The Wedding Band

by Cara Connelly

  The plane was smaller than Adam’s but every bit as lux. “Sit there.” Mercer pointed at a table. “Buckle up.” He sat down across from her.

  Em took one of the leather recliners, strapped herself in, and they were wheels up in under a minute. They banked over the island, and Chris saw the horses in the meadow below, running flat out, necks extended, tails streaming. Sugar led the herd with Kota stretched out over her withers, his strong back rippling as he urged her on.

  Anguish clenched a fist in Chris’s gut. She’d done this. To herself, to him.

  Then the plane leveled out. Mercer opened the laptop. “Is it password protected?”

  She nodded. He stared at her, unblinking. She gave up the password. Why not? Nothing on her computer could make this any worse.

  Defenseless, she watched him scroll through her files. There were many. Every article she’d written for the Sentinel for the last two years, all her background information, data on certain society types, details on functions, impressions. Her notes on Emma’s biography. Her own recollections of traveling with both of her parents.

  Nothing to be ashamed of, yet she squirmed as he read.

  Eventually she laid her head on the table, hiding in the dark crook of her arms. There, she could wallow. Berate herself. Call down vengeance on Mercer’s head.

  And she could grieve. For herself, because she’d lost the only thing she’d ever truly wanted, and for Kota, because he’d loved her, and she’d broken his heart. He might never open it to anyone again. And what a shame that would be, because what a heart it was. Huge and soft and loyal and true.

  But even now, as she flew over the wide Pacific, that heart was turning to stone. She knew him well enough to know that. To know that, and so much more.

  Eventually she dozed, and she dreamed, none of it good. When they bumped down at Burbank, she lifted her pounding head and stared out at Cali-­fucking-­fornia.

  Nobody spoke to her as she lugged her bag down the stairs. On the tarmac, Em handed her the keys to the Eos, then walked away with Mercer without a backward glance.

  CHRIS DROVE STRAIGHT to Seacrest, tears streaking her cheeks, regret burning a hole in her raw, empty stomach.

  She was in despair, and she wanted her mother.

  She found the afternoon activities in full swing. In the great room, a karaoke singer had residents clapping along to The Beatles. In a smaller room, a bored aide called out, “B eight, B eight. Check your cards, ladies.”

  Chris found her mother sitting on the patio with a cup of tea, looking more like an employee than a resident. At seventy-­two, she was one of the youngest, and one of the few without a walker.

  But her disease was progressing. Before long Chris would be a stranger to her.

  Today, though, Emma broke into a smile, squeezing Chris’s hand when she drew up a chair. “Where’ve you been?” she wanted to know. “I missed you.”

  “I missed you too, Mom.” Every day, more than words can say. “I was on assignment.”

  Emma perked up at the familiar phrase, and that was all the encouragement Chris needed to spill out the whole story: her screwup at the Sentinel, Reed’s bargain with Owen, the wedding, the island. Kota.

  She rambled through to the end, sponging her eyes with a hanky Emma drew from her pocket. Drawing to a miserable close, Chris waited for her mother’s no-­nonsense response.

  It didn’t come.

  Of course it didn’t. Emma had lost the thread early on, if she’d ever held it at all. Her attention was on the birds, darting in to peck seeds from the feeder, then darting back to the surrounding trees.

  “See the red one?” She pointed.

  “It’s a cardinal, Mom.”

  “Oh really? I’ve never seen him before.”

  Chris flopped back in her chair. The cardinal spent ten hours a day at the feeder. She saw him every time she visited. But to Emma, he was a fresh delight every day.

  Chris let out a sigh that turned into a sob. Friction and resentment had been cornerstones of their relationship. But there’d been so much more. Love, compassion, intellectual curiosity. A shared appreciation for art and music. Stimulating conversation that Chris never appreciated until it slipped through her fingers like water.

  What she wouldn’t give now to hear Emma cut through the bullshit, to blister Chris’s ear about trusting her reputation to rinky-­dink editors, letting the brass bully her into an untenable assignment, and compounding her problems by—­of all frivolous things—­falling in love.

  From the outset, Emma would have advised Chris to take her lumps rather than sneak into the wedding.

  It seemed so obvious now.

  And so trivial. Compared to all Emma had lost, Chris’s problems shrank to pinpricks. Chris still had her memory, her will, and full possession of her faculties. She could start again. Build a new career. If losing Kota’s love was the worst of the matter, she could deal with that too. She could outlast the pain and the loss.

  But what she’d never overcome was knowing that she’d hurt him in the particular way that she had. She’d struck where he was most vulnerable. And she’d never forgive herself.

  An aide approached. “They’re dancing in the great room, Emma. Stephen’s looking for you.” She smiled at Chris. “A new resident, and he’s already got his eye on your mother.”

  Who could blame him? Emma was Seacrest’s hottest catch. Women outnumbered men ten to one, but Emma was always in demand. She went through boyfriends faster than a cheerleader did.

  The truth was that while Emma was no longer the person she’d been—­driven and involved and often stressed to distraction—­the person she’d become was having a much better time.

  For Chris, it took some of the sting out of it. “Come on, Mom, I’ll walk you over.”

  She left Emma waltzing with a tall reed of a man, and went home alone to pick up the pieces.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  KOTA STARED AT Christy’s computer, open on his desk.

  Em sat across from him. “There’s nothing on it about the wedding,” she said. “No notes, no article except that snippet you’re looking at, which obviously wasn’t a serious draft.”

  He couldn’t dispute that. Asshole’s Brother Ties the Knot was plainly a rant. He’d pissed Christy off, probably with his own rant about her boyfriend, and she’d taken it out on the page. It wasn’t meant for publication.

  “Mercer’s source at the Sentinel confirms Christy quit,” Em went on. “She never submitted a story, never even went back to clean out her desk. Her publisher threw her to the wolves, the senator served her with papers, and she had to hire a lawyer and file an answer before Buckley dropped it.”

  Kota swiveled his chair and looked out at the rose garden. “So she told the truth.”

  “About that, yeah. Refusing to write the story cost her her job, almost got her sued, and stained her rep as a journalist forever.”

  And all because, when push came to shove, she wouldn’t betray him.

  “So what?” he said, refusing to soften. “She fucking lied her way into the wedding. She lied to her own father about it. Then she lied her way into my house—­”

  “Keep it real, Kota. You finagled her here by roping Zach in.”

  “Don’t nitpick. If I knew who she was, I wouldn’t have let her through the door. And I damn sure wouldn’t have brought her to the island. Once she lied about who she was, it tainted everything.” Every word. Every kiss. Every touch of her hand.

  “You’re right,” Em said.

  He swiveled to stare at her. “You never agree with me about anything.”

  She shrugged. “It’s no fun kicking you when you’re down.”

  “I’m not down. I’m fucking furious.”

  “You’re both. You’re furious because Christy deceived you. And you’re miserable because you fell in lov
e with her.”

  He glared.

  “Verna predicted it, you know. That’s why she wouldn’t give us the phone number. She said you were a big boy and could handle yourself, and Christy was a good person and would do the right thing.”

  “Yeah, Ma fed me the same line of bullshit.”

  “Well, she was kind of right.”

  “Don’t you start too.”

  “I’m not starting anything. In fact”—­she stood up—­“I’ll take that computer back to Christy right now so you can forget all about her.”

  He shut the laptop and planted his palm on it.

  She tugged at it. He pressed down.

  “Not yet,” he said.

  “It’s got her notes for the book she’s writing about her mother.”

  “She’s waited two weeks, she can wait a little longer.” He slid the laptop into a drawer. “Where am I supposed to be right now?”

  Em scrolled through her phone. “At Peter’s office, interviewing my replacement.”

  He stacked his heels on the desk. “I canceled that. You can stay.”

  “Oh goody.” She scrolled some more. “The trainer’s due at nine to put you through a three-­hour workout, then Peter’s doing a twelve-­thirty lunch at his place with the Levi’s ­people. You’ll have to duck out by two, because Sissy”—­she wrinkled her nose—­“is coming by to run lines.”

  “You got a problem with that?”

  “Please. You two don’t need to run lines. You’ve only got one scene together in the first week of shooting, and neither of you says more than ten words.”

  “Since when are you reading my scripts?”

  “Since I got insomnia. They put me right out. Dakota shoots fifteen extras. Dakota blows up a city block.”

  At least Em could make him laugh. That was more than anyone else could do. He couldn’t laugh, or eat, or sleep. He was running on empty. The three-­hour workout might kill him.

  “Anyway,” Em was saying, “it’s a ploy by Sissy to get you in the sack.”

  He smiled. “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

  “She’s gross.”

  “She’s gorgeous.”

  “She’s skinny. I think she’s anorexic.”

  “So?”

  “She’s been trying to get you in the sack for months.”

  “So?”

  “You can do better.”

  His smile fell. Better hadn’t worked out. Meaningless sex was all he was good for.

  He dropped his feet to the floor. “Block out two hours. Sissy’s dream is about to come true.”

  RAYLENE SURVEYED THE dirty dishes stacked on the coffee table. “Spaghetti again? Aren’t you sick of it yet?”

  Chris looked up from the CSI marathon. “It’s easy,” she said.

  “And fattening. And it clashes with your pajamas.”

  Chris looked down at the blob of red on bright yellow SpongeBob. She dabbed it with a finger, then looked up at Ray and deliberately sucked it off.

  Ray grrrred in frustration and stomped up the stairs.

  Mission accomplished. Ray was being even more of a pest than usual, always harping on Chris about getting off her ass, or getting her head out of her ass, or getting her ass out of the house.

  Enough with her ass, already.

  And there was nothing wrong with wearing pajamas all day. They were comfortable. They didn’t cinch or bind. If ­people could wear pajamas to work, they’d be a lot happier.

  Though a trip through the washer was probably overdue.

  Stumping up the stairs, she cursed the insanity that had gripped her when she’d bought a three-­story house. “Dumb, dumb, dumb.”

  She passed the second floor and Ray called out, “He’s not worth it.”

  But he was. He was worth all her suffering, and more. She’d done Kota wrong, and she’d pay for it all her long, lonely life.

  Stripping down, she caught her reflection in the mirror. Two weeks, and already her ass looked two sizes larger.

  Round was good. Bulbous was . . . not good. Kota wouldn’t give it a second look now.

  She pulled on yoga pants—­a short step up from PJs—­and a T-­shirt long enough to cover her ass. “There,” she said.

  The mirror replied, What next? A muumuu?

  “Shit.” She dug out her sneakers and tied them on.

  When she walked into the kitchen, Ray had come down and was standing at the counter. She took one look at Chris and sputtered her wine. “Halle-­fucking-­lujah.” Her favorite phrase since Zach had stopped by. “It’s about time.”

  Chris made a face and kept moving out the door. The slightest distraction could take the wind from her sails.

  Outside, she cringed like a vampire. The noontime sun lanced her eyes like a scalpel.

  Running was out of the question even on her best day, which this wasn’t. She’d like to blame her ankle, but two weeks of slouching on the couch had cured it. The problem was her heart. It weighed her down like lead, almost too heavy to carry.

  The unseasonable heat didn’t help matters either, another reason to curse Ray for prodding her off the couch.

  She’d about had it with Ray anyway. Their relationship was prickly at best. Chris only put up with her because Ray had played masterfully on her guilt since sophomore year, when she’d walked in on Chris making out with Evan Graves. It wasn’t like Ray had still been dating him—­he’d dumped her a week before—­but she hadn’t given up on him yet. And even though Chris hadn’t liked Ray any better in college than she did now, the roommate code of ethics forbade trespassing on posted property.

  But enough was enough. If Chris had learned anything in the last few weeks, it was that decisions motivated by guilt never led anywhere good. Guilt had made her take Ray in. And guilt had driven her to the Sentinel. The cosmic convergence of those two bad decisions now had her trudging down the sidewalk under the sweltering sun, feeling fat, ugly, and worthless.

  There was a lesson there, but she was too irritated to compress it into a pithy, tweetable phrase.

  Resentment at Ray carried her all the way to the boulevard and across it, then fizzled out in the relentless heat.

  Her shoulders slumped. The walk had delivered all it promised. Sweat, heavy breathing, chafing in more than one place. She regretted every step.

  She turned around to head back to the couch, and as she waited at the light, panting like a dog, her gray T-­shirt sporting sweat circles from armpits to waist, her unwashed hair straggling like weeds around her puffy face, fate dropped one more steaming turd on the pile.

  Because who should pull up to the light but Dakota Rain, top down, aviators on, hair styled by the wind to look camera-­ready.

  Chris froze. Even her heart stopped beating.

  Like a petrified rabbit, she prayed the wolf would glide past without spotting her motionless form.

  The “Walk” light appeared. She ignored it.

  Nothing—­not an earthquake, an explosion, a nuclear bomb—­could induce her to step into the crosswalk in front of his car.

  Seconds ticked in slow motion. The “Walk” light glowed like the sun.

  Kota forked his hair back in that way he had. He turned his head to say a word to the person beside him.

  And suddenly Chris couldn’t take it anymore. She made the mistake so many dead rabbits had made.

  She tried to hide.

  Just a quick step toward the light pole, but the motion caught his eye. She saw recognition hit him like a slap in the face. The light finally changed. Horns blared behind him.

  She turned on her heel and ran, fat ass flapping behind her.

  KOTA THREW THE Porsche into first and left rubber on the road.

  Em gripped the armrest. “Yikes! What the hell?”

  “Christy. Chr
is.” What should he call her? “The lying bitch.” That worked.

  Em swiveled. “Where?”

  “You missed her. She looked like hell.” Like she’d been sick for a month. “But her ankle must’ve quit hurting, ’cause she took off when she saw me.”

  “She probably thought you’d run her over.”

  “Pfft. She’s not worth the trouble.” Cops. Insurance. Bodywork on the Porsche.

  “Maybe you should—­”

  “What?” He shot a death ray at Em. “Take her on a date? Bring her home for Thanksgiving?”

  “—­try to forget her.”

  “Already done.”

  Em shut her mouth in that way that spoke louder than words.

  He refused to take the bait.

  She folded her hands in that way that meant he was too dumb to live.

  He focused on driving.

  Ten full seconds elapsed. Then he threw up a hand. “Spit it out.”

  “You’re in denial.”

  “Now you’re a shrink.”

  “You’re not that complicated. A monkey could diagnose you.”

  He smirked. “You said it, I didn’t.”

  She jabbed him. “I know this is uncharted territory for you. You haven’t given a woman a second thought since I’ve known you. But normal ­people get their hearts broken long before thirty-­five, and they move on. So will you. But first you have to admit you’re in love with her.”

  “Get real.”

  “I’m serious. It’s the first step on the road to recovery.”

  “Now it’s a twelve-­step program?”

  “I don’t know how many steps there are, but until you admit you fell in love with her and she hurt you, you’ll be stuck in this funk.”

  “I’m not in a funk.” He squealed into Peter’s driveway, slamming on the brakes six inches from a Lexus. “And we’re done talking about it. I got real problems, like this Levi’s deal. Peter’s expecting me to sign on.”

  “I thought you already decided to do it.”

  He turned off the engine and stared out the windshield. “It’s a three-­year deal. I don’t know if I want to commit.”