I half stood and shifted into Nick’s lap, cupping his face in my hands and then kissing him slow and soft.
“I really do love you,” I said. The echo was deliberate. I wanted this to be a new promise—a fresh one to Nick, to my dad, to myself. “And I love this idea. Let’s stay. Steve and Margot can make it work.”
“In life, as in the kitchen,” Nick said, then popped a triumphant piece of pie crust into his mouth. “Please note that Steve’s pastry did not have a soggy bottom.” His hand slid down my back. “And how’s your bottom today? I’d better check that, too.”
I looped my arms around his neck. “You are getting cornier every day.”
He shrugged. “Steve is a very basic man with very basic urges.”
“I said cornier, not hornier, but apparently both are true.”
Nick wound his hands in my hair. “It turns out Scotland is a much more convenient aphrodisiac than the Seychelles,” he said. “My only problem is finding bedsprings that can stand up to our needs.”
I ran a finger down his neck to where his shirt buttoned and flicked one open. “That’s why God invented floors.” Another button. “And showers.” A third. I moved again so that I was straddling him. “And dining room tables and chairs, and…”
“Mmm,” Nick said, running his hands around me and pulling my face to his. “God is good,” he murmured between kisses. “Very, very good.”
CHAPTER TWO
I could hear Nick even through the juddering of the bathroom pipes, which complained every time I used the old chrome hand shower. His whistling always got more elaborate when he was in a good mood, and he was apparently feeling extra carefree this morning, because his rendition of the Pointer Sisters’ “Jump” was note perfect and flashy.
“Need any help out there?” I called to Nick as I heaved myself out of the yellow porcelain tub and wrapped my hair in one of the cottage’s thin, rough white towels.
Between the whistling and clanking noises emanating from the kitchen, Nick didn’t seem to hear me, which I decided to take as a no. Smiling, I crossed the slim hallway from our bathroom to our bedroom, pulled on shorts and a T-shirt, and curled up with my laptop on the bed. An email from my mother waited, updating me on various shenanigans with the Iowa Business Council—Mom had taken over my late father’s fridge-furniture enterprise—and passing along the hometown gossip that Laundry Bill from Bill’s Laundry had caused a scandal when he had an affair with Diner Sue from Sue’s Diner, who was married to Cowboy Lou, who owned a hair salon. We’d been on the lam for almost two months now, and I’d decided a few weeks ago that my mother at the very least deserved occasional proof of life, even if it lacked specifics. She tiptoed around the situation via politely vague statements like “I hope married life is treating you well,” which didn’t beg for answers, and my replies were nothing more than benign confirmation that we still existed. I dashed one off and then wound my hair into a bun as I scanned the longer list of unread messages and spam that I hadn’t touched. An all-caps subject line from two weeks ago jumped out at me: CARE TO COMMENT?
The sender: Clive.
I almost cried out, but caught myself. Bile rose in my throat. In the other room, “Jump” had segued into “We Didn’t Start the Fire,” so I knew Nick was still occupied. Shaking, I hesitated, then opened the email. All it said was, Your Royal Highness: We’ve been through a lot together, and you’ve had a trying month. If you’d like the world to hear your side of the story, I’d be pleased to give my old friend the chance to tell it. Best, Clive Fitzwilliam, Royals Columnist, The Sun.
“You have got to be shitting me,” I hissed at my laptop. Been through a lot together? A trying month? As if he hadn’t been the architect of it all? His email said he worked for The Sun, and not his dream employer the Daily Mail, but that was small consolation for the fact that selling out his friends had given this infected wart of a human (nearly) everything he’d ever wanted.
I closed my eyes and inhaled. The morning of my Abbey wedding, my best friend Cilla had suggested maybe Clive would loom less scary to me if I reduced him to something more human, more fallible, by picturing him as he was before: Nick’s childhood friend, the kind and flirty guy I’d met at Oxford who’d been a hapless but hungry local reporter, writing about Tube station loos and the nun who claimed to see the Virgin Mary in a pancake, rather than a person who’d attempted to blackmail me.
But my mind’s eye couldn’t see that Clive anymore; all I could conjure was the bitter, twisted Clive who’d vibrated with spite when he confronted me and Nick about his claims that Freddie and I were having an affair. He was fueled by a lifetime of buried resentment and throttled hate. What did that Clive, the only Clive who would ever exist for me now, think he was doing emailing me?
My worst impulses won out, and I Googled him. He had tucked into his new gig with vigor: THE CHEAT, THE CAD, AND THE CUCKOLD, one of his
