The Wedding Wager (McMaster the Disaster) (13 page)

“I know,” she said, putting her hand to her forehead. “I’m sorry, I couldn’t help myself. But you just sent that email and then disappeared from the face of the planet. I obviously had to rush over here, and then when you weren’t home I started panicking. Thank God you walked up when you did, I was about to start shaking the collar of that fellow with the large glasses just to get some information out of him.”

I snorted, imagining my mother’s perfectly coiffed hair bouncing as she shook the poor nerdy guy into oblivion. At least she’d have to get off my case about being careful in public after her face got plastered all over the covers of the rags.

We got into the apartment and mother smoothed the front of her jacket and skirt about twenty times, obviously still trying to compose herself. “Alright, let’s get to work. We are going to be on high alert for the next ninety days at least, and you’re going to have to be on constant standby.”

“Did you like… join the military or something?” I teased.

She gave me one of her famous motherly, impatient looks. “You’re the one who just dropped the bomb of the century and you’re accusing me of military action?”

“Har, har,” was the oh-so-witty comeback I was able to formulate.

“Now hurry up, we have a ton of work to do.”

“Work?”

She folded her hands calmly in front of her, pursing her lips. “Yes dear, the wedding? You may remember that you’re getting married… in THREE MONTHS!”

I blinked back my shock at her yelling. “Okay, okay, sheesh.” I figured that moment, when she was being Godzilla-of-the-bride, was not the most opportune moment to fill her in on the little tidbit that I hadn’t actually chosen my wedding planner yet.

She’d probably climb the Empire State Building or something.

“Come on!” she said. “We’re taking my car.”

I sighed, thanking my lucky stars that I’d had time to grab my sugar fix.

She talked as she walked. “We’ve got to decide on flowers, I’ve got a cake tasting lined up, then there’s the venue,” she looked at the sky. “Good Lord I don’t know how we’re going to get a venue at the last minute like this.”

I mumbled something unintelligible.

“And for Pete’s sake, we have got to start booking some of this stuff. The time for looking is over.”

Again with the mumbling.

The rest of the day was a complete whirlwind. With the giant hot chocolate and then straight to the cake tasting, I’d never had so much sugar in my life. After that, I was completely useless, in a total sugar coma, trying to sleep it off between appointment after appointment. I honestly had no idea what I agreed to.

Hopefully, even in my hopped-up state, I’d had the sense not to finalize anything.

It’ll be fine, I kept telling myself. It’ll be fine.

~ ~ ~

Thank goodness Jake was back to his usual self, apologizing with three-dozen burgundy roses, personally delivered to my door.

“I am so sorry,” he said, happily using his key this time, much to my relief.

After that new blowout the other morning, I wasn’t sure if we’d already fallen into the trap I’d seen so many of my friends fall into… fighting over useless, petty crap every moment of every day.

I beamed. “I… I just don’t want to turn into one of those couples who has nothing to talk about unless they’re fighting over something.”

“I know,” he said, shortening the distance between us. He handed me the huge bouquet. “I don’t either.”

He grabbed me, tightening his grip around me, and the only thing I wished in that moment was that there was someone else in the house to magically take the flowers from me so I could ravage my man properly.

Later that night, Jake took me out on a romantic, fully catered boat ride. There was just something magical about the moon shining off the water while you’re across a single candle’s light from the one person in the world who you love the most.

Unfortunately, the whole evening was mostly to get some time in together before he had to leave again. I hated how needy I felt, wanting nothing more than to grab him and never let him go.

“I’ll call every day, you know that,” he said, rubbing my thumb as he held my hand across the table.

I nodded. “I know, it’s just that… it seems harder this time for some reason.”

“I know,” he said, crinkling his brow. “It’s like that for me too. Like, I feel closer to you now or something and it sucks that much more to go.”

“Exactly,” I said, hoping he wouldn’t see the glisten in my eyes in the candlelight.

Of course he did though, and when one fell, he whisked it away.

I wanted nothing more than to make love to him one more time, there on the romantic boat, but with the zoom lenses these days, that was not a risk we could take. Who knew who was out there lurking on the shore? Or from a friggin’ helicopter for all I knew.

~ ~ ~

“What am I going to do? What am I going to do?” I yelled several days later, my voice getting more manic by the second.

“You need to take a load off,” Jen said, handing me a glass of wine.

She’d put her own drink in a wine glass for effect, though it was straight up grape juice.

“You’ll never figure it out if you’re wound up this tight. Nothing good can come from a pressure decision.”

“It was a pressure decision six weeks ago. Now it’s downright critical.”

She tilted her head, contending the point. “And that’s why it’s even more important to clear your head and relax.”

“The wine is supposed to clear my head? Really?”

She shrugged. “Well it can’t hurt. You have got to relax. I’ve never seen you so stressed out, and believe me, I’ve seen you stressed.”

“Oh my God I know,” I said, talking a gulp of the wine. “I just… God, I just don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings.”

She nodded, understanding. “But you can’t have two people planning two completely different weddings.”

“You don’t think I know that?” I said, glaring.

“Of course I know you know that, it’s just… someone had to say it out loud, right? I mean, time is ticking.”

I sighed.

“Look, lets just have a few drinks,” she said, rolling her eyes at her own glass, “and see if we can talk it out. Who knows, maybe one of them will jump out at you as the obvious choice once we start breaking it down.”

I nodded, taking another gulp. This was going to take a lot of wine.

Over the next couple hours, we talked about everything, okay, mostly about pregnancy, babies, and well… Jake and David.

“I’m just still so… up in the air with him,” Jen said. “I mean he’s great, I just don’t know if I want someone who’s going to be in the public eye like that. Who’s going to be away all of the time.”

I gave her a panicked face. I mean, she was completely describing my life too, after all.

She shook her head. “It’s not the same for you,” she said, sipping her juice. “You don’t have a baby to worry about. I can’t just up and head to New Zealand for the weekend, you know? There’s stability, and finances, and sleeping to worry about.”

I had to giggle at her obsession with the sleeping thing, although if I knew anything about Jen, it was that she loved her eight to nine hours a night.

“I mean, you don’t even have to worry about a job or deadlines right now, you don’t have anything tying you down.”

I opened a new bottle, hating that she was right. “There is this one thing that could happen,” I said, wondering if I sounded slurry to Jen. “This old friend of Rosie’s called me up out of the blue the other day.”

“Okay,” Jen said, only half paying attention, trying to get just one more drop to shake out of her plastic juice jug.

“She’s this literary agent…”

Jen’s head snapped up. “Seriously? Do you have any idea how hard it is to get a meeting with a literary agent?”

I shrugged. “No.”

“Oh my God, they never go trolling for work, people are always flocking all over them, begging them to represent their stuff.”

“Oh,” I said, furrowing my brow. “She just called my cell the other day.”

“So she obviously thinks you have huge potential. But… what does she want you to write?”

“Nothing,” I said, nonchalant.

“Nothing?”

“Yeah, nothing.” I cracked a smile. “She wants something that’s already written.”

Now it was Jen’s turn to furrow her brow.

“But how would she know about the romance novel? It’s not even done yet.”

I startled. “Holy crap. I nearly forgot about the romance novel.” I tilted my head, pondering. “I wonder if it would be easier to get a novel on the shelves if I already had a different book on there?”

“Okay, now I’m seriously confused. What the hell are you talking about?”

“She wants the Disaster Diary.”

Recognition covered Jen’s face. “Oh my God, of course. It’s perfect. So… is she shopping it yet?”

“Shopping?”

Jen rolled her eyes. “That’s what they call it when agents present it to publishers for consideration.”

“Oh, um… no.”

“Okay, so when is she going to?”

“Well, the thing is… it’s just that….” The wine was making it a bit hard to formulate the right words. “Jake doesn’t really want me to do it. You know, with all the bad press last time and everything.”

Jen’s mouth dropped open. “You have got to be kidding me. Do you have any idea how many people in this world are begging, beating down people’s doors, to get a book published? And you’re possibly going to pass the opportunity up? And you’re a WRITER?!”

She sat staring, mouth still hanging there in disbelief.

“Um… I guess I hadn’t really thought of it that way.”

She leaned back into the couch, her shoulders slumping. “I think I’m in shock. I just can’t believe…. I mean, just the other day you were going on and on about how you want a career and you don’t want to rely on Jake completely for all your money and everything. My God, this is your chance.”

“Um… I guess you’re right.” I said, taking another long sip. “I honestly hadn’t realized how hard it might be to break into writing for a living.”

She handed me the computer. “Email her.”

And in that moment, I realized that Jen was completely right. I was totally looking forward to seeing the diary on shelves. I had been all along.

I quickly typed up a thank you and acceptance to Carla’s offer, attaching the copy of the diary I finished typing earlier. Jen pointed out how ridiculous it was that I was pretending to even waffle since, obviously I wanted to accept. I’d typed the darned thing out and everything.

I did wonder briefly if I should be drunk-emailing. But what did I have to lose? Sure, Jake might be a little upset for a while, but obviously he’d get over it.

The only thing was, the second I hit send, a wave of panic surged though me like I’d just jumped off a cliff.

CHAPTER 14

I could not believe how fast it came together. The next morning, Carla sent over a contract, and by the afternoon, the proposal had been sent to six big New York editors. By the end of the week, they’d all agreed to read it, and a couple had already expressed interested in acquiring it. Carla set up an auction for Monday. Everyone who was interested needed to bring their best offer.

I could not sleep all weekend. And there was certainly no way I was going to be able to make a decision about the wedding planner under those circumstances.

Of course, both Mattie and my mother wanted to haul me here, there and everywhere to show me about a gazillion things that I can honestly say, I remember very few of.

My mind was completely elsewhere.

I mean cripes, no woman could possibly have so much good going on in her life and yet my dreams were still coming true.

My career was about to take off.

And the best part… the work was pretty much already done.

It was a whirlwind of a day. I had to block all other calls—my mother and Mattie were so happy I was ignoring them—but info was coming in fairly regularly from Carla. I mean, I had no idea I would actually have to make the decisions that day, I kind of thought Carla would take care of it all, but she kept calling to ask about money, publishing dates, who I’d prefer for editing (like I had any friggin’ clue), all the way down to if I wanted to sell rights to other countries myself, or if I wanted the publisher to go ahead and do it on my behalf.

Needless to say, my mind was a big lump of Jell-O by the end of the day.

But I was certainly not going to have to worry about rent for a long, long time. In fact, I was not going to have to worry about anything financially for a long, long time.

Plus, as part of Carla’s negotiating, another book was already in the deal. I was going to get to do the book about the wedding, which would totally be a lot of work, but the best part was, a lot of the work was already being done, and not even by me. I could not wait to tell my mother that she was going to be a co-author. You know, or Mattie.

Suddenly the whole thing didn’t seem quite as rosy as it had the moment I signed the contract.

But I shook the bad stuff out of my head and proceeded to find a way to celebrate. What in the world did I want most of all right that exact minute?

I could think of only one thing.

A nice, long, relaxing day at the spa.

I made an appointment for the next day and then slept like a baby, complete with a huge smile on my face.

For exactly eleven hours.

~ ~ ~

Seriously, I could never get enough of the spa. Sadly, I think it was more the lying there, not having to do anything at all that was more of a treat than the actual treatments themselves. And after all that detoxing, what else was there to do but throw a few toxins back into my system?

In the form of champagne.

Since Jake was still away, and I was pretty much doing everything in my power to avoid Mattie and Mom, Jen was nice enough to celebrate with me. This time she had sparkling cider while I drank away my bottle of bubbly.

After a few glasses, I wished I’d gotten the drier version. Too much sugar in my alcohol and my head turns into a vice, tightening my blood vessels into what amounts to the world’s most painful headache.