“Fine,” she’d said with a sigh. He’d had the feeling she was indulging him, but he wanted to take care of her. When he’d found her pulling weeds in the rooftop garden, he’d quickly arranged for Sergio to hire new gardeners, a talented middle-aged couple who worked as a team. Honora had liked them immediately, but she couldn’t resist pointing out smugly, “See? It took two people to replace Granddad!”
Even with a wedding planner, she was very busy, bustling around to help the man select flowers, food, colors. She and Nico spent one obligatory afternoon with his lawyers, signing the prenup that his phalanx of attorneys had insisted was necessary. Honora rolled her eyes at the mention of settlements, seeming not to care. But in this, as in everything, he made sure his terms were generous. The longer they were married, the more alimony she would receive if they ever divorced.
But Nico didn’t like to even think of her leaving. He knew their marriage would last.
He loved seeing her joy as she decorated their baby’s nursery in soft pink and cream, filling it with books and a crib, buying tiny little clothes that seemed doll-sized to his eyes. Nico, for his part, contributed a six-foot-tall white teddy bear selected by Giles, his assistant at the New York office. Gifts weren’t Nico’s thing. Anyway, at the moment he was so distracted by lust that he could barely even pretend to work, or care about the land his company was trying to procure in Dubai. It felt like their wedding day would never come.
Then, suddenly, it did.
They’d decided on a beachside wedding at his home in the Hamptons. The weather dawned clear and bright, the previous day’s mugginess swept away by the fresh Atlantic breeze.
Around them, tufts of long grass laced gently rolling sand dunes. The chairs faced a wedding arch laced with white and pink flowers, on the edge of the grassy bluff overlooking the blue ocean.
The guest list was small, only about a hundred people, as Honora had wanted only close friends and family. “Just people we truly love, who love us, people we want to support our marriage.” Honora, of course, had many such people. Nico had struggled to come up with anyone who fit that description. So much of his life before now had been about climbing the ladder, about becoming rich and powerful, all to try to punish and impress someone who was now dead.
Did he really care about any of the people he called friends? Or was he just using them—as they used him?
But that had reminded him of one person he felt a little guilty about. He gave her name to the wedd
ing planner, wondering if Lana Lee would even show, and half hoping she wouldn’t, so he could tell himself he’d done what he could and forget about it.
Other than his ex-fiancée, he only managed to think of one true friend, who was more than a business rival or colleague. Theo Katrakis was a fellow self-made billionaire, an outsider like Nico—and a notorious womanizer who had similarly reached the age of thirty-six without a wife. But they’d watched a few football games together, done some race car driving on a lark, and once had actually had a personal conversation in which they’d discovered they’d both been educated in hard luck streets—Nico in Rome, Theo in Athens.
But now, Nico was wondering about the rightness of choosing him as his best man.
“No sight of the bride yet,” Theo said in a low voice. The two men, dressed in sleek tuxedos, stood beneath the vivid pink roses in the wedding arch, watching as the guests arrived for the late-morning beachside ceremony. “You can still make a run for it.”
Nico looked at his friend and was amazed to see he was serious. The Greek really thought Nico might desert Honora at the altar, in front of all her friends, after he’d given his promise to marry her. “You’re my best man, Theo,” he bit out. “You’re supposed to be supportive.”
“I am being supportive,” he said cheerfully. “Run while you can.”
Nico scowled. “You suck at being a best man.”
“You suck at being a groom, since you wouldn’t even let me throw you a bachelor party, which is really the whole point.”
Nico was irritated. “Hey, anytime you want to leave...”
“Before I see if the maid of honor is worth seducing? Not on your life.”
Baring his teeth in a smile for the benefit of the arriving guests, he said, “Maybe you just shouldn’t talk.”
“Nico,” a woman’s voice said behind him.
Whirling around, Nico saw Lana Lee coming across the grass from the house.
“Lana,” he said in a low voice. He took a deep breath as he looked at his former fiancée. “I didn’t think you would come.”
“Didn’t you want me to?” She looked elegant as always, with her glossy black hair tied back in a long ponytail, wearing a chic dark dress that draped perfectly over her model-thin body. Her sunglasses were movie-star-big, and no wonder. She was one of the most famous actresses in the world, specializing in blockbuster action films. “I was close by, shooting a film in New York.”
“It’s good to see you.”
“Let’s cut the crap.” She tilted her head. “Why did you invite me?”
Yes, why? “I thought that things ended...badly between us.”
“So you thought inviting me to your quickie wedding to some new girlfriend would make it better?” She took off her sunglasses. Her lovely face was blank. “My therapist said I’d get closure by seeing you. That’s the only reason I’m here.”
“Closure?”