Chapter 17 #2
Harriet hid a smile. “I also wanted to ask you, where did you set up a desk for Brian Martinez?”
It felt as if all the blood had drained from her body.
“I’m sorry, what?”
Lauren’s face must have gone completely white, because Harriet suddenly looked alarmed. “Yes, um, I confirmed with the White
House last week while I was filling in for you that he would have a desk set up here.” She started going through her phone,
looking for the email. “He was just promoted to digital director in the—”
“Communications office,” Lauren finished for her. The job she had wanted before everything went to hell.
“Sorry, I should have told you sooner.”
Lauren didn’t know how much Harriet had heard over the past several months, but clearly she had heard enough. “So he’s here
now?” Lauren confirmed.
“He’s been with the president throughout the day, but he’ll be at the Palace any minute.”
“I see. Well, make sure to seat him over there,” she said, pointing to a foldout desk with a power strip taped to it in the corner of the room. “I’ll handle anything else that comes up.”
Lauren spun around and started to head in the direction of where she thought the IT crew might be, but she stopped short.
There, for the first time in six months, was Brian, standing ten feet away from her.
She always thought that if she saw him again, she’d scream or sob or throw the nearest object at his head, but instead she
stood perfectly still, like any bodily motion would force her brain to shut down. He was shorter than she remembered, which
she found to be very satisfying. He was still handsome, though, a walking Ralph Lauren ad in his navy suit, white dress shirt,
and deep burgundy tie.
“Hey,” Brian said. “Lauren. Hi.”
“Hi,” she replied, then immediately hated herself for doing so.
“I figured you’d be here,” he said. Brian may have looked completely put together, but it was clear that he was nervous.
Lauren wasn’t exactly upset about that.
“I am definitely here,” Lauren said.
“Yeah, director of communications at Buckingham Palace! That’s so cool! I always knew you’d do great things.” Brian smiled.
“And London’s awesome.”
“Uh-huh,” Lauren said, her mouth and brain stuttering just like the Palace Wi-Fi. “What are— Is everything going well so far?”
Stay professional, she told herself. Do not pick up a steak knife and threaten him with it. Do not yell. Do not cry.
“Oh, yeah, really great,” he said. He sounded so American! Had she sounded like that when she first got to London? “Thanks,
yeah,” he awkwardly added.
“Sure,” she said. “Well, if you need anything, you can let someone else know.”
“Hey, Laur.” He exhaled and adjusted his tie. “I also . . . I also wanted to apologize. To you.”
At the word apologize, Lauren felt her brain suddenly click back online.
“Stop,” she said. “Brian, just stop. Not here, not right now. I need to work, and so do you.”
“Okay. Of course. But do you . . . Can we just talk at some point?”
Lauren glanced over at a reporter’s iPad live-streaming the arrivals at the dinner. The camera panned to a tuxedo-clad Jasper,
who was taking his seat next to the daughter of the Lord Mayor of London, a very single and fashionable woman who was often
in the headlines for her charity work. (And definitely not for her long list of celebrity exes.) The papers would love seeing
them together.
“After dessert is served,” Lauren said. “Maybe then. I’ll be around.”
Brian blinked a few times. “Sure, I’ll find you.”
Lauren said nothing as she walked away.
This would have been, she thought to herself with a renewed sense of sadness, a perfect time to text Joy. She almost laughed
thinking about the emojis Joy would have sent back upon hearing that Brian was in the building, which cheered her up for a
moment.
But mostly, Lauren spent the evening looking at a life that could have been hers.
Lauren thought she would feel an immense sense of relief as soon as the dinner concluded, but instead she just felt nervous
and edgy, knowing that Brian was somewhere out there, lurking like Jaws underwater, waiting to take Lauren by surprise yet
again.
But in the meantime, she had journalists to wrangle and two press memos to finish writing.
One of the members of the US press pack had brought their own power strip to plug into the wall so that more people had the ability to charge their devices.
It was a great idea in theory, but not so much when plugging into the Palace’s somewhat antiquated electric system.
It immediately shorted out the entire strip, along with some of the charging devices plugged into it, and after Lauren determined that the smoky smell was only from the initial spark and they weren’t about to burn the place down, she ran back to her office to grab her phone charger, yanking it out of the wall.
She almost made it back to the pressroom when she glanced up in the corridor just outside it.
Brian was standing there. “Hey,” he said, looking even more nervous this time. “Sorry, I hope you don’t mind.”
“I do, actually, I have to get this to—”
“Lauren.” Brian didn’t move from his spot. “I just wanted to say that I’m sorry.”
“Great,” Lauren said. “Good for you.”
“No, I mean it. Truly. What I did to you was . . .”
“Horrible?” Lauren said. “Fucked up? The kind of thing that happens on Bravo reality shows?”
“Yes,” Brian said. “All of that.”
“You literally upended my entire life!” she cried. Lauren held her arms open, gesturing to the Palace. “I left everything
behind to come here, and while I’m not sorry I’m here, I hate the fact that I was the one who ended up leaving when you were
the one who was in the wrong!”
Fuck the press. They could wait for her charger.
“You know what else I hate?” she said. “That we were building a life together, Brian. I told you so many things that I hadn’t told anyone else about my dad, how it felt when he left me!
And you knew that that was my biggest fear, being abandoned, and somehow it still seemed easy for you to do exactly that to me. ”
“It wasn’t easy—”
“Sure looked easy to me.” Lauren crossed her arms, stood her ground. “You’ve taken up so much space in my brain for all these
months and you don’t deserve any of it. You’ve controlled my life even though you’re not even in it anymore, and I am done.
You wanted to leave, so you can just stay gone. And how dare you come up to me here, on one of the biggest days of my job,
and try to smooth things over. You’re smug as hell, and I bet you’re not even that sorry at all. You’re only apologizing now
because we’re in the same space and you feel awkward about it.”
“No, I mean it!” Brian protested.
“Then why are you still with Brooke?”
Brian fell silent, just like Lauren knew he would. “Like I said, you just do whatever you want and you don’t care about the
collateral damage. I don’t accept your apology, and I won’t accept the way you treated me. Go fuck yourself, Brian.”
And then Lauren went past him and raced down the corridor back to the media room.
The pressroom had emptied out, stories filed, reporters departed, dignitaries tucked safely back into town cars, limousines, and private planes.
No one had choked or seized up, and when Lauren glanced at some of the early front pages already online for the next day’s newspapers, it looked like it had been a spectacular event, with all the stories talking about the reinvigorated relationship between Britain and America.
And Lauren was now slumped in a chair, a hand over her eyes, willing the painful headache to go away, when she saw Norman,
the Duke of Cumberland’s private secretary who was still looking after Jasper until his own was hired, come into the room.
“Yes?” she said, sitting up.
“D.O.E. would like to speak with you for a moment,” said Norman. “He’s waiting in the 1844 Room.”
“Of course,” Lauren said, running her hands through the ends of her hair before following behind him.
The duke was standing behind a blue and gold silk armchair, which he had rested his jacket on, and he turned around when Lauren
entered the room. He always looked good, but the white starched shirt and white bow tie he was wearing were something else,
and Lauren found it extremely unfair that some people just looked incredible in every single piece of clothing they wore.
“Your Highness,” she said, curtsying. “How can I help you?”
“Lauren, hello.” He sounded so formal, so royal. “Thank you, I’m sure you’ve had quite a long few days.”
She picked up the undertone of his words: They both knew that she had.
“I was just wondering what you thought of the interview and if you were happy with the reaction.”
“Oh yes, absolutely,” she said. “People seemed to love it, our social media feeds were flooded with positive comments.”
“Good, good, I’m so glad, truly.” He glanced up as Norman answered his phone and left the room to talk outside. “Oh, thank
goodness, we can speak normally now.”
Lauren smiled.
“Did the piece do its job?”
“Yes, absolutely. I’m just deeply, deeply grateful that you even agreed to do the interview in the first place. It would have
been fine if you didn’t want—”
“It would very much not have been fine, and you and I both know it,” he replied. “Plus, let’s be honest, it helped me steer
the conversation away from the money stuff as well. At least for now. I hope this helped you get ahead of your situation.
I know a little something about damaged family ties, and I’d hate to see you and your father’s relationship be damaged even
further.”
Lauren nodded, waiting for the lump in her throat to smooth itself out. “Thank you again. I know that you don’t love press
attention.”
“Well, good press attention isn’t the worst thing. And this is my reality now—the trade-off for reclaiming my position here with the
family.” He looked a bit sad, then added with a smile, “Plus Sweater Weather always appreciates some nice news stories about
her. She got an entire picture caption of her own.”
“I know the team is very grateful—”
“I’m just glad it all worked out.” Jasper paused, and when he spoke again, his voice was rough and serious. “But I didn’t
do it for the team, Lauren. I did it for you.”
“You didn’t have to.” Now her eyes were watering, damn it.
“I did,” he murmured. “You’ve been by my side every step of this journey, including the time that I came into your office
and scared the hell out of you—”
“I’m still really sorry about—”
“It’s fine, of course,” Jasper said. “I did in fact look scary. But you were there at the children’s hospital when I was a complete grump, and then in Singapore . . .” He trailed off as they both remembered the hotel suite that night. “Well, yes, Singapore.”
He reached for Lauren’s hand then, gripping it tightly. “I told you the other night in the gardens, there are so many things
I’d like to do with you, but I can’t. It would be throwing you to the rabid press wolves, and I couldn’t protect you if that
happened. But this story was something I could do to protect you. So please, let me have this one.”
They looked at each other for a long minute before Norman came bustling back into the room, interrupting the moment as Jasper
quickly shook her hand as if it was the end of a business meeting, and they stepped apart. “Well, thank you, Your Highness,”
Lauren said. “I appreciate all that you’ve done. For everyone.”
“Of course,” he said. “Have a good evening.”
Lauren’s head was spinning as she made her way back to the media room to collect her belongings. But with the arrival of Eugene
just a couple of minutes later, it only spun more.
“Lauren!” he said, standing in front of her, still in his white-tie attire. “Good, they said I could find you back here.”
“I’m here,” she said. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
“Did you get into a fight with the digital director of the American communications team?” He seemed absolutely aghast.
Here we go, Lauren thought.
“I had a personal disagreement with someone who used to be a close, um, friend—”
“Who now works for the president of the United States of America, one of our greatest allies.”
“—and I was taken by surprise outside of my office.”
“On the night of the state banquet at Buckingham Palace.”
“Believe me, Eugene, I didn’t want this conversation to happen any more than you did. He accosted me. How do you even know about this? Did you have me followed or something?”
It was hard to imagine Eugene looking any more offended, but he did. “Excuse me!” he said. “Cockburn mentioned he saw you and the American arguing.”
“Well, I hope he enjoyed the show,” Lauren said.
“After all the events over the past few weeks, that you would have the nerve to—”
Lauren felt the pain behind her eyes explode into a supernova.
“Eugene, enough. Please!” she said, her voice more fearsome than it had ever been with Brian. “I told you, it was personal.”
Eugene froze, but only for a second. “We will discuss further on Monday,” he said. “In my office. Ten a.m. sharp.”
“Fine,” Lauren said.
After he left, she glanced around the media room at the empty camping-style pop-up tables, coffee cups and saucers, and wadded-up
napkins strewn around. Someone else would clean it up, she realized. There was always someone to clean up the mess.
This time, though, she suspected that her time cleaning up after everyone else was about to come to an end.