I raise a shoulder. “Best not to pussyfoot around these kinds of things. People know when you’re vacillating, and that would have only made us look guilty when we have nothing to hide. It was best to be upfront and let them know our intentions.”
Her phone vibrates, and keeps vibrating, as it has since the post went up on the social media platform. She glances at it, then away.
"Oh, you did a good job of that all right. The straight-speaking groom who’s sorry that it didn’t work out with Lila, but who knew as soon as he set his eyes on me that I was the only one for him."
"It’s the truth."
"The truth." She throws up her hands. "The truth is that I look like a slut, like someone who, while organizing my client’s wedding, fell in love with my client’s husband-to-be."
"It happens." I slide the shot glass of tequila I’ve poured across the counter. "Have a drink."
"I don’t want to have a drink. I think this was a mistake. We shouldn’t have announced it like this."
"So, you’d have rather turned up at the wedding where the press would have realized it was you only when I lifted your veil?"
"Something like that."
Her phone vibrates again. She reaches for it, but I snatch it up and pocket it.
"Hey, give me that."
"It’s not going to help to look at the comments. Let them go crazy. It’s only going to get worse when we finally marry. But it will die down, I promise. Something else will come along, and they’ll shift their attention away."
"How can you be so… blasé?"
"Practice?" I drum my fingers on the counter. "When I first started out in the company that my father founded, everyone compared me to him. They soon realized I was more ambitious, far more ruthless, and didn’t give a fuck about what any of them thought of me."
"That must have made your employees happy."
"Those who didn’t like my style left. The employees who stayed, grew with me. Some of the naysayers never stopped spreading rumors about me. But the fuck if I cared. The more I built up the company and added new businesses to the portfolio, the more money I made, the more their voices dropped in pitch, until they were gone, drowned out by the jingle of coins. Metaphorically speaking, that is."
"Is everything about money?" She scrutinizes my features.
"Isn’t everything about money?"
"I know… It’s why I’m here, but that’s only because I don’t have any. What about when you have more than you can ever spend? Life can’t be just about amassing wealth and power and possessions. There has to be something more to it, surely."
"Says the woman who agreed to this arrangement to have access to both."
"No, I just didn’t want you to drive me out of business. It’s not as if you gave me much of a choice." She hunches her shoulders. "Maybe I didn’t think it through completely. I’m not sure it’s worth having my name out there as a wedding-breaker. I’m a wedding planner, not a wedding-destroyer."
"Should have thought about that before you gave my ex-fiancée the advice you did." I smirk.
"Argh!" She plants her hands on her hips. "Don’t you have one iota of empathy in you?"
I pretend to think about it, then respond, "Nope," and shake my head. "Empathy never got me very far in life. On the other hand, ignoring everyone and everything else to focus on my goals? That’s what’s helped me move forward."
"Me, too." She rubs her forehead. "But I’m not sure about anything anymore." She draws in a breath. “You know what that means, right?”
“No, what does it mean?”
She glances about the space, then her gaze alights on my bar at the far end. “It’s time for a drink.”
12
Isla
"No… no way. You said what?" I giggle, then hiccup. Shit, I’m drunk as a skunk in a drum. Oops. That doesn’t make any sense. I slide off the barstool and promptly land on my arse.