Chapter 19 #2
“What do you mean?” I ask, clutching the phone. Maddy and Savvy pause the TV, watching me. “Did the tent collapse? Did the caterers quit?”
“No,” Mark says. “Brooks. Brooks is… he’s gone rogue.
He showed up late; he looked like he hadn’t slept in three days.
He’s been pacing the library, mumbling to himself…
It’s like when he almost ruined my wedding.
Betty is trying to keep the schedule moving, but Brooks looks like he’s about to detonate a bomb. ”
My stomach drops. “Is he making the speech?”
“He’s supposed to go on in an hour,” Mark says. “But Penelope Vanderbilt is in there with him, clinging to him like lint. I guess he’s playing ‘keep your enemies close.’”
He lowers his voice. “Ivy, we had a drink earlier this week,” Mark says.
“And he mentioned your name. Just once. I saw it then, the way his face changed. The way his guard slipped for half a second. He’s in love with you, and he’s barely holding it together.
If he stops playing along now, everything blows up. ”
“What are you talking about?”
“He found out,” Mark says, his voice dropping low.
“He told me what happened. He saw the security tapes from the library before he drove to the city last night. He saw Penelope cornering you. He went to your apartment to find you, and when you wouldn’t open the door, he came back here and …
broke. He’s not going up there to celebrate, Ivy.
He’s going up there to publicly accuse Penelope of blackmail.
He’s going to tell the board to go to hell. ”
I freeze. "He can't. If he exposes her, it turns into a scandal. Everything collapses. He loses the deal."
“He doesn’t care,” Mark says. “He told me winning doesn’t feel like winning if you’re not there. He’s choosing you. But if he does this, his father will destroy him. He needs a fixer, Ivy. Right now.”
The line goes dead. I stare at the phone.
“What?” Maddy asks. “What happened?”
“Brooks,” I say, standing up so fast my head spins. “He’s at the party. He’s about to blow up the deal because I wouldn’t open the door last night.”
“Let him,” Savvy says. “He’s a big boy.”
“No,” I say, grabbing my purse. “It’s my problem. Because I didn’t leave so he could burn it down anyway. I left to save him.”
“I have to go back,” I say.
“Ivy, no,” Maddy says, standing up. “You can’t. It’s a three-hour drive on a good day. On Labor Day Monday? You’ll be lucky to hit Southampton by midnight. The party will be over.”
“I’m booking a helicopter,” I say, my fingers flying across my phone. I go straight to a private charter manifest. “It’s a forty-minute flight to East Hampton Airport. But because it’s last-minute on a holiday…” I pause, looking at the quote on the screen. “It’s ten thousand dollars. One way.”
I look at the $500,000 check on the table. The “test” I had failed on purpose.
“Luckily,” I say, a sharp, cold smile hitting my face, “I came into some money. I’m putting it on the Amex. I have the collateral to pay it off now. I’m using his ‘choice’ money to fly back and save his ass one last time. And then? I’m going to kill him.”
"I'll get us a car to the West 30th Street helipad," Savvy says, pulling out her phone. "I'll pay triple for the driver to run every red light on 10th Avenue."
“I’m coming too,” Maddy says.
I look at my friends. My team. “Let’s go.”
The transition is a blur of Manhattan neon and the roar of the turbine. Forty minutes later, the helicopter skids touch down at the East Hampton airport. The sun is a dying ember on the horizon, casting long, bruised shadows across the tarmac.
I scramble out of the helicopter, my hair whipping around my face in the rotor wash. I didn't change. I'm wearing jeans, a t-shirt, and my favorite leather jacket. I look nothing like a Taylor-approved fiancée. I look like a woman who chartered a ten-thousand-dollar flight to stop a disaster.
I grab the first black car idling in the line.
“Eastmoor Estate,” I tell the driver, slamming the door. “And if you get me there in under fifteen minutes, I’ll tip you enough to retire.”
“Lady, for that kind of talk, I’ll drive on the sidewalk.”
The car peels out. I stare out the window as the towering privet hedges of the Hamptons blur into a solid wall of green. Please don’t do anything stupid, Brooks, I pray silently. Please don’t throw it all away.
He’s going to blow everything up. He’s going to expose Penelope. He’s going to choose me, even when I’m not there. And while that is the most romantic thing I’ve ever heard, it’s also the fastest way to ruin his life.
I didn’t spend eight weeks dealing with his mother, moving crates of glassware, and eating dry quiche to watch him lose at the finish line. I am a fixer. And I have one last disaster to manage.
The car screeches through the gates of Eastmoor, tires spitting gravel. The valet line is backed up. I don’t wait. I throw a wad of cash at the driver and jump out while the car is still rolling.
I run toward the massive white tent. I push through the heavy canvas flaps.
On the stage, standing in the spotlight, is Brooks. He looks magnificent. He is gripping the microphone stand like he wants to snap it in half. Next to him, looking pale and slightly sick, stands Penelope.
Brooks is speaking. “The truth is,” he says, his voice echoing through the high-end speakers, “integrity is a commodity we often undervalue in this room. We trade in futures. We trade in assets. But we rarely trade in truth.”
He scans the crowd. He looks wild, his tie loosened, his eyes dark with a reckless kind of grief.
“I made a deal,” he continues. “To secure this company. I thought it was the most important thing in the world. I thought the future of Taylor Enterprises was worth any price.”
He pauses, locking eyes with his father in the front row. “I was wrong.”
The crowd gasps. Brooks takes a breath, his chest heaving. He opens his mouth to burn it all down.
“Brooks!” I shout.
My voice rings out, cutting through the tension like a blade. He freezes. He squints against the blinding spotlight, his hands still white-knuckled on the mic stand.
“Ivy?”
I march down the center aisle. My boots thud against the carpet runner, a sharp, rhythmic contrast to the elegant silence. I am not wearing silk. I am wearing jeans, a leather jacket, and a look that says I will tackle him into a marble cherub again if he doesn’t shut up.
Brooks stares at me. The calculated anger drains out of his face, replaced by a shock so profound he nearly drops the microphone.
“You came back,” he says, his voice raw, as I reach the edge of the stage.
“Of course I came back,” I say, climbing the stairs with purpose. “You were about to do something impulsive. Again.”
I reach him, stepping right into his personal space, purposefully shielding him from the board’s view.
I take the microphone from his hand, our fingers brushing, and the electric spark of him nearly knocks the wind out of me.
I turn to the crowd and flash my best, brightest, most professionally fake smile.
“I am so sorry for the interruption,” I say smoothly, my voice projecting with a calm I don’t feel. “Traffic from the heliport was a nightmare. You know how it is on Labor Day.”
I look at Brooks. He’s looking at me like I’m the only thing left in the world. I take a breath and pick up exactly where he left off, twisting his words back into the safety of our lie.
“Brooks was talking about truth,” I say to the guests, my eyes locking onto his. “And the truth is… he loves me. Right, Brooks?”
The silence in the tent is absolute, a pressurized vacuum of three hundred people waiting for the hammer to fall. Brooks doesn't hesitate. He takes the mic from my hand, his eyes never leaving mine, his voice low and vibrating with a raw honesty that makes my knees weak.
“I do,” he says.
He doesn’t wait for applause. He doesn’t finish the speech.
He simply lets go. He drops the microphone, the metal hitting the stage floor with a muffled, echoing thump that rings through the speakers, and pulls me into him.
He kisses me right there, in the center of the spotlight, a raw and public declaration that effectively incinerates every “Old Money” rule he ever lived by.
The crowd exhales, a collective, captivated sound.
I pull back an inch, my head spinning, and realize I still have a room to manage.
I reach down and retrieve the microphone.
I don’t give them time to think. I don’t give Penelope time to breathe.
I turn back to the sea of faces, my grin feeling remarkably real.
“Now,” I say. “Who wants cake?”
The tension snaps. Penelope, looking like she’s been struck, turns on her heel and practically runs toward the back of the tent, throwing out a sharp comment about getting the first piece as a cover for her retreat.
Brooks’s hand finds mine, his fingers lacing with mine in a grip that says he’s never letting go.
“I’m a fixer, Brooks,” I whisper, off-mic, as the band kicks back into a lively jazz number. “I finish the job.”
“You came back,” he says, and the ice in his eyes is gone.
“Smile, Taylor,” I say quietly, pulling him toward the edge of the stage to greet the board members. “We have business to finish. Then you and I are going to have a very long talk.”