Beautiful Little Fool

by K. K. Hendin

  “Oh, honey, I know,” Cedar said.

  “How would you feel about a vacation?”

  “God, I would kill for a vacation.” Cedar shut her eyes and smiled dreamily. “Sun, beaches, no fucking gallery drama…that would be wonderful.”

  “I was hoping you’d say that,” Ellis said, still nervous.

  “Why?”

  “Well, I bought something new yesterday.”

  “What’d you buy?”

  “An island.”

  Cedar’s eyes flew open. “You did?”

  “I did. Near Turks and Caicos.”

  “Island?” Cedar repeated.

  Ellis laughed. “What is the point in having eighty-seven billion dollars if you can’t buy an island so you and your girlfriend can vacation undisturbed?”

  Cedar gave a little shriek of happiness. “Are you serious?”

  Ellis scrolled through his phone for the pictures and passed it over to Cedar. “Of course I am.”

  Cedar scanned through the pictures, and then flung herself into Ellis’s arms. “Thank you, thank you, thank you!” she said, her voice muffled into his chest. “God, I am so excited to go vacation for a little bit.”

  “Anything for you, honey,” said Ellis, holding her as close to him as he could. “I’d do anything to make you happy.”

  “And I love that about you,” Cedar said, stretching up to kiss him.

  Love. Just the word from Cedar’s mouth made Ellis a little googly eyed. He was so in love with her.

  He was so happy.

  Vacation.

  On a private island.

  What a glorious, glorious time they were having. Cedar spent the first day on the island sunbathing on the beach, letting the warm rays of the sun darken her skin and lighten her hair. She drank silly cocktails and had tortured Ellis with orgasms because she felt like it.

  The fact that it was Ellis who was with her was only partially annoying. Island living either made her more mellow or him less annoying. Or a combination of the two.

  Except for now he was getting on her nerves. It was day two of their vacation, and the whole day he had been jumpy and off. They were sitting down, eating dinner, and he was nervous. Visibly nervous.

  Cedar tried not to roll her eyes. What was with him this time? God, he had been almost bearable yesterday.

  “Is everything okay?” she asked.

  “Everything’s fine,” he answered.

  “Are you sure? Because you know you can tell me if something’s wrong.”

  “No, everything’s okay. Just eat dinner, okay?”

  “Okay, then.” Cedar stared at her salad. “How was the merger today?” They may have been on the island, but they weren’t actually on a full vacation.

  “Went perfectly,” Ellis said, focusing. “For us, anyway.”

  “Excellent.” He still managed to surprise her. Just when she thought he was entirely useless, he said something like that and redeemed himself a little. “No trouble?”

  “They can’t afford it, so no.” Ellis leaned back. “Are you hungry?”

  Cedar looked down at her barely touched salad. “Not so much.”

  “I’m not really, either. Do you want to go for a walk instead?”

  “Sure,” Cedar said. What was he up to?

  The weather there was so much nicer than New York. And the beach was cleaner. Not filled with obnoxious tourists, or obnoxious neighborhood people. Quieter, too.

  “This is nice,” Ellis said, taking Cedar’s hand.

  “Mmhmm.” She leaned her head on his shoulder. “It is. Thank you so much for bringing me out here.”

  He tugged her to him and pressed a kiss on her forehead. “My pleasure, babe. Anytime.”

  “I may take you up on that,” she teased him.

  “Go ahead,” he said, smiling down on her.

  “Are you sure everything’s okay?” she asked. “You look nervous.”

  “You’re overthinking things,” he said, leading her down the beach. “Everything is fine.”

  Cedar let herself be led down the beach and up to the ocean. The sun was setting, and the entire beach was bathed in fading sunlight and color.

  Ellis suddenly let go of her hand and dropped to his knee.

  Holy shit.

  “Sometimes I think that Morris knocking on my door was the worst thing that ever happened to me,” he said, his voice cracking with nerves.

  Holy shit, he was actually doing it. Cedar steeled herself and rearranged her expression so he couldn’t tell just how thrilled she was.

  “But I met you because of it, and that has made all of this worth it. And I know it hasn’t been all that long, but when something’s right, it just is. I love you, Cedar. More than I thought I could.” He swallowed hard and pulled out an enormous diamond ring. “Will you do me the honor of being my wife?”

  “Oh my God,” Cedar gasped, an enormous smile spreading across her face. “Oh my God.”

  Ellis stayed there, frozen.

  “Of course I will!” Cedar cried, throwing her arms around him. “Oh my God, Ellis.”

  He tumbled back into the sand, not letting go of her. “Mrs. Carrington sounds so nice,” he murmured, holding her tightly.

  Hell yes it did.

  But Cedar Reynolds-Carrington sounded even better.

  That diamond was going to look amazing on her finger. And his money was going to look even better in her bank account.

  She leaned down and pressed her lips to his, the first genuinely enthusiastic kiss she had ever given him. He tightened his hold on her, kissing her back. Cedar was so excited she didn’t even care that much that they were rolling around on the sand in public.

  Well, she mostly didn’t care.

  “We’re getting married!” she sang as she peppered kisses on his face. “We’re getting married!”

  “We are,” he said, smiling.

  Cedar scrambled up and tugged on his arm. “This calls for some celebrating that we’d probably be arrested for if we celebrated in public.”

  “That it does,” Ellis said. “Hold on, though.” He took her hand, and slipped the ring onto her finger.

  Cedar examined it from all sides before looking up at him and beaming. “I love it,” she gushed, and for once, she wasn’t lying. She really did love it. She was going to have to figure out who designed the ring because it was gorgeous.

  “I’m glad.” Ellis pressed a kiss on her hand before leading her back toward the house. “I drove myself a little crazy making sure it would be something you would be proud to wear.”

  “Anything you give me I’d be proud to wear,” Cedar lied. “But I love this. And you.”

  “I love you, too,” Ellis said, tugging her into the house and shutting the door.

  It was much later that night when Cedar actually celebrated. Got out of bed, padded naked to the moonlit porch on the other side of the house, and screamed quietly with joy.

  Part two in the ensnare Ellis plan had a big check mark next to it, and she couldn’t have been more proud of herself.

  Now, there was a wedding to plan and legal bullshit to get through and all would be perfect.

  Who said that Cedar Reynolds couldn’t do anything? Because at that moment right then, they were absolutely wrong.

  The first rumor was “accidentally leaked” two days later, when Cedar had Cecil call Blossom Tanner, gossip extraordinaire. It spread like wildfire after that, with Ellis completely perplexed how people had found out so quickly.

  Cedar played shocked, because it was too early for him to know anything. She didn’t know him well enough yet.

  Although after all their little Pygmalion-esque tutoring sessions, he should have learned something about her.

  “We need to make an official statement,” she said that night, tracing patterns on his chest. “Confirming it and all.”

  “Sounds good,” Ellis said, drooping. “And plan a wedding, maybe.”

  “Maybe,” she agreed. “Although we should
probably figure out when that’s going to be.”

  “I’d rather sooner than later, if you’re okay with that,” Ellis said, running a hand through her hair. “But if you want to wait, that’s okay with me, too.”

  “Oh, good. I was worried you were going to want to wait.”

  Ellis’s eyebrows shot up. “Really? You’d be okay getting married soon?”

  Hell, yes.

  “Of course I would. It would be a little crazy to plan, but I can pull it off. And anyway, I want a fall wedding, and it’s almost August.”

  “A fall wedding sounds nice,” Ellis murmured.

  “The city looks the best in the fall.”

  “Where do you want to get married? The city, or somewhere else?”

  Cedar pursed her lips and thought. “I don’t know. Ceremony in one place, reception somewhere else?”

  “As long as we’re married at the end of it,” Ellis said, “we can get married wherever you want. I don’t care if it’s the moon.”

  “That would be quite the destination wedding, there, but I don’t think even we’d be able to pull that off.”

  “If you wanted it, we could pull it off,” Ellis said, and Cedar rewarded that statement with a little tweak of his nipple.

  “Silly, silly man. The moon might be a little too far for us. Maybe the ceremony somewhere in the city, and then the reception on the island?”

  “That’s a nice tribute to where we met and where we met-met,” Ellis said, smiling.

  Oh, that night at the Patterson party. Cedar smirked, knowing full well he couldn’t see her. Seeing him talking to the Robertsons was one of the greatest strokes of luck out of all of this. Dragging him upstairs and getting him to fuck her against a desk after that? Pure genius.

  “It is.”

  “Well, then. That’s what we’ll do.” He stroked a hand down her cooling back. “Go to sleep now. We’ll figure it out tomorrow.”

  “Okay,” she mumbled, closing her eyes and pretending to drift off to sleep.

  Until Ellis got on a plane and flew to a mostly deserted island in the Pacific, he didn’t realize just how much work he did every day. Any thought he had ever entertained that involved him thinking about how much easier life would be if he didn’t have to worry about money was bullshit.

  Well, he still worried about money. So maybe he was still right.

  He glanced over at Cedar’s sleeping body. Proposing near the beginning of their vacation had been a good idea. He would have been worrying about it the whole time if he hadn’t proposed that day.

  Thank God she had said yes. His life had changed so drastically since that day that Morris had shown up in his shitty little New Haven apartment, and if wasn’t for Cedar, he didn’t know where the hell he would be now.

  Not sleeping naked next to her in a bed the size of a small island, that was for sure.

  It was just funny how things had turned out. If someone would have told Ellis a year ago that he would be where he was right now, he would have asked them what they were smoking. If anything, he would have thought he would have married Karen…

  Fuck.

  He still hadn’t called her back, had he?

  He hadn’t. He would have remembered telling her that he was involved with Cedar, and that they were finished.

  It wasn’t like she hadn’t figured that out by now—according to Cedar, the news was splashed on every damn website and newspaper. Unless she had moved somewhere with no wi-fi, she knew.

  Dammit, this wasn’t how he wanted to end things. They had been together since they were seventeen. They had survived college together, survived her parents divorcing, her grandmother dying, graduate school, internships…they had gone through a hell of a lot together.

  And even though his relationship with Cedar felt miles past the closeness he felt with Karen, it was a dick move to find out from some random website that your kind-of-ex-boyfriend was engaged to someone else.

  He would call her tomorrow, he decided. She wouldn’t be up now, anyway. It was too late for her.

  He’d call her tomorrow and apologize. And think of something he could give her as a way to show how sorry he was.

  But tomorrow came, and tomorrow was spent celebrating his engagement to Cedar, and didn’t involve that much clothing at all.

  He’d do it tomorrow, he decided the next night.

  And the next.

  And the next.

  “That vacation was too short,” Cedar said as they boarded the plane to fly back to New York.

  “The next one will be a little longer, I promise,” Ellis said.

  “The next one will be our honeymoon.”

  “It will.” He tugged her toward him and kissed her. “Mrs. Almost Carrington.”

  She beamed up at him before snuggling into his side. “Can we wait until we land before dealing with any work stuff? I don’t want this to end yet.”

  “It’s not going to end,” Ellis said. “It’s just going to get a hell of a lot busier than it is now. But this isn’t going to end anytime soon.”

  “I know. But…I don’t know. I’m feeling clingy now.”

  Ellis picked her up and placed her on his lap. “Let the clinging commence.”

  She twined her arms around his neck and hummed happily. “Thank you for this, babe.”

  “Anything for you, darling.”

  He meant it. He didn’t think he had ever meant anything as sincerely as he meant that.

  The enormity of everything didn’t hit him until he climbed into bed in his house later that night. Cedar had gone back to her apartment, because she had to be up a lot earlier than he did and didn’t want to wake him up. He tried to tell her that it didn’t matter to him, but she kissed him and told him he had to save his strength for tomorrow.

  He was getting married to the queen of New York.

  He was going to be married to Cedar Reynolds. He had somehow managed to convince her to say yes.

  How the fuck had he gotten so lucky? To find someone who understood him so completely?

  Goddamn, he didn’t think his life could get any closer to perfection.

  Ellis didn’t think Cedar would have wanted a short engagement, but there she was, drawing shapes on his chest, telling him that she wanted a wedding as soon as possible.

  “Not that I mind, but why so soon? You don’t want to wait?” he asked.

  “I don’t want to spend another second away from you,” she purred.

  “You can move in,” he repeated. “I mean it, Cedar. Or if you don’t like the apartment, we can move somewhere else. It doesn’t matter to me where we live, as long as I’m with you.”

  Cedar rested her head gently on his chest. “It doesn’t matter to me, either. But I don’t know, I want our wedding to mean something.”

  “Doesn’t it already mean something now?”

  “Of course it does, honey. I just…I don’t know. It feels more real this way.”

  Ellis sighed. “Does this mean you’re supposed to be a virgin on your wedding night? Because I’m pretty sure that’s going to be an issue for you.”

  Cedar laughed. “Well, it’s possible for me to be one at my wedding, if I really wanted it. But losing my virginity once was one time too many, thanks.”

  “But after the honeymoon, you’re moving in?”

  “After the honeymoon, I will move in. I’ll have my things all sent over the week before the wedding, even.”

  “Good.” Ellis sighed, and closed his eyes. “Then maybe you’ll still be here when I wake up.”

  “One day,” Cedar whispered, stroking his hair as he fell asleep.

  One day, Cecil was going to kill Cedar. Really. This fucking wedding was spiraling out of control.

  Who was he kidding? It was out of control from the minute Ellis had proposed to Cedar. Things had done nothing but get worse. And the fact that Robert had found out about his little side thing with the mayor’s PA wasn’t helping anything, especially since said PA was fucking his boss, too,
and who the fuck even knew where he had been.

  The fact that they still had to run the gallery didn’t make anything better. Cecil had triple the amount of work now, and there wasn’t any salary bonus yet. Yet hopefully being the key word.

  The gallery was going to be closed while Cedar was on her honeymoon. Thank God. Because otherwise Cecil was going to be calling in sick for a week straight to recuperate.

  One day he’d be the Bridezilla, he vowed as he sorted through yet another batch of swatches from every goddamned designer in the whole fucking world. One day he’d be the one who’d be bitching to everyone that his day had to be perfect, and nothing less.

  One day he’d be the one with the promise of honeymoon sex. A billionaire groom would just be the icing on a very delicious cake.

  “Cecil, now.” Cedar’s voice whipped through his office, interrupting a very lovely daydream that involved him and a groom wearing a kilt.

  “Coming,” he said, even though he knew she didn’t hear him, nor would she appreciate the little snicker he had at his own expense.

  Anyway, he wasn’t going to be coming until he got home. There was nobody at work for him to play with, and going solo wasn’t really his thing right now.

  Gathering the fucking swatches, he headed to Cedar’s office to see what she needed this time.

  The difference between Cedar Reynolds and every other bride in the world was simple. She was marrying the richest man in New York, and they weren’t. And by default, she was single-handedly planning her own wedding. Well, single-handedly included her hiring a shit ton of people to do her bidding, but there was no event planner for Cedar. None of them ever did a job good enough for her standards.

  Small and intimate, big and formal? Cedar was doing both, and she was going to do both of them well.

  Her phone buzzed, again. Ellis. On your side of town now. Are you around for lunch?

  She smiled and sent him a quick text back. Lunch, or “lunch”?

  Either. Both. Whichever you want.

  Depends how much time you have, I guess.