THE MAN SHE FELL IN LOVE WITH
“Don’t you want to see what’s in the box?” Anthony made the little velvet box dance in his palm to the rhythm of the music, bouncing it around to make it hard for me to grab. But I did get hold of it.
I bit my lower lip and slowly opened it on its silent hinge. There they were. The platinum wedding bands we picked out. Our wedding bands. Simple, smooth, unadorned platinum. Traditional and elegant. None of those “it opens up into a timepiece” gadgets or Black Hills gold tricolored rings various mail jewelers tried to push on us. No diamond channel set for me. No birthstones or laser etchings in a lace pattern. No dual-tone metals with a gold edge in case gold jewelry comes back into style. We went simple. Beautiful.
I pulled mine from its slot and held it at an angle. And it was there. The inscription Anthony kept secret from me when he ordered it: E.—Forever—Love A.
And that was the first time I had cried in days. The first time I had cried tears of joy in months…
Books by Sharon Naylor
IT’S MY WEDDING TOO
IT’S NOT MY WEDDING (BUT I’M IN CHARGE)
Published by Kensington Publishing Corporation
It’s My Wedding Too
SHARON NAYLOR
KENSINGTON BOOKS
KENSINGTON PUBLISHING CORP.
http://www.kensingtonbooks.com
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Epilogue
Chapter 1
No one ever told Delilah Winchester that nothing in life is perfect. When you have more money than several royal families combined, and a well-adapted ego that’s aware of every penny, coddling each cent like a pedigree pet, there’s very little “perfect” you can’t create somehow with the whisper of a check torn from its Prada holder. Perfect can be bought. Perfect can be demanded. And perfect can be pulled from others at first by a threatening stance and a proverbial ax held over their livelihood, and then over the years with just a raised eyebrow and pursed lips. Perfect, my dear, is the goal. Those Buddhists are wrong, you see. It’s the only theory they can hang on to when they have no good shoes or clothes.
Delilah Winchester wasn’t always Leona Helmsley’s evil twin. She wasn’t always sour-faced and held together as if screwed too tightly by a too-often-insulted surgeon inserting titanium rods into her spine, neck and hips. And she certainly didn’t start life off looking down her nose at others (tough to do when you’re 5 feet 2 inches tall, by the way) with an overly applied scent of disdain. Spritz disdain into the air and then walk through the mist so as not to overapply. One never knows when one will walk into an elevator with a wealthy Somebody inside, perhaps.
Not too many people remember anything of her other than this icy power bitch in heels, who would pull out a wad of hundreds as a big show in front of a homeless person to fan through for a single (of course, doing this only in front of an admiring fan who would later go to the fan-based chat room to report Delilah’s act of benevolence and then call the gossip rags for a quick $100 finder’s fee on the tip).
Not many people remember when she shopped at retail stores, and not many people remember the softness of her pre-successful cheeks, the smell of apples on her hands from the pies she made at Thanksgiving, the simple silver chain she received as a wedding present from her groom that hung a cross demurely on her chest and the cotton shirts she wore with her sleeves rolled up, the Mary Kay lipstick she bought only at friends’ cosmetics parties, the sound of the laughter when her best friends from high school gathered once a year at her place and drank $8 bottles of wine by the fireplace, talking about their old high school days and rock concerts and wondering what happened to their ex-boyfriends.
She was young and pink then, a radiant Madonna woman in the days when that meant nurturing and peaceful, with hair dyed from the box with a few chunks mistakenly untouched by the auburn shading in the back when she pulled her hair up. Not many people remember when she went by her real name of Donna Penks. I can’t go by the name Donna Penks anymore! Donna Penks sounds like a name for the woman who calls Bingo at the church and runs coat drives for the needy. Donna Penks shops at Target. Donna Penks is the housewife who sits at home, cleaning the fish tank and wondering why her husband is three hours late coming home.
So—and not many people remember this either—Donna Penks was symbolically cremated with a bonfire on the kitchen stove to make ashes out of her old driver’s license, library card, PTA card, old postcards from vacations, twelve years of journals, a handkerchief, some old underwear, and a handmade sign that said “The Penks Family Welcomes You to Our Home.” Donna Penks was dead. Delilah Winchester rose out of the ashes in the skillet, after being sprayed a few times by the fire extinguisher. Delilah Winchester became the phoenix rising from the flames, once the burnt plastic fumes cleared away. Not too many people know that story.
Not too many people remember when her Mary Kay bubble gum pink lips magically morphed into $50 MAC red, and not too many people remember that she used to smile readily, laugh heartily, hug mightily, sing when she thought no one was looking, laugh when she burned a pot roast, playfully tossed a handful of flour at her kids while making Christmas cookies, stayed up all night with a sick family dog and dried the tears of her husband.
No one’s really left here to remember that person. She got rid of them all. The friends, the husband, the Mary Kay consultants.