Tomás sat next to him on the sofa and laid a hand across his shoulders. Gave him a reassuring squeeze. “She’ll get over it. Just give her time.”
Carlo shook his head, picked up the glass, and downed the whiskey in one swallow. “You didn’t see her, mano. I’m not sure she’ll ever forgive me.”
“Then who’s the bigger fool?” Paolo said and refilled his glass. Jabbing at the air with one finger, he said, “I warned you she was just like –”
“Cabrão, if you fucking say Sasha, I will hurt you,” Carlo said, raised the glass, and sipped it more slowly.
Paolo started to speak, but Tomás jabbed him in the ribs, causing Paolo to grunt and rub his side.
“I wasn’t going to say Sasha, cabrão,” Paolo said which this time earned him a shot upside the head from Tomás.
“What did he say about saying her name,” his middle brother warned the youngest.
“I appreciate you coming over –” Carlo began, but Paolo cut him off.
“What else could we do when you don’t show up for work on one of the busiest weeks we have?”
“Caralho, mano. How can you be so dense?” Tomás chided and squeezed Carlo’s shoulder again. “You take whatever time you need, Carlo. We can handle all the parties this week.”
“It’s not like someone died, Tomás,” Paolo said, even though it felt that way to Carlo. He hadn’t hurt this much since his avô, his mother’s father, had passed. He took another sip of the whiskey and said, “I’ll be in tomorrow. Early. I’ll make up for the time we lost today.”
His brothers shared a look of concern but seemed to understand that he didn’t want to discuss it any further. He’d deal with it in his own way and on his own time.
As for Emma, he’d give her the time she needed to deal with what had happened between them. But he wasn’t going to give up on her no matter how much it hurt right now. No matter how hopeless it seemed at the moment.
“I’ll be there tomorrow,” he repeated, certain that getting back to work was the first step in returning to normal.
EMMA STARED AT HER reflection in the window in her office. Outside a light snow was starting to cover the ground and dusting the trees with white. The sky was a dull grey but had more color than her skin which was as pale as the snow falling outside.
She practiced a smile, trying to appear cheery since the older couple who wanted to renew their vows was arriving in just a few minutes to discuss the event with her. She had laid out the materials with her suggestions on the salon’s conference room table and she hoped the couple would like what she proposed.
Her phone rang and as she returned to her desk, she saw the receptionist’s number on the caller id. She picked up the phone and the young woman said, “Mr. and Mrs. Adler are here.”
“I’ll be up in a second,” she said cheerily. Maybe too cheerily. She didn’t think she had fooled anyone around the office this week. Or her friends for that matter. They’d each made a point of coming by to see her and try to cheer her spirits.
Mr. and Mrs. Adler were sitting in the bridal salon’s reception area and for a couple who had been married for fifty years, they looked remarkably young and still in love judging from the way they held hands and gazed at each other. She plastered the smile on her face, walked over, and introduced herself.
In no time she had ushered them into the conference room where she had prepared the materials and to her surprise, Lucy joined them a few seconds later. At Emma’s questioning glance, her boss said, “The Adlers are my parents’ neighbors and I just wanted to see what fabulous ideas you have for them.”
And while that might be true, Emma also suspected that Lucy wanted to be around just in case she had a meltdown in the midst of all the happily-ever-after celebrations since Emma was not feeling anyone’s happiness at the moment. As Emma placed the copy of the couple’s wedding photo before them, she also spread out the various ideas she had for the decorations and flowers.
“You didn’t mention that you need invitations, but if you do we can arrange for those as well,” she said and the couple glanced at each other and smiled.
“We hold a big New Year’s Eve bash every year so everyone knows it’s happening. We never tell them where it is to keep it a surprise until the last minute, so we plan on doing the same thing this year,” Mrs. Adler said. She was a trim woman with short cropped blonde hair that had just the first touches of grey around her face. She had to be approaching seventy but didn’t look a day over fifty.
“That sounds like a lot of fun and it will truly be a big surprise for them when you renew your vows, but why New Year’s Eve? I see from the picture and interview that you got married in June,” Emma asked.
Mr. Adler, a polished and bespectacled man who reminded her of a 1920s banker and not the Sixties hippie in the wedding photo, finally took his eyes off his wife. He gestured to the photo and said, “Marie and I met on New Year’s Eve in New York City. Turned out we were both going to school there. I was at Columbia.”
“And I was at Barnard. It was quite a time in our lives, wasn’t it, Simon?” Marie said wistfully.
“That it was. Fate always has surprises for you and that was our surprise – finding each other on New Year’s Eve.”
“So that’s why you always do the surprise party?” Lucy asked.
Marie and Simon looked at each other again lovingly, but then grew more serious and Simon continued their story. “We never suspected that night how tough things would get. I’m a practicing Jew and Marie is a devout Methodist. Neither of our parents was very happy that we were dating, much less marrying.”
“They made our lives very difficult, but that didn’t stop us, did it?” Marie said and cupped Simon’s cheek.
“No, it didn’t. When neither family would accept the relationship, we decided to elope. Got married by one of Marie’s minister friends right there on Sea Kiss beach. Spent the summer traveling around in that beat-up old Volkswagen van,” Simon said.
“Needed new shocks by the time we were done with it,” Marie added with a wink at her husband and a wave of color washed across both their cheeks.
It was impossible not to get caught up in their romantic story and the obvious love and affection they still had for one another. Battling back tears, her voice husky as she suppressed the emotion threatening to overwhelm her, Emma said, “Well we’re going to help you surprise your friends with the best New Year’s Eve ever and the most romantic vow renewals you can imagine.”
She reached for one folder and hauled out a photo of the lovingly restored 1960s Volkswagen van that a friend of Jonathan’s was willing to let them use. “How about we start with you arriving in this beauty?” she said as she placed the picture in front of them.
The couple gave an appreciative chuckle and nodded. “We think that would be perfect.” Marie said and Simon quickly added, “As long as the shocks are in good shape.”
Emma laughed and shook her head. “Wonderful. I’ll make sure the van is up for it,” she said in a more serious tone and proceeded to show them her other suggestions. The rest of the meeting went smoothly and after they had set up a meeting for Marie to try on some gowns and Simon to pick out his suit, the Adlers left with beaming smiles.
“That went well,” Lucy said as Emma collected her materials from the conference room.
It was impossible to miss the relief in her boss’s voice. “Did you think it wouldn’t?” she asked, slightly miffed by Lucy’s lack of confidence in her.
Her boss realized her gaffe and quickly apologized. “I know you’re a professional, Emma. You’ve handled bridezillas I wouldn’t have gotten close to without a chair and a whip. But the Adlers are special people and it’s a rush job and . . . You haven’t been yourself the last few days.”
She hadn’t although she’d tried hard to hide it. Obviously, she’d failed at it miserably much like she’d failed with Carlo.
“I haven’t been myself. Carlo and I . . . It’s a complicated situation.�
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Lucy nodded and peered at her thoughtfully. She motioned Emma to a chair and she sat, not sure what to expect. Lucy was a good boss and never did the lecture thing and it felt like that’s where they were headed.
“You heard what Marie and Simon told you about their parents being displeased, but that’s not even half the story. Since I know you won’t talk about anything I tell you in confidence –”
“I won’t. You know that. It’s part of the wedding planner code,” she said with a smile, trying to lighten the mood.
Lucy chuckled and grinned. “Yes, it is,” she said and continued. “Their parents really didn’t want them to marry. Both sets of parents threatened to cut off their money for school and when Marie and Simon eloped, they did just that. The young couple spent the summer in that van because they were basically homeless and working any jobs they could to raise the money to pay for college.”
Having worked her way through Princeton as well, Emma understood how difficult that would have been for them. Especially at colleges as pricey as Barnard and Columbia.
“Somehow they did it and Simon became a successful investment banker. Marie went on to medical school and is still practicing,” Lucy advised.
“That’s quite a story,” Emma said with an appreciative dip of her head.
Lucy surprised her then by laying a hand on hers and leaning close. “It’s a story that says anything is possible if you love each other enough.”
“I care for him,” she said, echoing what she’d told Carlo weeks earlier.
Lucy shook her head and blew out a frustrated sigh. “You love him, Emma. Trust me. If you didn’t, it wouldn’t hurt so much.”
After an unexpected hug from her boss, Lucy stood and walked out of the room, leaving Emma to stare at table with the Adlers’ wedding photo and the plans for their big event. An event to commemorate fifty years of love, but also the sacrifices they’d made to be together.
The ache that had been inside her since the day Carlo had left became almost unbearable. She wrapped her arms around herself and bent, wanting to curl up and cry it felt so bad. If love was about that kind of hurt, she didn’t think she needed love in her life.
Armed with that conviction, she sucked in a rough breath and drove away the pain. But as she did so, the emptiness returned and she wasn’t sure she could live like that either.
Roughly tossing together the materials on the table, she hugged them to her chest and headed to her office. She had work to do planning someone else’s happily-ever-after and once she was done and somehow got through the Christmas holidays, she’d plan a getaway for herself. A week or two away from Sea Kiss and everything familiar would be just the thing she needed to get back to normal.
Only now normal didn’t seem as inviting as it once had.
Chapter 26
“Did she call you?” Carlo asked as Jonathan sat down across from him in the conference room of Connie’s new law office on Sea Kiss’s Main Street. Jonathan and Connie had bought the building and renovated it at the same time that Jonathan’s contractors had been working on restoring the old guitar building for Jonathan’s new research and development center.
A grim smile darkened Jonathan’s normally happy face. “I’m sorry, dude. I never expected this whole thing would get this gnarly.”
“It’s not your fault, Jon. I knew Emma came with a whole mountain of issues. I just didn’t realize the mountain was called Everest,” he said, trying to put the other man at ease over the situation.
Jonathan chuckled as Carlo had intended and then shook his head. “Women. Connie had her share of daddy issues too, so I get it. Emma will come around, Carlo.”
He wished he could be as certain as his friend, but every attempt he’d made to contact Emma in the past week had been rebuffed. She hadn’t answered his texts or phone calls. Since they hadn’t had any events to work together for the two weeks before Christmas, which was only days away, there had been no business reason to see her either and he was missing her. Badly. She was all he thought about day and night and everything was suffering for it. Luckily his brothers had picked up the slack for him, but with Tomás possibly returning to the Army in another month or so, he had to get his head back in the game. Especially if they were going to go through with the purchase of the convention center. That was what he had to focus on for the moment and so he said, “What did your guys say about the condition of the building?”
Jonathan stared at him hard, but then relented and changed the topic. “It’s in good shape. Whatever damage Sandy did has been repaired. Walls, roof, general structure, electrical. I don’t have to tell you the new equipment is top notch. You saw it for yourself, but even with all that, the three million they’re asking for is on the high side since there’s still a shitload of work to do before the building can be occupied.”
“I agree, but I’m not sure we should low ball them,” Carlo said.
Jonathan nodded, but then yanked out some papers for Carlo to view. Comparables for other properties that had recently sold, including the old guitar building Jonathan had bought only months before. As Jonathan fanned the papers across the conference room table, it was obvious that none of the properties had sold for over two and a half million.
“I see the numbers, Jon. But none of these are prime locations on the water. Those always cost way more,” he argued, playing devil’s advocate.
“They do, but I think it’s going to cost another million to get that building ready to open. We’re talking major investments in sheet rock, paint, lighting, landscaping, and more, especially since it’s landmarked. That limits what anyone can do with the property,” Jonathan pointed out and Carlo couldn’t argue with that.
“We offer two to start?” he said and waited for Jonathan as his friend looked over the comparables again.
“Two to start. We shoot for two and a half as the max otherwise we walk away. Do we agree?” Jonathan asked.
It would break his heart to walk away from such an opportunity, but his friend was right about the price and the work it would take before they could use the building.
“I agree,” he said.
Jonathan hesitated for a moment before he asked, “What about your brothers?”
“They trust my judgment. Besides, I’m putting up the bulk of the money for our share and Emma’s.”
“What if Emma’s not interested?” Jonathan asked making Carlo wonder if Jonathan knew more than he was saying on account of his wife’s friendship with Emma.
“Then I’ll cover her share somehow.”
“No way,” Jonathan began with an emphatic slash of his hand. “I don’t expect you to tap into your 401K or sell your house to cover anyone else’s share of this partnership.”
“I don’t need your charity, Jon,” he said. He wasn’t about to take advantage of a friend’s generosity to expand his business.
“And I’m not offering a handout, Carlo. That’s not the way I work. We can structure the partnership where I get an insider price for event space and first crack on dates to offset my initial investment. Take it from me, I’m the winner there because once people see what an amazing venue it is, you’d probably be able to charge way more for the space than what I intend to pay you.”
He searched Jonathan’s face for any sign of duplicity, but his friend was as open as he’d ever been. “Done. You’ll call Mary?” he asked as Jonathan gathered up the papers on the table.
“I will once Connie finishes setting up our LLC. Rumors are flying already, and I’d hate for the asking price to go up just because they think I’m involved. Any thoughts for the name of the partnership?” Jonathan asked.
With a laugh, Carlo said, “Four Guys and a Girl?”
Jonathan joined him with a hearty chuckle. “I think Emma would prefer ‘lady’.”
With a shrug, Carlo said, “Definitely a lady. A very pissed off one. I leave you to choose a name.”
“Great. We don’t have to name the partners to form the LLC so w
e won’t need Emma for that, but the lawyers are going to want some kind of partnership agreement eventually. You’ll talk to her?” Jonathan asked and tucked the papers into a well-worn leather knapsack.
“I’ve been trying, mano. She won’t answer,” he admitted in frustration.
“She’ll be at our house for Christmas Eve. You’re invited to come. Lots of family and friends will be there.”
With a heavy sigh, Carlo shook his head. “That’s my family’s big night so I’m normally in Newark with them. Besides, the last thing you want is an arctic chill descending on your festivities.”
Jonathan clapped him on the back. “Yeah, you’re probably right. It’s gnarly enough without adding fuel to the fire. I’ll hold off the attorneys as long as I can.”
“I appreciate that,” Carlo said and the two men stepped out into the reception area where Connie was busy unpacking law books from a box.
“Shit, babe. You shouldn’t be lifting anything heavy,” Jonathan said and rushed over to help his wife.
“I’m pregnant, not an invalid. Besides, they’re not that heavy,” she said as she grabbed a few and plopped them on a shelf in one of the bookcases that lined one wall of the reception area.
“I can’t believe you even use these anymore. That’s so 18th century,” Jonathan groused as he helped her with another stack of books.
“I don’t, but they make people think you’re a real lawyer,” she said with a roll of her eyes as Jonathan took yet another pile from her hands.
As Carlo grabbed yet more books, she directed him to another bookcase where she had some official looking plaques and awards.
“How are you doing?” she asked and gestured to where he should place the legal tomes.
“I could be better,” he confessed and after, endured her prolonged scrutiny.
“I don’t know who looks worse. You or Emma,” she said and instructed him and Jonathan on where to place the next round of books. He was grateful that after her comment, all the attention was on emptying the boxes sitting in the reception area. Once the cartons had been broken down, tied up for recycling, and placed at the curb, the three of them stood in the room, inspecting their work.
Never a Bride Page 21