The Mischievous Mrs. Maxfield

by Ninya Tippett

  My mouth curled up into an ironic smile. “What are you apologizing for? Calling me the same things yourself the first time we met? Or that your girlfriend mouthed off at me too?”

  His lips thinned into a line for a second. “Both. I’m sorry for the terrible things I said to you the first time we met. I wasn’t myself at that time. And I’m sorry to have put you in this position with Simone. I broke things off cleanly when I told her I had to get married. I didn’t want to have an affair with her if that wasn’t what she wanted and I really had no room for any more distractions with how my life was turning around so fast.”

  “She knows the truth,” I said slowly, lowering my eyes, feeling downright defeated. No matter what Simone might have seen between between me and Brandon earlier, there was no changing the fact that she knew he was only with me because of Martin’s outrageous ultimatum.

  Brandon sighed and leaned back in his seat. “She knows most of it. I made the mistake of telling her when I tried to explain why I was breaking it off. I thought it would help her understand better.”

  “Anyone who has what she wants within her reach will fight for it, especially when she knows that nothing meaningful really stands in her way,” I told Brandon with a sigh that matched his, my head leaning against the seat.

  “I’m pretty sure she loves you, Brand,” I told him with a small smile, no matter how difficult it was to say the words out loud.

  I put my bandaged hand over his, my fingertips brushing his skin lightly. “It’s not that big a revelation, really. She loves you and it hurts her to see you marry someone else—especially for the kind of reasons you have. It probably stings more for her to know that you’re not standing up to your father and telling him that you’re marrying her instead.”

  “It never once crossed my mind to marry Simone,” he said, turning his palm up and catching my fingers with his. “I never imagined her in a wedding dress, walking down the aisle, coming toward me, smiling so beautifully it made my chest hurt.”

  There was a tenderness to his words that caused my chest to hurt, apart from the ache dulled by the painkillers. Somehow, I was imagining myself in a wedding dress, walking down the aisle, coming toward him, seeing him smile back at me so sweetly it hurt.

  Maybe it was the drugs or maybe it was just Brandon but my whimsy seemed a little worse than usual.

  I quickly masked the effect his words were having on me with a crooked smile. “Considering your limited capacity for romance, Brand, I’m not surprised you don’t go spacing out, fantasizing about your dream bride.”

  “If I were fantasizing about you, you’d be striding down the aisle wearing sneakers with your wedding dress, taunting convention and tossing me a smartass grin,” he said before we burst out laughing.

  We had the sides of our heads pressed against the leather seats, our hands entwined, grinning and staring at each other while cocooned inside the car as the gentle summer rain stirred around us.

  “Why don’t you just stay with me tonight?” he said after a moment. “I’ll drive you over here tomorrow morning.”

  I wrinkled my nose. “I’m not sure Martin will like that. Wasn’t the whole point of this wedding to please your father?”

  He rolled his eyes. “He’s still getting what he wants. I’d like to get what I want every now and then.”

  “You always get what you want,” I accused.

  He scoffed. “Not since I met you. I’ve had to make some concessions.”

  “It’s about damn time,” I teased, grinning.

  His eyes closed briefly as he let out a low groan. “We have to get you inside before my father comes out and finds me mauling you inside the car again, Charlotte.”

  I giggled, releasing his hand and secretly regretting it as I unbuckled my seatbelt and grabbed my purse.

  I was supposed to be embarrassed about these things but with everything that had happened between me and Brandon and the circumstances that brought us together, an unlikely friendship had been struck between us, no matter how unorthodox or sudden, and there was little that I wasn’t really comfortable with him about.

  We were like two soldiers going to war who had stumbled upon each other and made a pact to survive together. We were forced to trust each other and watch each other’s backs, moving forward in a united motion born out of instinct and perfect understanding of each other’s personalities.

  “Hang on one sec,” Brandon said as he quickly scrambled out of the car and rounded over to my side.

  He pulled the door open and swept me up in his arms—really, Brandon was making a habit of this.

  I blinked against the light rain and clung to him as he walked the short distance to the house. He probably parked further away to keep Norman, Martin’s ever-efficient butler, from seeking us out in the rain with an umbrella.

  The moment we arrived at the front door, Norman stepped out, about to greet us, but Brandon held up a hand after lowering me to my feet that the elderly butler retreated politely and closed the door behind him.

  “Do people just get your wordless commands?” I asked as I carefully pulled my baseball cap off, shaking the water off my ponytail a little. “Because I already have trouble with your clearly-worded ones.”

  He smiled wryly, pushing back some of the baby hair that had gotten plastered on my forehead by the baseball cap. “I know. You usually need a different kind of persuasion.”

  I snorted and raised a brow at him. “Oh, yeah? Like what?”

  “Like this,” he said before he suddenly leaned down and kissed me.

  He cupped the side of my face, his thumb gently brushing against my cheek and his other arm circling my waist and pressing me closer to him.

  Both of my hands clutched his shirt lightly as I kissed him back, my eyes fluttering close, my heart soaring at the sweetness of his slow, tender kiss. I nearly felt boneless.

  After what seemed like forever, he pulled away slightly, smiling down at me, his hazel eyes sparkling.

  “I’ll have the rest of your stuff brought over tonight,” he said, rubbing the tip of his nose with mine lightly. “And I’ll see you tomorrow at the church aisle, Mrs. Maxfield. Don’t be late.”

  He stepped back and hurried down the steps, striding toward the car in the light rain.

  “I won’t be,” I murmured, wrapping my arms gently around myself, fighting the shiver that had nothing to do with the cooler temperature.

  Later that night, as the clock ticked by and brought me closer to the wedding day, I became more and more restless.

  Dinner with Martin, Mattie, Anna and Tessa had been fun. None of the sisters’ initial dislike of me surfaced. In fact, they helped me lay everything out that I needed tomorrow for the wedding when Felicity, Noli and Armina stopped by to set everything up. The wedding gown was held up by a dress form in the corner of the sprawling bedroom Martin gave me, the shoes, accessories and every possible thing a bride could adorn herself with on her big day laid out on a long, vintage table.

  I should be going to bed if I didn’t want to accessorize with puffy eyes as well tomorrow but my nerves were shot.

  With an embroidered, mint-green cotton robe over my pajamas, I made my way downstairs to the kitchen to get a glass of milk or something to help me sleep despite Armina’s warning to stay away from anything dairy before the big day.

  I was just walking down the hallway when I saw Martin’s office door slightly ajar, light still spilling out from it.

  I lightly knocked. “Martin?”

  “Come in, Charlotte.”

  I opened the door further and saw the old man sitting in his huge leather recliner by the bay window, leafing through what looked like a photo album.

  “Why are you still up so late?” I asked as I took a seat on a smaller armchair across from him.

  He looked up and smiled. “Shouldn’t I be asking you that question? It’s your big day tomorrow.”

  I grimaced. “I know. That’s why I’m still up. I’m a little nervous.”


  “Why?”

  Why? Because mine and Brandon’s ploy officially starts tomorrow. Because tomorrow I’m binding myself to a man I probably should run away from as fast as possible.

  “I think any bride will be nervous on the eve of her wedding,” I said with a small laugh.

  “Hmm. True, although you’re not a typical bride,” he said, echoing my words from earlier.

  You have no idea, Martin. Absolutely no idea.

  “Would it have helped if you had your family with you?” he asked quietly.

  I shook my head. “I have no family, Martin. Remember? I’ve flown solo for a while now, even when my father was still alive.”

  “I hope you know that we’re your family no matter what, Charlotte,” he said with a soft smile. “You will always be like a daughter to me.”

  A pang of guilt hit me. Even if Martin’s welfare was among mine and Brandon’s reasons for this scheme, we were still lying to him and it never sat well with me. He didn’t deserve this manipulation from us but I couldn’t make myself walk away.

  “Thank you, Martin,” I said, smiling back at him despite the tightness in my chest. “Your children are absolutely lucky to have you for their father.”

  He glanced down at the photo album on his lap. “I’d like to think I did well in raising them but only time will tell. None of them are perfect, which is fine with me despite what they think. All I want for them is just to be happy and well.”

  I don’t know if taking their choice away helps with that but who am I to lecture about parenthood? I’m not a parent and what I know of mine is nothing anyone should follow.

  “This is my favorite picture of Brandon when he was little,” Martin said, slipping his fingers underneath the thin plastic that held the photo and carefully taking it out.

  “I brought this home for him from my business trip,” he continued, handing me the photo. “He was eighteen months then. He looked at the toy for almost half an hour before doing anything with it. Christina, his mother, worried that he didn’t like it, but then he started to rearrange the pieces to his liking.”

  It was a photo of Brandon as a toddler with his chubby cheeks, big eyes and thick dark hair, sitting on the carpeted floor in a dark blue jumpsuit and white shirt, a wooden train block set on his lap and an adorable frown on his face as he stared at the toy in full concentration.

  “It’s odd that I would like it the most when he’s not even smiling in it but I thought it best captured my son,” Martin said as I continued to gaze down at the photo. “He’s always been such a serious child, even after his other siblings came. He’s always intent on figuring out the most efficient way to resolve situations into how he wants them to be that he often forgets there’s some joy to be found in life’s twists and turns. He forgets to smile or laugh or remember that he’s human and not a mechanical problem-solver.”

  “He’s a very successful business man though,” I said quietly, my fingertips tracing the face of the boy in the photo.

  “He is but he’s not a happy person,” Martin replied with a soft sigh. “He works like it’s a race to a destination he probably doesn’t even really know. He would go from woman to woman like someone trading a pair of shoes for another the moment they start to pinch because he couldn’t spare the time or the effort to figure out why the type of shoes he selected wasn’t a good fit to begin with.”

  Maybe I was just paranoid but something about Martin’s statement prodded on my consciousness—as if he knew.

  But that wasn’t possible. If he knew I was deceiving him, he wouldn’t be having a heart-to-heart with me like this about his son.

  “I think he would tell you that I more than pinch,” I joked with a small laugh, trying to quell my paranoia away. “He can barely take a step forward without me causing him some pain.”

  Martin smiled. “It won’t be painless. It won’t always be a walk in the park. But once you’ve given it a chance, you might get over the initial discomfort and adjust to each other better. You have to learn how to walk before you can run but I have a feeling that once you two hit your stride, you might just make the biggest leap of your lives.”

  My jaw dropped open a little bit at Martin’s proclamation but I quickly recovered and gave him a cheeky smile. “You’re full of walking metaphors tonight, Martin.”

  He chuckled, lightening up the atmosphere that had gotten a bit maudlin. “I’m full of all kinds of metaphors, Charlotte. You know that. They leave people free to make their own interpretation.”

  And I've made yours into rules I live my life by—one fortune-cookie saying at a time.

  I glanced down at the photo again and I couldn’t help imagining what Brandon’s children would look like—whether they would have his dark hair and my blue-green eyes or my honey blonde hair and his hazel eyes.

  Whoa. Where did that come from?

  “You can keep it, Charlotte,” Martin said, closing the photo album. “Maybe it will remind you of what it is about my son that I love the most and what I hope to help him find.”

  The old man rose to his feet and set aside the album and I stood as well.

  “You should probably go to bed,” he said, walking me to the door. “You have a big day tomorrow.”

  I was still a little bit dazed by our conversation that I just clutched the photo to my heart and nodded. “Goodnight, Martin.”

  “Goodnight, Charlotte,” he said, kissing me on the cheek. “Sleep well.”

  I forgot about the milk. I went back upstairs to my room and found the diary I haven’t had the time to write on in the last year and a half. Either I didn’t have the time or I didn’t want to read my hardships on paper because it made them more real for me.

  I tucked Brandon’s baby picture between the pages and wrote a short entry—my first one in a long time.

  Tomorrow, I’m marrying Brandon Maxfield.

  Are the reasons important? For fantasy’s sake, could I tell myself it was because fairy tales come true and my handsome, gallant prince has finally come?

  It doesn’t matter.

  Whatever his reasons are, I realize that mine have come down to one—the same reason any princess in any fairy tale would marry her prince.

  Maybe there could be a happy ending to all of this someday.

  -Charlotte

  ***

  “You must be Brandon’s bride.”

  I looked up and saw a tall, handsome man standing behind me from the view of the mirror.

  Clyde paused in the middle of gathering the top half of my hair which he was going to pin together under a bejeweled comb.

  “And you must be a complete stranger,” I said with a half-smile, trying to sift through my memory for a name to the face. He seemed familiar from Felicity’s profile portfolio but I couldn’t place him.

  “Char, this is Francis Pelletier,” Felicity volunteered, rising from her chair where she was going over her checklist.

  She wasn’t dressed for the wedding yet because for some reason, only the bride needed several hours to prepare. I was still in my robe because the hair and make up alone took almost two hours. Noli and Armina were over at the corner where the dress and accessories were, making the final touches on them.

  “Oh,” I said, surprised.

  Francis Pelletier was Brandon’s cousin—the same one his father threatened to give the CEO position to if he didn’t marry me.

  I studied the man on the mirror.

  He was impeccably in a black tux. He had light brown hair, blue eyes like Martin and a broad, easy smile. He wouldn't be more than a couple years older than Brandon.

  “I know I wasn’t invited and I’m sure it had nothing to do with you,” he said casually. “My cousin just doesn’t like me.”

  I raised a brow, feeling instantly defensive of Brandon. For some reason, his enemy instantly became mine. “And I’m sure you know why.”

  His brows shot up in surprise for a moment but he just laughed. “Probably.”

 
I could feel the others’ eyes on me as they listened to the conversation while continuing with their tasks and I was careful not to let anything slip. Francis was most likely unaware of Martin’s ultimatum.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked. “You did admit you weren’t invited.”

  “I didn’t even know Brandon was getting married,” he said, pacing slowly behind me. “I was sitting in my office in London yesterday morning when I heard the news. I thought I won’t miss a family occasion as big as this.”

  “Well, it wanted to miss you,” I said with a roll of my eyes. “I don’t want a fistfight at my wedding, if you don’t mind, so if you want to attend, stay out Brandon’s way. You can’t say I didn’t warn you.”

  His blue eyes regarded me thoughtfully. “You’re not exactly what I expected in Brandon’s bride.”

  “You and the rest of the world,” I quipped.

  “There you are, Francis.”

  We glanced up, much to Clyde’s chagrin because my head moved again, and saw Martin walking into the room in his dress pants and white silk shirt. “Tessa said you just arrived.”

  “Uncle Martin. Good to see you,” Francis said, clapping the old man in the back as he gave him a hug. “I was just introducing myself to Brandon’s bride.”

  Martin looked my way and I just smiled at him reassuringly.

  “I’d watch myself around Charlotte, if I were you,” Martin said with a smirk. “She doesn’t hesitate to introduce her foot to your intimate parts if you get on her bad side.”

  I snickered and I could feel everyone’s amusement.

  Even Francis smiled wryly.

  “I always do well taking your advice,” he conceded, glancing at me. “In which case, I’m going to make myself scarce now and maybe join you in your office instead of bothering the bride.”

  Once the two men had left, I asked Felicity again for a refresher on Francis Pelletier’s profile.

  He was currently running the operations for Maxfield Industries in Europe. He was single, wealthy on his own and generally well-liked. Nothing about him struck me as particularly annoying. It was more of my loyalty to Brandon that spurred my dismissive behavior toward him and I wondered why the two men didn’t get along.