novelxo Faking Ms. Right: Chapter 33
Iclicked away from the report I was supposed to be reviewing, and went back to my email. The photographer from the engagement party had sent a link to our photos. I’d already seen them. I hadn’t been able to resist. At this point, I was basically a masochist, considering I’d gone through them at least a dozen times today.
There were candid shots of guests smiling, holding up drinks, dancing. Ethan and Grant in matching fedoras, lifting champagne glasses. Dad with his ridiculous hat and cigar between his teeth. Everly with her girlfriends, posing like a twenties version of Charlie’s Angels. Annie and Miranda laughing with Ethan and Grant.
I’d purposely skipped the ones of my dad and Svetlana. Those still made me cringe.
The next photo was me and Everly on the dance floor. The photographer had caught her mid-spin, one arm above her head, her hand in mine. The tassels on her dress swirled around her, but it was her face that drew the eye. Bright red lips parted across her perfect teeth in a bright smile.
It didn’t escape my attention that I was smiling too, my gaze intent on her.
The photo booth pictures were just as bad. Silly props held up to our faces. We’d gone in multiple times and never managed to keep from laughing.
In the final one we’d taken, I’d grabbed her and planted a hard kiss on her mouth. Nothing about that kiss looked fake. Our lips were molded together, her bottom lip disappearing between mine. Her body was relaxed, arms draping down, as if she were melting against me.
She had been. I remembered how good it felt.
Someone knocked and my office door opened. I shut my laptop quicker than a guy watching porn at work.
Nora stepped in, her hand still on the door handle. “Do you have a minute?”
That was odd. Why was Everly’s friend here? My brow furrowed. “Sure.”
It wasn’t just Nora. Her other friend, Hazel, came in behind her. Nora’s dark hair was up and she wore a white sleeveless blouse and tan cropped pants with heels. Hazel wore a navy dress belted at the waist and a pair of dark-rimmed glasses.
“Can I help you?” I asked.
Nora ushered Hazel in and shut the door. Uh-oh. This couldn’t be good.
“Mind if we sit?” Nora asked, pointing at the two chairs on the other side of my desk.
“Please.”
Hazel sat, her back stick straight. The way she regarded me, her expression impossible to read, made me feel like a subject in a lab experiment.
Nora lowered herself more slowly and set her handbag down at her feet. “Shepherd, we have a problem.”
I knew I had a problem. An Everly-shaped problem, right in the center of my chest. But we had a problem? Were they here to chew me out on Everly’s behalf?
“We?”
“Yes, we,” Nora said, and Hazel nodded so hard she had to fix her glasses. “Do you have any idea where Everly is right now?”
“No, she took all her vacation time,” I said. “Why? Don’t you know where she is?”
“Oh, we know exactly where she is,” Nora said. “Miami.”
A sense of dread hit me in the pit of my stomach. “Why is she in Miami?”
“Remember her phone interview last week?” Nora asked, and I nodded once. “It went well. So well, in fact, that they invited her to come for an in-person interview. In Miami. She left this morning.”
My eyes widened. Miami? As in, Florida? “What the fuck?”
“Exactly,” Nora said. “I’m glad we’re on the same page. We need to do something about this.”
“We want what’s best for Everly,” Hazel said. “And there’s a slim chance that moving to Miami is what’s best for her.”
Nora waved a hand. “Maybe, but I doubt it. Hazel and I agreed that if she really has her heart set on Miami, and the job is a once in a lifetime opportunity, we’ll support her even though we’ll be devastated to lose our bestie. After all, Miami is a great place to visit.”
I gaped at her, still too shocked at the notion of Everly moving to the opposite corner of the country to say a word.
“However,” Nora continued, “I’m not even remotely convinced this is what’s best for her.”
“Neither am I,” Hazel said.
Nora pointed to her friend. “If Hazel agrees with me, you know I’m right. That’s how this works. The job might be fantastic, but all three of us know what’s really important here.”
“What?” I managed to croak out.
“You,” Nora said, her tone matter-of-fact. “You’re obviously her true love and if there’s anyone in this world who deserves to spend the rest of her life in blissful happiness with her true love, it’s Everly.”
“Precisely,” Hazel said.
“Believe me, I’m as surprised as you are.” Nora re-crossed her legs. “I don’t even believe in true love. But Everly was made for it. She’s like a princess in a fairy tale. A sunshiney, overly-optimistic princess with terrible dating luck, but a princess nonetheless.”
I had no idea what to say to that. But Nora wasn’t finished.
“Let me level with you, Shepherd. You messed this up, and you messed it up badly. But I’m still on your team, mostly because Everly genuinely loves you and I’ve decided to channel my inner Everly and try to see the best in you. So we’re here to help.”
“Help?”
Hazel sighed. “Help you, of course.”
“You need to fix this,” Nora said.
“Why is this my fault?” I asked, knowing full well it was my fault. Mostly, at least.
Nora’s brows knitted together. “Is that a serious question?”
Hazel glanced at her. “I think he’s serious.”
“Maybe I was too harsh with her, but she kept the sperm donor thing from me.”
“Too harsh is an understatement,” Nora said. “Did you really expect her to tell you about that, especially after she’d already decided she wasn’t going to go through with it?”
“It’s an uncomfortable topic to begin with,” Hazel said. “And the dynamic of you being her employer made it particularly awkward.”
“She had an ulterior motive that she kept from me. I trusted her and…” I trailed off. I didn’t want to get into all the ways I’d trusted Everly. How hard that had been for me.
“You feel a sense of betrayal because you discovered information that changed the way you viewed your relationship with Everly,” Hazel said.
“Yes, exactly.”
“It’s natural to need some time and space to process that information,” Hazel said.
“But now we need you to get your head out of your ass so you can fix this and bring our girl back,” Nora said.
“Excuse me?”
Nora sighed. “Shepherd, you know her. You know what a big heart she has. She’d do just about anything for the people she loves.”
I rubbed my chin, my eyes on my desk. Everly had the biggest heart of anyone I’d ever met.
“Maybe we were wrong about you,” Nora said. “But answer me one question.”
“What?”
“Do you love her?”
“Yes.” The answer rolled off my tongue so fast, I blinked in shock that I’d admitted it to them.
Nora and Hazel glanced at each other, smiling.
“We thought so,” Nora said. “Everyone who saw you together at the engagement party could tell.”
“And the fact that you supported her accepting an interview for another job speaks to both your character and your feelings for her,” Hazel said.
Something was dawning on me as I listened to Everly’s two best friends. It wasn’t so much what they’d said—other than the interview in Miami, they hadn’t really told me anything I didn’t already know—but what they hadn’t said that struck me.
Everly hadn’t told them about the band.
I wasn’t sure how I knew. It was possible they were avoiding the topic because she’d made them swear to keep it to themselves. But as I listened to them talk, I knew she hadn’t. She hadn’t told her best friends my secrets. She shared everything with them—I remembered her saying so—but she hadn’t shared this.
She hadn’t betrayed my trust at all.
“Oh fuck.” I stood and started uncharacteristically pacing around my office. “I told her to leave instead of listening to her and now she’s at an interview in fucking Miami.”
“Oh good, he’s catching up,” Nora said.
“What if she takes the job and leaves?” I was muttering to myself, no longer paying attention to her friends. “Damn it, she thinks I don’t want her. She doesn’t know it was real, because I never fucking told her.”
“This is good,” Hazel said quietly.
“Wait for it,” Nora said.
“I need to go to Miami.”
Nora held up a finger. “There it is.”
“When did you say she left?”
“This morning,” Hazel said. “They sent a private jet for her.”
“When is the interview?”
“Tomorrow,” Nora said.
“Thank fuck.” I went back to my desk to get my phone. Started scrolling through my contacts. “I have time to get there.”
Nora stood and patted my shoulder. “Atta boy. We’ll come if you want, but I have a feeling you’ve got this.”
I looked up. “Yeah. Thanks.”
They left, but I was too busy trying to find the right contact to notice. I didn’t own a private jet, although I could have. I hated to fly commercial, but I found it easier to just charter a plane when I traveled.
But what was the guy’s name? Everly always made the arrangements, so I rarely spoke to him. Which meant I was probably shit out of luck getting him to do me this big of a favor. A last-minute cross-country flight was a tall order, even with what I was willing to pay him.
However, if he knew Everly…
Finally, I found him. Tom Nguyen, owner Blue Streak Charters. Hoping for a miracle, I called.
“Blue Streak Charters, this is Tom,” he said.
“Tom, this is Shepherd Calloway. I need your help.”
“Okay…”
“I think you know my assistant, Everly Dalton?”
“Of course,” he said, and I could practically hear him smile. Good. That was a good sign.
I took a deep breath. Here went nothing. “I’m in love with her, but I’m also an idiot and I screwed up. And now she’s in Miami interviewing for another job and I need to get there before tomorrow morning, otherwise I risk losing her forever.”
“Is this a joke?”
“I’m not known for my sense of humor, Mr. Nguyen.”
He chuckled. “Fair enough. So you need a last-minute flight to Florida.”
“Yes.”
“I just have one question.”
“Sure.”
“Does Everly love you back, or am I going to get in trouble for this?”
“I think she does. I hope. Her best friends were just here trying to convince me to go after her.”
“Nora and Hazel? If they’re on your side, I’ll do it.”
How the hell did he know about Nora and Hazel? I shook off the question. “I’ll pay whatever you ask.”
“Standard rate will be fine, Mr. Calloway,” he said. “This is for Everly. If I didn’t have to pay for the fuel, I’d do it for free.”