Twenty-Five
For Michael, I had been patient. For Beverly, I was tolerant.
For the sake of peace, in the spirit of getting along, I had remained calm, kept a smile plastered on my face and bitten my tongue.
But now I was free. The gloves were off because the mid-December wedding was over.
The bride and groom had retired alone to their lavish penthouse suite upstairs, while most of the guests were still enjoying the open bar that would be serving until midnight.
Because the bridal party was supposed to be there in the morning to have brunch with the newlyweds before they left on their honeymoon, Sam and I had a room at the hotel.
I had watched the wedding from my seat beside his mother, but Sam had been a groomsman.
It was this honor/burden that had started the whole mess.
She was a stunning woman, tall and graceful and oozing confidence that you could feel.
Think Catherine Zeta-Jones in The Mask of Zorro.
With her jet-black hair pulled up into a French twist, her sapphire eyes and flawless, creamy skin, no one could take their eyes off her.
She looked like a model, but I knew she had just been made partner at the law firm where she worked in Manhattan.
And she could cook too. She was, Beverly said, a triple threat.
She had beauty and brains and made her grandmother’s Italian meatballs from scratch.
Any man in their right mind would want her.
The bride had confessed to me before the first day of the four-day wedding juggernaut that she was worried about Michael falling for her best friend, as had every man she’d ever dated.
I told Beverly that Michael Kage loved her and her alone.
She did not need to worry. Turned out I was half right.
Michael had made no bigger a fool of himself over Amanda Rinehart than any of the other men.
Only Sam had remained polite and unaffected, which, from what Beverly reported back to me, she wasn’t used to.
I didn’t like that she cared one way or another about my husband. I was annoyed.
When Beverly came to me the morning of the bachelor and bachelorette parties and asked if I could help her get the wedding programs reprinted, I asked her what was wrong.
I had designed and printed them over a month ago, so the last-minute panic had me confused.
It turned out that there was nothing wrong with what I’d done; the change had only to do with Amanda. She was insisting on walking with Sam.
“I’m sorry, what?” Dylan needed clarification again. We were at our office later that same day, and I had told her twice, but she was still looking at me like she didn’t believe me.
“Beverly wants the programs reprinted, because Amanda says the best man is too short to walk her down the aisle,” I said for the third time.
She did the thing where her eyebrows scrunched up in the middle. “Let me get this straight. The maid of honor is stepping down as maid of honor two days before the wedding because she doesn’t want to be taller than the best man?”
“Correct.”
“And the bride is gonna let the princess have her way?”
“Apparently.”
“Are you kidding?”
“No.”
“What’s going on?” Aubrey Flanagan asked as she walked into the office the three of us had shared for the past month.
So Dylan told her, and she gave me a funny look.
“What?”
“Who does she want to walk with?”
I arched an eyebrow for her.
“Oh, no way,” Dylan chimed in. “The prima donna wants to walk with Sam?”
My shrug was my answer.
“The bitch is hot for your man,” Aubrey teased me.
I shot her a look, and Aubrey started coughing as Dylan walked over and wrapped her arms around me.
“Listen to me,” she said, her voice soft but firm. “We both know that man is madly in love with you. Do not second-guess your detective based on this woman’s interest in him. One thing has nothing to do with the other.”
I nodded, and Aubrey rushed over to hug both of us.
“I watch him when he’s here, and he’s mad about you. I’m just teasing, and you should know better.”
And I did. I just didn’t appreciate the woman’s interest in him.
That night, during the bride and groom’s last night of freedom out on the town, the men and women had apparently bumped into each other.
I hadn’t been able to go, as I was pinch-hitting for Dane at a dinner Aja was having for a visiting speaker on educational reform.
My brother was out of town, so his wife had asked me to go with her as her date.
Thus occupied, I had apparently missed Amanda’s impromptu pole dance at the strip club, which had been met with thunderous applause from everyone in attendance at Michael’s bachelor party.
The lap dance she gave Sam afterward was the talk of the table the following evening at the rehearsal dinner.
It suddenly made sense why I had been attacked when he got home the night before.
She had started his libido raging, and I had been the recipient of his attention.
Knowing that she turned him on did little to improve my mood.
On the other hand…maybe it hadn’t been her at all.
Sam wanted me just as much as I wanted him, and it was constant and hungry.
To say that she turned him on wasn’t really fair.
But Sam loved women, thought they were beautiful—as did I—and had only been with women before he met me.
It was possible she had been the catalyst for his passion.
The whole issue stemmed from the fact that I had agreed in advance, along with Sam, not to mention our relationship in front of Beverly’s very conservative Midwestern family.
Even knowing all of that wasn’t helping matters.
None of her family or friends knew what I was to Sam.
No one had any clue that the rings on our fingers signified the wedding we’d had in Canada six months before, or that, as far as the city of Chicago was concerned, we were domestic partners.
That Michael had agreed with Beverly that it was the best thing to do in front of her family had saddened me, but in the end, I understood.
It was her day, not mine. Who was I to ask her to let me have my way? Why should my agenda top hers?
“So wait,” Rachel was summarizing. “Beverly let this girl go from maid of honor to bridesmaid just so she could walk down the aisle with Sammy, but you and Sammy can’t be a couple here at her wedding?”
“That would be correct,” I told her.
“Do we think it’s Sam, specifically,” she began, bumping me as she reapplied her lipstick, “or because Mike’s best man, Sterling, is shorter than her?”
I shrugged.
“I mean, I get the short thing. I wouldn’t want to be taller than the guy I was walking with either. It would look odd for pictures.”
“No it wouldn’t.” Jen chimed in from where she was on the other side of me, having slipped into Sam’s seat when he got up a few minutes ago. “I wouldn’t have given up my spot as your maid of honor for any reason.”
Rachel was quiet a moment. “You know what, you’re right. I wouldn’t have either. Okay, I’ve decided. She’s a piece of crap, Jory.”
I was quiet, not agreeing, instead watching the wedding party dance. I was riveted by Sam and Amanda as they swayed together along with all the other couples.
Only the bridal party was invited out for drinks after the rehearsal dinner, so I went home and packed for the following night.
Sam stumbled in after two, reeking of Amanda’s perfume, with smudges of lipstick on his collar.
When he tried to grab me, I sent him to the shower.
I found him half an hour later, passed out naked with only a towel wrapped around his waist, in the middle of our bed.
I covered him up and went to sleep on the couch.
I was woken in the middle of the night, and my irritation slept longer than my desire for him.
I was carried back to bed, and his kisses and his hands coaxed my anger right out of me.
I woke up there alone in the morning. He had more things to do with the rest of the bridal party and hadn’t wanted to wake me. He had made me coffee, though, and the note on the nightstand that told me where he’d gone was under a mug of it. I felt better until I got to the wedding.
Everyone around me, except Sam’s parents and his sisters, commented on what a beautiful couple he and Amanda made.
“Jory.”
I turned my head to look at Regina and found her smiling at me.
“Angel,” she murmured, patting my hand as we waited to leave the church. “No one looks better beside Sam than you. The two of you make the most beautiful couple I know.”
I nodded and squeezed her hand.
“Think about what your ring means to you. Going to a wedding, any wedding, should always make you think of your own and reaffirm your love.”
Even if no one in the place knew I was married?
“It only matters what you know,” she told me, like she was reading my mind.
“Hey,” a voice nearly barked at me, and the only one who did that was Sam’s father. I turned and scowled at him.
“Fix your face,” he ordered me.
I huffed out a frustrated breath of air.
“You and Sam, that’s bedrock, you know? You make him better.”
My eyes filled so fast.
“Fix your face,” he muttered again, passing me his handkerchief. He made sure his arm stayed around me the whole time we walked out.
Once we’d driven over to the Congress Plaza Hotel & Convention Center on Michigan Avenue for the reception, he kept one arm around his wife and the other around me as we walked in. It was really nice. Both Jen and Rachel stayed close as well.