Getting Even

Matt dragged her away from Romy, pulling her into a bone-crushing hug. “Hire a hit man, of course,” he said.

Veronica kissed him on the cheek. “Now there’s an idea!” she said as he released her. “I must call Scarlett and get the name of hers. Although I think she calls him an enforcer, not a hit man.”

“What the fuck? Go, Scarlett!”

“She’s not dating him, Matthew. She knows him in a strictly client-privilege way.”

Matt swung around to beckon to Teague, who was multitasking with a piece of paper in one hand and his cell phone at his ear. “Keep an eye on Table Two tonight, will you? Do your best to stop the bloodbath V’s planning.”

Veronica gave a thump to one of Matt’s massive shoulders. “I’ll hire the enforcer to take you out if you’re not caref—” Breaking off as the implication hit. “Hang on. What do you mean Table Two?”

“He’s on Table Two,” Teague chipped in, disconnecting his call and leaning in to kiss Veronica on the forehead. “And he’s about a hundred feet away, waylaid by at least seven, eight...no, ten autograph hunters, who are besieging Felicity, because Romy’s friends clearly have no pride. So if you want to get away, now’s the moment.”

Veronica turned, saw Felicity chatting animatedly and signing what Veronica assumed were Orders of Service from the wedding. Rafael was beside her, smiling benignly but looking preoccupied.

For a moment she couldn’t breathe and was grateful when Teague moved her a little to the side to make room for other guests to talk to Romy and Matt.

“You look like you’re going to pass out,” Teague said.

She shook her head then nodded. “I need to duck back into the chapel and out the side exit. There’s a mausoleum.”

“Er...”

“Yeah, a mausoleum! Go figure! Tremenhill Estate really is a one-site-fits-all proposition, isn’t it? Births, deaths, marriages. The chapel, the reception hall, the manor house, the cottages, the mausoleum, where I really need to be. I’m staying here, you know—or maybe you don’t know. In a cottage, not a crypt. And I’m giving zero fucks, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

“Yeah, I can’t say I’ve noticed zero fucks so far. You’re babbling, just FYI.”

“That’s vasovagal syncope. I think it means I’m going to faint. So I’d better stop talking and go sit down.”

“Fuck.” He brought her close, his arm under hers. “How far away is your cottage?”

“Walking distance. Why?”

“Because I’ll take you there.”

She pulled away from him. “No! No, no, no. I’m just going to walk calmly away, call my sister and let her talk me out of murdering that bastard, while you—” giving him a little push in the direction of Romy and Matt “—do your duty, smile in the wedding photos and impress everyone with your sunshine-and-light act.”

“Okay, but—”

“Teague! If I was going to faint, it would have happened mid-babble. Please let me at least pretend to be giving zero fucks.”

He gave her a searching look and then sighed. “Fine,” he said. “But you come and get me if you need me.”

She waited until he was back with Matt and Romy, then gave him a quick thumbs-up of reassurance before straightening her spine and walking-not-running toward the chapel. She allowed herself a look over her shoulder as she reached the doorway to find the autographing session was finished. Felicity was now tucked under Rafael’s arm as the two of them made their leisurely way over to the bride and groom. A chill of foreboding raced down her spine as Rafael’s eyes landed on her and she froze like a deer in the headlights, every cell in her body quivering.

He tilted his head as though challenging her—to what, she had no idea—and she unfroze. “Oh no,” she said through gritted teeth. “Zero fucks.” She turned her back on him to enter the chapel, where she wasted no time making her way straight back out again through the infamous side exit she’d eschewed earlier.

She hadn’t known what to expect of the mausoleum, but it was magnificent. A circular stone structure set atop a platform on a grassy hill, surrounded by a veranda whose roof was supported by a series of columns all the way round. A stone path bisecting a pristine lawn connected it to the chapel but also seemed to isolate it, which seemed kind of surreal and yet completely perfect.

As Veronica slowly made her way along the path, she had the fanciful notion that the mausoleum wasn’t only a guardian of souls but a sentinel, keeping vigil over the brooding, untamed moors beyond the estate’s civilized perfection. Bleak, wild and lonely on one side, manicured perfection on the other—like the two halves of her.

She laughed as she ascended the steps, imagining what Scarlett would say if she started describing herself in such terms. Something like Stop hugging trees and get your head out of your ass! most likely.

That was Scarlett—always talking sense. And, by God, Veronica was ready to hear it!

She took her cell phone out of her purse, brought up her sister’s number and stabbed at the call button.

Scarlett answered on the second ring as though she’d been expecting the call. “So you’ve seen him,” she said without preamble.

“Yes.”

“And?”

“I’m scared when I talk to him I’m going to lose it. Or maybe faint. Which would be worse?”

“Maaaybe try to avoid either.”

“If you’re saying I shouldn’t talk to him, why did you let me come in the first place?”

“I didn’t ‘let’ you. Nobody ‘lets’ you do anything. You just do it! As I recall it, I had the temerity to remind you that you still go stratospherically apeshit when someone says his name and you were the one who insisted you were ready for this.”

“I may have been...premature in my assessment.”

“So what are you going to do? Hide in the restroom all night?”

“No.”

“Where are you now?”

“Outside a mausoleum.”

“Hang on! The wedding’s in a cemetery? Never would have picked Romy as a Goth!”

“Romy as a Go—? No! It’s not a cemetery, just a kind of...of burial place, near the chapel.”

“Ooooh, I see dead people!”

“That’s exactly the problem!” Veronica said. “I do see dead people. At least, I want to see dead people. Correction, I want to see dead person. Just the one.” Pausing, she thought about Felicity beneath Rafael’s protective arm back at the chapel. “Okay, maybe two.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I want to kill him! Obviously.”

“Okaaay, take a breath.”

“I’ve taken so many breaths I’ve used up half the oxygen in Yorkshire!”

“Well, take another and try to remember what I said about using a catastrophe scale to keep things in perspective.”

“Oh, on the catastrophe scale this is a ten!”

“No, Veronica, it’s not a ten. There are worse things than seeing your ex at a wedding, so take a moment now to think about them.”

“Um, like...say...a typhoon ripping through the estate and killing all the guests?”

“Yeees. Although somewhat unlikely, if that makes you feel better, relatively speaking, then—”

“All the corpses in this mausoleum rising up as zombies and swarming out to kill all the guests.”

“That’s a little macabre but—”

“A sudden blizzard—”

“In July?”

“—snap-freezing the moors and killing all the guests.”

“I’m sensing a theme here, Veronica.”

“Sharknado. Herd of trampling bison. An invasion of serial killers. Everyone dead.”

“Don’t you think killing all the guests is a little extreme when you only really want to kill one?”

“Yes!” Veronica agreed. “And all I need to do is go back to my cottage and get a knife from the kitchen. It’s close enough that I could be back in under five minutes. He’d probably still be kissing Romy and hugging Matt and shaking Teague’s hand and holding on to Felicity and do not—do not!—tell me ever again how good she is in This Time Forever—and it would all be over with one downward slice.”

“Okay, enough, Veronica! Nobody has to die!”

“Castration, then. I’ll find a rusty knife.”

“Can’t you just castrate the voodoo doll?” Scarlett said, and started laughing. “I can’t believe I’m telling you to castrate a voodoo doll like it’s an actual solution!”

“Don’t joke about my doll!” Veronica said. “Sticking pins in him has helped me a lot.”

“Okay, I surrender! Kill Rafael! Go ahead! Do it! Just don’t leave any DNA ’cuz Mom will freak out if you get caught. And if we’re talking catastrophe scale... Well, let’s just say I’d back her over the typhoon. The sharks, as well. Definitely the bison wouldn’t stand a chance.”

“Zombies?”

“Pfft. Child’s play. And she’d out-frost the July snap-freeze. I’m pretty sure she’d even give the serial killers a run for their money.” Pause. “You know, you really could just give up on achieving closure—or at least postpone it—and keep your distance.”

“Downside?”

“Being bitter and twisted forever.”

“You’re not being very helpful.”

“Okay then, how’s this? Don’t stab Rafael or castrate him, unless you want to be either in jail or in therapy for a thousand years! Maybe try going up to the guy exactly as you’d planned and talking about his books and being civilized and burying the hatchet somewhere other than in his skull and moving the fuck on.”

“We were never civilized before, what made me think I could be now?”

“That was then, this is now. College kids—mature adults. Get it?”

“Okay, but I haven’t read the books. His books. You know why.”

“So read his damn books! Who knows, you might learn something that will help you consign him to the past—or the devil—whichever. Now hang up before I need therapy!”

“Not. Helpful.”

“I’m hanging up, Veronica,” Scarlett said, singsong style—and the line went dead.

“Read his damn books,” Veronica muttered as she all but threw her phone into her purse. “As if!” She’d read the damn blurbs—they were enough to tell her she shouldn’t read his damn books. Rich girl/poor boy. Bitch girl/proud boy. Romeo/Juliet. Unhappily-ever-after. She was a book editor—she knew how to read between the lines of a blurb. She knew he was writing about her, even if nobody else did.

Well, she guessed that counted as a forever—immortalized in literature. Just not the Till death do us part kind of forever she’d envisaged when he’d said Te amaré por siempre, Verónica that day in the garage of their DC town house.

“Till death do us part,” she said softly, thinking of the souls inside the mausoleum who were traveling into eternity together. She’d heard there was a married couple laid to rest in there who’d been together sixty years and died a day apart. That was what forever was.

She’d felt envious hearing Romy and Matt repeating the “till death do us part” vow in the chapel today. She’d hadn’t made that vow at either of her weddings—appropriately, as it turned out, since one marriage had lasted a mere twelve months and the other only twenty months. The idea of being interred with either Piers or Simeon for eternity in a place like this would never have entered her head. That kind of commitment belonged to a different kind of love. A consuming love. A Wuthering Heights kind of love. The kind that made Heathcliff bribe the sexton to remove the side of Cathy’s coffin so that when he was buried beside her, in a coffin identically opened, their remains would mingle in death.

“‘I wish I were a girl again, half savage and hardy, and free...’” she murmured, and the wistfulness of that quote from Wuthering Heights had her eyes rolling. “Get out of my head, Cathy,” she called out to the moors, “and take Heathcliff with you!”

She listened for an echo but instead she heard a gravelly voice with the barest hint of an accent say behind her, “Rereading Wuthering Heights, Veronica? Again?”

She turned...and there he was.

CHAPTER THREE

RAFAEL NOTED THE way her eyes went wide, the way her nostrils flared, the uptick in her breathing, the tension that ran through her, the flare of rage.

And then she drew herself in, tipped up her chin, arched her eyebrows and controlled the flame. She was like ice water drip-dripping onto hot coals—a hiss, a sizzle, no more. “You know what a sucker I am for a doomed love story,” she drawled.

“I’m sorry Piers and Simeon didn’t live up to your expectations,” he said, out-drawling her, “but ‘doomed’ seems a little harsh.”

Drip, drip of ice—but the steam was rising from those coals and it was only a matter of time before the ice melted. “Hmm, yes, I suppose it is a little harsh,” she agreed. “At least they had the courage to try, right?”

“Try...but fail.”

“I don’t think you’re the man to talk to me about marriage failures when you’ve never actually made it to the altar.”

“Is that a proposal?”

“It could be...the day hell freezes over.”

“Maybe that’s just as well, given the three and a half years you had with me lasted longer than both your marriages combined. Marriage obviously doesn’t agree with you. I wonder why...?”

She laughed—a long, fake peal of it. “How about you explore my marriages in your next book?”

He smiled, left it hanging there for a heartbeat and then said, “What do you mean my next book?”

He saw her chest rise with the breath she slowly drew in, then fall as she let it out. Oh, she’d definitely learned some methods to maintain her self-control over the years. A pity.

“So you’ve skewered them already, have you?” she said, and he might have believed she was bored if not for the scalding heat in her eyes.

“You tell me.”

Another of those peals of fake laughter. “I don’t see how I can since I haven’t read your books.”

Okay, that threw him. Enough that he had to actively work to keep his face impassive. His books had both been number one New York Times bestsellers, and she was an editor at Johnson/Charles—one of the most prestigious midsize publishers in America. Those two facts should have guaranteed a read for both books, even without their personal history. “Can I assume that means you’re still blocking me? After all these years? A more egotistical man might think you weren’t over him.”

The flare of anger, the tamping down, the slow breath. “Tell you what—” pulling her cell phone out of her purse “—how about I download them now? Old times’ sake and all that. You were always so particular about how I spent my money, but I assume you have no objection to me slinging you a few bucks this way.”

“By all means sling away, since it’s money I’ve earned,” he said smoothly, admiring her nerve while simultaneously wanting to shake it out of her. “Maybe we can get together sometime and you can tell me what you think.”

“Sure,” she said—but her eyes told him he could drop dead. “Can you give me the titles?”

He bit back a laugh at the sheer arrogance of her. “The first one is called Catch, Tag, Release.”

“Ah, yes,” she said, tapping away at her phone. “As in hooking some poor fish, whacking an invasive tag through its fin, then throwing it back in the sea.”

“My second book—Liar, Liar if you’re really clicking—looks at what that fish does when it gets its new lease on life.”

“How uplifting that sounds—Liar, Liar.”

“I’m sure you’ll find both books...instructive.”

“Oh joy!” she said, and rolled her eyes, which had him vowing to make her eyes roll all the way back in her head for him before the night was over. “Just what I look for in a novel—to be instructed!” She put her cell phone away. “Right. All set. Now, I’m sure you’re anxious to return to Felicity—must have been painful, unjoining yourself from her hip!”

Oh God, it was so hard not to laugh. “Jealous, Veronica?”

“Jealous? Please!” She spluttered that out. “I assure you, you have my permission to fuck whomever you want to fuck.”

He stepped in close, crowding into her space, and the vanilla scent of her flooded his senses. She dabbed that special oil everywhere, even between her legs—and the taste memory of licking it from her was so vivid, he had to swallow because his mouth had flooded with saliva. “You sure about that?”

“Most certainly.”

“Then that is very good to know.”

“If that’s all, I have husband number three waiting in the wings for me at the reception.”

He took her left hand in his, rubbed his thumb along her ring finger without taking his eyes from her face, found nothing there. Good. The photos he’d seen of her with her husbands, the massive diamond engagement rings they’d given her flashing in the camera lights, had caused him to break two expensive cell phones throwing them against the wall. Time for her to pay for what seeing those rings had done to him.

He smiled at her—made it as chillingly seductive as he could. “I know you came on your own, Veronica, and I can make a good guess as to why.”

She snatched her hand back. “Husband number three is a work in progress but it’s going to happen, I promise you that.”

“Then I look forward to being introduced to him.”

“And I look forward to meeting your conjoined twin just as soon as you’ve reattached yourself,” she said, and stalked past him.

Veronica stormed her way across the lawn, furious with herself.

So much for coming on her own—he’d seen right through her.

So much for her rehearsed lines—he’d gotten in first about the books.

So much for being charming and sweet—she’d been snide and venomous.

So much for her intimidating eyebrows—he’d looked ready to lick them back down into place.

And, oh God, her entire traitorous body was in eruption mode. She wanted to stab him and...and kiss him, damn it! Taste him once more. Touch him. Feel something.

So much for closure, then!

Third husband? Where was she going to get one of those? Out of her ass?

She’d just have to hope there was a single man at the reception she could attach herself to. A single man who wasn’t going to trip over his tongue when Veronica dragged him into Felicity’s orbit.

“Yeah, good luck with that,” she muttered as she tramped through gardens and across more lawns en route to what was known as Tremenhill Hall but was really a repurposed mansion.

Okay, time to dust off the catastrophe scale. She needed something brutally dystopian if she was to emerge from her next encounter with Rafael with any dignity. Too bad nothing sprang readily to mind.

She should have gone for the damn knife, screw the DNA evidence! Her mother could have shipped her off to a country that didn’t have an extradition treaty with the United States. Like...she didn’t know...did India have one? She could go and live on an ashram. Now there was a catastrophe she could get behind! Telling her mother she was gifting her trust fund to an ashram in India.

“Yeah, no thanks,” she said, and giggled suddenly as the marquee set up for welcome drinks outside the hall came into view. Like...giggled! Well, who knew? The catastrophe scale actually worked!

She whooshed out what felt like her first normal breath of the day as she crossed yet another lawn toward what was a very bridal confection. Garlands of white blooms not only festooned the marquee’s upper edge but also anchored billowing swathes of silky white fabric around the support poles. She looked down at her hot-pink dress, feeling every bit as conspicuous as she had during that “Oh fuck” moment in the chapel. But after her dare-you encounter with Rafael at the mausoleum, she was okay with that.

Or she would be, just as soon as she made sure she wasn’t on Table Two with Rafael and Felicity, because that would be taking the whole zero fucks mantra too far. Not that she really believed Romy and Matt would put her in that awkward position, but it was always better to be safe than sorry. And if she was on Table Two? Well, the bride and groom would be the first victims of the ensuing bloodbath, that’s all. It would be her Carrie moment!

She’d been to enough gala events to predict the seating plans would be at the hall entrance, so she walked straight through the marquee—and bingo! Two gold easels were set up alongside potted plants on either side of a center set of double doors. She headed for one of the easels and scanned the list for Table Two.

Brief close of her eyes—relief!—to find Rafael and Felicity listed but not her, before locating her name on Table Seven.

The room layout pinned below the table lists showed Tables Two and Seven were on opposite sides of the dance floor, but she decided she’d feel more confident of her ability to keep it together if she went inside and got the picture in 3D.

Through the full-height Palladian windows on either side of the entrance, she could see staff tweaking table settings. She hoped they wouldn’t shoo her out when she barged in early or she might lose her shit, but figured if she walked in like she owned the place—channeling her smiling-assassin mother and crossing that with the intimidating countenance so often worn by the headmistress of the Koller Finishing School in Switzerland—nobody would dare.

“Don’t fuck with me, people,” she said under her breath, stepping up and over the stoop to swing open the heavy double doors.

Within seconds she was threading her hot-pink, unchallenged way to Table Two. She sat in the spot reserved for Rafael Velez, then in the one for Felicity, and checked their line of sight to all the other tables before making her way to Table Seven. There she found that although she wouldn’t be facing them, she’d definitely be visible to them in profile.

That was going to have to change. Depositing her purse on her seat, she walked slowly around her table, stopping at each seat for a fresh assessment.

And then she heard her name. “Veronica Johnson.”

Male. British accent.

“‘Oh fuck’ from the chapel,” he added.

“I wonder how many times people are going to mention that to me tonight,” she said...and turned...and yes! Early thirties. Handsome. Impeccably suited—with tie, unlike Rafael Velez.

“I’ll be your knight in shining armor and defend you from attack,” he said.

“Hey, I didn’t say it, all I did was laugh.”

“And how could you not?”

“Exactly!” she said, and smiled her best smile at him. “But I’m in the market for a Sir Galahad tonight, as it turns out.”

“Ah! Well, in that case, let’s put you—” picking up her place card and bringing it to where she was standing “—here—” putting it down at the seat to her left “—next to me!”

She laughed as she squinted at his place card. “Why thank you, Phillip Castle.” She nodded at the extra card jostling for space beside her own. “But what will Sally Paulson say about it?”

“Ah, well, as to that...” He plucked Sally off the table and carried it around the table to put it where Veronica used to be. “I happen to know Sally Paulson fancies Romy’s cousin, Lloyd Allen—your erstwhile dining companion. So we’re sorted.”

A lightning-fast look across to Table Two told her she’d now be showing Rafael her back. “Seems we are,” she said, and decided to test the water vis-à-vis his susceptibility to Felicity. “You’re not disappointed you won’t be gazing across at the famous Felicity all night?”

He looked around as though Felicity had just materialized. Bad sign. “How do you know that?”

“I had a quick look around all the tables and found her on Table Two.”

“Ah! Maybe we need to do a few more place card swaps in that case—trade Sally and Lloyd for her and Rafael Velez.”

“A fan, are you?” Veronica said, abandoning hope of using him as her Husband No. 3 masquerader.