Page 31 of Must Have Been Love

“You’ve invited business acquaintances to my daughter’s princess party?” For fuck’s sake. I hate being blindsided. Autumn knows this.

She looks over my shoulder at the door, like she’s trying to figure out how quickly she can escape. “It kind of grew,” she admits.

“Seriously,” I tell her, because I’m losing it here. “I need to have a complete list of who’s coming. You shouldn’t have invited people without my say so.”

“You didn’t even want to hand out the invitations with Ayda,” Autumn protests. “If I’d run the guest list past you, we both know that you’d have vetoed everybody.”

“And where are they all sleeping?”

“We’ve booked rooms in the hotel and Eileen’s guest house, plus a lot of them are coming by yacht and sleeping out there. The accommodation is all covered, Hudson.” She’s smiling again. “All you have to do is show up and enjoy it.”

That’s asking way too much. I let out an agonized groan.

My phone starts to buzz and I glance at the caller, seeing it’s Damien in London reminds me that I was supposed to join a video call five minutes ago.

“You should go,” Autumn says, looking delighted at the interruption. “By the way, you don’t even need to worry about a costume. I’ve ordered a fabulous one for you.”

“What costume?” I ask, as I quickly type out a message to Damien to tell him I’ll be on our call in two minutes.

“For the party. Princesses and princes, remember?”

“Hell, no,” I growl. “I’ll go to the party, and I’ll pay for the whole thing, and I’ll even attempt to smile when I remember. But I’m not wearing a fucking costume.”

She laughs. “We’ll see.” Then she turns on her heel and walks out of the room, her body language telling me she thinks she’s won this round.

Probably because she has.

* * *

SKYLER

“Okay Slutty Princess,” Lee says, her face beaming at me through the screen of my phone. “It’s time for the big reveal. Show me what you’ve got.”

“I told you, I’m not going as a slutty princess to a children’s party,” I say, rolling my eyes at Lee. “It was just something I said to rile the man up.”

“You seem to enjoy riling him up,” she says, looking suddenly interested.

“That’s because he’s an ass with a stick up his behind.” Though I think we both know that’s not the reason why.

“He has a great behind though.” She sighs. “Have you seen how good he looks in a suit?”

“No,” I lie. “And nor have you.” Truth is I haven’t seen much of the man for the past few days. A couple of times I’ve seen his expensive car drive past and felt my heart race, but he hasn’t stopped.

This is a good thing, I tell myself.

“I’ve seen photographs,” Lee says.

“You’re married, you’re not supposed to be looking at other men,” I point out.

“Shut up. And show me your costume. I’m dying to see it.”

“Okay.” I put the phone on the little shelf next to the mirror in the bathroom, angling it so that when I take a few steps back she can see a full-length image of me dressed as a princess.

I got the costume last week when I went over to the mainland to file the application for a bar licence at the ABC office. Jesse brought it over and helped me fill it in, and we’d ended up making an evening of it, playing songs on the jukebox and drinking cans of beer from the local liquor store – who told me they can’t wait for me to re-open the bar because they’re beyond busy and they can’t keep up with the demand.

“Oh, my God,” Lee says, starting to laugh. “That’s not what I expected at all. Where’s all the pink ruffles and tiara?”

“You really think I’d wear pink?”

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