Simon Says...

by Donna Kauffman

  “Sounds like an eventful night.”

  Delia finally flopped down in the seat facing Sophie’s desk. “It was a distraction and I could use a few of those right about now.”

  “Really? Because I’d think the Wingates would be distraction enough right about now.”

  “Distraction from the Wingates,” she clarified.

  And Sophie totally understood that. Wasn’t she planning to sleep away her free time just to keep from thinking about Simon?

  Delia slumped a little in her seat. “I’m not sure I can hold up until the weekend, Soph.”

  “You sounded, I don’t know…energized, when you called, like maybe you’d come to some kind of conclusion about something?”

  Delia sighed and gave Sophie a look that said, don’t start. But it was too late for that.

  “I know, I know, we’ve been over it all before and you know how I feel,” Sophie reassured her. “I’m not going to hammer you with my opinion. Not tonight, anyway.”

  “Good, because no way am I calling off the wedding.”

  “Can I just ask you…given what’s gone on the past few days, and Adam’s attitude toward you, are you not calling it off because you’re still in love and want to marry this man? Or are you not calling it off because you’re afraid the powerful Wingate machine would crush you up and spit you out if you so much as tried?” She lifted a hand before Delia could respond. “Maybe I should put it this way. If you could have anything you wanted with no repercussions, as far as your future with Adam, would you still want to marry him this weekend, or would you prefer more time to figure things out?”

  “That’s a moot question because there will be repercussions for any action I take.”

  Sophie softened her tone. “Is that why you’re not taking any?”

  Delia gazed down at her hands and fiddled with the serious diamond adorning her ring finger.

  “Del, do you love him? Really love him? Because, Wingate family and your career aside, he’s the one you have to spend your life with.”

  Finally Delia looked at her friend, and Sophie hated the resignation she found there. “Do any of us know what we really want, Soph? Adam is a catch a dozen times over.”

  “If you’re talking financial security and appearance, yes, he is that. But what about the rest? What about—”

  “Maybe I don’t care as much about the rest as everyone else seems to.”

  “You forget, I’ve known you a long time. Of course you care about the rest. It’s why you didn’t settle for that ass of an investment banker you went out with two years ago, who was supposedly the catch of the century and showered you with expensive gifts and fabulous dates, but could only be bothered to actually listen to you when he wasn’t umbilically attached to his BlackBerry, which was always. You’re smart, Delia, and you can take care of your own finances. You need someone who is a match for who you are, not—”

  “I thought we weren’t going to have this discussion?” she said dryly. “Again.” She straightened in her seat. “The wedding is this Sunday. It’s now Wednesday. Well, Thursday, actually. Let’s be realistic here. It’s not going to get called off.”

  “So, what were you sounding so determined about when you called me?”

  “Well, maybe what you’ve said has had more of an impact on me than you realized. Or maybe he’s just been hard enough on me this week that I’m thinking about things a little differently—”

  “Delia—”

  “So, first, I made myself consider the worst-case scenario.”

  “Which is?” Sophie asked warily.

  “We marry, I decide it really isn’t the best thing for me, and I file for divorce. I signed a prenup, so there won’t be any talk that I married him for the money, and, sure, I’ll have to start over somewhere else as I’m not exactly going to be hired to work here again—”

  “You agreed to a prenup? When did that happen?”

  Delia glanced at her hands again. “Monday. You were still out sick. And, I knew you’d give me a hard time about it, but—”

  “I understand his family is richer than Croesus, but if he really loves you—”

  “He does love me, Sophie. You all pick on him, but he’s under a ton of pressure. It’s not easy being a Wingate, especially the only son. And, though they’re a tough bunch, we all benefit from that. I mean, our livelihoods are directly a result of their toughness, their success, so we shouldn’t be so quick to spurn—”

  “You’ve been assimilated after all.”

  “You know,” Delia said, fire in her voice for the first time that night, “you could be a little more grateful.”

  “Me? What did I do?”

  “You criticize the Wingate family all the time, but you draw a paycheck from them.”

  “Because I do a damn good job. A job I’m dedicated to and work my ass off for. The Wingates will never find fault with my ability to do my job or my focus to that job. But it’s a job, Delia. I’m an employee, not a member of the family. And it’s not Wingate Hotel I have any issues with. I am treated well here and I like the challenge. But when the family who happens to own this hotel starts treating my best friend like something someone scrapes off the bottom of their shoe, you better believe I’m going to speak up.”

  “And you don’t find that hypocritical?”

  “Do you honestly believe that it is?”

  “I’m just saying that you’re nipping at the hand that feeds you.”

  “If I had issues with how they operate their hotel, then yes, it would be unfair of me to bitch but not say or do anything about it, yet still draw a paycheck. But I don’t have to personally like the owner of my company in order to feel okay being employed by the company.” She sat back and took a breath. Maybe she shouldn’t have had that caffeine after all. “And just how on earth did this become about me?” Then something Delia had said struck a chord. “Wait. Back up a minute. What did you say before, about getting rehired here if you filed for divorce?”

  Suddenly Delia was fascinated with her hands again.

  “Dee?”

  “What? I just meant I wouldn’t be working for the Wingate empire if I divorced a Wingate.”

  “You said rehired. Not fired. If you divorced Adam, the consensus is they’d fire you from your job.” Delia didn’t look up. “Spill the rest.”

  “Well, after Adam found out about the bachelorette party, he confided in me that his sisters have been pressuring him about my work here.”

  “He ‘confided’ in you?”

  She looked up then, and even though her chin was up, her lips were a bit quavery, and Sophie immediately felt like a complete heel for pushing at her friend. She just hated to see her hurt, and hated even more if she was contributing to the misery.

  “He just explained, again, that being a Wingate wife would bring with it a ton of new responsibilities and he’d be honored—honored, Sophie, his word—if I’d agree to step down from my manager’s job and devote myself to helping him.”

  “As in, working for him?”

  “Not employed no, but as his wife, I’m an important asset and I want to be available to—”

  “Do you? I mean, it’s okay if you do, Dee, I’m just— You worked hard to get where you are so I am sincerely asking. Are you okay with giving up your career to help him with his?”

  “That’s the decision I made. That’s what I came to tell you. I want us to be a unit, a team, so I need to see us that way, think about us that way. It’s no longer me versus him, or my career versus his. We’re going to be an us, Soph. And if this helps foster that unified front, then yes, I’ll gladly shift my focus. I can always go back to work if it turns out I don’t feel I’m fulfilling my personal potential.”

  Privately, Sophie had her doubts about that. Not as long as Dee remained a Wingate, anyway. And though Adam might need a full-time hostess as a wife, Sophie suspected there was more to it than that. It wouldn’t surprise her in the least if Adam’s sisters were concerned about having to
introduce their future sister-in-law as a nightclub manager. Even if it was a premiere club in their own damn hotel. That wasn’t something a Wingate did. It was something they hired others to do. Delia did it very well. But that wouldn’t be good enough.

  “I just want you to be happy, Dee. I know you and Adam have had this whirlwind romance, and maybe it is all the pressures of his family that are making him be a bit more…tense with you lately.”

  “I didn’t agree to give up managing De Trop just because I was trying to smooth things over after the party debacle. But I do think it will go a long way toward unifying me with him, which, in turn, will help solidify my standing with the family.”

  Sophie didn’t say anything immediately.

  “I do think we can be happy, Sophie. Wingate fallout or not, I wouldn’t marry him if I didn’t think we had a shot.”

  She nodded, and tried to bite her tongue, but with the rehearsal and the dinners, and the rest of the prewedding events swinging into full gear Friday, this might be the last chance they had to talk privately. She took a breath and just said it. “I know we haven’t talked about it, but what happened the other night—”

  “Was a mistake, Sophie. I was drunk and I was scared. It’ll never happen again. If Adam and I don’t make it, then I’ll end things with him. I wouldn’t cheat on him.”

  Sophie nodded again. “I know. But…” She looked at her friend, and there was no censure in her tone now, just a sincere expression of concern. “I’m sorry I’ve been hard on you. It’s just that I care about you more than anyone and I hate seeing you get hurt. I worry that you’re caught in the middle, and I—I just wish you were happier going into this.”

  “I am happier now that I’ve decided what path to take. I think it’s just that the wedding has become this huge media event. It’s not about our getting married anymore. He’s just not handling it really well.” She leaned forward. “But, even with all the craziness and the pressure, he still wants to marry me, Soph. He loves me.”

  Sophie wondered how much Adam was caught in the middle, too, but she kept that to herself. Delia was clearly committed to making a go of it, so it was time to stop cautioning her and start supporting her friend’s decision. Besides, given her behavior over the past few days, who was she to talk about making wise choices where men were concerned?

  “Okay.”

  “Okay?” her friend asked warily.

  Sophie smiled and leaned forward to extend both hands to her best friend. “Okay. Let’s get ready for a wedding!”

  Delia beamed and put her hands in Sophie’s and squeezed tight. “It’s all going to work out, Sophie. You’ll see.”

  Sophie squeezed back. And, incongruously, her thoughts shot to Simon. And how close she had come to making a really bad choice with him. And how, even now, she wasn’t sure she’d done the right thing. “I want it to work out, Dee. More than anything, I want you to be happy.”

  But after they’d shared hugs and Delia had gone, Sophie was still left sitting there, realizing that she’d been saying the words to Dee, and meaning them, but in her heart, she’d also been thinking them about herself.

  12

  SIMON PACED. TWO DAYS. Two pointless, fruitless days. He’d spent that time shadowing Tolliver and his “business associate” as he’d overheard him introduce his beaming brunette shower buddy at a lunch meeting with a member of the press earlier that day. Or yesterday, as the case may be. He didn’t bother glancing at the illuminated clock dial beside his bed. He knew it was well into the wee hours. He also knew from the past two nights that sleep was a commodity his restless brain wasn’t prepared to allow his exhausted body to have. Not until he had that damned emerald in his grasp. Or at least a solid game plan on how to get it.

  And now that game plan was going to be even harder to come by.

  “Why the shift to the safe?” he muttered for at least the hundredth time. And, for the hundredth time, he had no immediate answer. Simon had been careful to stay well hidden, well disguised, as he’d tailed his former employer. No way had Tolliver made him. But, who knows, maybe he’d felt the surveillance. Given his notorious paranoia, it wasn’t entirely out of character to make the sudden change, and the reason could be something only Tolliver would think suspicious. The old man was also supremely wary of anyone who wasn’t in his direct employ, which was why he had his own team on premises at the Art Institute, watching over the collection as it was being installed. He’d probably babysit it himself if he thought he could handle any potential threat.

  Whatever Tolliver’s reasons, the fact remained that there were now two very beefy sentries posted by the entrance to the hotel safety-deposit boxes. Which meant the gemstone wouldn’t make an appearance until the night of the gala. Where it would be spotlighted around the neck of his “business associate.” Why the pretense there, Simon had no clue. Tolliver’s wife had passed on decades before, and though his personal life wasn’t tabloid news, it wasn’t any secret that he enjoyed the company of much younger, very beautiful women, whose only business appeared to be keeping the egos of older, wealthier men amply inflated. Perhaps it was the prestige of the benefit-oriented event that demanded he appear somewhat more interested in raising money than chasing women who were, at best, a third his age.

  Simon tried to recall the time when he’d been under the magnetic spell Tolliver could so effortlessly weave when it moved him. He’d convinced Simon that philanthropy was his passion, and that restoring his personal heritage was important to him, as a means of settling, once and for all, a generations-old feud, so he could return his full attention to the business of helping others. Simon had fully believed while executing his mission that the documentation Tolliver had “uncovered” was authentic, despite meeting Guinn, whom he’d genuinely liked and respected, and whom his gut had told him was the one to be believed.

  Now, Simon knew too much about the real Tolliver, the “man behind the curtain” as it were, about where his narrow-viewed, spiteful passions really lay, to ever imagine being swayed by his once powerful rhetoric again. But Simon had watched the poor sap interviewing his former boss and mentor leave lunch with his face almost glowing from the golden light that was Tolliver’s charm and magnetism.

  He couldn’t let him get away with this. Not only for Guinn’s sake, but because it simply wasn’t right.

  Simon needed a plan.

  He needed Sophie.

  He rubbed his hands over his face. And this time it had nothing to do with her key card. He wanted her here because he missed her. Because she had a sharp mind that he could bounce ideas off of. Because she respected what he was trying to do, and would help him figure out a solution, even if the solution couldn’t involve her directly.

  She understood him in a way no one else seemed to, maybe in ways even he didn’t fully comprehend. She had a different perspective on things than he did, came at them from a different angle, but it was one he always understood when he listened to her. She made sense to him. That was the only way he could think to describe how he felt about her. Everything about her just made sense to him.

  But that was one option that was not open to him. So, stop thinking about her and start thinking about how you’re going to get that damn stone off that skinny supermodel’s neck. Tolliver would likely have guard dogs shadowing him at the gala, just as he likely wouldn’t let his date for the event so much as separate herself more than a few inches from him all night. The only time he could see where she’d be given any tether was to go to the loo, and even then, Tolliver would send someone with her. No way would he let her wander off with that piece of history around her neck.

  Simon shoved off the bed and jerked open the door to the mini fridge, stared at the same overpriced, less than appetizing selections he had the last time he’d done this, and slapped the door shut again, empty-handed.

  He paced. He downed half a bottle of water. He paced some more, then finally groaned and did a spread-eagle face-plant on the bed. Was it pathetic that he c
ouldn’t stop thinking about her? Or that he was spending as much time trying to come up with some wild-ass game plan that would get her back into his life as he was trying to find a solution to the Tolliver problem? He didn’t even try to fool himself into thinking he needed her to get the job done. No, this was about him needing her for himself. It was about her being irreplaceable to him. Personally.

  He didn’t do personally. His lifestyle didn’t really permit a personally. And, if and when he decided to somehow fit a personally into his life, it would certainly have to be with someone who could actually factor into his day-to-day life. Not someone a continent away.

  “Someone who hasn’t already walked out on you would also be a good place to start,” he muttered. He was contemplating taking a reviving shower, ordering from the room service menu, or pulling a pillow over his face and attempting to get some much needed sleep, when there was a light tap on his door.

  “Housekeeping,” someone said quietly.

  His heart stopped, then started up again in double time. He cautioned himself to slow down, think, before reacting any further. He rolled his head and looked at the clock. It was just after six in the morning. Good God, another whole night without sleep.

  Guardedly, with an almost sickening rush of adrenaline pulsing into his exhausted system, he rolled off the bed to his feet, and cautiously approached the door to the hallway. He believed Tolliver wasn’t remotely aware that he’d trailed him to Chicago. But something had made him decide to use the hotel safe. If the quiet voice on the other side of that door belonged to anyone over six foot with a jacket size of forty-four or more, he was in for some unpleasant company.

  He palmed his gun from his ankle strap and positioned himself, back to the wall next to the doorknob side of the door. And waited.

  A nerve-racking minute later, there was another whisper-light tap. “Housekeeping.”