Private Relations (14 page)

She walked over and took the photograph he held out. It was a little bent from its years in his wallet, but still in pretty good shape. She stared at the photograph for a long, silent moment. Her hand trembled slightly, and then suddenly she dropped to sit on the bed beside him.

“Where did you get this?” Her voice was strained and low.

“Piper sent it to me.”

“Why would she do something to me that cruel?”

“I think it was me she was hoping to punish, not you.”

“I look so young.”

They stared at the photo of a younger, carefree Kit smiling joyfully at the camera on her wedding day. “You look so happy.”

“You should have seen me an hour later,” she said.

“I know,” he said, staring at her profile. “I should have. An hour later, and a day later and every day from then until now.”

Kit seemed to snap out of the spell the photo had cast over her. “It wasn’t meant to be, Peter. Our marriage would have been a disaster.”

She turned the photo onto its side and he caught her the second he realized her intention was to rip the picture in two. “No,” he said, taking it away from her.

“It is really sick to keep the picture of a jilted bride in your wallet. What is that? Some kind of trophy?”

“It’s my penance.” He stared down at that loving, happy face. “I thought when I came here this weekend that I could talk to you and make sure that you were okay with the way your life had turned out. That you were happier without me. Then I was going to tear up this picture and let go of the guilt I’ve been carrying around for three years.”

She held out her hand, palm flat. “Then let’s do it. Right now. I want to rip that thing to pieces. I’m fine. I’m happy. Go off and have a great life.”

He shook his head. “I said that’s what I thought I wanted. But I was wrong.” He stared into her eyes, those summer-blue eyes that he’d always loved. They were cold and hard now, but he loved those eyes in all their moods. He touched her thigh where it nudged his on the bed. “I never should have run out on you. Kit, I’m sorry.”

Like a sudden storm had come in, the cold blue of her eyes turned dark and cloudy. She suddenly leapt off the bed and marched to stare out the window. Anger vibrated from every line of her body.

“Sorry?” she yelled the word so it echoed back at him off the windows. “You’re sorry? You want to know what it was like? You’ve been needling me all weekend to tell. Okay. Fine. I’ll tell you. There were two hundred
pounds of salmon flown in fresh from British Columbia. Wild sockeye. My dad bought twenty cases of vintage champagne. He supervised the chilling of the wine himself.

“The flowers were just opening. I have never seen such perfect roses.”

She took a quick breath, the kind of breath he knew meant she wanted to cry but wouldn’t let herself. “And there was me. Standing there feeling so happy, and then nervous, and then terrified something had happened to you. That you’d got sick or been in an accident. And then, much later, I guess I accepted the truth. That you had run off and abandoned me. For a long time after that, I hated the smell of roses.”

“I remember those roses,” he said.

“You never saw them.”

“I remember you got obsessed about the color. Pink, but not too pink. A little yellow around the edges would be good, but nothing too egg yolky.” It had been a nightmare. Had he tried to talk to her about his increasing panic? Probably not. It seemed she had been incapable of talking about anything but wedding planning details anyway. But if he had tried to explain that he’d said he loved her, not that he wanted to marry her before they had even graduated college, he doubted she would have heard.

“I wanted everything to be perfect,” she said.

“I never saw you.” He shook his head. “For months. You were so busy with the wedding of the century that you never had a second to spare for the fun we’d been having up until then. Even our sex life went to shit.”

He remembered one vivid night when he’d come to her place bagged to find a dozen boutonnieres laid out on her desk. “Pick one,” she’d said. It was like picking
one beer over another in the same case—every one of them was a single rose with some green crap. Who cared which one?

Instead of making love that night as he’d hoped, they’d had a stupid fight about how he didn’t even care about the flowers for his own wedding.

Damn straight he hadn’t. Then he’d gone to her closet to change his shoes and she’d screamed at him. Her dress was in there. He wasn’t allowed to see it before the wedding day. Bad luck.

“I don’t even know what you’re talking about. Everything was fine. Maybe I was a little busy, since I did so much of the wedding planning myself, but you saw me all the time.”

“If you weren’t off getting fitted for the dress or driving a hundred miles to see if you could find fresher flowers, you were so busy obsessing about place cards that we might as well not have been in the same room.”

She swung around. “You could have said something, instead of taking the coward’s way out.”

He rose and took a step closer, only one because the way she was standing there, vibrating with emotion, one more step was going to have her running out that door. “I thought I was going to my wedding. I had my tux on, and my boutonniere. I swear to God, I didn’t consciously plan to miss the wedding. I was rehearsing my toast to whoever I was supposed to toast—”

“The bridesmaids,” she supplied.

“Right. I was rehearsing my speech and I missed the turnoff for the country club. No problem, I figured. I’d turn around at the next intersection.”

There was a pause while they stared at each other, both recalling that awful day.

“I stood there, in front of two hundred guests, some of whom had flown miles. At first, we joked about you being late. Then everyone started to get real quiet and they sent me these looks of pity.” She wrapped her arms around herself.

“Our friends. My friends. My mother and my father. The minister.” She laughed, an unamused laugh. “He had another wedding to do that afternoon. He kept looking at his watch when he thought I didn’t see him. And you know what’s really sad?”

He shook his head.

“I still believed in you. I really thought you would come. He loves me, I thought. Peter would never, ever do this to me.”

She was crying now, the tears she’d bottled up so long spilling freely down her cheeks.

“I’m so sorry,” he said, the words sounding feeble and inadequate. He tried to take her into his arms, but she pushed him away.

“This is ridiculous,” she said, swiping her hands over her wet cheeks. She glanced at her watch. “And time’s up, anyway. Goodbye, Peter.”

She walked toward the door.

“Wait,” he said.

She turned, looking sad and impatient at the same time. “What is it now?”

“Maybe it’s too late, but you have to know how I feel. I made the biggest mistake of my life when I ran away that day. Please, please give me another chance.”

“How could I ever trust you again?”

“I…Look at Irene. She trusts Giles, and that’s a hell of a lot more of a stretch. She’s letting herself believe that her Cinderella fantasy is going to come true.” He
shook his head. “And the crazy thing is that it’s happening. Maybe that happy-ending thing can happen again for us.”

The noise she made was somewhere between a snort of derision and a hiccup. “Goodbye, Peter.”

“Kit, I love you.”

She looked less than impressed. Her brows rose and the corners of her mouth turned down.

He smiled at her, feeling sad and hopeless. “The last time I told you I loved you, you immediately started planning the wedding.”

“Well, believe me, our wedding is one event I will never again plan.”

Without another word or so much as a glance in his direction, she left. The door took its sweet time closing, and he watched it all the way.

K
IT COULD BARELY SEE
, which infuriated her. She never cried. And she never, ever, ever cried over a man.

Not anymore.

There was a package of novelty Happy Face tissues in her bag but, naturally, she didn’t have her bag when she needed it. So she sniffed and wiped her eyes with the heels of her hands and disappeared into the stairwell so as not to have to bump into any guests. She needed to get out, and fast. No way she was hanging around while Peter was in the hotel. She ran all the way down the stairs to her office, grabbed her bag, blew her nose defiantly into a Happy Face tissue and then bolted.

She ran for the employee entrance off the lower level, planning to disappear into the closest subway station on Lexington Avenue and ride home. But she never made it to the exit. A low, throaty laugh caught her attention. She’d know that sound anywhere.

Without pausing for a nanosecond’s thought, she walked into Piper’s office. “You’re back early,” she said, and then stopped dead, color rushing to her face. “Oh, Piper, Trace. I’m sorry,”

No wonder Piper was giggling. She’d be giggling, too, if the man she loved had her on her back on her desk. They were fully clothed, but five minutes later
they wouldn’t have been. Already Trace had slid the strap of Piper’s low-cut dress off her shoulder and his mouth was busy.

Kit turned to flee, only to have Piper’s voice stop her. “No, Kit. Don’t go.” Then a grunt. “Get off me, Trace. We’ll finish this later.”

“Oh, honey, yes we will.” Trace planted one more smacking kiss somewhere while Kit kept her face averted, then he strolled past and winked at Kit. “Next time knock, kid.”

“Oh, God, I’m sorry,” Kit said, dropping to the couch.

Piper rose to sit as gracefully as a cat, then swiveled her butt so she was facing Kit, her legs crossed at the ankles and hanging off the desk. Her upper chest gleamed with moisture from where Trace had been kissing her. She had that freshly laid look, but then Piper had pretty much had that look going on since she was a teenager. “Don’t worry about it. A little anticipation is good for a man.”

Kit crawled onto the floor and retrieved two pens and a staple remover that had been knocked to the floor in Piper’s latest round of inappropriate office behavior.

“You should put all your office supplies on bungee cords,” Kit muttered.

Piper laughed and nonchalantly pulled her strap back onto her shoulder. “You look like hell. What’s going on?”

“Don’t give me that innocent look. You know exactly what’s going on.” Anger spurted through her body. “You should have told me the winner was Peter. You should have told me. And how
convenient
that Cassie didn’t show after I’d confirmed with her that very morning. You did more than hide Peter’s identity from me.”

“Yeah. You’re right. For the record, Cassie didn’t
want to let you down. I bribed her with a screen test with a friend of mine in L.A. A hot young producer. I also promised she’d still get the bonus and another crack at being a fantasy weekend hostess.” Piper looked troubled. “I figured I was doing you both a favor. When you called and interrupted me and Trace on Saturday night, I got pretty pleased with myself. The way you were talking, it seemed like there was a lot of good stuff going on between you and Peter. I imagined that one day we’d laugh about this.”

“I’m not laughing, Piper.”

“Okay. Let’s take this from the top. You showed up at his suite looking like a million bucks. Had a great dinner. He gave you a list of things he wanted to do that was really a schedule of your perfect day. Then I went to the Hamptons.” She put her palms back on the desk and shook her hair off her shoulders, Playboy center-fold-style. Piper had practiced vamping so long it was second nature now. “What did I miss?”

“A few awkward conversations and some pretty amazing sex.”

“Get out!”

“Yeah, well. It was a stupid idea.”

“Which? The talking or the amazing sex?”

“Both.”

Piper shook her hair again so that it rippled in a sexy fall. “Tell me all about the sex first. Details.”

Kit found a scrunchie and tied her hair back into a neat ponytail. She was still angry with Piper for deceiving her, but right now she needed to accept that Piper had, in her misguided way, meant the best. And she needed her friend’s advice. Or maybe her pampered shoulder to cry on. “The sex was kind of like before, only better.”

“Really? Even after three years in Manhattan?”

Kit nodded miserably.

“He’s still the best you’ve ever had?”

Desperately she scanned her list of lovers. Surely someone had out-wowed him in the bedroom. At last, she nodded again.

“Cool.”

“He told me he loved me.”

“No way! When?”

“About fifteen minutes ago.”

“In bed or out of bed?”

Kit rolled her eyes. “Out.”

Piper straightened. They’d played these games so many times. “Clothes or no clothes?”

“Clothes.”

“Okay. He means it.”

“No, he doesn’t. He came here looking for me to blame him for ruining my life. I swear he was disappointed when he saw I’m fine. I’m over him.”

A disbelieving snort was her answer. Kit chose to ignore it.

“The minute he figured out I’m fine and have a great life, he started chasing after me.” She shook her head in disgust. “Men.”

“Why’d you sleep with him?”

“For the same reason you usually sleep with guys.” She smiled slightly. “Used to sleep with guys. I felt like it.”

“And you wanted to prove to him you could screw him and leave him.”

Kit dropped her head in her hands. “I didn’t think of it in those terms, but that probably had something to do with it. That was sort of clichéd of me, wasn’t it?”

“Not as sucky a cliché as Peter pulled. The old leaving the bride at the altar thing is getting stale.”

In spite of her misery, Kit laughed. Trust Piper to expect a trendier breakup. “You’re right. He should have sent me a bouquet of dead roses with a drop dead-o-gram.”

“Or he could have had his matching tattoo removed.”

“We never had tattoos.”

“You were smart. Hurts like hell when you get them lasered off.” Piper seemed to wince.

“I guess.”

“You know, one reason we’re still friends is you never remind me that you warned me not to get Rock’s name tattooed on my ass. Okay. This is as good a segue as any. I sort of thought I was helping you get Peter out of your skin. Did it help at all? Seeing him again? Having a chance to talk about stuff?”

“I don’t know. I feel really churned up right now. He made me so mad. He showed me a picture of me you sent him,” she glared at Piper. “Which you never told me you’d done.”

“Bastard. I wanted him to see what he was missing.” She glanced up and opened her eyes wide. “He still has it?”

“He keeps it in his wallet.”

“Interesting.”

“Sick. I tried to tear it up, but he wouldn’t let me.” She let out a breath. “So he showed me this picture and started apologizing again. I looked down at that picture of myself and suddenly it was like I was there again, you know? With the smell of roses all around me and two hundred guests all dressed up waiting for ‘Here Comes the Bride.’”

“Instead, they got ‘There Goes the Groom.’”

“Yeah. And I lost it. I told him what it was like. The humiliation. And you know what he said?” Her voice rose but she couldn’t seem to stop it.

“What?”

“He said he hated picking boutonnieres.”

The phone on Piper’s desk rang but she ignored it.

“You made him pick boutonnieres?”

“Of course I did. They were for the groomsmen. I wanted them to be perfect. I wanted everything to be perfect.”

“He said he didn’t show up because of some friggin’ carnation for his lapel?”

“Rosebud. Cream, white or oyster. With a choice of greenery.” She shook her head. “No. That’s not why he left. He said he never saw me because I was planning the wedding and…oh, it’s stupid.”

Piper slid off the desk and came to sit beside Kit. “Maybe he was trying to tell you something important.”

“Piper,” she warned, “if you quote anyone who appears on daytime television…”

“No. I’m not going to.” She grinned slyly. “But I did read this book where this—I don’t know—psychologist or psychiatrist or something said that you should say what you mean and mean what you say.”

“That should change the future of self-help as we know it.”

“No, but listen. If Peter was trying to say what he meant, you know, deep down, that serious stuff that guys can never say…maybe he freaked because of you planning the wedding so perfectly.”

Kit got up and stalked across the room. “What are you implying? If we’d taken the bus to city hall some lunch hour that we’d be celebrating our leather anniversary?”

“Leather anniversary?”

Kit turned. “The third wedding anniversary. The traditional gift is leather. The modern equivalent is crystal or glass.”

“You sure know a lot of weird facts.” Piper shifted on the couch. “But the point is that Peter was trying to tell you why he cut and ran.”

“If he didn’t want to marry me because I wanted the boutonnieres to be perfect, then he didn’t deserve me.”

“Of course he didn’t deserve you.” Piper drew a noisy breath, as if she had something difficult to say. “But you can get a little carried away sometimes.”

Kit blinked at her.

Piper stared back steadily. “Life isn’t perfect, Kit. I’ve screwed up enough of mine to know that. You know what I think?”

“That I should say what I mean and mean what I say?”

“Yes. But besides that, I think your parents’ divorce screwed you up more than you ever let on. You had this perfect life and then suddenly it blasted apart. It’s like your mom planned this perfect life and it blew up on her, so you are determined to do a better job so life can’t blow up in your face.”

“But it always does.”

“I read in this book that we either copy our parents’ marriage because that’s how we learned about marriage or we deliberately do something different. So my theory about you is that you wanted the perfect family life without the mistakes your parents made. You planned the wedding so perfectly, you forgot about what Peter wanted.”

Kit felt a little sick, as though there wasn’t enough air in the room. If there’d been a window down here,
she’d have opened it. “You’re my best friend. How can you blame me for my fiancé leaving me at the altar?”

“I don’t blame you. I’m saying, maybe Peter’s trying to tell you something important.”

“You think I try too hard.”

“It’s a pattern. It’s the same with your job. Nobody does better promotions than you. Nobody in town has your imagination and flair. But sometimes you go a teensy bit overboard.”

“The crocodiles,” she breathed.

“Kind of a metaphor for your life.”

“I don’t believe in dwelling on the negative things in my past.”

“How can you learn from mistakes if you ignore them?”

“Peter was the biggest mistake I ever made.”

“Then learn from him.”

Kit stared blindly at her friend for a moment. “I have to go.”

“Call me.”

She flapped her hand behind her, which she hoped Piper would take as a possible yes, but maybe not. She didn’t think she could handle any more pop psychology today.

She paid no attention to where she was going, following the stream of traffic to the subway on Lexington Avenue. She made her way home on autopilot and stumbled into her apartment. She’d had barely any sleep in the last two days; that must be why she felt so peculiar.

She got out her vitamins. The special health food store brand for active women, the extra B complex, and the calcium because she was already protecting her bones from osteoporosis.

She wasn’t hungry, but she felt she needed something comforting, so she brewed some tea and put it in a pretty china mug.

Then she sat down in her easy chair in her small living room. No music, no TV, no distractions of any kind. And she started thinking.

Was Piper right? Had Peter been trying to tell her that she’d scared him away with her over-the-top wedding plans?

So, he carried her wedding-day picture around and talked a good line about being sorry. His behavior was still inexcusable.

Now he was telling her he loved her?

What kind of man walked away from the woman he loved?

What kind of woman was so obsessed with perfection that she drove her man away?

Suddenly a mental image flashed across her mind of her as a child. She was trying to tell her mother about some minor accomplishment at school. She was having milk and cookies and in her excitement was waving the cookie around. Between reminding her not to chew with her mouth open and wiping up the crumbs, her mother had barely heard a word she’d said.

At least her mom had been married for fifteen years before she drove Kit’s father away. Kit hadn’t even made it through the wedding ceremony.

Okay, so Peter had done a terrible, unforgivable thing. But, for the first time in three years, she realized that she’d played a role in the disaster of her wedding.

Was Piper right? Did she keep setting herself up?

She reviewed some of her recent promotions. She
was edgy, that’s all, she thought. People loved her promotions. But there was always that feeling that she teetered on the edge of disaster.