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  Red sensed her uneasiness and put his knife and fork down. “Okay. What now?”

  “Don’t be annoyed with me,” she said softly.

  “I’m not annoyed, I’m concerned. What’s going on?”

  She told him about the meeting with Edward and he leaned back in his chair, shaking his head when she finished. “I’m sorry that the creative team is choosing to handle things this way.”

  “Please don’t intervene on my behalf,” she told him.

  Red grinned. “How did you know I would?”

  “I know you. Or, I know how you behave when you’re challenged.”

  “I won’t stand for ill treatment of the woman I love.”

  Nicole smiled despite herself. “I can take care of myself. I need to prove to them that I can handle whatever they throw at me.”

  “I like your attitude.” He started eating again.

  “They want to run me out of the group,” she said. “Don’t they?”

  “Yes.”

  “But they know they can’t fire me or overtly sabotage me, so they’re going to try and freeze me out and make things miserable enough that I quit.”

  Red, nodded, dabbing his mouth with his napkin. His dark eyes met hers and for a moment she didn’t care about any of the workplace drama. She only cared about him, about pleasing him, making him happy in every way.

  “You’re getting some hard lessons, Nicole,” he said. “And it hurts me that I’m the cause of it.”

  “You’re not doing anything wrong.” She speared a piece of chicken and thought about eating it. “I need to toughen up. And I will toughen up.”

  “You’re plenty tough,” Red said. He reached across the little table and covered her hand with his.

  She looked up into his eyes. “People are going to regret messing with me.”

  He smiled. “That’s the spirit.”

  ***

  The rest of the day, Nicole worked at a furious pace. Edward was throwing all kinds of things at her. He had incredibly complicated project timelines that he needed to have mapped out with Jameson International’s timeline software. She’d never used any of it before, and it was complicated and not very intuitive.

  So she sat at her desk with the software manual open next to her and spent hours reading it, then trying to work on little pieces of Edward’s timelines he’d given her to update and reorganize.

  He’d also tasked her with completely reorganizing their file structure on the network. The creative group had a large set of folders on the company’s intranet, and these folders had been set up years ago when the company was much smaller. As a result, it had grown cumbersome to navigate and find things.

  Nothing was in order.

  Remi’s folders, in particular, were disastrous. She was a virtual pack rat. There were files from five years ago full of old ad campaign material: pictures, ad copy, contracts, all sorts of things.

  Nicole got a bit of a start on reorganizing the file structure, but she needed to map it out first. If she wasn’t careful, she could make things worse and lose valuable material.

  Near the end of the day, Edward had three long meetings in a row, and he brought Nicole with him to each one. She had to take in depth notes on subjects and topics that were very unfamiliar to her.

  It didn’t help that everyone in these meetings spoke very quickly and used jargon she wasn’t familiar with. They discussed other companies she’d never heard of. There were people conferenced in and she didn’t know who they were. Some of them had thick foreign accents and she could hardly make out a word they said.

  It didn’t matter. Edward was throwing her in the deep end and betting that she’d sink. She was determined not to, determined to prove to Edward and Remi and anyone else betting against her that she was much stronger and tougher than they’d given her credit for.

  Finally, mercifully, the last meeting of the day was over. Edward turned to her.

  “You’ll have all of the meeting minutes to me first thing tomorrow morning?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll look them over and then we need to send them out to all of the participants, and copy upper management.”

  “Absolutely,” she nodded.

  He didn’t say anything else, just walked away from her. No “good job today,” no

  “thanks for your effort,” nothing. She’d been busting her ass for him all day and would continue to do so, and Edward wasn’t going to give her any positive feedback at all.

  She closed her laptop and walked back to her desk, feeling liked she’d already aged ten years. Her hands were sore from so much typing and her brain was fried from trying to learn and take in so much new information.

  She called Red from her office phone and he answered promptly. “Are you ready to take the next step?”

  “Ready as I’ll ever be.”

  “Good. Let’s meet in the lobby.”

  “The lobby? Everyone will be watching us.”

  “So? I don’t care what everyone else does.”

  Nicole got off the phone and readied herself for the next chapter of this bizarre journey. Before going down to the lobby, she went to the bathroom to freshen up, and on the way out, her cell rang.

  She looked at the number. It was her parents’ home number.

  “Shit.” She debated answering or not answering, finally decided to take the call.

  She couldn’t hide from them forever.

  “Nicole?” her mother’s voice piped.

  Shit. If it at least could have been her father who was on the line—Nicole could deal with him.

  “Hi, mom. What’s up?”

  Her mother sounded like she was chewing something. Probably eating some healthy snack. “How are you?” she asked. “How are things?”

  “Fine, mom. Busy.”

  “I’m sure. Yes.”

  Long pause.

  “Everything okay?” Nicole said.

  “Your father and I have been talking about everything that’s happened since you moved to New York City. And especially, we talked about the party on Sunday and Red’s proposing to you.” More chewing, as her mother seemed to want to make this as drawn out and painful a conversation as possible.

  “Okay…” Nicole said, waiting for the inevitable shoe to drop.

  “We’re just concerned about how fast this is all moving. Have the two of you discussed a wedding date yet?”

  “Not just yet, mom. But I’ll let you know as soon as we’ve settled on something.”

  Chew. Chew. Chew. It was maddening.

  “Maybe you should make this a long engagement,” her mother said. “Put the wedding out two years.”

  Nicole laughed softly. “That’s a little too far off, mom.”

  “You two are still getting to know each other. He seems like a very nice man, but…complicated. Don’t you think?”

  “I love him and he loves me.”

  “I’m sure that’s how it feels right now. As if everything is so simple, cut and dry.

  But the fact is—“

  “The fact is, it’s my life and my decisions.”

  “No need to jump down my throat, Nicky. I’m being supportive.”

  “This is not being supportive,” Nicole said. “You’re trying to undermine my confidence with your little digs about our relationship.”

  “Now wait just a minute,” her mother said sharply. “I didn’t come on here and tell you all the comments we got from people around town, about the reporters who took pictures of our home and made fun of us. It hurt your father deeply to have our home laughed at and mocked in the news.”

  “The Rag is not a news site, mom. It’s tabloid crap. Nobody cares what they say on that website. It’s all vicious gossip.”

  “Maybe you don’t care. Maybe Red Jameson doesn’t care, because he courts the attention and publicity. But your father and I don’t want to be ridiculed for living a simple life.”

  “I’m sorry that it happened, mom. If I’d have known, we never w
ould have come to the house.”

  “So now you’re with a man who you can’t even be seen with in public, without fear of what the news will print about you the next day. What kind of life is that, Nicole? Do you think you can be happy living this way?”

  “Mom, I need to go.”

  “Think about what I said. I love you, your father loves you—“

  “Love you too.” She hung up and dropped her cell back in her purse, wishing it would just burst into flames. That phone had caused her more than enough grief to last a lifetime already.

  As she made her way to the elevator and then the lobby, Nicole thought how amazing it was that her mom knew just what buttons to press to make her feel diminished and hopeless.

  Here she had finally met the man of her dreams, and her mother couldn’t celebrate and be happy for her. She had to stir up doubt and anxiety and make everything seem as though it were a nightmare.

  Wouldn’t most mothers be happy if their daughter ended up with a handsome billionaire who loved them to death?

  Red was waiting for her in the lobby, next to the door to the parking garage. As she met him and they kissed briefly, she knew that all eyes were upon them.

  I need to get used to this, she thought. This is going to be my life from now on. A lot of my privacy is going to be violated, and it comes with the territory.

  And quickly on the heels of those thoughts, were the words of her mother, still ringing in her ears.

  “What kind of life is that, Nicole?”

  ***

  The ride to Connecticut was long. Nicole was in her own world, quieter than she normally tended to be.

  Red didn’t seem to mind. He alternated between listening to music (mostly rock music) and talking on his Bluetooth. The calls were innocuous stuff; him making little decisions, telling someone how to best approach an important pitch for a big campaign, talking company strategy.

  She tuned most of it out, assuming that this was just part of his typical routine.

  But there was one call midway through the drive that seemed different than the rest.

  His voice took on a different tone. At first, he seemed to be discussing something very dull…a company in Germany. She didn’t remember the name of it. And then suddenly his manner changed and became very intense.

  “Why would you say that?” Red asked, his eyes staring at the road in front of him as he talked into his headset. “No, no no. That’s not the case at all. We’re heavily leveraged in that market and we absolutely need them to be on board.” There was a long pause while he listened. His hands gripped the steering wheel until his knuckles turned white and she could see his lips press together. “No, John. No. That’s not how it is at all and you can tell them. Tell them they better not fuck with me on this one or so help me God…”

  For a moment, Nicole felt afraid of him. He was so intense, so full of a dark rage and she thought that it could somehow be directed at her.

  “We need this deal to go through,” he said. “It’s not a little thing, John. It’s a big thing. We’re talking millions and millions…the stock price will go into the fucking toilet otherwise…and you know what that would mean.”

  The conversation seemed to downshift from there, and Red made some small talk before finally getting off the phone.

  When he was done, Nicole looked over at him. “Everything all right?”

  He smiled tightly. “Just the usual business bullshit.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. Well, some things are shittier than others. This thing is particularly shitty.”

  “You seemed angry at whoever you were talking to.”

  “That’s John Peterson, our CFO. He’s involved in a pretty important deal with a company we just acquired in Germany. It’s a very complicated deal. I can’t go into the details.”

  “Oh, of course. I wouldn’t expect you to.”

  His shoulders were hunched and he seemed distant. “It’s just business,” he said, as if trying to convince himself.

  A short while later, they arrived at Nicole’s new home.

  She’d tried to prepare herself for a shock, but really nothing could prepare her for what was in store when they approached the gate of Red’s Connecticut property. She couldn’t even see his home from the gate. All she saw were rolling hills, a large lake (or maybe it was a pond, but it was a huge pond), and trees fading into the distance.

  The private road was well lit by street lamps, but this time of night it was hard to tell just how big the property really was.

  At the gate there was a security booth with a young, fiercely serious man inside, sporting a military crew cut.

  Red put down his window and smiled at the young man peered into the car and looked directly at Nicole with cold, green eyes. Then his eyes flicked back to her fiancé.

  “Good evening, Mister Jameson.”

  “Evening, Dan.”

  “Is everything good, sir?”

  “Better than good, Dan. Thanks.”

  The gate clicked and hummed as it opened electronically. The guard watched them as they drove slowly past and now they were on the private road.

  Red glanced at her. “Overwhelmed?”

  “Very.” She took a deep breath and exhaled. The pond was on their left now. “It’s absolutely breathtaking.” She saw a family of ducks swimming leisurely in the still water.

  A quaint bridge, strewn with tiny glowing white bulbs extended over the narrower portion of the pond. In the distance, a little house lay nestled close to the water’s edge.

  “We’re on about seventeen and a half acres of land,” Red said. “It’s quite a lot to maintain. Over there is the caretaker’s home, and he and a small crew keep up the grounds year round. They’re good people, you’ll get to know all of them well.”

  Over the crest of a tiny hill, she caught sight of a full-sized basketball court on the left, and just next to that, tennis courts. They looked beautiful, as if they’d only just been built a day or two before. “Do you play on those?” she asked.

  “I do,” Red told her. “A few times a week a tennis pro comes to the house and gives me lessons or we play a set together.”

  “When you say, tennis pro, do you mean like one of those club pros that they have?

  The ones that give lessons to little kids and beginners or…”

  Red laughed. “I mean, one of the guys ranked in the top hundred in the world. I’ve had Roger Federer our here to play, John Isner, Andre Agassi. Andre’s back isn’t so good these days. Oh, Pete Sampras…”

  “They give you lessons.” She shook her head in disbelief.

  “A lot of them are friends. I’ve done campaigns with most of these guys. But yeah, they give me lessons and play with me. I don’t exactly provide much of a challenge, but the pay is good and afterwards they might stay and have a lovely meal.”

  The private way stretched on and on. They came over another rise and the house appeared in the distance, sprawling and magnificent. With the lights on both inside and around the house, it looked like something from a dream Walt Disney might have had. It literally took her breath away. The entire house and property was glowing magically, as if enchanted.

  “It’s a bit on the large side,” Red admitted, glancing at her reaction.

  “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  “It’s got twenty-five bathrooms and twenty-three bedrooms. Fifty thousand square feet.”

  “Why…why would you need any of that? You could provide room and board to a small village with that much space.”

  He chuckled at her astonishment. “I suppose I don’t technically need the space.

  But one day I do hope to have a family, and I like the idea of having plenty of room for guests; mothers and fathers, uncles, grandparents, little kids. And everyone has their own privacy, nobody’s on top of each other.”

  “Nobody can even find each other,” she said.

  His expression became serious. “Maybe it’s because of how I grew up,
” he told her. “We had no space at all. Me and my brother and mother, in a little apartment together, always on top of each other. I didn’t have any privacy, I had to share a room with Bryan until I was seventeen and finally went to college. I know it could have been worse, but something about it just ate at me.” His eyes were hard and she could feel the tension radiating off of him. She sensed that Red hadn’t exactly had a happy childhood.

  Nicole put a hand on his leg and felt him instantly relax. “I think it’s wonderful that you’ve been able to build a home that is exactly what you want. Sorry if I poked fun.”

  “I know it’s a bit much,” he said. It was the first time she’d ever seen him embarrassed of his wealth and opulence.

  “I think it’s amazing.”

  “Wait until you get inside,” he said.

  But even before they got inside the house, there was a fork in the road, and Red turned right, taking them past an incredible Olympic sized pool, the blue waters lit from lights beneath the surface. As Nicole craned her head to look at the crystal clear water, imagining herself taking a dip on a warm summer day, Red parked the car next to the house and turned to her. “Last stop, my beautiful bride-to-be.”

  “This is like some kind of fairy tale.”

  “Come on, Princess Masters, your castle awaits.”

  Out of the car, she took a deep breath of fresh air and smiled. She could walk for hours and hours out there, over the bridge of the beautiful pond. She imagined herself stopping and watching the wind ripple across the surface of the water.

  Everything here is partly mine, now, she told herself. It still didn’t feel real to her.

  Red took her by the hand and pulled her toward one of the entrances. He flipped open a little box and punched a very long sequence of numbers into a keypad. There was a series of little beeps and then a clicking sound. “Come on inside,” he said, opening the door and letting them into the foyer.

  It was too big and grand for words, she thought. No description would do it justice, and nobody she knew would believe her if she told them.

  There were light marble floors as far as the eye could see, and a grand staircase that stretched above their heads. The foyer was so open that you could actually see across into the other rooms that continued on and on, like reflecting mirrors.