by Sara Celi
“Olivia was—”
Ainsley held up a hand. “Before you go telling me something that you think that I want to hear, I want to make this perfectly clear to you. I need you to tell me the truth. Absolute truth, and nothing more than that. Don’t lie.”
“I wouldn’t. I’ve never lied to you.” I sliced my hand through the air. “Never.”
She released a heavy sigh. “From what I understand, you two have had quite a past. Very… Dramatic. Yes, I think that’s the right word for it.”
My dread began to turn to desperation. If she knew about the yacht, she might have already formed an opinion about what had happened. She might already have judged the situation, and that meant I had minutes—maybe seconds—to change her mind.
“I won’t disagree with you there. It was all of that, and more,” I said, choosing my words carefully. “She’s a handful, and from the moment I started dating her, I had doubts. I thought she’d change, though. She kept telling me that she would.” I recoiled at the volatile memories, the outbursts, the lies and manipulation, the constant drama. “But she didn’t. Not even close. Or wait, she did change—she got viler. And wickeder, and meaner, and she became the most malicious… Well, let’s just say that being with her was one of the worst decisions of my life.”
“Interesting.” Olivia crossed her arms. “Is that why you were so angry that day in the South of France?”
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. Once again, Olivia had managed to bring that back into my life; and once again, the fury of that afternoon had proven to be one of the defining moments of my entire existence. I opened my eyes.
“The charges were dropped. We never went to court. It was no—”
“Oh, my god,” Ainsley whispered, her eyes wide and the whitewash of fear paralyzing her beautiful face. “You’re not even bothering to deny it, are you? It happened the way she said, didn’t it?”
“No.” I moved to the edge of my chair. My attention locked on her, and the desperation I felt threatened to crack through every word that I spoke. Still, I needed her to understand me. I needed her to see this for what it truly was. “We had a fight that day, but it didn’t happen the way that she claimed. She threw the china and broke some of the furniture; she’s the one who cut herself in the bathroom.” My mouth went dry and my palms turned clammy. “You don’t believe me, do you?”
Ainsley sank further into the chair, but I could tell by the guarded expression on her face that she didn’t believe me. She thought I was at fault. And in a way, maybe I was. After all, hadn’t I been the one to get mixed up with this woman in the first place?
“I don’t believe you,” Ainsley finally said. “I keep thinking about that night at the Whitney Museum.” She raked a hand through her hair. “If you could do that, then maybe this whole yacht incident is within your wheelhouse, too.” She sneered. “Maybe you’re not the man that I thought you were.”
“Please,” I said as the lump began to grow in my throat. “That night was a mistake. I was—I was overcome, and I’d had too much to drink. I thought I saw something in your eyes. I… I guess that I misread it. I fucked up. I’m sorry.” I reached out to her, then let my hand fall. “I really thought you wanted me to kiss you. It wasn’t until you slapped me that I realized I shouldn’t have been so assuming.”
I gulped. He wasn’t totally wrong. I might not have wanted him to kiss me that night, but once he did, I’d liked it. Enjoyed it. Relished how he’d claimed me with no regard for any consequences. But this new information about his past still stung.
“I feel like I don’t know who you are, Trevor.”
“Everything Olivia said or did regarding this is a lie, a flat-out fabrication.”
I stared at him. “Is it? I just don’t know what to believe.”
“Let me show you something, Ainsley.” I stood from the chair, walked over to the black cabinet at the end of the room, and retrieved a file from the top drawer. When I returned to the chair, I handed the information to her. As I did, my stomach lurched. I hadn’t ever expected to use the information I’d stored in there, but part of me felt relieved that I’d bothered to keep it. “Here. This is the truth about Olivia. I’ve been documenting this for a while, and I had hoped that I wouldn’t need to use this anymore.” I thought of the black roses in the closet. “But maybe what I had really been doing was accumulating it for you.”
Ainsley took the portfolio from me, her eyes glittering with wary fire, and gave a low whistle. “It seems like everything important happening in my life these days happens because of a file folder.”
“Yes, I guess it does, and I’m sorry.”
She flipped through some of the pages. Memories assailed me of those delicate little fingers stroking my skin during our passionate lovemaking, and I had an urge to grab her hands. I wanted to force her to look into my eyes and my heart and see the truth, but she wasn’t ready for that. Her stiff body and cool exterior were proof.
Come on, Trevor, work your way out of this mess…
“Olivia isn’t… she isn’t well. She’s self-destructive.” I paused, waiting for her to get my underlying meaning. All she did was turn another page and scan it. “But I’m glad you know about her now. I’m not hiding it from you anymore.”
She looked up from the documents. “How could you have let yourself get mixed up with someone so crazy in the first place?”
I shrugged. “That’s a question I’ve asked myself a hundred times. And no, I don’t have a good answer for that.”
Her gaze remained fixated on me. “But she’s gone—gone for good?”
I considered my answer, then reminded myself of the conversation I’d had with Olivia only moments before Ainsley swept through my door. “Yes. It’s the past, and that’s where it’s going to stay.”
It was a small lie, and I knew it, but I didn’t want to up that part of the drama. Not yet.
She swallowed. “Good. And I will accept your explanation.”
“You will?”
She nodded, and I exhaled a breath I didn’t know I’d been holding. “At least now, we have that out of the way.”
“Well, you might have convinced me, but you haven’t convinced Ashton. He wants to pull the plug on this entire merger. In fact, if it hadn’t been for me…” She trailed off and looked away. “He doesn’t trust you.”
“I know he doesn’t trust me.” Confident that she wouldn’t pull away this time, I placed a hand on her soft knee. “But do you?”
She looked back at me. “I—I do.”
“Are you sure?”
The hardness in her eyes subsided. “Yes.”
Her answer filled my heart. Blood rushed through my body and made me aware of every cell in my body. She trusted me. For real. And if she did, didn’t that mean we’d have a chance for even more—something lasting?
“I wasn’t a good person in my former life, when I spent all this time chasing things that meant nothing. I thought money and power would keep me warm at night, but the truth is, I didn’t know what it meant to be alive until I met you.”
She gasped. “Really?”
My chest grew tighter as I realized the enormity of what I was saying, and exactly where we were headed. “I want to marry you, Ainsley, and when I say that, I mean that I’d want that no matter what this business outcome would be. I’ve… I’ve never felt with anyone the things that I feel when I’m with you.”
“This is crazy,” she said, but a smile pulled at her lips. “This is insane.”
I moved my hand from her knee and linked my fingers with hers. “I don’t care. It doesn’t have to make sense to anyone else. It just has to make sense to us.”
“But—”
“But what?” I caught her gaze with mine. “Ainsley give this a chance. A real chance. You just might be surprised at what you find. Forget the business deal. Forget the merger. Just—just think about us.”
“I am.”
“Good. And no matter what, I’ll wait for
you, Ainsley. I’ll wait until you can see it, too.” I dropped her hand, then caught her jaw between my index finger and my thumb. “And in the meantime, I’m going to show you how much I’m starting to care about you. I’m going to prove my feelings to you.”
And I knew, right there, as we sat in my office, that I would.
“Oh, that is rich,” Brooke said later that evening over cocktails at Twenty Club. Instead of making our bridal appointments, we’d gone to the club. We’d already downed one round of bourbon cocktails, and the remains of some sliders, shrimp cocktail, and a cheese plate lay before us on the center of the high-top table we’d commandeered near the bar. “Trevor McNamara at your feet, doing whatever you want, totally infatuated with you. You are so freaking lucky.”
“Am I? I just told you that not only am I in an arranged marriage for the sake of saving my family fortune, but that my ‘fiancé’ comes with a crazy ex-girlfriend who tried to destroy him.” I gave her a long look. “I don’t think I’d call that rich. I’d call that nuts.”
“But it also gave him a chance to tell you how much he cares about you.” She leaned across the table. “And he does. A lot.”
I waved away her words. “It’s complicated, to say the least. Especially in light of what’s going on with the company.”
Brooke snorted. “Listen to yourself, Ainsley. You have New York’s most eligible bachelor at your feet. He doesn’t just want to marry you. It sounds like he’s falling in love with you. That’s huge.”
I laughed at her exaggerated enunciation of the word “huge.” She could be so dramatic sometimes. “Whatever you say.”
“Come on, you know that you’re enjoying this. You’re getting the upper hand back.”
I shrugged. I did enjoy it, in a way. He’d practically fallen all over himself to please and reassure me during our conversation in his office, and I’d admit to anyone that I’d enjoyed his company. I wanted to spend more and more of my time with him. But still, I wasn’t sure if what I was feeling for him was anything close to love.
“I know we said we’d look at wedding dresses.” I drank the last of my Manhattan cocktail. “But after that conversation today, I’m not ready to look for something.” My thoughts drifted to the pending engagement party. We still had a lot to plan, and now more than ever, everything was riding on it. My conversation with Ashton about Trevor’s past, and the explanation Trevor had given for the file on his ex-girlfriend, hadn’t gone very well. My brother remained unconvinced that marrying Trevor was the right thing to do. “Can we delay this? Shop for a dress in a few weeks?”
Maybe I’d have more clarity after the engagement party, when we’d been formally announced as a couple to all of Palm Beach society.
“Fine with me. We can always look for something in Palm Beach or Miami.” Brooke took a final sip of her cocktail, placed it on the table, and rubbed her hands together. “Besides, I think you’re going to need something custom for a wedding like this. Off the rack won’t do. It must be special. It has to make a statement.”
“I’ll drink to that.” I raised my glass. I probably needed at least two more to take the edge off the lingering stress. “And you better help me plan this. You know how much is riding on it.”
“You know it,” she said. “I’ll never let you down.”
Brooke and I finished the weekend in New York City without shopping for a wedding dress. Instead, we took an afternoon at the Red Door Spa, caught a new exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and met a few friends from her undergraduate days at Cornell for drinks at the New York Athletic Club.
In other words, we had a relaxing time that we both needed.
And for the rest of that time, I didn’t see Trevor at all. We texted a few times, and I called him twice, but I didn’t see him again before I left the city. It was probably better that way. His words from that day in his office still played heavy on my heart.
I finished out the weekend and returned to Florida, still unsure of how I felt about Trevor’s words. And they weighed on my mind for the next two weeks in Palm Beach as my mother and I made the final preparations for the engagement party. She’d flown in from France the night before the event. On Saturday morning, we went to Flagler Museum around ten thirty.
“Ainsley are you listening to me?”
I blinked and looked over at my mother, who held a box of small rose bouquets. “What?”
“Did you hear anything that I said?”
I shook my head.
She sighed and pointed at the box. “Can you take these and place them on the tables? I want to ask the staff about the alcohol list.”
“Sure.”
I took the box from her and began placing each low, rounded bouquet on the high-top tables that circled the center of the Flagler Museum pavilion. Mom made a few more comments about her dissatisfaction with the ambiance of the room, and then she left to find Karen, the party planner.
I kept my focus on the final details of the space. The rented room sat off to the side of the museum, and it featured floor-to-ceiling windows with a view of downtown West Palm Beach and the Intracoastal Waterway. About thirty tables lined the perimeter, and the bouquets were positioned on top of each one. I had just placed the final ones when Trevor strode through the wide doors at the far end of the room.
“You’re early,” I said, not bothering to hide my surprise. I placed the box on the ground near the last table and crossed the room to him. “I thought you were coming in later this afternoon.”
“I managed to get away.” He smiled. “Helps that I know the business owner.”
I laughed, then glanced over my shoulder at the space that, in just over six hours, would hold three hundred of our nearest and not so dearest friends. “What do you think?”
“I love it.”
“I’m glad.” I turned back to him and his expression had changed.
He made a move like he wanted to kiss me, and his hand rose and fell against my shoulder. “I’m—I had to see you, Ainsley, I couldn’t wait until tonight.”
“It’s okay,” I assured him, leaning close. “You can kiss me if you want to.”
He pulled me toward him and crushed my lips against his. I molded myself to him, aware of how in even the briefest of moments, the naturalness of this all seemed so remarkable.
When we broke away from each other, I led him to a large box of truffle chocolates all neatly wrapped in gold boxes with green ribbon. “Did you see these? Direct from Italy.” I took one from the box and handed it to him. “I think our guests are going to love them.”
“Good.” He glanced at the box and then back at me. “Do you think most of the people we invited will actually end up coming?”
“Trust me,” I said. “All of Palm Beach is coming. All of them.”
I’d been to parties before—plenty of them. But it had been a long time since anyone wanted to throw a party for someone that I cared about, to say nothing about throwing one for me.
So, this was different.
Thirty minutes into the party, and the pavilion room was full. The bars on either end of the room had long lines, and staffers circled with trays of miniature quiches, bacon-wrapped dates, shrimp, and oysters. A photographer from the Palm Beach Daily News, one from Palm Beach Illustrated, and another from Palm Beach Social circulated the room, getting photos of the various couples in the room; a long line of party guests also waited to take their photo in front of Henry Flagler’s famed railroad car from the 1890s. In the corner of the room, a four-piece cover band from Miami performed a set of 1980s hits.
And in the center of it all stood my fiancée, holding court. She currently entertained Mitzy Reese, and I watched her throw back her head to laugh at one of the jokes Mitzy told. Ainsley wore a shocking red dress and black strappy heels—I’d never seen anything this gorgeous. And damn it, I was the luckiest bastard in the world because I was going to marry her.
First, though, I was going to take her home that night and make love to her
at least twice. I knew that much. Women in dresses like that, with bodies like hers, deserved to be pleasured endlessly.
I was just the man to do it.
“She looks great, doesn’t she?” Ashton said as he snatched a glass of champagne from a server passing by us with a tray full of them. “My sister always delivers.”
“She does.” I tossed him a reassuring smile. “And I’m glad she convinced you to give this all a second chance. I want to be with her. This is genuine.”
He eyed me. “I still have my reservations.”
“I know.” I gulped back some of the guilt that always seemed to circle me whenever the topic of Olivia came up in conversation. “And from what you read, you have every reason to be suspicious. I would be, too.” I glance in Ainsley’s direction and saw her engrossed in conversation with Mitzy Reese. Her curls bobbed back and forth. “I’m not going to hurt your sister. I promise.”
When my gaze met Ashton’s again, I couldn’t read his stony expression.
“We might have been rivals,” I added, “but when I really stop and think about it, when I really consider how this all played out, this whole chain of events makes sense. It’s poetry. It’s what our fathers would have wanted. Mine died ten years ago. Yours followed eight years later. And now, the city will be ours. Together. We don’t have to fight over it. We can dominate it.”
“Just as long as you don’t dominate her.”
I laughed. “I never could. You know your sister.”
“I do.” Ashton sighed. “And given the fact that you gave me a copy of the file on Olivia, then I’m willing to do this—if it makes her happy. Besides, it doesn’t seem like the merger is going to take much longer. Soon, you’ll have control.” He rubbed his forehead. “Of all this. Just what you wanted. Your official entry into high society.”
Another server moved past us with a selection of miniature shrimp on skewers. I took one off the tray and bit into it. It tasted juicy, plump, and expensive. “Thank you. It’s all going so well.”
And it was. Too well.