I loved?” He slides me that modest-looking smile. I feel like he’s hiding something behind it. “I love. I’ve just never been in love.”
“Been loved?” I’m sure he has many, many admirers.
“I thought so once. Thought I was in love once. That I was loved in return.” He makes a gesture with his head, the action of a man considering something. “But it turned out not so.”
“I’m sorry.” I know he’s never been married, because it would’ve said so in our marriage license.
My stomach swoops like a dive-bombing magpie. My husband. Why aren’t I terrified?
“Life is all about learning,” he replies prosaically.
“What did you learn from love? Because all I learned was love sucks hairy arse.”
“I learned that the betrayed will betray you and the deceived will deceive you.”
Guilt. That’s what his response sounds like. But strangely, not his tone. Did he cheat and she repaid him in kind? It’s hard to tell. At least his lesson sounds more poetic than mine.
“When you split,” he begins again, “friends stood by you, though, right? And family. Didn’t any of them want to key his car or maybe beat him to a bloody pulp?”
“I don’t really have family. Just my slightly nutty granny, who was convinced ... well, it doesn’t really matter what she thought. And our friends took his side. Oh, they made sympathetic noises initially, tempered with murmurs of It’s better to find out you’re not suited now . As though being habitually unfaithful is something anyone would put on their wish list.” I snort inelegantly, still stung by the memories. “Such a joke. Everything went off the rails for a while after that. I got caught up with business trouble, and there were things going on at home. By the time I resurfaced, my so-called friends had stopped being interested. And then, of course, they absorbed the new Mila into their orbit.”
“Jesus . . . really?”
“It’s a couples group. No one wants exes staring daggers at each other over dinner. But I wasn’t around, and that must’ve been convenient, given my ex’s new fiancée now sits in my chair. So I’ve heard.”
“Fuck. Sounds like you’re better off without them.”
“Yes.” Not that I was given the choice. “I’m not saying I wanted people to choose sides.” I can hear my voice becoming spiky with anger, but I can’t seem to stop myself. “But I couldn’t understand it. I still don’t. They chose him, and he cheated on me! What does that say about him as a person? As a friend? God, I hate that he wasted my twenties, the best years of my life!”
“Mila.” Oh, the way he says my name. “Your twenties won’t be the best years of your life.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I’m heading toward the end of my fourth decade, and it’s been a blast.”
“No way. No way you’re nearly forty.” He’s obviously older than me, but I suppose I hadn’t put a number on it.
“Careful.” The backs of his fingers are a tender caress against my cheek. “I might get used to this flattery.”
“Hah.” The sound is just a breath of air between us, his eyes on mine, mine watching his. It’s not flattery, exactly. Maybe I just assumed those laughter lines at the outer corners of his eyes came from his near-constant amusement.
“Unless you’re trying to flatter me,” he adds in that bedroomy tone of his. “Because where would that leave us then?”
Naked. And in the bedroom.
Fin will be one of those men who grow into their years. He won’t have any trouble attracting younger women even when he’s old and gray. He has that—what do the French call it? Je ne sais quoi. That certain something. An undefinable allure.
“You told me you like older men,” he murmurs as he captures a loose lock of my hair.
“Did I?” I swallow, my breath tight and my response husky.
“Yeah,” he murmurs, twirling it around his forefinger.
Maybe it’s more the case of liking what Sarai said yesterday. A man who’s firm but gentle. A man who’d take you to your limits while also taking care of you. The thought drops into my core, a percussion so tempting that I panic.
“I dread to think what else I said. I’m sure it was mostly nonsense.” I give a reedy-sounding chuckle as I pull from his orbit. “Anyway, I don’t remember.”
“I hope it comes back to you. It was an experience well worth remembering.”
“If there was a Dirty Dancing lift, then I’ll pass.”
But it does seem like a squandered opportunity. Fin seems to be a man who takes his craft, and his partner’s pleasure, very seriously. So maybe it’s best that I don’t remember at all.
“Coward,” he says, his own amusement low and throaty. “Is your ex older?”
I pull a face. “Maybe the older-men shtick was just flattery.”
“You didn’t need to sweet-talk me. You already had me.”
“Maybe I was just joking—pulling your leg.”
His answer is a taunting, doubtful expression.
“It doesn’t sound like me is all I’m saying.” I give a spiky one-shouldered shrug. “I can’t see the attraction, honestly.”
“You can’t?” he replies, all smirking taunt.
“Older men,” I say, digging my hole deeper. “What would we have in common? Tell me a scary story about the last recession,” I say, all breathless ridiculousness. “Feed me your butterscotch candies, Daddy. Then let me rub your arthritic joints with Voltaren.”
What in the name of all that’s good and holy is wrong with me?
“Daddy?” Fin says, biting back a grin.
“That’s what you picked up from all that?”
“That and it sounds like you might be into men much older than me. Just so you know, I’m undeterred.”
“You’re a”— zaddy —“a mental case,” I say, leaning away from his almost embrace.
He stretches his arms above his head, very much unspurned. “Want to take a nap?”
Unspurned and unrepentant.
“Together?” Clothed or unclothed? The latter, in Ronny’s voice, seems to come out of nowhere. “Why?”
“It was a big night.” His hand drops to his abs, and he gives a tiny wince. “A time zone change.”
“From Jakarta?”
“I’m kind of tired.”
More like pushing his luck. “No. No napping. You can, absolutely, if you like. But we,” I add, motioning a finger between us, “can’t do that.”
“We can do whatever we like.”
“Not when we’re supposed to be decoys.” I hook my thumb over my shoulder. “Thinking about it, shouldn’t we be seen out there, in the resort?”
“Seen doing what?” That tone. Does he even know he’s doing it—the sex-voice thing?
“We could go to a yoga session?” I suggest. “Or maybe visit the main pool or go for a walk to provide the media a few long-distance photo opportunities. It’s not like we can hide out here for the next six days, is it?” More like I won’t be able to cope for six days alone with him.
“So ... yoga and walks and swimming is what you think newlyweds would be doing?”
“Why not?”
His expression flickers as he begins to stand. “I guarantee that wherever they are, Oliver and Evie will barely have left their suite. They’ll be too busy enjoying each other, which is the way it should be, bunny.”
“I don’t— bunny ?” I fill the word with derision.
“Yeah. Let me know when you remember why, and we’ll revisit the conversation. Meanwhile,” he says, holding out his hand. “I guess I could cope with a walk along the beach with a pretty girl.”