The Bride (The Boss) (31 page)

Emma’s gently wheedling tone—the one I’d heard her use with her father on several notable occasions relating to her wedding expenses—simpered through the phone. Neil was powerless to resist.

“Fine, fine. We’ll be there in…” He checked his watch. “Probably forty minutes. Damn. No, I know, it’s not your fault. We’re on the way.”

“Is everything alright?” I feigned concern as he hung up the call.

“Only Horrible Michael stealing my daughter away to an over-priced club on the night of my birthday, and then not being able to pay for it when he does.” Neil waved Tony off and opened the door for me. He motioned to me to slide over, rather than walking around the back of the car. Then he hit the intercom, informed Tony of our change of plans, and Neil settled back in his seat like a man trying to get comfortable in an iron maiden. “Honestly, drinks and dancing on a Monday night. What kind of husband is he going to make?”

“I seem to remember someone in this car fucking his secretary until she couldn’t walk on a Tuesday night, then sending her home with no panties and expecting her to show up for work on Wednesday morning.” I tapped my lips with one straightened index finger. “I wonder what kind of husband he’ll make.”

Neil gave me a look that warned I might not find out. It was all I could do to keep from giggling madly.

“I have to call Rudy,” he said handing my phone back.

When he reached for his, I shook my head. “No, I’ll just text him. I’ve already got the message half-typed.”

Neil’s knee bounced in agitation for the entire ride. By the time we pulled up outside of 1 OAK, he was so tense that his shoulders probably felt like phone books.

He pushed the intercom. “Tony, would you mind terribly taking this credit card inside to my daughter and her idiot fiancé?”

Shit. That was going to make my job harder. It was up to me to get him into the building.

I chewed my lip, trying to pick the perfect reason we should go in. I wouldn’t have a second shot without sounding suspicious. “Hey, I’ve never been here, and you’re the only chance I’ve got of getting in. What do you say we have one drink? Just long enough for me to say I’ve been there.”

He let out an annoyed, resigned sigh. “One drink. Lest the night mimic those insane movies were people hop all over the city from party to party, getting into zany mishaps.”

“That’s the spirit, grumpy man!” I laughed as Tony knocked on the window.

Neil rolled it down just a hair. “I’m sorry, Tony, we’ve changed our plans. Sophie wants to go in. Can you circle the block a few times? We won’t be long.”

“Certainly, sir,” he replied, and when I looked over my shoulder at him, he winked.

Hey, you can’t keep secrets from the domestic staff. They find out everything eventually.

“There’s no line,” Neil said, looking uncertainly up and down the street. “That’s very odd, isn’t it?”

The doorman didn’t ask for our names and ushered us in without a glance to his clipboard. Neil looked down at me as we walked down the hallway. “Sophie…what’s going on?”

The muffled throb of loud music penetrated the gold-script scrawled black walls, and with every step, it was harder to contain my grin. In the warm yellow light, it was difficult to gauge his facial expression. At the end of the hall, we stepped through the curtained entryway and into the club proper. At the sight of two-hundred people all turned out for him, Neil froze, and in that moment, all of the guests who’d been standing there, patiently waiting for us to arrive, shouted a gleeful, unison, “Surprise!”

The DJ switched the music, and The Beatles “Birthday” blasted over the speakers. Emma, Michael, Rudy, and Valerie were all amongst the front lines, and they swarmed over him now.

“Happy birthday, Daddy!” Emma shouted, jumping up to put her arms around his shoulders. “Are you surprised?”

“I may be in clinical shock.” He laughed, squeezing her tight. He looked to Rudy and Valerie. “Were you in on this?”

“It was all Sophie and me,” Emma gushed.

“You have no idea how difficult it was to not totally ruin it.” I rose on my tiptoes to kiss his cheek. “Happy birthday, baby.”

“So when should we expect the midlife crisis?” Rudy quipped. “Will it be an earring, or another expensive car?”

“Both.” Valerie laughed. She hugged Neil, and I distanced myself from them, to avoid feeling like I was trapped in an awkward three-way embrace.

Rudy raised a perfect eyebrow in my direction. I just smiled back at him. Even though he was Neil’s best friend, he had an antagonistic streak when it came to me. Probably
because
he was Neil’s best friend; he didn’t want to see him get hurt.

“You know,” I said, stepping away from Neil’s side as he spoke with Valerie and another party guest whom I didn’t recognize. “Tonight is Neil’s birthday. Do you think you and I could get along, just for a few hours?”

It was hard to stare down someone as handsome as Rudy. He had flawless dark skin and sleepy eyes that still somehow laser focused on his target. He dressed like a man who’d been born in Louis Vuitton, and no matter how cool he might act toward me, I had to admire the aesthetics he worked so hard to maintain.

He pursed his lips and pushed up his thick, black-framed glasses with an elegantly pointed middle finger.

“Oh, very mature, Rudy.” Neil’s voice surprised me as he slid his arm around my waist. He didn’t sound annoyed at us, partially, I think, because he liked being fought over. His hand closed possessively over my hip, and he motioned toward the bar. “I have been at my own birthday party for five minutes, and there is not a drink in my hand.”

We made our way to the bar, Neil stopping to chat with and hug the guests we passed. Others were already on the dance floor, where the DJ was impressively mixing “Where Did Our Love Go” by The Supremes with a house beat.

When I’d told Neil I’d never been inside 1 OAK, I hadn’t been lying. Only the coolest people in New York got in, and while I thought I was pretty awesome, I knew I wasn’t Beyoncé awesome. While Neil laughed and talked with his friends, I scoped out the surroundings. The ceiling was wood, the same as the facade of the building. Exposed brick peeked between huge black and white photos and decadent curtain panels of subtly metallic fabric. The floor was a white and black zig-zag of tile that I was certain would be dizzying if it weren’t broken up by the shoes of the guests walking over it.

When we stepped up to the bar, Neil asked me, “Now, what kind of depressing, middle-aged-man-desperately-trying-to-recapture-his-youth drink should I have?”

“Jagerbomb,” I said with a forceful nod. “Two of them.”

The bartender—one of five—served up two Red Bull Jagerbombs and passed them across the bar.

“You take the shot glass and drop it in—” I began, and he cut me off.

“This is my fiftieth birthday party, Sophie, not my twentieth. I have done shots before.” He lifted both glasses. “On the count of three?”

We counted together, then dropped our shot glasses in and tossed back our drinks.

“Good lord,” he sputtered, smacking his palm on the bar. “That is the worst thing I have ever done to myself.” To the bartender, he called, “Can I get a bottle of Reyka?”

“Emma and I made sure you would have the best table in the house.” I pointed to the VIP tables, in the narrow u-shaped bend at the end of the room. Emma and Michael already sat there with a bottle of something of their own.

The sight of that bottle in front of Emma made my spirits fall. If she was drinking, she wasn’t pregnant.

“I’m going over. You can circulate, if you want.” I grabbed the booze and glasses off the bar.

“Very good, I’ll be there in a moment.” Neil kissed my cheek, then took the bottle, unscrewed the top and took a giant swig off it. When he handed it back to me, he said, “What? It’s my birthday.”

“Okay, but you won’t want a hangover tomorrow, trust me.”

He tilted his head, silently demanding an explanation.

I grinned at him. “Because you won’t be any good for your birthday present.”

His open-mouthed pause indicated he knew
exactly
what kind of present he was getting, but if he thought we were just going to stay in the apartment and get nasty in our bedroom, he was in for the shock of his life.

When I walked away, I put a little swing in my hips. I knew he’d be watching.

I made my way to the booth and slid in beside Emma and Michael. “This is amazing!”

Emma beamed at me. “We did such a good job. I’m so pleased with us.”

Michael chuckled and kissed the top of her head.

“And I’m glad to see you decided to invite Michael after all.” I laughed, pouring some vodka into a shot glass. I held it up to clink against Michael’s.

“I have to say, ruining Mr. Elwood’s birthday was not my intent, but if my presence causes him some unhappiness…” Michael threw back his own shot, of some kind of pink liqueur in a bottle that looked like it should have held perfume.

I gasped and waved my hand at my mouth, then pushed the bottle of Reyka to the center of the table. “You all help yourselves. I think I’m going to get a glass of wine.”

“I’ll go with you! I want to get a Coke.” Emma slid out of the booth after me. We were a few feet from the table when she lowered her voice to as much of a conspiratorial tone as could be heard over the music. “I really just wanted to get out there and have a look around without Michael. He talks to
everyone,
it’s impossible to go two feet.”

“They do say we marry men who remind us of our fathers,” I said dryly, and Emma pulled an “ew” face.

The party was, without a doubt, the best one I’d ever been to. There was music and people were
actually dancing
. I’d never thrown a party where people had danced. It helped that the club’s sound system was excellent. And celebrities. I hadn’t been prepared for that. Emma bopped up to my side just as I caught a flash of ginger-hair above the other heads in the crowd.

“Is that…” I almost choked on my own tongue. “Is that Prince Harry?”

“Yeah, he’s crashing. He’s here with the son of one of dad’s lawyers.” She rolled her eyes and scanned the crowd. “Honestly, he could have at least asked. It isn’t as though he doesn’t know how to contact me.”

She spoke those words as though it were totally normal for Harry Mountbatten-Windsor to be able to get in touch with her at a moment’s notice.

Because we’d spent the entire first year of our relationship insulated from the rest of the world, I’d had no idea how many influential and famous people Neil counted among his friends. Rudy, of course, I knew from his work in fashion and costume design, but there were artists, singers, actors, socialites—basically the entire society section of any random copy of
Vanity Fair
one could find. I should have realized that owning a multimedia corporation would put him in contact with people from the entertainment and news industries, but it was a little disconcerting to see people I’d only seen in magazines walking around the party like normal folk.

In a social environment, Emma was surprisingly fun. I’d had plenty of enjoyable lunches and family functions with her, but she was always so uptight. I knew she found my silliness immature, and she would probably never be okay with the relationship between her dad and me, but we did get along quite well, most of the time. But tonight, she was like a person I’d never seen before. She even dragged me onto the dance floor and introduced me to some of her friends.

The first two hours passed quickly. I alternated between dancing and politely interacting with Neil’s guests, most of whom I didn’t know. There might have also been a bit of royalty stalking, now that I knew there was royalty to stalk. When Neil caught sight of me, he would wave me over or catch my hand, introduce me to this important person or that, and I would nod politely and try to appear more intelligent than I was intoxicated. I was standing at his side, playing the part of the obedient trophy girlfriend, when I noticed the rocks glass in his hand was empty.

“Want me to get you another drink?” I offered. It wasn’t that I wanted to get away from him, but I didn’t find long conversations about Formula One as exciting as the awesome party going on around us.

He handed me his glass and dropped a kiss on my forehead with a knowing smile. “Go on. Go out and find Prince Charming Party Crasher.”

I made my way to the bar and slid the empty glass to a bartender with incredibly douchey facial hair. “Two fingers of Glenlivet with a splash of water,” I said, looking away so as to not encourage dude bro eye contact.

Unfortunately, I ended up making unwanted eye contact with Valerie, who’d just accepted a glass of white wine from another bartender. When our gazes met, I was trapped. We were too close in proximity for me to play it off with a wave. Valerie saw it, too. She took the few steps toward me and said, under her breath, “Be aware that many of the people at this party know that Neil and I have history, and those people are probably watching us right now, hoping to view something unseemly.”

“Awesome. I’m a little bit of an exhibitionist, anyway.” I took the scotch from the bartender. “Can you get me another?”

Valerie lifted her glass. “To the busy-bodies.”

I clinked the glass that had been intended for Neil against hers and nodded.

“This really is a lovely party, Sophie. You and Emma did very well.” She took a sip from her glass. “Congratulations on the house, by the way.”

I shrugged. “I didn’t build it. But I’m so glad to be getting out of the city. I come from a small town, and after six years, it’s starting to grate on me.”

“I can sympathize,” Valerie said with one of her sexy, throaty laughs. “I don’t come from a small town, but New York is unlike anywhere else in the world. It can be quite overwhelming.”

Then why are you moving here?
a jealous little voice snarked in my head. I translated it to, “At least you always have the office in London, if you ever want to escape.”

“Well, I couldn’t walk away from
Porteras
, you know,” she said, glancing down as the bartender slid the second glass to me. “It’s been something of a dream of mine to run a fashion magazine.”