Happily Ever After: A Novel (2 page)

Calm down, she told herself.

The elevator chose that moment to land smoothly on the fifty-eighth floor. The doors slid back to reveal a modern reception area and Peter Jensen himself standing by the large and not altogether welcoming receptionist’s desk.

“Lily, great,” Jensen said with a grin. “I see you’ve already had a chance to meet Aidan Hathaway.”

Lily turned to the man whose intense eyes now registered a degree of amusement.

“You’re Hathaway?” she asked, her legs almost too wobbly to carry her out of the elevator with any dignity.

In response, Aidan Hathaway gave her a smile that could only mean trouble.

Chapter 3

A
t 6:50 on Friday morning, Allison stands at the foot of my bed and clears her throat. In the background, the air conditioner hums. It’s only April, but we are on day two of a heat wave that is making the local meteorologists hysterical. They keep throwing out words like
Armageddon
and
Apocalypse.
Yes, it’s hot, really fucking hot, in fact, but I don’t exactly see the end of the world angle, at least not this morning.

“Mom? Are you awake?”

“No,” I mutter, pulling the blankets up over my head. “I’m not even close.”

“Which jeans?” Allison yanks my covers back and shoves two pairs of dark blue, impossibly small pants in my face. How can a body be that rail thin and still house all the necessary internal organs? Maybe it’s the macrobiotic brown rice her father feeds her. He swears it will change my life. I tell him so will macaroni and cheese, although I doubt we’re talking about the same kind of change.

“Mom, wake up! Which jeans?”

“They’re the same,” I say.

“No,” my daughter says emphatically. “They are
not
the same. You aren’t paying attention.”

“You’re right,” I say. “I’m sleeping.”

This earns me a classic tweener pout. Allison’s lower lip juts out far enough to provide a comfy landing spot for the finches I hear outside my window. But I know better than to mention it. A pout I can handle. A full-on snit will have to wait until after I’ve had coffee.

“Those,” I say, pointing to the pair of jeans in her left hand.

“I don’t like those.”

“Okay, the other ones.”

“Thanks, Mom,” Allison says, and skips off to her room, where I’m sure she will commence agonizing about what shirt to wear. If I get up now, I can be safely locked in the bathroom by the time she comes back.

Downstairs I hear the door slam, which means it’s now exactly 7:00
A.M.
You know those atomic clocks that are so accurate they lose only one second every 30 million years? Well, they’ve got nothing on Greta. My German housekeeper, somewhere between the ages of sixty and infinity, walks in the door every morning at exactly seven o’clock. In the ten years we’ve been together, she has never once been late, making it the longest and most fulfilling relationship I’ve had in my adult life. I mean, Greta
does
things. She cooks. She folds. She irons. If she’s mad, she refuses to acknowledge my existence for a few hours and then gets over it. There’s no backstabbing or cheating. I trust her completely. That she may be the only person I can say that about is alarming only if I spend time thinking about it.

Plus, on the first day Greta and Allison met, when Allison was a mere twelve months old, they gazed into one another’s eyes and fell in love. They simply adore each other. Sometimes when I watch them together, I feel as if I’m on the outside looking in, like I’m in a bubble with impenetrable walls.

One minute after the door slams, I hear dishes being hauled from the washer and put away. Next, the strong aroma of coffee wafts up the stairs and lures me from my bed. Downstairs, Greta hands me a mug with a layer of warm, foamy milk on the top. I want to kiss her, but she doesn’t do touchy-feely with me. At all. Ever.

“Thank you and good morning,” I say. She nods without saying a word and turns to Allison, who has joined us in the kitchen. Allison holds up two shirts.

“Which one?” she demands. I should have done the bathroom thing.

“Pancakes or waffles?” Greta shoots back.

“Pancakes,” Allison says.

“The stripes,” Greta says, pointing at a shirt. I watch this exchange like I’m a referee at the U.S. Open.

“Great!” I say. “That’s all settled.” Neither one acknowledges my existence. I take my coffee to the table and hide behind the pages of the local newspaper.

I don’t do a lot of cooking. Allison says the food I prepare is awful because I don’t pay attention and usually forget a key ingredient or two. Which is true. It can be distracting trying to figure out how many ways Aidan Hathaway and Lily Dell can fuck in 250 pages. It’s not world peace, I know, but it does require concentration.

While Allison and Greta chatter in German, I, who did not grow up with a German housekeeper and speak little more of the language than
Ich bin ein Berliner,
stare blankly at the headlines and try to chart a course through the day that will allow for everyone’s needs to be met. It won’t work. Something will slip through the cracks. I’ve come to think of my to-do list as a work in perpetual progress. It is an epic that will span many years. It will never end! If I could make it more interesting, I might be able to convince my publisher to serialize it in an e-book.

“Do either of you need anything from Target?” I ask.

“Pink nail polish!” shouts Allison.

“Laundry detergent,” says Greta.

Greta does most of our shopping, or “marketing” as she calls it. But she draws the line at Target and Home Depot. There is something about the vastness of these stores, the overwhelming quantities of cheap merchandise, that offends her sensibilities, and I understand this to be a nonnegotiable aspect of our relationship.

As I’m just about to clarify the shade of the pink and the brand of the detergent, I’m suddenly swallowed whole by a prickly, cold sensation, as if the icy ghost of Christmas Future has wrapped himself around me and begun to squeeze.

Panic. I lean both hands on the marble kitchen island for balance, closing my eyes against the dizziness. A sheen of sweat breaks out across my forehead, and I shudder from its chill. I gasp, a sharp, awful sound. My lungs feel small and useless.

“Mom?”

I open my eyes to see Allison staring at me, alarm splashed all over her pretty face.

“Are you okay, Sadie?” Greta asks, simultaneously looking at me and flipping a pancake into the air, just to have it land perfectly dead center of the pan.

Slowly the tightness in my chest recedes. This is not my first panic attack. This is panic attack number 342. Or something like that. We are practically old friends. I gulp the rich, sweet-smelling air while trying not to look insane.

“I’m fine,” I say, still clutching the counter. “Just a dizzy spell. Probably the heat.”

I smile. I down a slice of toast and sip my coffee. Usually as a panic episode recedes I feel nothing but relief and genuine gratitude that it is not my permanent state. And yet right now I feel exceedingly unusual, like a part of me has split off and gone elsewhere, as if I might be floating. Greta turns back to the pancakes, but Allison keeps watching me, brows furrowed. I kiss her head.

“I’m fine,” I say. “Eat your breakfast. We have to go to school.”

I excuse myself to take a shower, but I don’t head for the bathroom. Instead, I’m drawn toward my office, although I cannot explain why. My heart beats erratically, the detached feeling following in my wake. I want to take a shower and get dressed and take Allison to school. I don’t want to go to my office. But what I want does not seem to matter.

I stand outside the closed door, pure panic rising in my throat at the prospect of opening it.

“Stop it, Sadie,” I whisper. “Get a grip.”

I place a hand on the doorknob. My teeth chatter. Sweat soaks the back of the gray T-shirt I wore to bed last night. The doctor said panic attacks were not uncommon in women my age and could come at any time, without warning.

“Sometimes they have triggers and sometimes they don’t,” she said with a distracted smile. She then proceeded to tell me a story about a woman roughly my age who was terrified every time she had to open the trunk of her car.

“She’s sure she’ll find a peacock in there,” the doctor said.

A peacock? The doc nodded grimly. This was her way of telling me it could be worse. At least I wasn’t afraid of peacocks in the trunk. But in some ways, a peacock was better than free-form panic. At least then, I would know to avoid car trunks. The doctor prescribed Xanax and told me to come back in two weeks.

I now carry the Xanax in my purse everywhere I go, like a talisman against the panic monster. I drink wine, telling myself it will calm my mind, which it does for a moment in time. But these solutions are Band-Aids, and I wonder what will happen when they fall off.

Still standing outside my office, I count backward from ten and push open the door. It’s empty. No peacocks. I sit down at my desk with a thud and run my fingers along its edge. I love this desk, its modern lines and no-nonsense approach. It’s all business, and when I sit at it, so am I.

I start to relax, ready to begin the process of convincing myself that everything is perfectly fine. My laptop sits open on the desk, just as I left it last night. Up on the screen is the manuscript for
Stolen Secrets,
featuring Aidan Hathaway and Lily Dell. I focus on the blinking cursor, midway down the page, rhythmic and soothing. My eyes drift to the word count at the bottom of the screen. Sixty-two hundred words.

Impossible. I look away. I look back. I still see a sixty-two hundred word count. But ask any writer: word counts are not things we forget. They are a measure of progress, about the only one we get until we share the manuscript with an editor or a friend coached not to criticize a first draft too harshly. As well as I know that my nose is slightly crooked, I know I quit well shy of my fifty-five-hundred-word goal, at forty-two hundred to be exact. In fact, as I climbed into bed, I swore I’d make up the difference tonight. So where did the extra fifteen hundred words come from? A veil of dread covers me like a burka. Memory loss at forty-six years old? Early onset Alzheimer’s? What happens to Allison and Greta and Perkins then? Before I can return to full hyperventilation, I hear a shout from downstairs.

“Mom, school! Aren’t you out of the shower yet?”

How long have I been sitting here staring at my laptop? I reach up and feel my hair, bedraggled as usual. Nope. Never got to the shower, and now I’ve lost the chance. I will go through my morning looking like I just rolled out of bed because, technically, that will be true.

“We’re going to be late, Mom. And it’s
not
going to be my fault.”

I jump out of the chair, and as I head for my room, I shed the plaid pajama pants and gray T-shirt only a single lady determined to stay that way would wear to bed, both now damp with the sweat of panic.

Chapter 4

Stolen Secrets

Chapter Two

Sitting at the bar in Gramercy Tavern, Lily tried to keep a blush of pure humiliation and anger from her cheeks. Just that very morning, after the elevator incident, Hathaway’s secretary had called, requesting her presence tonight at seven o’clock.

“Give the maître d’ your name and he will seat you in the correct position,” the secretary said in a clipped British accent. “And don’t be late. Mr. Hathaway doesn’t like late.”

Correct position? But the secretary was gone before Lily had a chance to clarify what exactly that meant.

“I’m not going,” she announced to the three high walls of her cubicle. “No way.” But here she was, because in the end, the anxious, slightly desperate feeling Aidan Hathaway produced in the pit of her stomach was impossible to ignore.

The maître d’ took her name and sat her on a particular barstool.

“He likes his girls to face to the south,” the man said, turning her slightly. “That way he can see you when he comes in but you can’t see him.” The maître d’ relayed this information as if it were all quite ordinary. Not knowing what else to do, she thanked him and took her seat at the bar, the flush of anger making her glow.

After a moment, Lily turned so she faced the door of the bar. She would not play Hathaway’s games.

Over the course of the day, Lily had convinced herself the only reason she was showing up was to clarify with Hathaway what, exactly, had happened in the elevator. Lily was not that kind of girl, and she felt this was something she had to make very clear.
She was on a mission to restore her good name. A drink materialized in front of her. The bartender, a cute blond guy, gave her a wink.

“Pretty lady like you shouldn’t be sitting here alone staring at the door,” he said with a warm smile. “Whoever he is, if he can’t show up on time, forget about him.”

“Thank you,” Lily said, raising the glass to her lips. The drink was pale purple and smelled of violets. “This is wonderful. What is it?”

“What’s your name?” the bartender asked.

“Lily.”

“Well, then that’s what the drink is called. The Lily.”

Lily cast her eyes down, a warm glow replacing the fiery anger of moments before. She didn’t know if it was the alcohol or the flirtation.

“That’s really sweet of you,” she said, taking another sip.

Suddenly, the bartender’s face fell. He grabbed a towel and began mopping quick circles on the bar even though it was so clean Lily could see her reflection.

“Excuse me,” he said, and scurried away.

At that exact moment, a cold hand closed around Lily’s neck. She gasped. Aidan Hathaway.

“Again, you look lovely, Lily,” he said, keeping a light grip on the back of her neck. There was something about the way he said her name that made the bottom of her stomach drop. It was the sensation of longing. She wanted to be naked with him, tangled in his limbs and a mess of soft white sheets.

But she reminded herself she barely liked the guy. What sort of person has his secretary arrange for dates anyway? Couldn’t he have called her? After all, she worked for his company. It wasn’t like he couldn’t get her phone number.

“I’m sorry I kept you waiting,” he continued, pulling up the stool next to hers so their knees touched. “Work. I have something for you.”

He handed her a shopping bag from Bloomingdale’s. Inside was a wrapped box.

“Open it,” he said.

Doing as she was told, she pulled out the box and stripped off the copper-colored wrapping paper, letting it fall to the floor. Gently, she loosened the box lid to reveal several layers of tissue paper. Her hands shook as she peeled back the tissue to reveal her shirt, the one she’d ruined with lipstick just earlier today. Unlike her shirt, this was not a knockoff; it was the real thing. Lily looked up at Hathaway, into his green eyes. All traces of anger evaporated.

“I don’t know what to say,” she said. “Thank you.”

“It looked good on you,” Aidan said. “It would be a shame not to have it anymore.”

Oh, how she wanted him! It almost seemed too big to manage. And not at all logical. Everyone knew you did not sleep with the boss unless you wanted to derail your career. But this was Aidan Hathaway, New York City’s most eligible bachelor.

Stick to your plan, Lily, she chided herself. Your mission.

Aidan didn’t say anything. He just studied her face, a shadow clouding his eyes, as if he could read her thoughts.

“You’re incredibly beautiful,” he said slowly, his voice husky with emotion. “And you have no idea.”

Don’t say those things, Lily thought.

“Mr. Hathaway,” she began. The speech was all prepared, rehearsed in front of the bathroom mirror in fact. Now she just had to deliver it. “I’m so honored to be lead creative on the Hathaway account that I think it’s important we maintain a professional relationship. I don’t want any distractions. I want my full focus to be on marketing the many Hathaway brands to the world.”

She felt the heat rise on her face, all the while held captive by his eyes. He smiled as she went on.

“Furthermore, I think I should explain that my, our, behavior in the elevator was, um, really . . .”

She sputtered, losing the words she’d so carefully assembled. She wished he would stop looking at her.

“Do go on,” Aidan said, placing a hand casually on her thigh. She could smell him, the same warm citrusy scent that had made the elevator so small. It very effectively canceled out all other thought. He was inches from her.

“Are you done?” he asked.

Lily nodded. She could think of nothing but his hand on her thigh. The tips of his fingers grazed the hem of the very professional orange sheath dress she had changed into earlier. She gulped.

“Good,” he said.

Before she knew it, he had swept her off her barstool and into his arms. His warm lips found hers, and he kissed her, long and hard and deep. His touch set off fireworks behind her eyelids. She wrapped her arms around his neck and held on. Suddenly, he pulled back and put those lush lips to her ear.

“I want you,” he whispered. “I’ve wanted you from the moment I saw you. It’s almost more than I can stand.”

He slid a hand between her legs, far enough up that she forgot what she was thinking about.

“Do you want to come home with me?” he asked.

Again, Lily found her voice betrayed her. She nodded her head. Yes. Please.

“I want to possess you,” he whispered. “To consume you.”

There was something about the word
consume
that sent a cold shiver down her spine. Aidan Hathaway had a reputation for consuming anything and everything that caught his fancy. Yes, after the elevator, she’d done her research about the man himself, read all the gossip about his womanizing ways, how he was hot and heavy with a Brazilian model one day and on to a British rock star the next. She’d read about how he zeroed in on companies he wanted to acquire with an eaglelike precision and would not rest until they were neatly tucked away under the Hathaway Enterprises umbrella. He was intense on the basketball court, routinely getting out on the floor with the professional athletes whose teams he owned.

And when it came to philanthropy he was just as focused. Instead of giving over a pile of money and calling it a day, he went along to Africa or Asia or wherever to make sure the dollars he gave were spent appropriately. He was known to fund entire ventures while on the road, if something caught his eye and seemed worthy.

Aidan Hathaway was twenty-nine years old.

His eyes held her, although she craved release. He seemed to see right into her soul, all the way down to the dirty, hidden stuff, the secrets she had never told anyone. She found herself wishing Hathaway Enterprises had never hired Jensen & Richardson Communications. But it was too late for that.

“Do you want what I want?” Aidan asked.

“Yes,” she breathed, not even thinking about her answer. It came out like a sigh of relief.

His hand moved to the back of her dress. It was a beautiful Prada knockoff with a row of simple buttons up the back. She could feel his fingers pop a button and slide between the fabric and her skin. She shuddered. A part of her screamed out for him to stop, they were in a public place for God’s sake, a restaurant full of people! But another part of her did not care if he undressed her right here and had his way with her on the very clean bar. And that part won out.

“Shhh,” Aidan whispered, his lips brushing the soft flesh of her neck. She tilted her head back, her body pleading for more. Nothing else mattered but right now.