Chapter 38
“Should we get matching rings?” Jamie asked, surveying the set on display in one of the city’s most exclusive jewelers. “Or should we get whatever we both want?”
Etta’s hand squeezed her side, arm wrapped cozily around her.
The salesperson stood before them, bedecked in a designer sweater dress and wearing the type of perfume Jamie usually only smelled on a banker’s rich wife.
“I’m fine with somewhat matching… although I don’t want to get too crazy.
I’ll leave the gems to you. I’m a simple woman, you know. ”
Jamie caught the humor in her words and laughed. Simple. Yeah. Sure. Oh, Etta could be simple in many ways, but they were both thinking of anything but the many ways.
They were two days separated from one of the greatest rounds in bed they ever enacted.
Jamie woke up Saturday fatigued yet refreshed.
Okay, so her body was fatigued… but her soul was so refreshed that she remained in awe that Etta loved her so much.
Since then, her fiancée had barely stopped touching her.
Etta’s arm was always around her, fingers dancing on her skin, and eyes taking in her hair, clothes, and the sparkle on her face.
“I want to get something that goes with this.” Jamie pointed to her ring. “Because I never wanna stop wearing it.”
“May I suggest…” the saleswoman began. “Many women switch to wearing their engagement ring on another hand, or have it set into a necklace.”
“Why, thank you.” Nevertheless, Jamie didn’t like the idea of taking her engagement ring off… like, ever. “If we go this route, though,” she kept saying to Etta, “we could get matching bands. Oh, maybe with inscriptions!”
Her perfume came dangerously close to Jamie’s nose. “I’d like that.”
Hilariously enough, wedding ring shopping was one of the easiest things they had yet to do for the wedding. Jamie put the lack of a dress and maid of honor out of her head. They were entering May already, but there was still plenty of time, right?
“I hope you don’t mind that we swing by my lawyer’s before heading home,” Etta said as they exited the jeweler’s.
“On a Sunday?”
“Did you see where we were on a Sunday?”
“Right.” She does a lot of personal business on Sundays. When a woman was wealthy, people opened stores and offices for her even on a Sunday. Why not? It meant damn good business. “I don’t mind.”
“It could take a while.”
“That’s fine! I’ve got some work of my own to go over.
” Jamie had a voicemail from Kathleen to go through, for example.
Ever since she proved to not flake out on the haggard champion of charity, Kathleen had started assigning her star volunteer more work on the pet haven project.
“Paw Meadows,” as it was going to be called, still needed outside funding and a board to head it.
Jamie’s job was to research potential candidates outside of Kathleen’s web of (shitty, unresponsive) contacts.
They got in the Town Car and headed farther into downtown. Etta was on her phone and Jamie was nose-deep in her notebook. Nevertheless, they were attached at the hip, Etta stroking her fiancée’s hair as she flipped through messages and grumbled about business this and economy that.
Jamie had only been to Etta’s lawyer’s office a few times, and most had never been for anything pleasant – like dealing with Jacqueline Love and the takeover Etta did a while back.
Jamie had only gone with her to those meetings because her testimony was needed.
Otherwise, she stayed away from legal shit.
But popping in with Etta shouldn’t have been a problem.
Haha. Shouldn’t have been.
Her first sign that something was wrong was Etta’s lawyer greeting her first. With a smile. The man never smiled.
Her second sign that she should start running, even if it meant leaving Etta’s warm hold for the first time in days?
The presence of her own lawyer, a man she rarely saw because who the heck needed a lawyer when you were just Jamie Joy?
Apparently, she did.
“Etta…” Jamie stood in the middle of the immaculate office, smelling of old tomes, sour liquor, and musty cigars. “What’s going on?”
She knew what Etta was going to say. She didn’t say it. Instead, she left it to her lawyer, a wiry old man who looked at her with a knowing “I have been here before and I will be here again” gaze.
“Didn’t Ms. Coleman tell you?”
“Jamie…”
“She’s arranged for us to go over the prenuptial agreement today.”
“Forgot to mention that, huh?”
Etta wasn’t a woman who ever looked sheepish, but there was definitely some color on those chiseled cheeks. “I thought I had told you…”
“No!”
Amazing how quickly Jamie’s good mood could up and die.
Funny thing, that. It was almost like she didn’t appreciate having the idea that she was a money-grubbing cow whom Etta would have to divorce one day sprung on her.
Didn’t exactly feed into Jamie’s confidence.
Why did she have to be told what she already knew?
Probably because the first term Etta’s lawyer presented her basically said, “You get nothing, Jamie Joy. I’m smiling at you, and she says she’s in love with you, but guess what? You get nothing.”
Didn’t matter if her lawyer said this was due course and this was how negotiations began.
It didn’t matter that Etta was willing to be more than fair on every item on the list. It didn’t fucking matter that Jamie didn’t get control of the company in any way, but she could take stock options instead of money if they divorced.
If they divorced.
It was two months before her big wedding, and not only did Jamie not have a dress, but she wasn’t even sure she would have a fucking fiancée at the end of the day!