I put all my original clothes back on and checked out my own back to see just how bad a skin problem I had back there. “Thank you,” I said to Number 3, who I now understood as the silent one who knows more than the other two combined.
“You’re very welcome,” she said and shook my hand. “You’re going to be a beautiful bride.”
I smiled and felt much better then about selling my soul for a Vera Wang wedding gown. I’m sure anyone in my place would do the same thing.
“Happy now?” Delilah pushed open the doors and led me out into the sunshine of an October afternoon in the city. And I got a little chill. Must have been the air.
Anthony didn’t know anything about this little deal with my mother yet. That was coming.
On the train headed back home, that short hop on the PATH, I felt like Diane Lane in Unfaithful. What I’d just done came at me in waves. For one second, I was giddy and excited, and then my eyes changed. Self-loathing. Guilt. Fear of being found out. Then some pride that I looked so great in those gowns and my Pilates classes were paying off. Then some more guilt and dread. No one was going to hand me an Oscar nomination for my performance today, but the dress…the Vera Wang dress…it was gold to me.
Chapter 9
“Why are you so happy?” Anthony moved my hair out of his eyes as I leaned over him from the back. He was reading on the couch, wearing red plaid cotton pajama bottoms that only he could carry off as sexy because he has a great chest and defined abs. His glasses were low on his nose, knocked lower by my chin with my bad aim and my need to just be close to him.
“No reason,” I said. “Just glad to be home.”
He lifted his arm and cradled it around my head, let me kiss his temple, down the side of his cheek to his jaw, giving me that great “mmmmm” he does when I’m hitting the right spots. Which means it’s time for the ear. I know his body like a map. I know every part of him and how each part responds, that he likes the insides of his elbows lightly dragged by my fingernails. He likes the side of his neck kissed with an open mouth and not just with my lips. He loves it when I flutter my eyelashes on his cheek.
And he can always tell when I’m doing all of the above because I’m on a mission.
“Hon?” he said, in something of a moan, I was doing it all so well.
“Mmmm?” I said, climbing over the couch to drape myself across his lap and close my lips over his top lip.
“What did you do?” he said with a smile in his voice. He knew.
“Hmmmm?” Keeping it nonverbal and going for his ear would do the trick, I thought.
He laughed out loud, which couldn’t offend me like a game-playing girlfriend, because we both knew I was busted. “What did you do, Em?”
I played along, because I had no other choice. He knew me like a map too. “What makes you think I did something wrong?” I laughed my answer and looked, to him, adorably guilty.
“Because it’s Tuesday.”
I laughed.
“And because you usually check your messages before jumping on me.”
I brought my hands up over my chin and my mouth, laughing still, leaning into his chest as I giggled through my own ridiculousness.
“Did you crash the car?” he asked, still amused.
“No.”
“Bounce a check?”
“No.” Still playing coy, going almost as far as twirling my hair around my finger, but I’m not the typical bimbo-esque manipulator. I could never pull that look off.
“Did you sell out to your mother because she offered to pay for the wedding, your student loans, our house and a designer wedding gown?” he said right into my ear, then grabbed me in a playful and loving tight hug. I yelled out in delight and relief and love and confession. He saved me from having to say it to him.
Once his kiss let me breathe again, I managed to sputter, “How did you find out?”
Now it was his turn to work me. “I have my ways.”
“Come on,” I poked him in the ribs, then straddled him. “How did you find out? Did Leah tell you?”
“Leah knew?” Anthony nodded, impressed with Leah’s restraint.
I nodded. “And your answer would be…?”
“Your mother made the offer to me too,” he said. “Except for the gown part.”
I blinked. Wow, Delilah was good.
“And you said…?”
Anthony sighed and looked to the ceiling, bringing his hands up to clasp behind his head. Then brought his hands down again so as not to hasten his imaginary hair loss. “I took the deal before you did,” he confessed. “I wanted you to have the nice wedding, and get your debts paid without working your butt off, get us a house, set us up.”
This was a very strange version of the Gift of the Magi, only without hair loss and watches. Instead we had Vera Wang dresses and…well, imaginary hair loss. My eyes teared up, which is also a strange reaction to the fact that we now had proof that both my future husband and I were willing to sell our souls to my mother for money.
“You put up with a lot with your mother, and you supported her for a long time,” he explained. “You don’t live off her wealth, which a lot of people would, and you haven’t sold out to her lifestyle. That’s why I love you so much.”
His eyes are the warmest and most soulful I’ve ever seen.
“So I took a shot and told her yes, I’d work on you,” he sighed. “Just because I wanted you to get something in return.”
“And…?”
“And because there was no way we were ever going to stop your control freak mother from trying to run the wedding,” he laughed. “No way at all.”
“I know,” I shook my head, beaming and kissed him again. “That’s why I took the deal. She’ll never change.”
“Well, that’s how you’re alike,” he said. “You have that quality too.”
I sat up, a bit shaken by the comparison.
“I mean,” he saved himself. “You’re both strong women…but you have the ability to think of others. And you’re not going to change that.”
He pulled me in close to him and held me in those big arms. I listened to his heartbeat. Heaven. The safest place on earth. And I thought about what he said, wishing he had gotten the chance to meet Donna Penks. To know how much like her I am. Why my mother killed her off is a mystery to me. Why she doesn’t let Donna Penks out more often, like she did for a second today, is also a mystery to me.
But Donna Penks was quickly floated out of my mind when Anthony started mapping me with his hands, with open mouth kisses, brushes of his lips and flutters of his eyelashes on my stomach. And we were lost to the world of weddings and everything else for hours and hours.
Chapter 10
Smoke filled the apartment from knee-high level to the ceiling.
“Leah?” I called into the opaque gray fog, squinting my eyes from the burning scent of sandalwood. “Leah!”
“Over here,” Leah was already by the window, fanning some of the smoke outside with one of my bridal magazines in one hand and a paper plate in the other.
This was beyond ridiculous. I bumped the dining room table with my hip and did a double step to move toward her. “That’s enough with the incense already, Leah,” I said without my usual understanding. Pyromania is not an acceptable form of mourning for a loser fiancé with bad taste