Page 50 of How to Say I Do
But if I said yes, I would.
You really wanna get hurt again Wyatt? Didn’t you learn your lesson the first time?
If I could see my mother and father again—
Mr. Bettancourt—I typed, slow and methodical, keystroke by keystroke—Please send me the NDA and let’s discuss.
CHAPTER14
Noël
The plan had beento take all my bold new understandings and my groundbreaking discoveries with Tessa to Dinah’s desk and dump them. Her client. Her account. I had zero interest in weddings. No, less than zero. If I never saw another bride or groom or bouquet of white roses mixed with sprigs of baby’s breath, I would die a happy man.
But Tessa outmaneuvered me. Before I’d made it back to the office, Tessa had called up Harrison and requested, in that special, global superstar way, that Dinah be removed and I be given her account.
Lucky me. If Dinah hadn’t been out to garrote me last week, she surely would be now.
And to put the giant “fuck me” cherry on top of this shit sundae, Harrison was just full of back-slapping joy when he transferred the account.
“Noël, when you pull off the Yarborough wedding andElite’s Fashion Week parties, you’ll be the hottest name in the city. I’d better sign you as my partner before you get it in your head to launch your own firm, right?”
Honestly? I’d rather don a ratty, roach-ridden getup from the back of a thrift store, apply sizzling neon makeup, and stroll the Upper East Side than strike out on my own.
“Knock these out of the park and we’ll draw up the papers.” Harrison said.
That sound? That was my life, churring down the garbage disposal.
A week after suggesting to Tessa that she might be interested in a quaint and undiscovered Texas winery for her wedding, Tessa loaded me and Tyler onto her private jet and took us south, at Wyatt’s invitation.
“This is just amazing,” Tessa gushed. She was swiping through the iPad I’d given her and Tyler when we boarded, stuffed with pictures Wyatt had taken of his ranch. I’d bravely managed to look at a whole two of them, and now I was downing vodka martinis as fast as was professionally acceptable.
Theoretically, I was going to actuallybeat Wyatt’s ranch in four short hours, but the future wasn’t set. The plane could crash. We could fly into a cloud and ram into an alien spaceship. We could bounce off the atmosphere and skip out to Mars.
What would happen when we arrived?
I thought Wyatt would have said or done something already, or given me some kind of sign or signal about how he felt about my reappearance in his life, but, no, there’d been nothing. He was as impassive now as he’d been expressive in Cancun.
It was only six days. He probably doesn’t even remember you.I slurped vodka from my ice cubes until my cheeks hollowed.
“How did you find this place, Noël?” Tyler asked.
Tyler was, annoyingly, as absolutely sincere and genuine as Tessa had claimed. He reminded me a lot of Wyatt, what with his soulful, loving looks and how he played with Tessa’s hair and they got lost in each other’s smiles. Honestly, good for Tessa, but I kept waiting for the Breaking News alert and a revelation that Tyler Walker was a secret serial killer or a puppy-mill operator.
“I found out about the Gran Cielo Viñedo recently. It’s a family-owned business, and… it seems like a great fit.”
“It’s soromantic.” Tessa beamed at Tyler. He gazed at her with Bambi eyes. Ugh. “And the idea of it being undiscovered is…” She sighed. “This is exactly why I wanted to work with Harrison’s firm.”
I poured another slug of vodka. At this point, I wasn’t even pretending to be classy. Fuck the olives.
Tessa had tactfully never brought up my love life—one Google search would give her all the sordid details—but forty-thousand feet over Missouri and on the way to Wyatt’s was apparently the time and place for her to broach that subject. “You’ll find your soul mate, Noël. Someone out there is waiting for you, just like Tyler was waiting for me. When you two meet, it will be magic. You’ll be swept off your feet, guaranteed.”
Memories rushed me: Wyatt salt-soaked and smiling in the surf, Wyatt holding out a plumeria blossom and apologizing that it wasn’t a Texas yellow rose.
“One day,” I said.
Thanks to Tessa’s private jet, we landed at the Real County Airport—a lone runway surrounded by fields—instead of at San Antonio International Airport. A brand-new, fully-loaded Lincoln Navigator was waiting for us, and, thank God, Tyler leaped behind the wheel. I read out Wyatt’s address. He punched it into the navigation.
Texas blurred beyond the backseat windows: gnarled live oaks dotted across golden fields, sprawling hills bedecked with wildflowers, creeks running like ribbons along the wandering line of the horizon. The sky was a lid of cerulean. My heart hammered like a hummingbird. I closed my eyes and gripped the seat cushion.
