Diamonds Are Forever (25 page)

“What an honor to meet
you,
” Gemma replied, in awe as she took his hand.

“My, I can’t believe just how young you are,” Burke shook his head.  “I mean, Tyler mentioned you had a whole
other
career before this and I don’t see how you could have possibly had the time to do that and now do this and hone your craft as you have.”

“Oh, gosh,” Gemma said, blushing at his words.  She felt her heart flutter at the recognition in his praise, realizing it was
that
feeling that she had hoped to feel after her show.  Perhaps she had put too much stock in Fashion Week itself.  Especially if the weeks to follow were going to be anything like this.

Thank God for this meeting.

~

Gemma came out of her lunch with Burke in high spirits.  Though he wasn’t in the fashion industry, being praised by and subsequently commissioned and hired to work for him was an honor that no one could deny.  And he hadn’t seemed to care that she had been the cause of recent tabloid fodder or that few in her old or new industry seemed to take her seriously.  Instead, he focused only on the work that she had produced. 
The perks of working with someone so insanely eccentric
, Gemma mused with a smile.

Climbing into a cab, she directed the driver towards Brooklyn.  Damian had just returned home from his charity game in Spain and texted her to meet, looking forward to celebrating together.  With his own obligations to his team and the league gearing up for the new season, he had reluctantly missed Fashion Week.  But Gemma had almost preferred it that way.  She had realized that she needed a little time away from him, but not necessarily because she didn’t
want
to be with him.  It was just that Damian, unfortunately, was now representative of her most recent mistake – one that had tarnished an otherwise clean entry into the fashion industry.

But it didn’t matter anymore.  With a high-profile new job on the horizon, Gemma realized how silly she had been to give it so much thought – to put so much emphasis on Fashion Week when her work went beyond it.  Besides, the people who mattered clearly took notice.

Upon arriving at Damian’s door, Gemma finally realized just how much she had missed him.  She hadn’t been alone with him since the morning that they found out about their unplanned wedding and hadn’t seen him since the night they left the
Leadoff
premiere.

When the front door opened, Gemma smiled, studying Damian’s curious ensemble – a blue tri-blend t-shirt and a pair of jeans worn under a black apron, a set of tongs sitting in its front pocket.

“Hi,” she said, cocking her head.

“I’m cooking for us,” he said, leaning down to give her a quick kiss on the lips.

“I can see that.”  She took his hand, following him through the house to the open French doors that led to the backyard.  Though the place was still relatively empty, sporting stacks of both packed and unpacked boxes, it looked nothing like it did the night of his housewarming party.  In the light of day, with just the two of them in its space, it felt warm, airy.  Even without all the furnishings and decorations, it already felt like Damian.

The backyard, on the other hand, was completely furnished.  It was cozy, a fenced-in space lined with vibrant green trees.  Atop the freshly manicured lawn was a rustic brick patio, boasting a trim of terra cotta pots filled with vibrantly colored flowers.  In the middle of it all was a circular dining table with a wrought-iron frame and a glass top, set neatly for two.

“Huh,” Gemma nodded, lifting an impressed eyebrow.

A few feet away from the dining table was a rustic brick counter and grill.  There were bowls of figs that appeared to have been picked from the branches looming above it.  And just inches away were plates of stuffed squash blossoms ready for the grill, two wine glasses beside them, overturned and waiting for the
Riesling
that chilled in an ice bucket behind them.

“Hungry?” Damian asked, smiling over his shoulder as he returned to the grill.

“I just ate,” Gemma replied.  “But I’m more than happy to do it again, especially with
all this.
  Everything looks beautiful.”  She walked to him, placing light hands on his back as she peeked around his shoulders.

“I missed you,” he whispered, leaning in slightly.  Gemma blushed, moving forward to meet his lips.

“I missed you too,” she said before kissing him.  He reached around to hold her still, kissing her so deeply she thought she’d fall over if she didn’t hold on tight.  Gemma giggled, clasping her hands behind his neck as she pulled her legs up around his waist.

“Oh no,” he laughed.

“What?” she asked, continuing to kiss him.

“I should have known not to cook first.”  Damian held her to him with one arm, turning back to the food set on the grill.  “But I guess we can just let everything burn and go back inside.”

“We can wait,” she said, running her fingers over his hair.  She placed a small kiss on his temple.  “We’ve already waited this long.”  Besides, there was still the issue of them being married.  They had indeed already waited
so
long to sleep together, it might as well wait till things were perfect.  She didn’t feel like consummating a marriage that, in her mind, wasn’t real.  But that was strangely hard to say aloud.

“Also,” Damian said.  “The only reason I’m able to keep from doing more to you right now is Mr. Baker back there.”

“Mr. Baker?”

“As private as this garden is, we’re still in the city,” Damian laughed.  “So, if you turn your head slowly and look up towards that window above the fence…” Gemma did as she was told, peeking over Damian’s shoulders to spot an elderly man sitting by the window in the townhouse attached to Damian’s.  From Mr. Baker’s position, he could look clearly over the fence and into Damian’s backyard.  Gemma frowned, their illusion of privacy shattered.

“He just sits and watches you? Isn’t that a little bit creepy?” Gemma asked, realizing that Mr. Baker didn’t look away, even after he had clearly been caught.

“We’ve talked,” Damian shrugged as he turned the squash blossoms on the grill.  “He’s just… lonely, I think.  He never had children so it was just him and his wife and now it’s just him.”

“Oh,” she replied, still looking back at Mr. Baker.  She noticed, then, that there was a small orange flag hanging off his windowsill.  Gemma recognized it as a Knicks pennant.  “Oh! Did you see what he has on his window?”

“Yeah,” he said, with a smile.

“Does he know who you are?”

“He does now,” Damian said.  “Once he learned my full name, he put two and two together.  He only watches the games that he can get through his crazy old television.  It’s one of the ones that uses those rabbit ear antennas,” he laughed.  “And he gets his stats through the papers.”

“That’s cute,” Gemma murmured as she watched Mr. Baker get up slowly from his seat, disappearing somewhere within his home again.

~

As the sun began to set, Damian lit a set of a half dozen candles on the brick counter.  Gemma sat the dining table, watching as he plated the food and poured the wine.

“Josh and Vlad were there so I got to play with some old teammates and some new ones, too,” Damian said, continuing his story about his game in Spain.  “It was kind of a nice way to sort of say goodbye to one chapter and welcome the next.  Which I’m sure you felt with Fashion Week.”

“Yeah,” she replied, somewhat unconvincingly.  It wasn’t quite the case.

“You haven’t told me about how everything went yet.  I just got the story about Tyler getting you the job with Burke Faust,” Damian said.  He gave her a fleeting kiss on the top of her head as he made his way to the seat across from her.  “I mean, it had to be pretty incredible to get his attention, right?”

“I guess,” she shrugged, biting a nail.  She didn’t want to talk about Fashion Week, considering how anti-climactic the show itself was and how inflammatory the press had been.  Damian had managed to miss it all, not that the media was going after him.

“Really?” Damian laughed.  “It was kind of a big achievement.  I wanted to be there so badly – you don’t want to tell me a little about how it all went?”

“I mean…” The truth was she didn’t.  She had liked living in the moment where her greatest achievement was charming Burke Faust into giving her a job on the spot at their first meeting, not in the mess that Fashion Week had become for her.  But it was hard to explain to Damian why.  After all, it would require her to relive the hateful headlines that had kept her from truly enjoying her own show.  And it reminded her that she was not yet clear to celebrate, not with their mistake still hanging over her head.

“I only heard a little from Gavin but he said everything went smoothly.  And that even he had a great time there,” Damian said.

Gemma nodded hastily.  “Can we change the subject?” she suddenly asked.  Damian blinked back at her, looking a little surprised before reaching for his wine glass.

“Sure,” he replied.

“Let’s… maybe get a certain subject out of the way first?”

“Oh.”  Damian pressed his lips together, playing with the stem of his glass.  “What about it?”

“You said you were handling things.  So, may I ask where in the process of things we are?”

“One of us has to file a statement saying that we were too intoxicated to be making the decision to get married,” he explained.  “Then the other has to agree.  And from there, it’s just a matter of signing a few papers and doing a quick hearing with a Nevada judge over the phone.”

Gemma raised her eyebrows.  “That sounds easy enough,” she nodded.  “So you’ve filed the statement, right?”

“No,” he replied.  “But I’ll handle it and I’ll keep you in the know.  Don’t worry about it, Gemma.”

“Are
you
not worried about it?”

“What is there to be worried about?” he asked with a look of genuine confusion.  “I didn’t think this was a big deal to you.”

“
Why
would you think that?” Gemma asked, a hint of spite in her voice that she failed to hide.  Damian flinched, seeming to detect it.  “It doesn’t bother you that it happened at all? That we were trying to keep this all quiet and private and suddenly, we’re getting married pretty publically in Vegas of all places?”

“It’s not ideal
,
obviously,” Damian laughed, though Gemma could spot his jaw tensing.  “But it happened.  So we just have to do what we can to remedy it, if that’s what we want to do.”  Gemma crimped her lips shut.  She remembered how casual he had been about it at the
Leadoff
premiere, how Azura had mentioned that Damian spoke to her about the situation even after they promised they wouldn’t discuss it with anyone else.  And now he was just brushing everything off like it was “not a big deal?”

“You do know what people were saying about me after everything happened, right?” Gemma said, feeling her throat tighten.  “It was the
week
before my show, before my debut in my new industry and we pull some stunt like that.  What were we thinking? I know you remember more than me because you talked about it with Azura and Gavin, didn’t you? So what was there to talk about? Do you remember how it happened? Why we thought to do something so painfully
stupid
?”

Damian flashed his brows, leaning back in his seat.  “Have you been mad at me this whole time?”

“Is there a reason I should be?”

“Not that I know of.  But I have a feeling that’s not what you’re thinking,” he said, watching her carefully with his eyebrows still raised.  “So what
are
you thinking?”

“I think that there’s something you’re not telling me, Damian.  I think you remember more of that night than you let on and for some reason, it’s worth hiding from me.  And I hate that you’re acting so casually about this, like this isn’t a big deal and we’ll just sign some papers and it’ll be like it never happened.”

“People make mistakes, Gemma,” Damian continued.  “Especially when there’s alcohol involved.  What we did was make a mistake.”

“Marriage isn’t some small decision,” Gemma said.  “It isn’t some thing we decide on a whim like it’s no big deal.  Marriage is the topic that broke up my last big relationship.  It’s not just some little
mistake
people make.”

“Yeah, well we made it, Gemma,” Damian said, his jaw clenching as he stood from his seat.  “I don’t know what else you want me to say.”

“I want you to recognize that it was a mistake.”

“I did already.”

“I want you to tell me why you didn’t stop us.”

“I wasn’t exactly sober, Gemma,” Damian said with a bitter laugh.  “And why was it up to me to stop us?”

“Because…” Gemma started, realizing that the rest of her sentence would sound unreasonable.  She had wanted to say it was because he was her friend.  And as her friend, he had the duty and responsibility to be her watchful eye, her support.  As she thought about it, she realized she couldn’t answer without sounding so ridiculously
selfish
.

She looked up, wanting to apologize.  She was surprised with herself, disappointed in how quick she was to react and how she’d let herself ruin the night that Damian had obviously given good thought to.  He had already taken his plate from the table, tossing the contents out in a bin beside the grill.  A sudden guilt weighing on her chest, Gemma jumped to her feet, her legs pacing to catch up to him.

“I’m sorry,” she said, quickly.  “I wasn’t trying to start an argument, Damian.  This isn’t what I wanted our night to be.”  Damian kept silent, cleaning the grill as he faced away from Gemma.  She approached him slowly, touching her fingertips to his back and waiting for a response.  There was none.  She reached around his waist, embracing him.

“It’s a quick process,” Damian finally said.  “The annulment.”

“I know,” Gemma said, pressing herself to his back as she tried to swallow the lump in her throat.  “I know and I’m sorry I made such a big deal about it.  I’m taking things out on you that have nothing to do with you.  Fashion Week.  The media.  It’s not a big deal.  It was just a mistake, you’re right.”