AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“He knows,” Emma said through a stuffed nose. “We’ve been trying for a while. We knew there were going to be difficulties, but now, the fertility doctor thinks that even with IVF…”
“So, you get a surrogate. Or you adopt. There’s no reason the two of you can’t have children.” He sounded almost relieved at finding it a fixable problem. “You’ve talked to him about this, haven’t you? About your fears regarding getting married?”
“He says I’m being stupid.”
“You are. I love you with all of my heart, Emma, but there are times when you couldn’t see your way out of a telescope.” He managed a grim laugh.
“You’ve been with Sophie too long, you’ve picked up her talent for insane metaphor,” Emma said in usual, dry humor.
“Michael knows you’ll be unable to have children. I think it’s wonderful that you two were responsible enough to find out before going ahead with the wedding. But you know now, and you both still want to get married. I think that gives you your answer.”
I’d heard too much, so I slipped quietly from the hall, walking on the balls of my feet so my heels wouldn’t make noise. I went out to the curb and climbed into the backseat of the Maybach to wait. Emma emerged from the restaurant first, her arm through Michael’s. She was all smiles now, as though she’d never doubted. Neil came out after them and stopped Emma for one last hug. It went on for a long time, and when he let her go, he watched her walk away.
Tomorrow was going to be so hard for him.
“Everything okay?” I asked, when Neil got into the car.
Tony shut the door behind him, and Neil took a moment to get settled in and buckle his seat belt before he answered with a vague, “Everything is fine. Emma just has a touch of nerves.”
He didn’t tell me everything. He didn’t betray Emma’s confidence. Not even to me. I admired that so much, and I could never tell him.
I leaned my head on his shoulder and hoped my contented heart could send some sort of telepathic message to him.
“What were you and Valerie talking about in the bathroom? Pamela said she thought you might have been arguing,” he asked absently as we pulled off, past Michael and Emma in their car.
My stomach turned. “I don’t know where she got that impression. It was something or other about the wedding.” It wasn’t a lie. I didn’t know how Pamela had overheard us from the alley, and we had been talking about the wedding—just not the one Neil assumed we were talking about.
“She’ll still be planning the bloody thing a week from now.” He made the statement with genuine affection, and I felt the most horrific stab of hatred toward her. But I couldn’t say anything to Neil, not when he was so stressed out. My anger at Valerie was an infection killing off any shred of niceness in me. I had to let off some of it, or I would fester until I burst like a gangrenous leg. But there was no one I could talk to. Holli had been my only close friend, after I’d lost so many work friends when I’d been blacklisted at Porteras. Valerie was Emma’s mom, so even after the wedding, I wouldn’t mention it to her. I couldn’t say anything to anyone. It was a terrible, lonely feeling.
“I was thinking,” he began tentatively, picking imaginary lint from the knee of his trousers, “when Michael said what he did about Emma. That he knew from the moment he saw her…”
I wanted to brace myself, to believe that what he would say next would be, “I didn’t feel that way about you.” But he wouldn’t. Because I knew it wasn’t true.
“I had to talk myself into my first marriage. I thought I was going to break Elizabeth’s heart the way I broke Valerie’s. And I did. I may not have been technically unfaithful to her, not physically, anyway, but I was in love with another woman the entire time I was married to her. It wasn’t that I didn’t love Elizabeth, I did.” He paused. “But I loved you more.”
He’d met me once, for a few brief hours. And loved me for six unrequited years. And that scared me as much as it touched me. “Neil. You have to understand something. Every day, I worry that I’m not living up to the expectations of the man who spent six years building me up in his mind.”
“It must be an awful pressure.” He reached for my hand, and squeezed it. “But you don’t meet my expectations. You exceed them. Every day, I fall more in love with the Sophie who found me again. Not the Sophie from that airport seven years ago.”
I had to ask now. I couldn’t hold it back any longer. “So why are you being so weird about getting married? When you proposed to me, I thought, ‘no one is ever going to love me as much as this man does.’ And then in one conversation, I couldn’t be certain of that anymore.” I swallowed, warning myself off asking, desperately not wanting to bring Valerie’s machinations into this. “Has someone said something? Expressed disapproval or—”
“Of course they have. Sophie, I’m a fifty-year-old billionaire marrying a twenty-five-year-old. Everyone has expressed concerns.” A slight smile touched his lips. “But it’s not them. It’s this fear…that perhaps I want you too much.”
I didn’t know what to say to that.
“Do you remember why I was in LAX?” he asked, after a pause.
“Yeah, you had some interview with a Japanese car company guy. And you couldn’t rent a crew for your jet in time to make the meeting.” I wracked my brain for some detail I had possibly missed.
“During the layover, I got a crew. I didn’t take the flight that was delayed. I could have left at any time after three o’clock that afternoon. But I took a risk and rescheduled the interview.” His laugh was hoarse, and hollow. “I chose a funny, strange woman I met in an airport over an interview that ended up establishing Auto Watch as a hard-hitting example of auto journalism, on a scale I’d never hoped it would achieve. I knew how important it was. And even back then, I picked you.”
My chest hurt. His declaration was at once touching and terrifying. He’d known me for only a few hours then. He’d been able to choose staying with me in that hotel room over his magazine—and Auto Watch was as much his baby as Emma was—but he hadn’t been able to stay with me when he thought it meant my future was at stake.
“Are you…” I frowned. How would I put this? “Neil, this thing with the wedding. Are you running out of the hotel room again?”
He looked away. “I think so. Perhaps I’m always going to be caught between wanting you, and trusting myself to want you within reason.”
“So stop second-guessing yourself.” I put my hand on his knee. “And stop worrying about what you think is best for me. I’m the girl who was going to run away to Tokyo without any money and without speaking a word of Japanese. Do you think I don’t know my own mind? Okay, I don’t always make the best decisions, but this isn’t one of those times. I love you. You have cold feet. Fine. If you don’t want to set a date yet, that’s fine. I just want to be with you. If it means never getting married—”
