Page 76 of A Very Happy Thanksgiving
My pot plants were still looking mighty sorry for themselves, but Marc took the edge off my mood far better than any drug ever could, so I didn’t much care. He was never more than a phone call away.
And tonight, he’d be right by my side.
“So, do you think Polly’s parents will disown her?” Serena asked.
Edie shook her head. “They can’t. She’s the marketing genius who doubled the profits at their family business, remember? Either Polly and Damon will elope, or they’ll somehow try to rebrand him.”
“Hard when there are so many pictures of him on the internet.”
“Did you get all those words in the right order?” Marissa asked, not-quite innocently.
Edie’s eyes widened. “Oh my goodness, can you imagine what would happen if they had one of those video montages at the wedding reception?”
“Better have a defibrillator on standby,” Liam put in.
This was okay. Nobody appeared to be particularly interested in me. These folks had a sense of humour, and to most of them, I was just Marc’s boring girlfriend. Dinner wasn’t bad either—whoever was lurking in Edie’s kitchen cooked almost as well as Marcel did.
After dessert, people began to drift off—Salma and her girlfriend climbed into a cab, and Eisen headed back to Somerset with Janie because their two boys had school the next morning. Marissa and Liam lived in the Cotswolds, and Liam had an early shift, so they left too. Marc hugged Serena goodbye, and Owen too. I’d been surprised to find out how well he and Owen got along—he’d even agreed to be a groomsman at their upcoming wedding, albeit reluctantly because he didn’t want to overshadow their day.
That left Marc and me with Heath and Edie, and we wouldn’t be going anywhere because they’d offered us a bed for the night. Marc said he usually stayed there when he came to London—occasionally he went to Serena’s place, but rarely to a hotel. He preferred privacy to pampering, and that suited me just fine.
But was Edie comfortable with the situation? She grew visibly more antsy after the others departed, even after Heath settled her onto the couch with a blanket and poured her a glass of orange juice.
“So, uh, Phae… Have you been to London before?”
“Once or twice.”
“Did you come for business or pleasure?”
Yes, Heath had definitely told her about me, enough that she was worried. Fuck it, I’d address this head-on.
“Business. But don’t worry; I left my gun at home this time.”
A lie, but she’d never know that, and at the edge of my vision, I saw the guilt that flashed across Heath’s face. Because he’d spilled my secrets? Or because he regretted bringing an assassin into his home? Guilt wasn’t something that troubled me often, but I’d learned to identify it in others. Only Marc made me feel the full colour of emotions, and the past four months had been overwhelming in many ways.
But I was holding up.
Our relationship grew stronger every day.
If I wasn’t with Marc, I called him, and just hearing his voice grounded me. Over a decade of avoidance, and we’d slotted back into each other’s lives so easily that I sometimes forgot we’d been apart. I’d watched as he shed years of Hollywood stress, grew a beard, rediscovered jeans, and planned out his new yard with the landscaper. After he wrapped up his final movie, he wanted us to get a dog. I’d made the mistake of mentioning the dog thing to Sin, and now she was texting him pictures of shelter mutts every day.
This wasn’t the life I’d envisioned, but it was the one I’d realised I needed.
Edie’s eyes widened at the mention of my gun. “I’m glad to hear that. Getting arrested at the airport would be so awkward.”
“Edie’s worried about work, not you.” Heath took the direct approach as well. “She got a call after dessert—one of her clients has been admitted to hospital.”
“Her mum called me,” Edie explained. “Lorena took an overdose. The doctors pumped her stomach, and they’re hopeful she’ll make it, but nobody’s sure what she took yet.”
Was that all? Phew. Nice Dusk reached out and squeezed her hand, pleasantly surprised when she didn’t recoil.
“I’m sorry to hear it. I’ll say a prayer and keep her in my thoughts.” People expected Americans to say shit like that. “It can’t be easy when a tragedy like that happens.”
“It’s the inevitability that I find the most difficult. Lorena’s been on our books for almost a year, and I just knew something like this would happen. It was like being a passenger on a plane with no engines, heading for the ground and having no way to stop the disaster.”
“If an aircraft is heading for the ground with no engines, a skilled pilot can glide it to the nearest airfield. They don’t just fall out of the sky,” I said, and Marc elbowed me in the side. Oh, right. Oops. “I mean, yes, that sounds terrible.”
“Lorena’s left her asshole of a boyfriend four times, but he fucks with her head, so she always goes back to him sooner or later. Honestly, I wish I could drop him off a bridge.”
