The Bride (The Boss 3)

When I heard Pamela leave, I stomped down from the toilet seat and flung open the stall door.

For a second, I worried Valerie might have a heart attack, and not in a metaphorical sense. Her eyes flew open, her face went pale—I swear, if she hadn’t been wearing coral lipstick, her lips would have been blue—and her body jolted. Maybe it was because she was shocked at being caught. Maybe it was just the loud noise of the door banging on its hinges and ricocheting back into the latch, which was, admittedly, alarming. But she took a step back, so I knew I did not look happy.

When I spoke, it sounded like some inhuman being had inhabited me. Having been raised extremely Catholic, I did worry for a moment that I might have been possessed, but I think the only thing truly controlling me was my incredible willpower to not knock her down and jam my Stuart Weitzman pump down her throat. “Let me be clear. There are two reasons, two reasons, I am not resorting to physical violence right now, and those are that Emma wouldn’t want your hair to be all ripped out in the wedding pictures, and I don’t think you’re worth a night in jail.”

“How dare—” she tried, but I was on a roll.

“I am not finished speaking!” I nearly shouted, but I didn’t want anyone to overhear. I wanted to have this moment uninterrupted, because I didn’t want anything misconstrued. I didn’t want Valerie to think she had an inch of wiggle room, or a drop of sympathy from anyone for the shit she’d been pulling.

I lowered my voice to a deadly whisper, and the ice in my tone matched the ice in my veins. “I am tolerating you right now for Emma’s sake, and for Neil’s sake, but I don’t have to tolerate being spoken of in that way. I let it go when I heard you trying to get Neil to dump me the very first time you met me. But this is getting fucking ridiculous!”

Valerie’s neck seemed to take a step back while her head stayed perfectly in place. “I’m allowed to express myself freely to my friends. If you don’t like it, perhaps you should break your nasty eavesdropping habit.”

“You aren’t allowed to sabotage

my relationship with Neil. Say what you want about me, but that’s where it ends!” I clenched my hands to fists at my side. “If I ever hear you talking about Neil like that, like he’s an infant you have to raise, if I ever hear you suggest you have even a hint of say over our lives again, I will cut off your access to him faster than you give me one of your stupid fake apologies.”

She laughed haughtily, but it was so obviously forced as to highlight her sudden fear. “Neil and I have a daughter together, Sophie. He couldn’t cut me out of his life, even if he wanted to.”

“Your daughter isn’t five, Valerie. He doesn’t ever have to be in the same place with you ever again.” Except for work. Shit. I decided to bluff. “He’s retired now. He could ship you off to the London office in some kind of restructure.”

She didn’t have anything to say to that.

So I added, “How do you think he’s going to react when he finds out that, after a year, you’re still trying to break us up? Because I have this crazy feeling that you know exactly what he would think. And you also know what he would do, if I asked him to.”

She did. I saw it in the watery gleam along her lower lashes.

Good. She deserved to cry. She deserved to feel like shit, if that was how she was going to treat Neil, and me. “Toe the fucking line, Valerie. Step one centimeter out of bounds, and after the wedding, I’ll tell Neil that you think you’re pulling the strings. You know control freak Neil would just love that, don’t you?”

Valerie went so still, I thought she might have stopped breathing.

“Cross me again. I dare you. You piss me off, and I ask him to cut off all contact with you, indefinitely.”

In the stunned flicker of her eyelashes, and the slowly bleeding edge of her eyeliner as a tear escaped, I saw that she’d been confronted with her worst fear. That Neil really would choose me over her, and that there was nothing she could do to stop him from turning his back on her if he wanted to.

I stormed out of the bathroom. My hands were still shaking. I was kind of worried that Valerie might come at me Dynasty-style and cause a big public scene, but she was too smart for that.

I was angrier than I think I’d ever been at anyone before. Valerie didn’t have to like me, but why did she feel the need for petty, vicious gossip about me? If she was such good friends with Neil, why couldn’t she be happy that he’d found someone who loved him and who loved her daughter? Why did it have to be such a played-out competition, the ex versus the new woman? There were times I genuinely respected and admired Valerie. Then I felt betrayed when she ruined it all in a single asshole moment.

I didn’t want to do this. I didn’t want to be jealous of her, or threatened by her. I didn’t want to have an annual falling out with her. And I really did want her out of Neil’s life. He counted her as a friend, but she treated him like garbage. Why did he let her? Because they had a child together? Emma was grown, and Neil couldn’t reasonably expect that we’d still be having joint Christmases when Emma was thirty. All I could figure was that he still felt so guilty over breaking her heart twenty-five years ago, he couldn’t bring himself to build normal boundaries.

But I couldn’t live like this. I couldn’t be around someone so toxic, someone who continually targeted me for passive -aggressive attacks; who made me the subject of malicious gossip at every chance she got, and who was perfectly comfortable slandering someone who was supposed to be her friend in order to do it.

I couldn’t feel any sympathy for her. I just couldn’t. Neil’s sudden waffling on our engagement had one hundred percent to do with her, I was sure of it. Not because I thought Neil was easily manipulated, but because I knew Valerie had the advantage of time to hone her manipulations. I also knew that Neil was at least somewhat aware of them; Emma had told me that her mother had outed Neil to his ex-wife, though Emma didn’t know the truth about her father’s bisexuality. Valerie’s meddling had made Neil furious. There was precedence set for bad Valerie/Neil’s girlfriend behavior, so I had no doubt he would believe me.

I just didn’t want to be that person, though. I didn’t want to ask my boyfriend—hopefully still my boyfriend, if the damage hadn’t already been done—to cut someone out of his life for my convenience. But there was no way I would face the rest of my life knowing I would be fighting with Valerie every step of the way.

I swiped at my lower eyelids with my thumb, hoping the fact that I’d been crying wouldn’t show. I wasn’t about to go back to the bathroom while Valerie was still in there. I lifted my chin, set my shoulders back, and went to fake happy for the rest of the night.

Walking into the dining room, I caught Emma in a moment when she thought no one was watching. Her eyes were downcast, and she pushed her salad around her plate with the enthusiasm people reserved for root canals and paying taxes.

I wasn’t the only one faking happy tonight.

* * * *

After the torture of dinner and speeches and watching as Emma painfully tried to maintain her smile despite whatever was eating at her—and hoping it wasn’t really, as Valerie had claimed, discomfort at my presence—I was glad when all the guests had left and the only thing remaining was to make our escape.

“Where’s Emma?” Michael asked, frowning as he scanned the banquet room. “She was just here a moment ago.”