The Best Of February 2016. Catherine Mann
texted her:
I need to buy some gowns. The stylist says I need at least ten. That seems excessive.
Octavia texted back:
Conservative. I bought two dozen when I married. I just bought twelve more—thanks, Lorenzo, for the ample hips and bust.
Two dozen? The gowns were four figures each!
This first event was Cesar’s mother’s reception for her new daughter-in-law, however. La Reina Montero was hosting a very civilized affair to introduce her eldest son’s new wife to five hundred of her closest friends and relatives. In a month, La Reina would do it all again when her second son’s engagement to Diega Fuentes was formally announced. One would think Señora Montero had a reduce-reuse-recycle zero-waste attitude, if not for her willingness to feed the same crowd twice.
Sorcha glanced at Cesar, glad he couldn’t read her thoughts.
She had glimpsed these sorts of events from afar as his PA, and had usually been the one to arrange tuxedos to come back from the cleaners and drivers to arrive at the door. When she had asked if those sorts of duties fell to her as his wife, he’d asked, “Do you want them to?”
Much discussion had ensued about her role in organizing his private life—which harkened back to her claim that she might want an outside job again, eventually, but the truth was she was already overwhelmed. Readying their new home was a job in itself and mothering was nonstop. She liked the idea of taking charge of his personal calendar, but wasn’t sure if she could handle it yet.
He wound up suggesting she needed a personal assistant, which had made her laugh outright.
“My mother has one,” he’d said with a negligent shrug. Like it was a handy app you downloaded onto your tablet.
“I’m not on your mother’s level,” she had protested.
“You’re not the Duquesa yet, but you will be. She’ll judge you far more harshly for not wearing the affectations befitting your station than for acting the part out of the gate.”
No pressure to be her absolute highest self tonight or anything.
They arrived earlier than the rest of the guests so they could form part of the receiving line. Sorcha felt as though invisible eyes were on her as she walked up the front steps in her heels, green-and-gold skirt caressing her thighs while she resisted the urge to tug on the strapless bodice to ensure her breasts didn’t make an appearance.
She’d been to this house exactly once, in the days after Cesar’s crash, when she’d brought some things from his office to his father. She’d used the service entrance and had been shown into his office for twenty minutes. She had spent nineteen of those minutes memorizing Cesar’s boyhood face in a family portrait over the fireplace.
Tonight, she was a member of his family. Cesar led her without hesitation up the stairs into the private domain where he had grown up, seeking out his parents in their personal lounge. He made a point of calling them by name when he greeted them. “Sorcha, you remember my parents, Javiero and La Reina.”
“Of course.” Sorcha smiled. As his PA, she had used their titles when speaking to them and their greetings had been touchless. They both held her hands and kissed her cheeks today.
“Welcome.” Javiero was an older version of Cesar, very handsome and still with a full head of dark hair. He stood tall in his tuxedo, jacket not yet on, and moved with economy. He never wasted a word, much like his son. Working closely with him in those first days after Cesar’s crash, doing everything she could to ensure the impact to the corporation was minimized, she had thought Javiero respected and valued her. This evening, he was inscrutable as he glanced at his sleeping grandson.
Sorcha had mostly spoken to La Reina on the telephone, ingratiating herself shamelessly in the first year of her employment. Mothers were worse than wives if you got on their bad side as a man’s assistant. She figured she had one chance as his wife.
“So lovely to have you back with us,” La Reina said, proving she could lie as elegantly as she could dress. “And a son. Such a delightful surprise. I’ve been tied up with planning this party or I would have come to see him. I thought when you’d moved into the new house would be convenient, so I could see both at once.”
Tonight was not, apparently, a convenient time to view her grandson.
“I’m nursing,” Sorcha said, pretending the payoff check hadn’t happened. Or the generous but ironclad prenup. This was how his family did things, right? All business, purely practical, no emotion. “We couldn’t leave him home.”
“Oh, yes. I always thought breastfeeding sounded like such a nuisance,” La Reina murmured.
Sorcha bit her tongue.
“The nanny will watch him in my suite,” Cesar said. “But we won’t stay the night.”
“When you have him settled, join us for cocktails. Rico and Pia are here. They might be downstairs already,” she added.
They left for Cesar’s suite and Sorcha felt as if she could breathe again. At least it hadn’t been ugly. Maybe she could get through this after all.
Thirty minutes later, she accompanied Cesar toward the stairs. He offered a hand as they began to descend and she gratefully took it, even though she kept the other on the rail. It would be just like her to go headfirst, she was so sick with nerves right now.
“Your hand is freezing,” he said, closing his warm one more tightly over hers.
“I’m terrified,” she muttered. “What are people going to say?”
“Congratulations,” he replied. “What else can they say?”
“I suppose,” she mumbled, and told herself to quit frowning, but couldn’t shake her worry. “Are you sure I look all right?”
He was exceptionally handsome in his tuxedo, wearing it like old jeans. He’d shaved and wore the bored expression of a man who’d done this too many times to count.
“I told you before we left that you look beautiful, but Enrique started crying. You might not have heard me.”
“No, I did. I just—” Didn’t believe it. She’d seen him with his lovers in the past. He’d always been so attentive and indulgent, performing foreplay with light fingers on a woman’s skin and nuzzles of his lips against her cheek.
She was his wife and while his compliment had sounded sincere, he’d also seemed stiff when he’d said it. Standoffish. He wasn’t flirty and affectionate with her.
They reached the bottom of the stairs and she let go of his hand, turned to face him and made herself confront her worst fear. She had always felt attractive, if wary of her own allure, but the changes of pregnancy had her confidence faltering.
“Be honest. Is the baby weight turning you off? Because I’m trying to drop it as fast as I can, but it’s hard.”
“Sorcha.” He looked genuinely shocked and confused. “What gave you the idea...? Even if you were still out to here—” he stuck his hand in the air at his middle “—it wouldn’t matter. You always look flawless. You’re the most naturally beautiful woman I know.”
“I’m sorry. I’m just really nervous and—” She was such an idiot. She shouldn’t have started this here, now, but this party felt like the official beginning of their marriage and she wouldn’t relax until she at least knew... “I went to the doctor today. She said we could, um...” She looked around. “You know,” she said in an undertone. “If we use, um,” she swallowed and mouthed, condoms.
He stared.
She felt as though she grew transparent, skin thinning with heat, clothes incinerating until they flaked off her body in papery curls and she stood naked before him. She had just handed him the power to accept or reject her, leaving her self-worth hanging in the balance. She wished he would—