He chatted easily now, telling stories about fishing trips and golf games with clients between bites of an enormous burger. Such kind, lively eyes, she thought. And he’s mature. Not some self-absorbed kid. Rick was age-appropriate. He was focused. Down to earth. He was…
A little loud, though, isn’t he? Out of the corner of her eye, Suzanne imagined she saw people at a nearby table looking over at them. You’re imagining things. Focus. What a cute face. Remember those first kisses?
Rick was describing a party he’d attended on a boat for some work function in Miami. Something about a thirty-five-foot yacht and scoring a key nursing home account over a game of poker. Is that barbecue sauce on his chin? Should I let him know?
Suzanne fidgeted with her napkin and tried to ignore the sauce. She knew very well her reputation as a serial dater. Her friends had teased her about it for years, and she’d never taken it seriously. But lately the teasing felt more like criticism. Like there was something wrong with her.
There’s nothing wrong with me. I am perfectly capable of making a relationship work long-term. She forked a cherry tomato and put it in her mouth. Did he just say ‘irregardless’?
As the yacht story wound to its apparently hilarious conclusion, she faked a brief laugh, and Rick honed in. “So, how about you? I remember that you grew up here. I’ve never asked—do you have family in town?”
“Yes, my parents live in Peachtree City.”
“Isn’t that where they have all the golf carts everywhere?”
“Yes.”
“That’s pretty cool. Are you close to your parents?”
“Define ‘close.’”
“Well, uh, I guess, do you see them a lot?”
“Not really.”
Clearly this was a closed door, so the salesman changed tactics. “Well, at least they’re nearby. My parents moved down to Florida a few years ago and I only see them a couple of times a year. It’s a good thing Dad and I have an annual fishing trip in the Keys. We go out on this great little boat…” And he was off again. Suzanne watched his face as he talked. A little doughy, perhaps, but with kind eyes. She imagined that being on the road all the time meant he didn’t eat as well as he should. His dark brown hair was still full and thick, in need of a trim—it curled up just a bit over his ears. Overall, she decided, he was attractive but approachable.
“That sounds really nice,” she said at an appropriate pause in his monologue about the fishing trip. He does seem to have a thing about boats, doesn’t he?
Soon Rick was boasting happily about a swordfish he and his dad had caught several years before. Suzanne wondered whether she could ever successfully decorate a room that included a six-foot mounted fish. It would have to be a nautical theme…
Stop it, she chided herself. You are not marrying this guy or his fish. We are having a grownup conversation and being open to the possibility of something more. This is what people in their thirties do on dates.
She smiled broadly at him, remembering to show her teeth the way she’d been instructed before beauty pageants as a child. She could almost taste the Vaseline her mother made her rub on her top teeth to ensure they didn’t get smudged with lipstick. Smile. Be open.
Rick returned the smile with warmth. He also seemed to notice he’d been talking about himself for too long. “So tell me how you got started in the party planning business.”
Suzanne recounted briefly how she had been an art history major at the University of Georgia, desperately wanted to work as a museum curator, and how she’d taken the job on the event staff at the High Museum right after college. “Originally, I hoped the foot in the door at the museum would land me a job in procurement or something, but it never happened.”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Rick said sympathetically.
Suzanne shrugged. It turned out she had a knack for event planning. Something about the combination of creativity and crisis response. After a couple of years at the High, she had been hired away by a large event planning agency. She stayed there for a few years before creating her own boutique agency. Now she had one of the most successful, prestigious agencies in the city. People were often shocked to discover she and Chad were the only permanent staff. “We actually won an award last year,” she told Rick.
“Sounds like you are quite the little rock star in the event planning world,” he said. “Or do you just plan events for rock stars?”
Normally very discreet about her clients, Suzanne couldn’t resist the opportunity to brag a little. “Actually, I am doing a benefit in a couple of weeks for Dylan Burke. Of course, he’s more a country star…”
“Seriously? I was kidding about the whole rock star thing.”
A Southern lady is always modest, her mother’s voice chided her. “Well, it’s not that big of a deal,” Suzanne hedged. “It’s at my old stomping grounds at the High, which is probably why I got the job.”
“Don’t sell yourself short,” Rick countered enthusiastically. “That’s awesome. He’s totally famous.”
She waved away the words with a manicured hand, but Rick was undeterred. “Seriously, you should be really proud of yourself. That’s a huge deal. Obviously you’ve earned quite a reputation for someone like Dylan Burke to choose you.”
His eyes held hers sincerely. Okay, Rick, ease up. We’ve already slept together. You can dial it down a tad.
“Really, his manager chose me. I haven’t actually met him yet. We’ll see how it turns out,” she said, and pretended to be engrossed in the highlights of spring training on the TV over the bar. “How do you think the Braves will do this year?”
A few hours later, Suzanne awoke suddenly, unable to breathe. She gasped for air in the darkness, desperately trying to move, to figure out where she was. There was no light anywhere. Her chest tightened painfully, heart pounding, lips dry. As she struggled to move, she heard Rick groan softly nearby and roll over, releasing her from his grasp. She was in his hotel room, she remembered, and relaxed a little. When his breathing was soft and steady she moved again to slide out from between the crisp sheets.
I can’t do it.
She found the clock face down on the floor. Almost four a.m. She crept into the bathroom and shut the door before finding the unpleasantly bright light. She splashed water on her face and breathed deeply. After a few moments with her hands steadying her against the sink, she looked in the mirror. Jesus, I look like crap. Mascara was smeared beneath her eyes, her formerly perfect hair was a rat’s nest behind her head, and the evening of cocktails had weathered her face like a sailor’s. Suzanne looked and felt much older than thirty-three. She made a mental note to have Chad schedule a facial before the benefit.
Silently, she began gathering her things. The hotel room was pitch black, so she scrounged in her purse for the tiny keychain light, shaped like a pig, which Marci had given her years ago. The expensive pumps had been kicked off near the door. Skirt and blouse were in a heap nearby. After a few moments of searching, she located her bra hanging off the desk lampshade across from the bed. Her panties, however, had gone completely missing.
She covered the room with the tiny pig several times, freezing periodically when she heard Rick shift or grunt in his sleep. Opening the blackout curtains a fraction gave her enough light to shimmy into the rest of her clothes and make one more sweep of the room. She kicked herself for wearing her favorite pair of La Perla underwear, as they were about to become a casualty to an early-morning getaway.
Sorry, girls.
She decided to add “Leave favorite underwear at home,” to her list of dating rules. The rules were sort of Suzanne’s cross between Emily Post and Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman, mostly resulting from her own bad experiences: Never bring a man back your place. No emotional talk during sex. Never get naked with the lights on. Always undress yourself. No dating guys with kids or dogs. No sex in cars. And so on. She thought one day she could publish these rules and make a fortune.
She closed the curtain and crept toward the
door. She was nearly out of the room when she lost her balance and bumped against the closet door. It rattled loudly. Rick stirred behind her. “Suzanne? You okay?”
Damn.
“Yes, I’m fine.” Her voice was sheepish despite her best efforts. “I just need to get an early start today.”
“But,” his voice in the darkness was slow and softened by sleep, “it’s Saturday.”
“Yeah, I just have so much going on with this benefit; I really need to get home. Thank you for dinner and…everything.”
She waited as she heard him fumble for the lamp and got it turned on. “Um, sure. You’re welcome?” he said, looking around, befuddled. In the sudden light, his bare chest looked a little pudgier, and furrier, than she remembered. He ran his hand through the thick brown hair standing up all over his head.
“Okay, well…bye, Rick,” she said, as sweetly as she could. She turned back toward the door.
“Wait,” he said softly.
Please don’t make an ass of yourself, she willed him. Please just hate me and let’s be done with it.
She didn’t have to worry. As much as he liked her, Rick the Salesman knew a simple, cardinal rule of all relationships: never beg. He simply asked the exact question to which he wanted the answer. “This is ending right now, isn’t it?”
Suzanne noticed that there was neither hope nor despair in his tone. Obviously, he genuinely liked her, and yet the question only sought to confirm, rather than to convince or retaliate. She hesitated only for a split second. “Yes.”
She hovered there momentarily, waiting for the usual barrage of questions or arguments to commence, but Rick just nodded slowly and said, “I’m sorry to hear that. It really was very nice to meet you, Suzanne.”
Her face flushed. The stark contrast between this courteous ending and last night’s very primitive activities embarrassed her, as did standing in her professional clothes and heels with no underwear. “You, too, Rick. Take care, okay?”
She hurried out, made her way down the stairs, and exited the side door. She had the phone number to the cab company on speed dial.
Chapter 2
“You look awful,” Chad said when she got to the office Monday morning, handing her a cinnamon latte. He was right. She’d barely slept all weekend.
“Thanks,” she replied. “I would say the same for you but I have to say you actually look great in jeans. I didn’t know you owned any.”
He pretended to be offended. “Hey, just because I don’t dress like a homeless person every day doesn’t mean I can’t pull off casual when it’s appropriate. You just never get to see me on my days off. Except today.”
The snarl was tiny but hard to miss. Typically their office was not open on Mondays, because the nature of event planning required them to work so many weekends. But the gala was coming up in two weeks, and Chad had been bribed with the promise of a week’s paid vacation and several free dinners to work three Mondays in a row in preparation. It was a raw deal for Suzanne and she knew it, but Chad was indispensable to her and the thought of his being unhappy was more than she could handle. She considered it an investment in her own sanity.
“Thank you again. Your sacrifice has been duly noted.”
Chad gave her a tight smile and walked deliberately to his desk, about ten feet away from hers. They worked in a converted studio loft space in West Midtown, with floor-to-ceiling windows, brightly painted exposed pipes, and old red brick along the outside walls from the building’s days as a textile mill. Normally neat as a pin, today the office was cluttered with event paraphernalia. Two hundred goodie baskets with tiny guitars hot-glued to ribbons hanging from the top. Silent auction items ranging from original artwork to an autographed pair of boots. Piles of pop culture magazines and music industry trade publications from which Suzanne and Chad had tried to glean everything possible about Dylan Burke before the benefit.
Suzanne took the latte to her workstation and began retrieving voicemail messages: seventeen since she’d checked in on Saturday. The routine questions and confirmations from vendors she forwarded to Chad. She’d have to handle herself the several semi-panicked messages from Dylan Burke’s squeaky manager, Yvette. When anxious, Yvette had the shrillest high-pitched voice Suzanne had ever heard. She groaned as she jotted things down on several sticky notes, lining them up in order of priority as she went through the voicemails. Yvette apparently never slept, never took a day off, and never stopped worrying about her young boss’s desires and reputation.
Dylan Burke, twenty-six, was the quintessential small town Tennessee boy made good. Known for his gritty persona and anthem-style country-rock, he had become country music’s latest rising star. He’d had several chartbuster hits in the last two years, including “Country Rules” and “Sticking Up for the Sticks.” Each of these featured plays on words, guitar solos, and rhythms that seemed to have been designed with line dancing in mind. His most recent hit, “Duct Tape Fixes Everything,” was a cutesy ballad-type song that featured a young boy trying to repair his parents’ broken marriage. Suzanne, not a country fan, had never listened to it, but the mere mention of the song sent Marci weeping.
Women loved Dylan Burke for his winning smile, tight jeans, and ever-present faded camouflage baseball cap. The mainstream media loved taking pictures of him with an acoustic guitar in beauteous settings, gossiping about his endless stream of busty young girlfriends, and chronicling his fairly predictable rebellious behavior. The tabloids loved his large and conspicuous family most of all.
The Burkes were Nashville’s take on the Brady Bunch. Dylan’s rough, outspoken mother had moved to Nashville from a rural Georgia trailer park, hoping to make it as a singer and dragging her two young daughters with her. She had met and married Dylan’s father, a divorced music producer who had two teenage daughters of his own, while waiting tables at a diner. Dylan and his younger sister Kate had come along shortly thereafter. By the time Dylan was eight, Donna Burke had abandoned her own hopes of a singing career in favor of her talented only son.
It seemed to Suzanne—as she and Chad pored over articles, researching their famous client together—that after Dylan’s career began to take off, his family had a competition to see who could ride his famous coattails farther while embarrassing him the most. Every other week it seemed that his mother or one of his five sisters said or did something ridiculous, and nearly always there was photographic evidence to document it. Dylan must have a terrible publicist, because not only did their behavior never seem to faze him, he continued to be seen with them at even his most prominent award ceremonies and press opportunities.
She suspected that the gala in Atlanta was designed to soften all of that—as well as to demonstrate Dylan’s more urbane side. Even before reading People, Suzanne knew that Dylan was making a foray into acting, having been recently cast across from Reese Witherspoon in a romantic comedy set in Atlanta. The benefit at the High was supposed to show his sophisticated side, while subtly promoting both the movie and his current album, Fireflies. A tall order, but Suzanne had every confidence she would be able to pull it off.
The evening was a “cowboy meets culture” kind of event, and the biggest deal to hit the High in a long time. The guest list was loaded with an eclectic mix of celebrities—everyone from Travis Tritt to Gore Vidal, along with Dylan’s verbally uncouth mother, well-connected father, and the more attention-hungry of his five sisters. And of course, several other artists from country music’s freshman class of wild boys would make an appearance, accompanied by a gaggle of aspiring starlets. These last were mostly the stick-thin, silly types who wore sunglasses indoors and carried tiny dogs in their purses. It promised to be an entertaining evening.
Naturally, several local and national media outlets had representatives attending, pretending to be focused on style or the arts, but primarily to await the inevitable spectacle bound to occur when black ties and boots met vast quantities of booze.
This was why Suzanne had been hired, in fact
. The High didn’t have the internal staff to handle all the intricacies of dealing with the event itself along with the press, agents, handlers, and celebrities. Suzanne’s insane dedication to perfection and diplomatic skills, along with her experience at the museum, made her the perfect choice. When Betsy Fuller-Brown had called Suzanne personally to request a bid, she’d suspected they were pretty desperate to hire her and put in for twice her normal project fees on a whim. To her shock, they had not batted an eyelash, much less tried to talk her down.
Three months later, Suzanne realized she had already earned every penny of her fee and then some. Apparently, Dylan Burke and his staff knew he was the hottest thing going and planned to make the most of it by being the highest-maintenance celebrity entourage ever. Starting the first week after she’d taken on the project, Suzanne had received reams of faxes from Yvette every week detailing special requests for the event. A boot-shaped ice luge that dispensed Southern Comfort into chilled shot glasses. Mason jars full of live fireflies as centerpieces—promoting Dylan’s Fireflies album. Several large suites at the Four Seasons for Dylan’s family and friends, as well as a VIP lounge area at the museum. As Yvette enthusiastically described Dylan’s apparently very specific vision over a breakfast meeting, Suzanne thought, This is why I don’t do weddings. The brides.
Today’s crisis had apparently been brewing over the weekend. Yvette’s high-pitched voice was especially shrill. “Suzanne, it’s Yvette. Listen, we are having some major issues here with the seating arrangement. Donna Burke is insisting that she needs a table near the stage, but you already have the VIP tables full for the major donors and the partner sponsors. I also need a press table on the right side of the stage so that the photographers can capture Dylan’s left profile for the pictures.”
Suzanne dialed back Yvette’s number and, of course, reached her voicemail. If this is so important, she thought, answer your damn phone. “Hi, Yvette,” she trilled as sweetly as she could. “Suzanne here. Just got into the office and got your messages. I totally appreciate your concerns; thank you for voicing them so well. Why don’t you just buzz me back and we’ll talk?”
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