No Romance Required(53)
“Hello? You can’t be serious.” Jill gestured at the floral-patterned sofa Vicky had been fondling for five minutes. “That thing is hideous.”
“No kidding,” Vicky muttered, consulting her checklist to avoid Jill’s perceptive blue gaze. “Okay, I think we have everything we need from here. We’ll just stop by Divine Flowers and pick up—”
“What’s wrong with you? You’re acting weird.”
Vicky got the same funny catch in her chest that she got whenever she thought about Cory and their big lie. It usually accompanied a head rush and a sudden urge to remind herself of her coping techniques. “Sorry. I just have a headache.”
“Didn’t you have a headache the night of my birthday party too? Isn’t that why you skipped it?” Jill smirked. “It had to have been bad, if you missed a chance to chaperone me at a place where there’s drinking and body grinding.”
“Oh, it was bad,” Vicky agreed, tucking her list into her purse.
“Yeah, that was the night after you and Cory got caught fucking.” She batted her lashes. “Excuse me. Making sweet love. In a fracking gazebo.”
Vicky walked faster to the checkout counter. “Don’t remind me.”
“But that’s what happens when you’re in love. You can’t control yourself, right?”
Vicky glanced at Jill, her head rush turning into a sinking feeling that submerged her whole body. God, that was truer than Jill knew. More true than even she’d guessed.
“What about all the Christmas stuff for the shoot?” she asked weakly. “You and Lorelie took care of it, right? The tree and ornaments, all the other things we discussed? I called ahead to Value Hardware and they’d arranged to have a lot of it ready for us from their early stock—”
“Dude, I handled all that.” Jill grabbed her arm and propelled her through the miles of sectionals and recliners toward the checkout area. “Which I told you earlier. Weren’t you listening?”
No, not really. She was completely off her game. Cory had thrown her in too many ways to count, from submission in the barn right on down the line. “Just as long as I don’t have to deal with any of that crap right now. I can’t handle Christmas stuff on top of everything else.”
Jill peered up at her, her normally lively eyes surprisingly narrow. “Why? What ‘everything else’ is there? You’re supposed to be happy about being in love, Vic. You’ve been waiting for it for so long.”
“Who says?”
“Me. Your best friend who knows you better than anyone else who doesn’t share a bloodline with you.” Grinning, Jill tapped the diamond starfish necklace Vicky never took off, a present from her mom years ago.
Surprised by a wave of sudden tears, Vicky glanced down just as her cell went off in her purse. She tugged it out, saw Cory’s number, and let it go to voice mail, then listened to his message.
“Honoring your advance notice policy, there’s a thing Wednesday night. I think it would be good for us to go. There are some people I could introduce you to that I think might be beneficial contacts for your business. Let me know.” She could tell he was about to hang up when he added with an audible edge of amusement, “Sugarplum.”
Swallowing hard, she glanced at Jill, grateful to see that her assistant was chatting with their salesperson, finalizing their Thursday deliveries.
God, she wasn’t in love with him, was she? Not all the way. She still had a little bit of an escape route left.
She didn’t agree to go to the shindig with him until Tuesday. It hadn’t been her intention to string him along, more that she couldn’t bear to talk to him. Unsurprisingly, he was not pleased by the lateness of her reply, which she got when he proceeded to be chilly as hell to her Wednesday night at the “get-together” that was really a catered affair with tuxedoed servers, premium champagne, and caviar. So not her scene.
At least he kept up his end of the bargain and introduced her to several influential people, two of whom had upcoming interior design jobs—one for a private residence that was closer to a mansion than a house, and one for a new art gallery in Philadelphia. Throughout the evening, she passed out business cards to wealthy, important people and collected icy, impervious looks from her lover and tried to act like she wasn’t overwhelmed by either.
He dropped her off and they agreed to see each other on the shoot on Friday. And that was that. No kiss good-bye. Just a sort of unexplainable chill, which might’ve come from her lack of haste to accept his invitation or maybe, more likely, he’d already started to pull away.