“Here are your tutus, girls,” she said, coming into the studio box first. “Find your size and put it on quick like a bunny. We need to go over the routine a few more times before we hit the stage. I had to make a few changes to the choreography.”
“Why’d you change it up,” she heard Lucia demand as she walked the oversize box over to the bench where the girls sat down to take off their street shoes.
“Because Cole’s not going to be here to do the lifts, and I’m not strong enough to take his place. So we’re going to have to figure out how to do those parts without him.” She set the box down and began sorting out the sizes, slapping the fur-lined tutu outfits onto the bench in piles.
“Why can’t Cole do it?”
“I just told you he’s not going to be here, now can you just get into your costume, Lucia? Please!” Sunny snapped, feeling as if the child’s questions had pushed her to the end of her rope.
“But we’re already in our costumes,” Lucia whined behind her, “And Cole’s right here!
What? Sunny’s back went ramrod straight and she turned around to see the little girls not only all dressed up in the cat costumes she’d picked out for them, but Cole...in a hooded fluffy dog costume with long droopy ears. Like the girls, his nose was painted black, but unlike the girls his eyes weren’t filled with happiness, they were filled with pain. As if seeing her for the first time since Nora’s ball was breaking his heart in two.
Or maybe she was only imagining that was what it was, since that’s exactly what it did to her to see him standing there.
She shook her head. “No, Cole. Don’t do this.”
“Sunny,” he said, his voice ravaged. “Please hear me out. Please listen to me.”
The sixteen girls’ heads ping-ponged back and forth between them like they were at a tennis match.
“No, I don’t know why you’re here, but go away. Please just go away.”
“No, I tried do it your way, and if you feel anywhere near as bad as I have over the last week, then it’s not working,” he said, his voice hardening. “I’m not going to go, not until you hear what I have to say.”
“Ooh, this is better than a telenovela,” Lucia observed, and got a few nods of agreement from her fellow dancers.
“Why are you doing this to me?” Sunny demanded, her heart beating as if it were set to shatter inside her chest any second now. “This has been one of the most terrible weeks of my life. Why would you come here? You’re only making it worse.”
“Oohhhh!” the girls said, their heads moving back to Cole for his response.
“Because I love you,” Cole shouted back at her. “Dammit, Sunny, I love you. I was an idiot not to realize that sooner, but trust me, just going a week without you made it clear. I can’t work, I barely sleep. All I can do is think about you and how stupid I was for letting you get away, for lying to you in order to become Chairman of the Board. Because guess what? I’ve got the chairmanship. Nora signed the paperwork earlier in the week. So I finally got everything I wanted, but it doesn’t mean jack, because you aren’t there to share it with me.”
The girls couldn’t have possibly understood what half of that meant, but they all said, “Awwww!” just the same, as if it were the most romantic thing they’d ever heard.
But not Sunny. She shook her head at Cole. “What’s your endgame this time, Cole? You’re telling me you love me, why? To get back at Max? To prove something to Nora? What is it this time?”
Cole shook his head. “My only endgame is you, Sunny. You’re all I want. That’s why I’m going to have to renege on my offer to put you up in The Benton New York.”
Sunny was about to tell him what she’d told Agnes, that she didn’t want the apartment, anyway, that she’d figure it out on her own before she ever accepted another thing from Cole Benton, but he didn’t give her a chance to speak.
“You can’t stay in my hotel, Sunny. Not without me.”
“What?” she said, her anger giving way to confusion.
“Sunny, I want to move to New York with you. I don’t have to be here to run The Benton Group. I can work out of New York. It’ll make things a little more difficult, but I don’t care. I just want to be with you, Sunny. If you want you can even have the chairmanship of The Benton Group. I’ll give it to you like my grandfather gave it to my grandmother. I’ll do anything. Just—Sunny, please...”
Her eyes widened as Cole went down on his knees and pulled a ring box from out of the pocket of his dog costume. “Sunny, please...”
The rest of his words were drowned out by the girls screaming their heads off when he opened the box to reveal a ring with a diamond so big it looked like costume jewelry.
Sunny stood there frozen to the spot, unable to process what Cole was doing. What he’d promised. What he was asking her to promise.
“Dios Mio! Dios Mio! Dios Mio!” Lucia screamed, as if this really was the end of a telenovela. “Say yes, Miss Sunny. Please say yes!”
Epilogue
She’d said yes. Cole was still having a hard time believing it, even as he watched Sunny getting dragged up to The Benton’s ballroom floor by Pru a few months later. A Beyoncé song played overhead and a crowd of showgirls and young old-money heiresses gathered to see who would catch Sunny’s bouquet, now that she was officially taken.
“You’re probably feeling like one smug bastard right now,” Max said, appearing beside him.
Cole thought of the vacation he and Sunny had planned. Two months in a little bungalow on a small island in Tahiti during her winter break from NYUA. All that time alone together before they had to return to New York—he’d probably be able to come up with some very creative punishments for his bride in the their back and forth game of control.
“One lucky bastard,” he corrected Max.
“Yeah, well, you’re just lucky she didn’t take you seriously about becoming the Chairman of the Board...” Max rubbed the bump on his nose, the only thing that kept him from a girlish level of prettiness. “She’s a saint for taking you back. And she’s hot as hell, too? Yeah, you definitely got lucky, bro.”
Cole’s eyes narrowed. His brother’s observations about his wife’s looks weren’t a thing he cared to hear. “Don’t make me regret making you my best man, Max.”
Max shrugged. “You only did it because Sunny made you. She gave me that whole speech about this being the first step in mending our relationship, too.” He pointed his finger toward his mouth and pretended to gag on it.
“Speaking of relationships, I’ve decided our gran might not have been so wrong about the benefits of marriage, after all. You have a year.”
Max scrunched his forehead. “A year for what?”
“To settle down and get married,” Cole answered. “Otherwise, I’m cutting you off. No more salary for doing absolutely nothing, and I’ll exercise Gran’s option to buy your shares in the company at their original value. So you’ll only get what they were worth when Grandpa died, before I took over.”
Max stared at him, then he burst out laughing. “Okay, you got me, bro. That was a good one. I didn’t even know you were capable of making jokes. Sunny’s really changed you.”
Cole grinned back. It was true. Ever since he’d made the temporary move to New York to be with Sunny, he’d been smiling and laughing more than he ever had before. He was even occasionally known to make a joke.
Max’s face lit up. “Hey, your hottie wife’s hottie bridesmaid just caught the bouquet. What’s her name again?”
“Prudence,” Cole answered. “But everyone calls her Pru.”
“Yeah, Pru,” Max said with a wink. “Better go congratulate her.”
Max handed him his glass of champagne and went off to make his move on Pru. And he must have been right about Sunny having really changed Cole. The old Cole would have made
sure Max knew he wasn’t joking, that he really was going to cut Max off if he didn’t get his act together and show he could commit to something. But the new Cole decided to wait to tell him until tomorrow morning at the wedding breakfast, because hey, it was his wedding day.
“You’re smiling,” Sunny observed a few minutes later when she rejoined him at the main table. “Wonder what’s going through your mind?”
“How lucky I am,” he answered truthfully.
Sunny chuckled and whispered in his ear, “I don’t know about that. You told me to get a lace gown, and I got this silk sheath instead. Oops! Now I’ll definitely have to be punished on our wedding night.”
Cole smile grew even bigger, thinking of Sunny lying across his bed, begging him all night to do with her exactly as he pleased, and made a mental edit on an old Vegas standard.
Luck would definitely be a Sunny tonight.
* * * * *
ISBN: 978-1-472-07203-0
VEGAS, BABY
© 2014 Theodora Taylor
Published in Great Britain 2014
by Mills & Boon, an imprint of Harlequin (UK) Limited
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Vegas, Baby Page 17