Page 89 of Bound To Be Mine

The four of us sat down and banged out some of the specifics.

“Man, you have to see this grill Mandy has,” Briggs said. “Let’s leave them to talk shop.”

The guys left and we spent another hour nailing down what Bernadette wanted for her dream wedding. I liked Bernadette. She had a lighter side. And was actually really funny.

I had a whole family suddenly. It was temporary, but it was nice to have in-laws. I had yet to meet Elizabeth, but Bernadette liked her a lot and told me we would get along well.

Dating my husband was turning out to be one of the more unexpectedly good decisions of my life, which was saying something given the circumstances under which the marriage had begun.

Life was genuinely better than it had ever been before.

27

BRIGGS

The guest room had become my office after day three when it became clear I would be sleeping in her bed every night. I wasn’t complaining. She offered to let me use her office, but that felt like raiding her purse. It was private. Her domain. She had her own filing system. And not to mention, it was cluttered. Cluttered in her way but too much for me. I liked a clear desk. No clutter. No knickknacks.

And because I’m anal and prefer to do my big work on a desktop, I had one delivered. I ordered the keyboard I like because I was a creature of habit. I spent my days working in the office while she was out doing meetings, cake testings, and whatever else she did.

When she got home after a long day, we had dinner together. I either cooked on that amazing grill, or we ordered in. I noticed she wasn’t big on cooking. Or she just didn’t have the time. And she lived alone. I didn’t do a lot of my own cooking either when it was just me.

It was nice. That was the word I kept returning to, which was insufficient but accurate. It was comfortable. Content. There was nothing lacking. Nice gets a bad reputation for being basic, but there’s something very comforting about not needing more. We didn’t need to chase a feeling or spice things up.

It was perfect as it was.

I was at my laptop with the financial projections for a proposal I’d been building in the margins of everything else. After learning more about what Mandy did, it had given me an idea. Retail locations. Three to start with. One in New York and another in LA, and a third to be determined based on market analysis I was still completing. It was an idea I’d been turning over for a while, the natural next step if Blackwell wanted to move beyond wholesale and digital into a physical brand experience. The partnership with Cleo and Callum and Mandy made it more viable than it had been six months ago. A lifestyle brand needed somewhere to live.

Brides needed to walk into a store and have the total experience. Mandy told me brides were very tactile. They always touched the fabric swatches even if the fabrics were all the same and it was only the color that was different. Some of them needed to smell the invitations and flowers. It wasn’t the kind of experience that can happen behind a screen.

Retail stores were the next thing. We had to make it happen one of these days.

I was working through the LA market numbers, which were interesting. There was enormous consumer appetite and equally enormous commercial real estate costs. The celebrity factor would be a huge draw, but I knew we’d be cutting out the mid-tier market.

My phone vibrated from where it sat on the corner of the desk. I picked it up and saw it was a message from Dash. No message, just a link.

It was to an Instagram post from Mandy’s account. It was a repost of a photo of us at dinner the night before. Someone had taken our picture unbeknownst to us. That wasn’t entirely true. I didn’t know the exact person who took that picture, but one of the reasons we went out to dinner at Nobu was to get seen. We needed to make sure people didn’t forget us. Free marketing and all that.

I couldn’t help it and had to read a few of the top comments. They made me laugh. People saw a moment in millions of moments and decided they knew us. I set my laptop aside and rubbed my eyes. The numbers were starting to blur together anyway.

The truth I’d been avoiding all week sat heavy in my chest. Whatever this was between Mandy and me, it had an expiration date. Three months, we’d agreed. Less than that now.

I left the guest room and made my way to the kitchen for a snack. My snacks. The stuff I stocked in my fridge. I had made myself at home. My clothes were in her closet. My toothbrush sat next to hers in the bathroom. We’d fallen into routines like we’d been doing this for years instead of a week. Morning coffee together. Her telling me about her day over dinner. Falling asleep with her in my arms.

It felt real. It felt like home.

But it wasn’t. Not really.

I had a life in New York. Work that needed my attention. The team was doing their best, but there were things that required my physical presence. Adrian had been patient, but that patience had limits. He was juggling a lot right now. One of us needed to be in the office.

I didn’t want to leave. More like, I wanted to leave, but I didn’t want to leave her.

Mandy had her entire career here. I’d seen her calendar. She was booked solid for the next two years. Weddings almost every weekend, consultations during the week, site visits, and tastings, and all the million things that went into making someone’s perfect day happen. Her business was thriving. She’d built something incredible from nothing. It was only going to get busier with the recent collaboration.

I couldn’t ask her to leave that. And she couldn’t ask me to abandon my family’s company and my responsibilities. We were on opposite coasts with zero chance of meeting in the middle.

The rational part of my brain knew how this had to end. We’d stick to the original agreement. Three months of playing house, then a quiet divorce. We’d both walk away with what we needed. She’d have her reputation intact and a successful partnership with Blackwell Couture. I’d have… what?

Some more profits for the company. My old life back. My empty penthouse. My solitary dinners. My perfectly controlled existence where nothing unexpected ever happened and no one made me laugh until my sides hurt or convinced me to sing karaoke or challenged me to be better than I was.