Epilogue
FEbrUARY
LEXI
“Well, I can’t marry you until you’ve seen my football team play. If you don’t like it, the wedding’s off.” Oliver pulls our rental car into the parking space labeled simply “Oliver” in the staff lot of the Boston Commoners’ soccer stadium.
Cole and Dane park in the space behind us. Apparently, they’ve both become hooked on soccer since Oliver bought his share of the club, and for Saturday game days they give the weekend security guys the day off and come with him.
“Pretty sure you’re only half joking.” I unclick my seat belt.
“Don’t be silly,” Oliver says, turning off the engine. “I’m not joking at all.”
He winks and brushes his lips against my cheek.
This man is all mine. This man who can charm the birds from the trees and the stars from the sky and who turned my down-to-earth parents into people who got all tongue-tied when they met him, adored him at first sight, and could not be more excited to attend a royal wedding at a small village church in Scotland.
We haven’t set a date yet, but it won’t be until next year—much to Oliver’s parents’ consternation.
But my mom, who is rarely out of scrubs and isn’t comfortable in anything more dressed up than black pants and a lightly patterned top, can’t wait to come back to New York to go shopping for her dress and hat with me—my treat, of course. As Dad’s suit will be.
I already have an offer from a designer to take care of my dress free of charge in return for the publicity, and Oliver’s parents will pay for everything else, meaning we have almost no wedding expenses.
“Come on,” he says. “Let’s get inside so you can meet everyone before kickoff.”
As he reaches for the door handle, his phone rings with a video call.
“Who the hell is this?” He pulls the phone from his pocket. “You are fucking kidding me.”
“Who?”
He turns it toward me to show me the name “Mum.”
Oh Jesus. “You should take it. Get it over with. Or you’ll spend the whole game dreading calling her back, and it’ll ruin it for you.”
“I hate it when you’re right,” he says.
“No, you don’t. You love it.”
I blow him a kiss and he gives me a joke eye roll as he answers the call.
“Hi. Oh, Dad’s with you too.”
“Are you in a car?” his mother’s clipped voice asks.
“Yes. Just arrived at the football stadium. Match starts soon,” he says in a clear effort to hurry things along.
“Oh, that bloody waste-of-money football team,” his dad mutters.
“Craig,” his mother hisses. “What did we agree?”
“All right, all right.” Craig’s sigh is filled with decades of exasperation.
“We were wondering when you and Lexi might come for a visit,” his mother says.
Oliver’s face morphs into that cute expression he gets when he’s baffled. Hard to tell whether he’s more puzzled by her suggestion that we should visit or by the fact she used my name, implying a vague acceptance of my existence.
“Visit?” Oliver says. “Is there an event or something I’m expected to attend that I’ve forgotten about?”
“No. I was hoping you might want to come to discuss wedding plans.”
Oh God. Here we go.
“Like we said,” he says, “there’s no rush. It’s more than a year away.”
“Well, your father and I have talked about it. Haven’t we?”
“Yes. Yes.” Craig sounds like he’s been elbowed in the ribs. “Your mother’s talked about it an awful lot.”
Oliver digs his teeth into his top lip to suppress a smile that would likely be accompanied by a chuckle.
“We have to plan these things in advance, you know,” his mother says. “We have to pick a day when Granny and Grandpa are available.”
I still haven’t wrapped my head around the fact that the king and queen will be at our wedding.
“Oh, no worries,” Oliver says. “We’ll probably elope.”
How he managed to keep a straight face saying that I have no idea, because I have to press my hand tight on my mouth to prevent an audible laugh sneaking out.
There’s silence from his phone that’s eventually broken by his mother saying, “Craig. Craig.”
“What?” his father replies.
“Tell Oliver they can’t elope. The people expect a wedding. The whole village shut down for Sofia’s to allow everyone to attend the outdoor party on the green. They loved it.”
“Your mother’s right, Oliv—”
“It’s okay.” Oliver raises his hand to the camera. “It was a joke. Only kidding.”
His mother makes an oof sound, like she’s wiping her brow.
“Your jokes are never as funny as you think they are,” she says. “You almost gave me a funny turn.”
“Anyway, Lexi hasn’t even met Granny and Grandpa yet,” Oliver says.
“I was thinking our next trip should include us visiting them before we set a date and make actual plans. I don’t mean so I can call it off if they don’t like her.
I’m sure they’ll love her. Just to do the right thing, you know. And we’ll take it one step at a time.”
Getting his grandparents’ blessing is a tradition Oliver wants to keep out of respect to them.
They might not have stood up to the press to protect his mother, but Oliver says they didn’t know any better then.
I would argue they should have learned that lesson and done more to protect him from similar treatment, but I’ve agreed to go along with it for his sake.
Although, the mere idea of entering Buckingham Palace is enough to make my knees shake.
“Oh, right. Yes. That’s good that you’re going to do that.” His mother sounds shocked by his adherence to that royal custom. “Then maybe you’ll finally allow the formal engagement announcement.”
And that’s the exact media circus we’re trying to delay. I haven’t got an engagement ring yet for that very reason—in case someone snaps a picture of me wearing it.
“Maybe,” Oliver hedges. “Gotta go now, or we’ll miss the start of the match.”
“Oh, and I keep forgetting to tell you,” his mother pipes up. “We fired Giles. Anyway, let us know when you want to come.”
What? Oliver shoots me a look. Jesus, yes, that’s a big thing to toss in as an aside at the end of a conversation.
“Hold on, hold on,” Oliver says. “You fired Giles?”
“Yes. Just before Christmas. It wasn’t until after the holiday cards had all been mailed out that we realized he’d had them printed with the wrong year on them. We were mortified, weren’t we, Craig?”
Oliver’s father grunts the grunt of someone weary of hearing about the Christmas card debacle.
“Made us look ridiculous. I hear Lady Blatherwick suggested we must be going into mental decline if we didn’t spot it when we signed them.
Intolerable for Giles to embarrass us like that,” she adds.
“Anyway, must dash. Flora’s appeared with some tea.
Oh, and digestives, excellent. Let us know when you’re ready to visit, and I’ll book Sofia’s wedding planner to help Lexi with the arrangements. ”
Oh, hell no. That’s not happening. There will be no wedding plans with his mother’s “helpful” suggestions along the way. I lean close enough to be in Oliver’s peripheral vision but not close enough for the camera to see me, and shake my head with a pointed glare.
“Okay, Mum,” he says. “Thanks. We’ll let you know.”
“Bye, dear,” she says, then snaps, “Craig?”
“What? Oh, yes. Bye, Oliver.”
And they hang up.
Oliver looks from the phone to me, shell-shocked.
“In case you don’t realize,” he says, “that casually dropped in ‘oh, by the way, we fired the staff member who shafted you and your girlfriend’ is their emotionally crippled way of apologizing. But clearly they had to frame it as being for a completely different reason because they can’t admit that him secretly rummaging around in your past, buying those spring break photos and getting them published was wrong. ”
“Or that the other awful things they actually instructed him to do were also wrong.” I raise my eyebrows at Oliver’s startling omission.
“Yeah, that too.”
I’m learning that with his family, it’s often best to let things go. Fighting it achieves nothing other than getting sucked into a downward spiral that only ever generates stress and angst but never solves anything.
“Anyway”—I do my best to move on—“thank you for fending off any urgent need to plan the wedding.”
“No worries.” He kisses my cheek again. It’s one of my favorite things that he does, and it never fails to bring a smile to my lips and a ripple of pleasure to my neck.
“No way was I going to get into it with her about that right now,” he continues. “For the moment, it’s best to take the two giant wins of her accepting that we’re getting married and that Giles was a total shit.”
“You’re right.” The things this man puts up with and the balancing act he has to perform to live a life somewhere between normal and his royal obligations is exhausting. And I admire him all the more for it. “It’s a start.”
Oliver checks the time. “Twelve minutes to kickoff.” He lifts my hand to his mouth and kisses the back of it. “Come on. Time to meet the other love of my life.”
“Well, shit,” Oliver says as the whistle blows on a two-one defeat for the Commoners.
“You realize he’ll be unbearable for the entire rest of the weekend, don’t you?” Chase says to me.
Chase Cooper.
Chase freaking Cooper.
Of course I knew Oliver was friends with these people, but who wouldn’t be bowled over to be in the presence of Hollywood’s famously swoony sweetheart?
And it seems he really is exactly as delightful as everyone says. Having been a journalist for such a long time, I assume all image is PR. But not with this dude. First impressions say he is indeed as approachable and quick-witted as he is talented in the acting department.
It makes me wonder if he has some secret flaw. The media’s obsessed with him being single for such a long time.
“Oliver will be less depressed about a loss now that he has you to keep that famous British smile on his face.” Miller Malone gives him a friendly pat on the back.
He’s the only one of the other three owners I hadn’t heard of before it was my job to research Oliver. But he’s a well-known figure in Boston due to all the big luxury apartments he builds.
“Yup. I’ve never seen him this relaxed,” says Leo Johanssen of Lions’ Den investor reality show fame.
“You’ve worked some magic there, Lexi,” says Amelia, the four guys’ executive assistant at the club.
Leo, the multibillionaire famous for his poker face on the show, looks down at her and, if I’m not mistaken, his mouth turns up slightly at the corners.
“Shame about the book being scrapped, pal,” Miller says to Oliver.
“Yeah, I was gutted at first,” he replies.
“I wasn’t,” I add, to chuckles from the others.
“I thought it was the only way I could ever get a paycheck,” Oliver says.
“But being around this one inspired a much better idea I would never have come up with otherwise.” He puts his arm around me and kisses that familiar spot just above my ear.
“Chase’s contract lawyer helped us broker a deal, and I can’t believe we’re about to start filming our first documentary series. ”
“Could not be happier for you,” Miller says. “Meanwhile, amid all you guys’ showbiz glamour, I have to drive two donkeys to their new forever home tomorrow because our regular transport guy is busy.”
He might be Boston’s condo king, but Miller also helps out at his fiancée’s family’s donkey sanctuary in a small town in Upstate New York.
“No showbiz glamour for me either,” Leo says. “I’m clearing out a storage unit I’ve had for years tomorrow.”
“Do you need help?” Amelia pipes up. “You know I’m good at making you get rid of junk in the office.”
“Oh.” He shuffles a little on the spot and runs his finger inside the neck of his black turtleneck. “Um. Actually, you know, yes.” Are his cheeks a little pinker than they were a second ago? “That would be great.”
“Just don’t ask her to bring you more than one drink at a time or they’ll get mixed up,” Chase says.
“Hey,” Amelia says. “I can quit moonlighting as your private server in the owners’ box anytime you like.”
“How’re things going with the new movie prep, Chase?” Leo asks, changing the subject.
“Good. I think. Hard to tell when it’s my first time executive producing. I’m crossing my fingers it works out.”
“If you want to get out of the acting game, you could retire to a tropical island right now and put your feet up for the rest of your life,” Oliver says.
Chase shakes his head. “I’d be bored rigid. I don’t want to leave the industry completely, just want to get out from in front of the camera. Then maybe I’ll get more privacy.”
“So who’s going to be in the movie?” Miller asks.
“I’ve got a meeting in LA next week to discuss who to cast as the female lead,” Chase says. “I need someone cheap. So no big names. The studio isn’t exactly throwing cash at my first project.”
“Nice that you’re going with a soccer theme,” Leo says.
“Oh, what’s it about?” I ask.
“It’s a bit like a remake of Bend It Like Beckham. But with adults, not teenagers,” Chase says.
“So you need an actress who can play soccer?” Leo says.
“Yup.” Chase heads toward the box exit where Dane and Cole are stationed. “We don’t have the time or budget to train someone. So a complete beginner would be a disaster.”
We all gather up our things and follow Chase’s lead.
As we wend our way out of the box and down the stadium’s concrete hallway, Cole and Dane falling in step behind us, Oliver puts his arm around my waist. “But then, when I met you, I thought you were going to be a disaster.”
“Not as much of a disaster as I thought you’d be,” I say, giving the love of my life a peck on the lips as we walk along. “But look at us now.”
If it would be a disaster for the lead in Chase’s movie not to be able to play soccer, imagine how much worse it would be if the studio has secretly cast the high school sweetheart who shattered Chase’s heart…and who couldn’t find a soccer goal if you drew her a map…