by Lara Hunter
The moment their eyes met, he stood from his seat, at full, six-feet height, showing his handsome, muscled torso, and his immaculate suit.
“Hi,” Grace murmured. She was close enough, now. She felt her cells humming with passion and barely contained nerves. “I see you found us a seat.”
“I hope it suits you,” Michael said. Despite his sparkling eyes, which were clearly excited to see her, his voice was deep and far away. He sighed, collapsing back in his seat and gesturing for her to follow suit. “I hope you don’t mind, but I ordered you the best drink Kenny makes. He’s mixing it right now.”
On cue, Grace heard the movement of the ice in the shaker. The smell of mint escaped, filling her nose. She grinned. “I always like a good surprise.”
“So do I. Normally,” Michael said, shrugging. “Of course, the surprise I got this morning would be the exception to the rule.”
Grace pressed her lips together, diving from the stars and back to the reality of the moment.
“I see,” she whispered. “Do you want to talk about what happened?”
Kenny set the drink before her, and Grace thanked him with a brief smile. She brought her lips around the edge of the glass and allowed the first sip of gin to glide along her tongue. She shivered at the intense flavor.
“It’s exhilarating, isn’t it?” Michael offered, splaying his palm upon the table. “He’s a master mixologist.”
“Did you ever bring Helen here?” Grace asked, steering the conversation back. Michael’s eyes grew dark, but she persevered, shrugging slightly. “I’m sorry. I just want to make sure you’re all right, after the breakup.”
Michael lifted his glass and poured whiskey down his throat, ice clinking against his perfect white teeth. He swiped the back of his hand over his lips, as if preparing himself for the journey ahead. He seemed like a sailor, or a pirate. “I never did bring Helen here. No.”
“Because she wouldn’t like it?” Grace asked.
“I’m really not sure what she likes, to be honest,” Michael said. “I know she likes coding. I know she’s at the office right now, fixing the mistakes of an employee I had to fire yesterday. What a wretched week.” His head hung low.
“So you didn’t fire her the minute she called the wedding off?” Grace asked, feeling a slight buzz after only a few sips. All she’d eaten that day was salad, and she was going to pay for it.
“No,” Michael said gruffly. “I couldn’t do that. She’s one of the best people I have working for me right now. If she wants to leave, then so be it. I can’t stop her. But I couldn’t very well send her on her way right now. And besides, she’s a fine person. I have no ill feelings towards her.”
“I still don’t really understand what happened between you two,” Grace said, her voice soft.
Michael shrugged. “I’m not sure I understand either, anymore.” He glanced toward her, his eyes brimming with curiosity. “You said you met with her this morning. Did she say anything to you about calling off the wedding? Did you say something that could have set her off?” As he spoke, he grew more accusatory.
Grace stared down at the ice floating in her half-empty drink. She hadn’t imagined the conversation flowing in this direction. She’d been rash, a teenager with a fluttering stomach, full of butterflies for this man. And now, she had to face up to what she’d done.
“Actually, Michael, I should tell you the truth,” she breathed. Across the room, someone dropped a wine glass. The shards shattered across the ground, causing a cry of alarm to ring out. But Michael’s eyes didn’t waver from Grace’s. Not for a moment.
“When Helen came to my office this morning,” she continued, “she wanted to tell me something. I don’t know why she chose me. But she did. And I did what any woman would have done.”
“What in the world do you mean?” Michael asked, gripping the edge of the table.
“She told me you’d asked her to marry her so you could get access to the money in your father’s will. It was a sham.”
Michael didn’t speak for several moments. The thoughts processed through his mind, causing his thick, black eyebrows to ease lower over his eyes. He looked ominous, like a movie villain.
“What does that have to do with anything? People marry for worse reasons all the time. As I stated in your office, just yesterday, we weighed the pros and cons of getting married, and we decided to go ahead and do it. Perhaps she also mentioned the part where I told her she didn’t have to do anything she didn’t want to do. We didn’t even have to consummate it, for God’s sake.”
He rapped his knuckles on the table, almost rudely. Kenny scampered forward from the bar and tipped the whiskey bottle upside down, refilling him at a moment’s notice.
Grace wanted to ask him a million questions, then. Did he hear how wretched he sounded? But she held her tongue, rolling it along the ridges of her mouth. Her stomach coiled within her, demanding sustenance. But she felt tied to a treacherous ship, now. And a storm was brewing.
“What did you tell her, after she divulged this information, then?” Michael said. His eyes were glassy. Empty.
Grace parted her lips slightly. “Well, I felt she should follow her heart. So that’s what I told her to do. To listen to her gut. All the old clichés.”
“And the very same one you used on me, all those years ago, telling me to go into computer science,” Michael replied, smacking his palm upon the table. The mahogany wood shook like an earthquake. “Dammit. All that crap. It works on people, Grace. People want to feel pure and righteous when, in reality, nobody is.”
“And you don’t think righteousness is worth aiming for?” Grace whispered.
“Of course not. Not in the end. I think everyone is out for his or her own gain. In the end, even love falls away.”
Grace’s heart ached, knowing, now, just what kind of man Michael was.
“I don’t see what the big deal is,” she said, almost as an afterthought. “Helen didn’t love you. You didn’t love her. It’s not like you’ve lost this great, all-consuming passion in your life. In fact, as you say, she’s still around. Coding.”
“You fail to understand how much damage you’ve done,” Michael continued. “Perhaps you thought I’d be touched by you telling her to follow her heart and listen to her gut—all that. It was what changed my life, after all.” His voice was gruff. “But this morning wasn’t the time for it, Grace. You, with all your legal expertise, you should have known that.”
Grace’s face was beet red. She wanted to inhale the rest of her drink and scurry home, away from this ghost that was ripping into her. But something forced her to stay, glued in her chair. She could smell the heat of him: his cologne, mixed with just a hint of his sweat. It played with her mind, somehow making him seem even more attractive, even in his rage.
“What does it matter to you, anyway?” Grace said. “You have enough money to retire and live the rest of your life in luxury, just with your company alone. What does it matter if you get your father’s money?”
“It’s the principle,” Michael offered. “Dad didn’t want me to be alone. And, this way, I get my inheritance while fulfilling his wishes.” He looked forlorn, now. His shoulders slumped forward. “It just doesn’t have anything to do with hearts, or guts, or romance.”
“But doesn’t that negate the very idea your father was trying to get across?” Grace offered. “You’re treating romance like a business strategy, just like your father treated everything in his life.”
“You can’t possibly understand it,” Michael said, vehemently. “I don’t expect you to. Your parents love each other. You’ve probably had love in your life, but I haven’t allowed time for it. And, Grace, whether you like it or not, that money is rightfully mine. He added this last element to the will—that I’m to marry before January 1 of the year of my 31st birthday—only a few months before he died. It was a horrible time for me. My father was my idol. I looked up to him for everything. He saw me graduate from Yale. He saw me launch t
his company and sweat to build it from the ground up. But he didn’t see me fall in love. And that disappointed him more than anything.” Michael shook his head, tapping the tips of his fingers against his full lips.
Grace couldn’t speak. She sensed that Michael blamed her for the loss of his father’s money. And, she supposed, she had had a dramatic hand in helping Helen make her decision. Any argument she could think of—that Helen would be unhappy, that she was too young to commit to a life like that—seemed sour. She needed to tread carefully.
“What do you think you’ll do?” she whispered.
Michael shrugged heavily, raising his shoulders high. “Now that you mention it, I’d love your help. I only have four weeks before that cash slips out of my fingers. You put me into this mess, Grace, and I need your help getting me out of it.”
Grace tilted her head. Her mind was racing, trying to recall the Michael she’d once known. The eighteen-year old who had seemed so kind and caring. Now, he’d seemingly morphed into his father—against his father’s best wishes. She wanted to call attention to this, to show that he was marching backwards, into an empty, lonely existence.
But she felt oddly nervous around him. Her legal mind didn’t spin as sharply as usual. And so, she asked a simple question.
“How would I be able to help you, anyway?”
Michael leaned forward, then. He seemed to scan her face with his dark eyes, to assess every inch of her. She felt on display, as if he, the computer programmer, could read the dark, internal “coding” of her greater make up.
“You’ve grown into a stunning woman, Grace. You were always beautiful. As an eighteen-year-old, you surely made every eye turn your way. I ran across a damn parade just to get to know you.”
“Just picture it. You. Once such a romantic,” Grace teased.
“There’s no room for romance in the world,” Michael said flatly. “Trust me. I’ve tried it.”
“Maybe you should try again,” Grace said, her voice cracking.
“Have you ever been in love?” Michael asked her.
The question was so direct it nearly knocked Grace from her chair. She remembered long nights of kissing in college, of feeling her stomach tie in knots, of imagining what it might mean to fall for someone so completely.
She shook her head, answering honestly. “I used to daydream about us,” she whispered. “I thought perhaps you were the one. I thought maybe it was our destiny to meet in Vermont, miles away from everyone we knew.”
“And now, look at us. Together again.”
Grace nodded, her black hair swimming around her chin.
“Both with successful careers. Both without love. And one of us about to lose several million dollars.”
Michael’s eyes sparked with an idea. He reached his hand across the table, allowing his index finger to glide along the top of Grace’s hand. “I think we can help each other. Especially given that you and your business are rather new, and are paying rent in one of the most desirable buildings in Manhattan. I can’t imagine it’s cheap. It’s almost nicer than my offices.”
Grace’s heart jumped in her chest, her throat clenching. “You’re saying you want me to—”
“To marry me, instead of Helen,” Michael said, bringing his hands together in a mighty clap. “I don’t know why it took me all this time to think of it. It even makes more sense to marry someone outside of my own business—after the ceremony, we don’t have to deal with each other ever, if we don’t want to. And you’ll receive a massive sum in exchange for your assistance. I’ll give you a third of the inheritance. Plenty of millions. Enough to make you a very healthy, happy woman for the rest of your days.”
Grace tilted her head, almost wondering if she’d misheard. She canceled out the noise brimming around them, the surrounding conversations serving as a reminder that life, love and happiness continued on with the ticking clock. It just didn’t tick for her.
“You want me to marry you? You’re moving on so swiftly?” she asked, incredulous.
“It’s the obvious thing to do. And it’s not like you’re dating anyone, right?”
Grace felt slapped. Here she was, the second choice in a bizarre game of money. She turned her straw through the last of her drink, stabbing at the tender mint leaves. The idea sparked something deep within her and crawled through her veins, causing her to feel warmth and a strange, long-lost emotion: was it hope?
She could save him from himself. She would spend time with him over the following few weeks, and she would peel away at the layers to reveal the emotional, soulful human she’d met at the Vermont parade all those years before.
It would be her project. And then, maybe one day, it could become her life.
NINE
Grace began to nod, then, and immediately the color began to rush back to Michael’s cheeks, brightening his eyes.
He breathed a sigh of relief. “Phew. You really made me nervous for a minute there. I had no idea what you were thinking.”
“We all have our little tricks up our sleeves, don’t we?” Grace offered playfully. She tilted her shoulder toward him, hopeful he’d view the slant of her body, the slight hint of cleavage revealed. But his eyes were elsewhere, far from her milky skin.
“It’s perfect. I met you again at just the right time,” Michael said, now filled with glee. He lifted his glass and pushed it toward her, clinking it with hers. “To our beautiful future. Together or apart.”
“To the future,” Grace whispered in agreement. She sipped the rest of her drink, crunching lightly at the mint leaves as they floated toward her lips.
Michael dipped his hand into his pocket and drew out his cellphone, tapping on it furiously.
In the back of her mind, Grace imagined him changing every notification, every meeting, from the name “Helen” to “Grace.” Perhaps it was just that simple for him. Perhaps he really was cold, impenetrable, and she was just a filler, a path to his greater plan.
Now, she truly understood just how wretched Helen must have felt that morning. But still she grinned, clenching her teeth, waiting for him to release his firm grip on his phone and return to their conversation.
It seemed as though she would be waiting for a while.
Grace waved her slim hand through the air and ordered another drink from Kenny, her eyes beginning to glaze over. The world had shifted. And she was vaguely ashamed of her romantic self, hanging on to a past she couldn’t quite get back.
They had another drink together, sipping them quickly. Grace felt jittery with sudden nerves. She eyed this man, who she suddenly felt was a stranger. That moment of recognition she’d had in her office a day before, when a wave of nostalgia had nearly strangled her, was gone, now. In its place, she was left with a narcissistic, dispassionate man who just wanted money to pile up, whether or not he needed it. Just like Scrooge.
Michael paid for their drinks, leaving an admittedly large tip for Kenny. He stood and turned toward Grace, tilting his elbow toward her. “Want to take my arm, like in the old days?”
“How romantic of you,” Grace said, rolling her eyes slightly. But she slipped her delicate wrist through his elbow, feeling her heart flutter at their touch. Some aspects of him were still irresistible, whether she liked it or not.
***
Michael led her from the bar to the revving city street. Taxis screeched past, splashing melted snow upon the sidewalks.
Grace pressed her lips together, eyeing Michael with interest. “Where in the world are you taking me now?”
“I thought we could go for a walk. Catch some air,” Michael answered.
He took a left and began to bound down the street. Grace walked quickly, keeping up with him, still strung along by his elbow. The air was sharp with chill; it was difficult to breathe, yet it seemed to rejuvenate her lungs.
“So. Do you want to plan a ceremony?” Grace asked.
“We can keep it on Christmas Eve,” Michael answered with a light shrug. “Why should I cancel the plans
I’ve already made?” He eyed her body, clearing comparing her to Helen. “I would say you could use the dress she bought last week. But I don’t think it would fit.”
Grace’s face burned. Her smooth lips parted, immediately feeling chapped by the winter air. “A Christmas Eve ceremony, then? Will it be decorated for the season?”
“Well, of course. Now that the wedding’s with you, we might as well play that up, right?” Michael asked. “We met in Vermont, where we kissed surrounded by some of the cheesiest Christmas decorations on the planet. Why not work with that, for old time’s sake?”
Grace’s mouth felt sour with disappointment and the leftover taste of gin. “You said you loved Christmas when I met you. You promised you’d show me all the reasons it was important.” Her voice was teasing, but she felt heavy with sadness.