The Wedding Dress

by Danielle Steel

  “I don’t want to be part of a team, Zack. I don’t want to share you, or be the home team while you have Marlenes on the road. If that’s what you want, you shouldn’t be married. Not to me anyway.” And the worst of it was she was twenty-six years old, and if she stayed with him, he would break her heart again and again forever. She knew that now, and if she stayed, she couldn’t pretend to herself that it would be any different. It wouldn’t be, and they both knew it. This was who he had grown up to be. They were kids when they got married. And this was who Zack Katz was turning out to be as a grown-up, a billionaire, and a spoiled brat who wanted his cake and to eat it, and to cheat on his wife. He needed the Marlenes, and whoever the next one would be, and he thought he could get away with it, and he deserved it. She realized now that there would always be another Marlene stashed somewhere. He couldn’t help it, and didn’t want to stop.

  “Are you leaving me?” he asked in a frightened voice.

  “Would you care?” she responded in a hard tone.

  “Of course I would, I love you,” he said with tears in his eyes, and she could see that he probably meant it. His mother had more or less abandoned him when he was eleven, he couldn’t bear the thought of losing Ruby too. And he needed all of them to fill that void.

  “Maybe you do love me, but you need the others too. That’s not what I want. The problem is we have two very young children, a two-year-old and a three-year-old, and I have this pathetic old-fashioned belief that children need a father. A real one. And if I leave you, they get screwed. If I stay, I do. So I haven’t decided yet what I’m going to do.”

  “Why don’t you stay and we’ll try to work it out. We’ll have a good week together somewhere.” His tone was pleading. He wasn’t a bad man, he just couldn’t be faithful to her and never would be. She knew that now.

  “And then what? You go back to London for a week of ‘emergency meetings’ to see Marlene, until the next one comes along that you can’t resist. I thought you were over that, but apparently not, and now I get that you never will be. You’re always going to need just one more to fill the void in you that you can never fill. You want me and everyone else. And they’re all so willing and desperate to have you because of who you are and what you have. I actually loved you for who you really are, or who you used to be. And I don’t like playing second fiddle, or tenth fiddle, or whatever fiddle I am in your busy life. So no, I’m not staying, and I need to think about what I’m going to do now. You can give the alligator bag to Marlene. It’ll knock her socks off. I assume she’ll be back on board as soon as I leave.” She closed her bags then, and went to see the captain. She told him she needed a car and driver and a flight out of Nice that evening, most likely to Paris, or any city where she could connect to San Francisco.

  “You’re leaving us, Madam?”

  “I have to get back to my children,” she said quietly, and he told her he would get on it immediately. She waited on deck, and he came back to her ten minutes later.

  “I’m afraid it’s not ideal,” he said apologetically. “There’s an eleven P.M. flight to Paris, which will get you there an hour later. And an eight A.M. flight from Paris to San Francisco. You’ll have an eight hour layover at the Paris airport. And you’ll have to leave immediately to get to Nice in time for your flight.”

  “That’s fine. I’m packed.”

  “I’ll have a driver at the dock in five minutes, and I’ll have the boys get the tender ready,” he assured her. It was embarrassing talking to him, knowing clearly now that Zack brought his other women on the boat.

  She went back downstairs to see Zack, and noticed that he had gotten the lipstick off his neck.

  “I’m leaving,” she said coldly to mask the overwhelming hurt she felt, and the disappointment.

  “You won’t stay?” He looked at her mournfully. She shook her head. “Don’t leave me, Ruby. I swear, I won’t be an idiot again. I get carried away sometimes. You’re right. Women throw themselves at me.”

  “And you catch them.” She smiled sadly at him. She got her handbag out of their cabin then. Her suitcase was already gone. She walked down the stairs to where the tender was waiting, got in, and looked up as they pulled away. Zack was standing at the railing, watching her, and she wasn’t sure in the twilight, but she thought he was crying. She looked away then, and as they sliced through the water at full speed on their fastest tender, she was sure that Marlene would be back on the boat to console him before she got to Nice. Ruby didn’t know if she was going to leave Zack or not, and divorce him, but whether she did or not, whatever she did now, the marriage was over. If she stayed, they would be married in name only. It was a lot for her to give up at twenty-six.

  Chapter 19

  When Zack came back to San Francisco from the boat, a week later, he checked their bedroom as soon as he arrived, and saw that Ruby wasn’t there. It had the orderly look the room had when she was away. He checked her closets, and her clothes were still there. The children’s rooms were empty, and he asked the maid if Mrs. Katz was away, and felt foolish doing so. She hadn’t called him or left him any messages since she left the boat, and he hadn’t the courage to call her.

  “I think they’re at Lake Tahoe, sir.” He didn’t call her there either. Ruby had been right of course. He’d had Marlene move onto the boat the night Ruby left. He couldn’t help himself. It was always so tempting, and he thought he’d get away with it. And most of the time, he did. He hated being alone. He couldn’t stand it. It was agony for him. He needed a woman with him at all times to love him. He knew now that it had been a mistake marrying Ruby, marrying anyone. He loved her, but he wanted to have fun too, which to him meant lots of women, not just one. And the older he got, the more he enjoyed the women who flocked to him and adored him. Ruby was wrong. They did fill the void, even if only for a short time. But he loved their children, and so did she.

  * * *

  —

  Ruby had gone to Tahoe with the children as soon as she got home. She was there when her grandmother returned from Europe and she told her what had happened in Saint Tropez.

  “What are you going to do about it?” Eleanor asked her.

  “I don’t know,” Ruby said honestly. “The children are too young. I can’t deprive them of their father.”

  “What about you? You can’t stay in a loveless marriage with a man who cheats on you. You deserve better than that.”

  “Maybe in a few years…” Ruby said, thinking about it.

  She spent the rest of the summer in Tahoe, as they always did, and Zack didn’t come up, or call her. He was afraid that anything he did would push Ruby over the edge, and he didn’t want to lose her. He wanted to stay married to her. He didn’t want to lose his kids. And neither did she. And if she divorced him, she’d take them with her. Or he’d have to leave.

  Ruby spent the month of August gardening with her grandmother, and playing with her children. The gardening they did together made her feel peaceful again. Her grandmother showed her how to do it, and explained that a garden was a living, breathing thing, and it taught you patience and gave you strength.

  “My mother taught me that. She learned how to garden after they lost all their money. It helped me when your grandfather was away in the war. It will help you while you make your decision.” Ruby found that she was right and it did. She went back to the city at the end of August ready to face the future. She decided to wait a few years before leaving Zack. He was a good father. For her, the marriage had ended in Saint Tropez. She was staying with him for the children, not for him or herself.

  Zack didn’t ask her what she was going to do after she got home, and she didn’t tell him. They continued to live under one roof, as their lives became more divergent year by year. The children were the only thing that kept them together. They hardly spoke anymore. They became strangers to each other. She was sure he had other women, and
she didn’t want to know. He no longer had her.

  Kendall was seven when she saw her mother crying one day. Ruby was thirty and wondering why she stayed with him. She couldn’t see any future, except a lonely life with a man who didn’t love her anymore, and whom she hadn’t loved in four years. The spirit of the marriage was dead.

  She visited her grandmother whenever she could and they gardened together. Ruby had gotten good with the orchids and loved working with them. They were so beautiful, and she loved the rare species. She had just come back from Tahoe and the emptiness of her life had hit her again, when Kendall found her crying.

  “Why are you sad, Mama?” Kendall asked her, and she couldn’t answer her. She was too young and the answer was too big. She was lonely. She and Zack were no longer even friends. Yet, as the children got older, Ruby knew she had done the right thing staying with Zack. Kendall worshipped her father and said she wanted to be like him one day. She loved computers as much as he did. He wanted Nick to come and work with him too. What they saw was an incredibly successful man, a legend in his industry and in the world, a man everyone admired. There was no denying that he was a genius. But he had broken Ruby’s heart irreparably, and staying with him was killing her spirit. Part of her was dead inside and she knew it, but she tried not to care.

  Her grandmother knew it too and hated to see it. But the decision to leave him had to come from her.

  When Kendall was fourteen, she turned on her mother and criticized her constantly. Her father was her hero, and she was more and more like him in obvious ways. Hard, demanding, smart. Despite his success, Kendall was actually tougher than he was in some ways. There was a cold side to her that worried her mother.

  Nick was more sensitive, gentler, kinder, warmer, and more like Ruby. He said he was going to work for his father one day. He was thirteen, and he wanted to work in finance or computers.

  Four years later, Kendall went to UCLA and loved it, and Nick went to the London School of Economics the following year and said he was happy there, but his mother didn’t believe him, until he met Sophie Taylor in his second year there and everything changed. She was a sculptress, and her father was a carpenter, and she taught Nick to make beautiful furniture. He dropped out of school, moved to the Cotswolds with Sophie, and opened a business with her. Ruby loved visiting them, and was proud of what he was doing. Zack constantly criticized him, and Nick stopped talking to his father entirely. He thought his father was toxic. Ruby didn’t say it, but she thought so too. More than anything, Zack was selfish. Everything in life was about him and what he wanted. Kendall was somewhat that way too. Kendall sided with her father about Nick and told him what a loser he was to be making furniture when he could be working for their father when he graduated.

  The greatest blow of all, especially for Ruby, happened the summer before Nick left for college in London. His great-grandmother Eleanor was in fine form and had died peacefully in her sleep at ninety-one. It was a tremendous loss for all of them. But Eleanor had led a rich life and was a happy woman. She missed Alex once he was gone, but they had shared a lifetime. They buried her in Tahoe, beside Alex. Ruby couldn’t believe she was gone. Her grandparents had been such a vital part of her history and had saved her.

  Before she had died, Eleanor told Ruby that Kendall reminded her of Ruby’s mother, Camille. There was a fire and an anger in her that nothing would quench. She was on the wrong path, and blazing a trail. She wanted to be like her father and was following him blindly, the way Camille had followed Flash to her own destruction. But Eleanor was at peace about her life when she died.

  When the kids left for college, Ruby was still married to Zack, though they barely saw or spoke to each other. He carried on his affairs, though less and less discreetly. Kendall blamed her mother for her father’s loneliness which drove him into the arms of other women. She didn’t see the pain he had caused her mother or the soul-deadening abuse of his constant infidelities. Nick had accidentally seen him with other women on several occasions and hated him for it. It was exactly what Zack had felt about his own father. Kendall was willing to do anything to win her father’s approval, including blame her mother for her parents’ bad marriage. She no longer remembered the times she had seen her crying during her childhood.

  Nick hated the fact that his mother stayed and didn’t have the courage to leave his father. Once both her children were in college, she no longer had the excuse that it was for her children. She was forty-one when Nick left for school in London, and she had been miserable with Zack for the last fifteen years. Eventually she didn’t even know she was. She was just numb. Her grandmother had seen it for many years, and reminded her that she needed a life too, not just a father for her children. Once they were gone, what excuse would she use? Her grandmother hadn’t lived long enough to see her free of him.

  Ruby spent more and more time in Tahoe maintaining her grandmother’s gardens, in memory of her and for her own peace of mind. She had no reason to go back to the city, to the house where her grandmother and her own children had grown up. It felt hollow now, with no love in it. She was more at home in the simple cottage in Tahoe. Her grandmother’s house in Tahoe stood empty now.

  Zack traveled extensively, and had apartments in New York and London, and still had the boat. Ruby disappeared to Tahoe when he came back to San Francisco, so they didn’t have to be in the house together. It was an unspoken agreement, and she came back from Tahoe when he left.

  They both attended Kendall’s graduation from UCLA, and left separately immediately afterward. Zack had flown in from London and Ruby had successfully avoided him for six months before that, although officially they still lived at the same address. And the rare times they saw each other, the house was large enough that they could avoid each other. They’d had separate bedrooms for years.

  Kendall went to work for her father as soon as she graduated, and met a young architect, Ross McLaughlin, when she moved back from L.A. He was tall, dark, and handsome, and he looked surprisingly like Alex, her great-grandfather, although she didn’t notice it. By contrast, she was blond and blue eyed like her grandmother Camille, who had died shortly after her mother was born.

  Ross was building small beautiful homes in San Francisco. He loved fine craftsmanship and small, elegant spaces, combined with a cozy, warm feeling throughout the house. Kendall gave him a tour of the house she had grown up in and he was overwhelmed by the sheer beauty of it. He told her that his dream was to buy houses and restore them and then sell them. He didn’t have the funds to do it yet, but he hoped to one day. She thought his dreams were paltry considering what he was capable of. He didn’t have great financial ambitions, he was an artist at heart.

  “You sound like my brother when you talk about fine craftsmanship,” she said with a slightly patronizing tone. She was a tough girl with a sharp tongue but Ross was intrigued by how smart and ambitious she was.

  “What does your brother do?” He was curious about her and wanted to see more of her. But she was often busy with her father and still lived in their family home, although both her parents were away a lot, and she usually had the enormous mansion to herself.

  “He makes furniture in England with his girlfriend. He dropped out of the London School of Economics.” It was obvious that she didn’t approve of him. Their father was an icon and Ross already understood that she worshipped him and everything he stood for, although Zack Katz had a reputation for being ruthless and self-centered, narcissistic, and had a huge ego. He didn’t sound like a good guy to Ross.

  “Your brother sounds like an interesting guy,” Ross said gently.

  “He’s an underachiever. He could do a lot better. He doesn’t get along with my father.” Few people did, from what Ross had heard about him, but he didn’t say that to Kendall. She had a hard shell that made him want to melt it.

  “What does your mother do?” He was curious about them.

/>   “She grows orchids and takes care of her gardens.”

  “So your family is composed of two underachievers and two stars, you being one of the stars, if I’m assessing that correctly,” he teased her and she laughed. She liked him a lot but he didn’t fit the profile of the kind of man she wanted to be with. She wanted to meet a man like her father one day. Ross was the exact opposite of her father, and different from the men she knew. He was a talented architect and a warm, intelligent, sensible person. He had self-confidence and good values. He wasn’t a show-off, he didn’t want to set the world on fire. He wanted a normal life, not to be a legend. He had grown up as an only child in a family where everyone liked each other, and he was close to his parents. Originally from San Francisco, he had gone to Yale, and had then come back to San Francisco, to build his dream houses one day.

  “I think that’s about right,” she said, dismissing her mother and brother as the underachievers. She didn’t respect either of them, only her father for everything he had achieved and wanted to be like him. “And my great-grandparents ran a fancy antique store after the family lost all their money in the Crash of ’29.”