by Claire Adams
Nick’s argument didn’t really make much more sense than Mother’s did, but regardless, I eventually gave in and agreed to the wedding. That was where the craziness began and I began to miss and crave my quiet little life.
The wedding was in three weeks now and my family was on their way to Las Vegas. I shuddered to think of the type of damage they could do to this city.
My mother had sent a designer out to make my dress months ago and that was an ordeal in and of itself. He was a fussy, old thing that didn’t like kids. Gabriel had swung from the extra fabric he wrapped around me to fit the dress and almost gave the man a heart attack.
Nicholas was working with Sal now. Instead of building clubs and resorts and running them, he was investing in them. He was home more than he was at work and I loved that, but with all this wedding stuff going on, he seemed to suddenly have a lot more meetings.
Tonight, though, he was supposed to be home in time for dinner and Lynn was taking Gabriel for the night. I was planning a romantic dinner for us on the balcony, and I was excited about it. It had been a while since we’d had a night just for us. I put the wedding stuff and the thoughts about my family away for now and began cleaning up after my wayward toddler.
********
It was almost seven o’clock when Nick got home. Lynn had already picked up Gabriel, the penthouse was finally in order, and dinner was finished and on the warmer. I’d made us a crab salad to start with and smoked salmon filets with asparagus and red potatoes. I had the warm plates on the table on the balcony covered and waiting and a bottle of wine chilling.
I’d put on a new dress that I bought a few days before. It was a short, blue cocktail dress with spaghetti straps and I thought the color looked good against my dark skin. I wore my hair down. It was getting long and hung almost to my waist now. Nicholas liked it, so I hadn’t cut it since we’d been together other than to get a trim.
As soon as he walked in the door, he stopped and looked at me and grinned. He let out a low whistle and said, “Did Lynn pick up Gabriel?”
“Yes.”
He covered the space between us in two steps and pulled me into his arms. He gave me the sweetest, deepest kiss we’d shared in a long time and when he let me up for air, he said, “Dinner smells amazing, but you smell better. Can we skip it for now and make love instead?”
I’d been cooking for hours after chasing our son around since five a.m. and struggling to clean up the penthouse and get myself ready before he got home. The idea of making love to my gorgeous husband was always appealing, but suddenly the idea of leaving the food I’d struggled so hard to make to get dried up and stale brought tears to my eyes. “Couldn’t we share a meal like normal people and do that later?”
His lips twitched as he said, “Normal people don’t do that?”
“Stop it,” I pushed against his chest and stepped back. “You know what I mean. I worked hard to make everything just so.”
He pulled me back in and kissed my forehead. “I’m sorry, baby, I’m sure you did.” He looked around the apartment and said, “It hardly looks like a toddler lives here at all.”
“What do you mean, hardly?”
I felt his body shake as he laughed. “I’m not going to say the right thing tonight, I can see that, so let’s eat before you’re too mad to make love to me when we’re finished.”
I rolled my eyes at him, but kept the disappointment I was feeling in check. I’d had this idea of him coming home and breathing in the aroma of dinner before he swept me up into his arms and carried me out to the balcony to dine. We’d talk and laugh and drink wine and then we’d make passionate love and he’d hold me the rest of the night without a wiggly toddler in between us.
I sighed and took his hand. I led him out to the balcony and he slipped off his jacket before taking a seat at the table. He didn’t pull out my chair or wait for me to sit down. Trying not to pout, I sat and watched him pull the cover off his plate. I waited for a reaction and when all I got was, “Looks good,” I had to physically struggle to keep the tears at bay. I forced a smile and said,
“Can you open the wine?”
“Sure.” He picked up the bottle from where it was chilling and I handed the corkscrew to him from across the table. He opened the wine, smelled it, and then poured each one of us a glass.
I picked mine up and poised to toast with him just as he drank down half his glass, smacked his lips and poured another one. He realized then I was holding my glass up and looking at him. “Oh, sorry, babe.” He reached his almost empty glass across the table, tapped it to mine and said, “To us.”
With the smoke of the anger I was keeping inside now coming out my ears, I drank my wine. Then I uncovered my salad, put my napkin in my lap, and realized my husband was already devouring his salmon. “Did you taste your salad?” I’d found a recipe for a vinaigrette dressing online and made it from scratch. I was excited when I made it to see how he liked it since cooking was a brand new endeavor for me.
“I’m sorry, babe. I don’t really feel like salad tonight. I had a giant Cobb salad for lunch and it was delicious.” He took another bite of his salmon and after he chewed and swallowed that, he said, “It had the most amazing dressing on it….” My face must have gave me away because suddenly he quit talking and said, “What?”
“Nothing. I’m glad you had a nice lunch. My sister called today.”
He groaned. “Do we have to talk about the wedding tonight?”
“Who said anything about the wedding?”
“Baby, every time you start a sentence with, ‘My sister called today,’ it ends up being about the wedding. Then you get stressed out and our evening is usually ruined….”
“Well, excuse me for bringing up the most important day of our lives.”
He laughed. “Really, babe? I thought you were only doing this extravagant wedding for your family’s benefit. I thought we already had the most important day of our lives…quite a few of them, as a matter of fact.”
“Do you not want to marry me?”
Laughing again he said, “Since I’m already married to you, I’d say that was a moot point.”
“A moot point? Us being married is a moot point?”
He sighed and the smile fell from his face. Reaching across the table he said, “Baby, what’s wrong?” I pulled my hand back so that he couldn’t reach it and I said,
“What’s wrong? Are you kidding me?” I pulled my napkin off my lap and threw it onto the table as I stood up.
“Emma, where are you going? What are you so upset about?”
Still fighting back tears, I said, “I spent this whole day getting ready for this evening. It’s the first time we’ve been completely alone in months. I thought we might be able to enjoy a dinner I slaved over with some conversation about getting married and showing the whole world how much we love each other, but I guess that was too much to expect.”
Nick was looking at me like I was a crazy person, maybe because my voice was about ten decibels higher than normal and I was actually yelling. Although I realized I was doing it, I couldn’t stop myself and as he silently sat there listening I went on,
“You know I’m a princess. I didn’t grow up learning how to cook or clean or take care of a baby. Yet here I am, a domestic goddess at your fingertips, and do you appreciate it? No. Do you want to even taste the dressing I made from scratch? No.
“And on top of cleaning and cooking and chasing a toddler, I took the time to fix myself up before you got home. Do you think that was easy to squeeze in between everything else? It wasn’t. And then I simply want to talk to you about my conversation with my sister and you can’t keep your sarcasm in check for even a second!” He waited a few beats and said,
“Are you finished?”
“You’re damned right I am.” I turned away from him and started to storm back into the apartment.
“Emma….” I had no idea why I was so emotional, but the tears would no longer stay in my eyes and I didn’t
want to turn around and let him see them rolling freely down my cheek.
“Baby, I don’t understand why you’re so upset. I’m sorry. I appreciate everything you do, but I keep telling you that you don’t have to do any of it. We have plenty of money to hire people to do these things that are stressing you out…. Emma, please look at me.”
I turned to look at him. The tears were still on my cheeks but now I was pissed. “Yes, you’ve told me many times that we have money to hire people to do these things. All my life I had people to do these things for me. I simply wanted to learn how to do them for myself and you and our son. I did that and this is the appreciation I get.”
I did storm out then and went straight to our room. I slammed the door and stripped out of my new dress and threw myself down on the bed like a five-year-old having a tantrum. The truth was I knew he hadn’t said anything bad enough to warrant this strong reaction from me. but my emotions were suddenly running rampant.
If he’d only acted a little more romantic. If he didn’t act like he hated the subject of our wedding. If he’d shown me at all that he appreciated the work I put into this day….
Sleep pulled at me as I lay there and sulked and the more time that went by without Nick coming in to check on me, the more depressed I got. The magic was gone. He was bored with me. I wouldn’t be surprised it the idea of the wedding was repulsive to him because he didn’t want to be married to me at all.
Now that I was simply a housewife and a mother and no longer a princess that needed rescuing, there was nothing interesting about me and Nicholas craved excitement. I felt the hot burn of tears again as I lay there and convinced myself that this was it. This was the last day of the best year of my life. That was my last thought before sleep claimed me.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
NICHOLAS
I sat stunned at the table long after Emma had stormed off in tears. I knew I should go after her, but I had no idea what she was so upset about and if trying to talk to her would make it better or worse.
She was not prone to dramatics; that’s her sister’s way. Emma is usually a great communicator, the best I’ve ever been in a relationship with. I knew that taking care of this big penthouse and the baby were stressful, and then you add her sister and mother and that cursed wedding into the mix and it was a recipe for becoming completely overwhelmed.
I finally got up from the table and started to go to her. I decided against it. Maybe she just needed some time alone. She never got that. Instead, I wrapped up the food and cleaned the kitchen.
When I finally went into the room, she was curled into a ball on the bed in just her underwear. My cock did a somersault at the sight of her and I knew if I lay down next to her I wouldn’t be able to keep my hands to myself. So I covered her with a blanket, gave her a soft kiss and went into my study to work for a while. I don’t know what time it was when I fell asleep at my desk, but I was awoken by a door slamming just as the sun began to push its way into the room.
Disoriented and sore from sitting up in the chair all night, I got up and went to see what the noise was about. I was bleary eyed when I walked in the bedroom to check on Emma. She was gone and the bed was unmade. I looked in the bathroom and then went into the kitchen.
She wasn’t anywhere and my heart began to race in panic. The past few years came racing back. I thought about her running away. I thought about her being kidnapped and finally my brain could focus just enough to get my phone and call her. It rang three times before the sound of her annoyed voice finally said, “What?”
“What?” I asked incredulously. “I woke up and you were gone. Where are you?”
“Oh, you noticed. I didn’t think you would since you didn’t bother to come to bed last night.”
I rubbed my face and took a deep breath before asking, “Emma, baby, what is going on with you?”
“What is going on? I spent my whole day yesterday getting ready for a night alone with my husband and he couldn’t even bear to eat with me or sleep with me.”
“Baby, you’re acting crazy.”
“Crazy? I’m acting crazy? Are you serious calling me that after what I went through with Miguel?”
“I’m not calling you anything. Babe, please calm down and let’s talk like rational, normal human beings.”
“I’m tired of being a rational human being. Maybe I want to be a crazy person. Maybe that’s why you’re so bored with me that you slept straight up in a chair all night to get away from me.”
“Oh, Emma, it wasn’t to get away from you. Why are you acting like this?”
“I have to go. I have lots to do before my family gets here tonight.” I didn’t catch myself before I groaned. As soon as it was out of my lips I regretted it, but it was too late. “Oh, I see…you push me to have a relationship with these people and yet the idea of having to socialize with them even a little bit is too much for you.”
“Jesus, Emma, you’re not acting like yourself at all. Maybe you should see a doctor.” That was the point where she hung up on me. I tried to call back, but it went straight to voice mail. She’d turned off the phone. I groaned again and called Brandon. “Hey, B, who is on Emma today?”
“It’s Mike.”
“Has he reported in?”
“I just heard from him. She left the house about half an hour ago on foot. He followed her to the park. She’s just sitting there on a bench now, crying.”
My heart hurt. She never cried. I hadn’t seen her cry since that day at the cabin when she broke down about Gabriel. What the hell is going on with her? My thoughts were racing and going crazy places. Is she tired of me…of us? Does she regret giving up her title? Is she thinking about leaving and going back to her family? “Is there something you want Mike to do, Nick?” I kind of chuckled.
“Not unless he can give me some lessons on women and their emotions, B.”
Brandon laughed. “If he can do that, I’ll sign up for one of his seminars myself.”
Laughing, too, I said, “I guess just watch her. She seems to need some time to herself. Her family will be in tonight.”
“Yes, that I am more than aware of.” Brandon had been dealing with Emma’s father’s head of security. He told me the man was a pompous ass and I knew he was regretting this visit even more than I was.
“I’m sorry, Brandon. At least it’s only a few weeks and then they’ll be thousands of miles away again.”
“Yes, sir, looking forward to that.” I was smiling as I hung up. The next person I called was Lynn. “Hey, Lynn, how is the little prince?”
“He is perfect. Can I keep him?”
I smiled. “I thought children gave you the creeps? It’s what you used to always tell me when I asked why you didn’t have any.”
“Oh, they do. Gabe is the first one I ever met that doesn’t. I love him. If he was old enough, I’d marry him, but since he’s not, I’d be willing to adopt him, instead.”
I laughed. “You’d have to fight his mother for him.”
She sighed. “I know, and she becomes a bear where he’s concerned and could take me, I’m sure.”
“Speaking of his mother, Lynn, have you heard from her today?”
“She texted to see how Gabriel was. I’m going to keep him until her family arrives. She didn’t want him to be any part of the media circus that’s going to happen today.”
“Good. How did she seem?”
“What do you mean?”
“She was upset with me when she left the house. I’m worried about her. She won’t talk to me, and she’s just not acting like herself.”
“Huh oh, what did you do?”
“I wish I knew and then I could apologize for it and we could move on.”
She laughed, “And that is why I don’t adopt fully grown men; they’re clueless. Tell me what happened.” I relayed the events of the night before to her and then this morning. When I finished, I heard her cluck her tongue and say,
“It doesn’t sound to me like she was looking fo
r time alone. It sounds like she was looking for time with her husband. You’re a genius, Nick; why couldn’t you figure that out?”
“Because her husband was there. I was trying to spend time with her and that just seemed to make her madder.”
“What was she wearing?”
“What?”
“What did she have on when you got home?”
“Um…a dress, I guess.”
“You guess? I’ll tell you what she was wearing. She had on a gorgeous cocktail dress that fit that beautiful, little body like a glove. She picked it out especially with you in mind and if you can’t even remember what it was she had on, you blew it right there.”
I closed my eyes for a second and pictured her in a blue dress. It was hot. She was hot. “I whistled and asked her if I could take her to the bedroom before we had dinner….”
“Oh, man, you’re an idiot?”
“Excuse me?”
“She put that dress on to have a meal with you, in candlelight, probably on the terrace, right?”
“I guess; I didn’t see any candles…”
“Nick, she made that dinner for you with her own two hands. When I picked up Gabe, she had on an apron and was wiping sweat off her brow while she cooked. She’s a princess and you’re a billionaire. How many women in her position would do that? Emma might not need constant affirmation, but she needs some. Did you even compliment the meal? Did you eat it?”
“I tried, but she got upset because I didn’t taste the salad.”
“You need to apologize. You need to admit what you did wrong.”
“That’s just it, Lynn, I still don’t know what that was.”
“Then you’re screwed,” she said. She told me she had to go because my son was climbing the stairs up to the loft his mother used to live in. I smiled at the thought, but as soon as we ended the call, my mind was racing once again.
Emma’s family would be in town tonight and I was sure Emma had a night out planned and all sorts of other activities. They’d all be talking about the wedding. Her mother would stare holes through me and Gabriel would be the star of the show. I wouldn’t have a chance to talk to her until we went to bed. I hoped she didn’t find anything else to be mad about before that happened. My phone rang and I excitedly picked it back up, hoping it would be her. It was Sal.