The Pretend Fiancé (24 page)

“Everyone appreciates good company, love. You appreciated it not so long ago.”

“That was different. I didn’t know what you were trying to do. If I could go back and stop it, I would. What are you doing here anyway? Are you stalking me? Because that is not okay.”

“Whoa, whoa. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to come off like that. I’m out here one, because I like going for walks. Good for the soul, didn’t you know? And two, I’m a journalist. You can’t think that you and your Harvard man are the only story around here.”

“I suppose...” Gwen said. It still seemed weird, him being there like this, but Gwen had been increasing her tolerance to weird over these last few days. If weird were alcohol she didn’t think she’d be a cheap drunk anymore. Still, she didn’t exactly feel comfortable sitting next to the cause of one of her biggest and most recent problems.

“I think I’ve had enough of fresh air and culture for one evening. I’m going to head out now. Nice seeing you, well not really, but you know what I’m trying to say.”

Gwen stood up from the bench, flinching as muscles tightened from sitting stretched.

“Wait! Gwen, please, just give me a few moments.”

“What for? Do you have any idea what kind of trouble you caused between me and Aiden? Do you have any idea how you made me feel after you couldn’t control yourself?”

“You’re right, you’re right. Of course you are. Please, just do me the courtesy of hearing what I have to say,” Ben said, standing up with her and spreading his hands in supplication.

“Make it fast,” Gwen replied, crossing her arms and giving him a glare.

“Will do,” Ben said, shoving his hands into his jacket pockets, “Here goes. First, I am truly sorry for that. Deeply sorry. How am I doing? Carrying on, I did it because I thought I sensed something from you. I thought I got a signal from you that maybe, just maybe, you’re not as happy with Aiden as you think you are. And I also got this idea in my head that maybe you fancied me a little, too... Is my minute up yet?”

“Just about.” Gwen shook her head. Apparently there had been misunderstandings and mixed signals on both fronts. Besides, Ben wasn’t trying anything on her now. Maybe he was being genuine.
Best to let him down easy
.

“So tell me, Gwen, am I wrong about you and Aiden and you and me?”

Her shoulders heaved in a sigh. “There has just been so much going on lately. You wouldn’t even believe it. Look... Ben, you’re a nice guy. I think you’re funny and charming and smart. In different circumstances, I would love to be with you. And I do like you, maybe more than it’s okay to like you... But the circumstances don’t allow it. And I don’t want them to.”

“And what about Aiden? You two patched things up, I take it?”

“As much as they can be patched up. Things are just a little tense right now, because of some really strange circumstances with his family. Aiden is different. He’s always under a lot of pressure. He has his company and his money to worry about, and I just want to help him with that.”

“What if he didn’t have that company and that money, though?” Ben said, “Would you still feel the same way about him?”

Gwen shook her head, “No. Of course I wouldn’t. Sometimes I do think it would almost be better for us if he didn’t. It wouldn’t get in the way anymore. Money complicates things like you wouldn’t believe. But it’s so much a part of him that it scares me a little to think of him losing it.”

“So you’d still love him, then? No room in there for Ben?” he said.

“Okay, the third person thing’s a little weird. Also, of course I’d still love him. I’d love him if he didn’t have a cent to him. And that will never change. There. Is that satisfactory? No more mixed messages, or signals, or inklings, or any of that sort of thing.”

Ben smiled and nodded. “That’s actually all I needed to hear. Thanks, Gwen. You have no idea how much hearing all that helps me.” He held out his hand.

Gwen shook it. “Good, well, I guess this is goodbye then?”

“Yes, I should think. Parting and sweet sorrow and whatnot.”

Before she could stop him, he lifted her hand up to his lips and gave it a scratchy kiss. “Until we meet again,” he said.

He was a handsome man, and charming. However, Gwen was glad she wasn’t with him. And despite what she’d said to the contrary, she didn’t think that she’d start anything with him. There was something not quite wholesome about that man. She wasn’t exactly certain what or why. It was only a feeling, an intuition.

She watched him walk away, then checked her phone for the time. “Oh!” she said, realizing that if she wanted enough time to really go through her outfits for whatever Judith had planned she’d have to get back to the suite about fifteen minutes before the current time.

***

“S
end him in!” Judith said, and the butler nodded.

Moments later, a rather tall, rather handsome Englishman in need of a shave stepped into Judith’s sitting room.

“You have it, then?” Judith said, feeling far too giddy for her age.

“It was like you said, she walked right into it.” He pulled a small black recorder out of his pocket and set it on the coffee table. It rather reminded Judith of a tube of lipstick.

He pushed a button and through the tiny speaker Judith heard two voices.

“
What if he didn’t have that company and that money, though? Would you still feel the same way about him?
”

“
No. Of course I wouldn’t...”

Gwen sounded even shriller through the tinny speaker than she did in person, Judith noted.

He killed the sound. “Satisfactory?”

“More than satisfactory. Thank you again for your services, Mister Somersby.”

Ben Somersby gave her the full wattage of his smile. “Oh, it was my pleasure, madam.”

“W
hat time is it?”  Gwen said.

“Two minutes since the last time you asked,” Aiden replied, giving her a light nudge with his elbow.

“Okay. What time was it when I asked two minutes ago?”

“Precisely? Two minutes ago it was 9:37 Post Meridian.”

“Post Meridian? Fancy. But how many seconds past 9:37 was it two minutes ago?” Gwen said, feeling cheeky. That earned her another elbow nudge, this one a little more insistent than the first one.

“They’ll come soon enough, stop worrying,” Aiden said.

They’d both been dressed and ready to go for the last twenty minutes at least. Aiden had put on a tailored black suit complimented by a red silk tie while Gwen had (after an agonizing hour and a half with all their luggage strewn across the bed) opted for a black dress that reminded her of the one she’d worn when they first met at Astor’s party in Manhattan.

That seemed so long ago to her now. Sometimes, all the things that happened to her there felt like a story she’d heard second or third-hand, or as a dream that you remembered snatches of during waking life.

At that moment, however, her concern rested squarely on the shoulders of her tardy parents.

“Did you know my dad likes to boast about never having been late for a day at the office in his life?” Gwen said.

“They’ll be here,” Aiden said, trying to soothe her nerves.

“And where is that creepy butler?” Gwen said. Lateness was a theme today, it appeared. “Judith better want us somewhere really close by if she expects us to get there inside 20 minutes.”

“I’ve been wondering that, as well,” Aiden said. He took another compulsive look at his watch.

“And you’re sure she said nothing at all about what’s going on tonight? Not even the tiniest, most cryptic of hints?” Gwen said. She wondered if she should wait out in the hallway, just in case everyone had suddenly forgotten which suite they were in.

“No, nothing. Nothing at all,” he said, his jaw working at the mention of Judith. Aiden had seemed a bit off somehow ever since he came back to the room. And every time Gwen asked him what they’d talked about, he became cagey, giving her answers like Nonsense or Senility.

“I’m going to call dad’s room,” Gwen said, starting for the phone. Someone knocked on the door.

Before Gwen could wrench it open and berate the late person on the other side (and most certainly to prevent such a scenario) Aiden beat her to it.

“Barb, Stan. Come in, please,” Aiden said.

Her mother and her mother’s boyfriend walked into the suite arm-in-arm. Barb wore a single-strap red dress and Stan, to Gwen’s surprise, actually didn’t look bad in his suit. Not nearly as nice as Aiden did, of course, but not anywhere near the sideshow Gwen had going in her mind’s eye.

“Oh, wow!” Stan said, ogling the furniture, the staircase, the big TV over the fireplace in the corner, “I don’t even want to know what they charge per night for digs like this!”

“It would give you nightmares, I’m sure,” Aiden said.

Barb uncoupled from her beau and greeted Gwen with a hug. Thankfully she no longer reeked of the same perfume as earlier. “You look so beautiful! Classic, I think. Doesn’t she look classic, Stan?”

“Like something out of an Audrey movie,” Stan agreed, followed by, “So what’s a guy gotta do to afford something like this? ‘Cause I own an IT firm back in Albany and I’m not sure my salary could cover the damage deposit.”

“He’s just joking, Aiden,” Barb said, “He just gets a little nervous before a big date is all.”

Gwen wondered if there was time to visit the bathroom for a good stomach heaving before they had to get going. Before she could give the matter any further thought, someone else knocked at the door.

Again, Aiden reached it first. “David, Elsa,” he said, standing aside and waving them in.

David wore the same tux as he had to the restaurant. Elsa, hanging off his arm, also wore a black dress. Hers was definitely of the sluttier variety, Gwen noted. It had a drooping neckline that was one moment shy of not standing perfectly straight to spill everything out, and a hem that also warned against even considering the idea of bending over.

What Gwen found more interesting though was the couples’ reactions to each other. She knew that David had met Stan, for instance. But she doubted that her mother even knew about her father’s current fling with Elsa.

They all sized each other up while Gwen and Aiden slowly backed out of the picture.

Barb squinted, trying to place where she knew that face from. Gwen cringed, waiting for the yelling to start.

“Oh! Aren’t you our waitress from the other night?” Barb said.

“Yes!” Elsa replied, “And you are the drunken former wife of my David!”

This is it
, Gwen thought
, the fight starts here
. Elsa looked young and spry, but she knew Barb was wiry and scrappy and... They hugged. The two women who should have been enemies hugged.

“I suppose I did pour the sauce on a little thick, didn’t I?” Barb said.

“I don’t get it...” Gwen said.

Aiden put his arm over her shoulder and pulled her close so that she could smell his aftershave. “They’re over each other, that’s all. And they’re being friends about it You should be happy for them,” he said.

Gwen watched the two couples go sit on the couch and the wingbacks in the little sunken living room and begin chatting animatedly. From the sounds of it, Elsa was trying to tell Stan the story of Barb getting so drunk that she couldn’t even stand up. The waitress threw her hands into the air to simulate all the cutlery and wine glasses flying off the table. They all laughed.

And they did look happy, Barb and David. Gwen could see that from the way Barb snuggled into Stan’s body when he pulled her close, or the way her dad couldn’t keep the big, dopey grin off his face when the pretty waitress looked his direction.

Her mom and dad, when they weren’t screaming at each other over the minutiae of their separation, actually seemed like friends. The realization struck her an almost physical blow, and she knew this was the thing she’d just not been able to grasp about them until that moment.

“You know what? I think I am. Happy for them, I mean. I guess this place does have a few good memories after all,” Gwen said, leaning more of her weight against Aiden.

“A few,” Aiden agreed. Again, he looked at his watch. “I wonder if something’s wrong? It’s nearly 10.”

“But what time is it
precisely
?” Gwen said, getting him back with a nudge of her own.

“Time to worry, perhaps?” Aiden said.

That ratcheted up Gwen’s anxieties, and she kept looking at the door, wondering what the mean old witch could possibly have planned for them tonight.

When the knock finally did come, it startled Gwen so badly that she would have stumbled if Aiden hadn’t been there with his arm around. This time, she beat him to the door, opening it to reveal the butler on the other side.

“I have a message for you,” he said, holding a folded piece of paper between his index and middle fingers. As soon as Gwen took it, he gave her the slightest nod and headed back for the elevators.

Gwen stood in the doorway, too anxious to open the note to even go inside and shut the door. She unfolded the paper, read the few handwritten words inside. Aiden came up beside her, and she handed it over to him. “Is this where I think it is?”

He confirmed her suspicions after reading the contents. “It is. It’s the same room where I asked you to marry me, right here, downstairs in this hotel.”

Gwen tensed deep inside her body. What sort of game was Judith playing? Why did she choose that particular room?

D
ownstairs, heading away from the lobby towards the ballroom, a powerful wave of déjà vu whipped its way through Gwen. She walked arm-in-arm with Aiden, her parents and their dates following behind.

But it wasn’t just Gwen’s parents. She recognized people. People from that first night in the ballroom. Aunts and uncles and friends from school. She even got a glimpse of Beatrice speaking with a group of people.

And everyone again wore their nice clothes. They waded through a sea of suits, tuxedos, and fashionable dresses.

They arrived at the ballroom and found it done up exactly the way it had been that night. All the tables with their white table clothes arranged in a rectangle around the dance floor. Even the same music was playing.