“Yes, after we’re done making sure every detail is perfect.”
“Not every detail.” Issam frowned, and Mackenzie’s stomach dropped. She couldn’t for the life of her imagine why Issam would be this upset about the information she wanted to share with him. “Things are slipping through the cracks.”
“What things?” Mackenzie wracked her brain for anything that had gone wrong in any of the meetings that day. Nothing had.
“The flowers.”
“The flowers?” She laughed out loud. “Why are you concerned about the floral arrangements?”
“Because my mother is allergic to one of the blooms in the centerpieces. She told you so last week. I was there. But the arrangements haven’t changed. Sahr sent me a preliminary invoice this morning.” He shook his head. “It got by you and Sahr. I meant to talk to you about it at dinner.” His tone became stern. “These are the kinds of things you should be focusing on.”
Mackenzie wanted to pull away from him, but she forced herself to stay close. Fights were won in close quarters, her mother would say. “Okay,” she said slowly. “I should have remembered that.” She struggled to summon guilt and shame, and she couldn’t do it. Yes, one detail had been overlooked. But she was trying to do two crucial things at once, and she was doing an incredible job. “But you should listen to me.”
“You should listen to me.” Issam, in the end, was the one who drew himself away, just slightly.
“I’ve been listening to you.” Mackenzie was losing control. “But here you are, dismissing me.”
“I’m not dismissing—”
“You’re dismissing me and the information I got because you’re too obsessed with punishing me for the floral arrangements.”
“My mother is allergic.”
“Fine.” Mackenzie sat up and pushed her way to the side of the bed. “Don’t listen to me.”
“Where are you going?”
“Back to my room,” she said, the weight of the day even heavier on her shoulders. “I’d rather be alone.”
16
Mackenzie sighed in front of the mirror in Issam’s massive bathroom. Her earrings weren’t cooperating—or maybe it was her fingers. Either way, it was all off.
They’d officially made up after the tiff about the flowers, and she’d gone back to sleeping in his bed, but ever since then Issam had seemed distant. And she had felt distant. A discomfort hummed in the air between them, and Mackenzie couldn’t decide from minute to minute whether she wanted to approach it head on or let it lie.
Sharing information about the shelter hadn’t gone well, that was for sure, and Issam had gone back into his meetings without another word to her about it.
She tried again to put in the earring, and this time she succeeded.
Issam came to stand beside her and straightened his tie. The lipstick she needed was on the other side of him, across the sink. Before that conversation, she would have reached out and touched him, brushed her body across his while she reached for her lipstick.
Now…
Issam didn’t seem to notice that she needed the lipstick. He was focused on his own reflection.
“Excuse me,” she said stiffly.
He stepped aside, giving her enough space to reach without making any contact.
Yes, this was how she wanted to be spending the week before
her wedding.
Tonight’s party was to be held in one of the palace’s ballrooms. It was a family party. When Issam had told her that the previous day, she’d asked him whether it was an intimate family gathering or a family event like their surprise engagement party.
“Like the engagement party,” he’s said, scrolling through the last of the day’s emails on his phone. “My mother will have invited everyone.”
She hadn’t had much to say about that.