The Kiss Plot by Nicole French
One
Ding. Ding. Ding.
The blunt edge of the butter knife touched crystal with gentle clinks that still managed to disseminate through the crowded ballroom. Within a few seconds, all five hundred members of New York’s elite quieted while tuxedoed waitstaff darted silently between tables, delivering platters of duck à l’orange, Wagyu filets, or blackened branzino. It was the third course, which meant most of the room was tipsy, but not drunk. Full, but not yet tired. And the big band on the ballroom stage hadn’t even touched the second set of swing classics, having supplied, until this point, Glenn Miller covers more fitting to a dinner soundtrack.
This wasn’t the first speech of the night, but it was the one people anticipated the most.
My husband stood, his blond hair glimmering like a halo beneath the chandeliers above and twinkling lights wrapped around the statuesque white flower arrangements at every table. I smiled into my glass. I was the only one here who knew how devilish the man really was.
Husband. Holy shit, Eric de Vries was my husband. The staid, normal word sounded surreal in my head, particularly since six months ago, I was pretty sure I’d never get married. And certainly not to him. Eric was the golden boy of New York, the closest thing to royalty America had had since JFK, Jr. Tall and blond, with sturdy Scandinavian features and the bearing of a prince, he was the kind of person who existed in romance novels, not in real life.
And now he was mine.
Six months ago, we’d shocked this world by announcing our engagement. I’d walked out of a salon broke and fabulous in leather pants, combat boots, and freshly rainbow-colored hair. And then I’d slammed right into Eric, who had proposed the craziest idea I’d ever heard.
Twenty million dollars. Five years. Marry the only man who’d ever broken my heart and walk away never wanting again.
Except now, I wasn’t going anywhere.
I was a character from a Kevin Kwan novel, my hair back to my natural brownish-black, but just as glossy as the celebration in front of me. My chunky glasses had been traded for contacts, and instead of my customary handmade duds, I was decked out in the second couture wedding dress of the night that cost more than my rent all of last year. The stunning Giambattista Valli was designed specifically for the reception with a sleeveless lace bodice, barely-there straps, and a tea-length skirt covered completely with ostrich feathers.
It was a hell of a long way from combat boots. Did I feel a bit like a stranger? Sure. Acclimating to this crazy world hadn’t been easy. These people backstabbed with X-ACTO knives. But when Eric looked at me like that, honest to God, I couldn’t have been happier.
That sly grin appeared, the one that he reserved just for me. It was evenly mixed with boyish charm and a stern clue of what was to come after the guests left and we were alone. In front of others, Eric was reserved, content to let me be the bigger personality. I had the jokes, the splashy style, the attention-seeking hair while Eric observed passively. But behind closed doors, he was in command. Of my mind. Of my body. Of everything, every single sensation.
So, while his full lips smiled, his stormy gray eyes gleamed with a promise. Mine, they said. It was probably seventy-five degrees in this ballroom, but I shivered and clenched my thighs together. Hell yes, I was his. No receipts. No returns. One hundred percent property of Mr. de Vries.
Eric straightened his bow tie and turned to the quieted crowd. “I don’t have nearly the grace of my mother,” he said, nodding to Heather, who had spoken earlier in lieu of her deceased first husband—Eric’s father, Jacob. “And I don’t have the jokes of my ridiculous best man.”
There was a friendly chuckle as the room turned its attention briefly to the man in question, Brandon Sterling.
“Don’t even reach for my swagger, kid,” he called out in a Boston accent thickened by alcohol. Skylar, his wife and my best friend, elbowed him in the side. Brandon just shuttered her concerns with a kiss. Once I would have been jealous, or at the very least pessimistic about the love those two shared. But now I understood it. I had a soul mate. The perfect man. And he was standing in front of me, toasting our wedding.
Eric just rolled his eyes and turned back to the crowd. “A lot of people were surprised when I announced I was getting married. And they were even more surprised when I introduced this one to the family. They said don’t do it. They said it was all wrong.”
I tried to remain passive as he listed all the reasons why we were such a terrible fit. Different families. Different temperaments. Different incomes.
Despite the joy of the day…I did find myself wondering now if he considered us a mistake. After all, it was only hours ago that I was screaming at him in the chapel.
Steady now, Jane Brain. Don’t let that head of yours run away with itself.
I swallowed my doubts as my dad’s voice echoed from my memories. More than anything, I wished he could have been here. But since he was in a better place, the best I could do would be to honor his death by listening to him now the way I never had when he was alive. Eric was going somewhere with this barrage. I’d come out the other end feeling fine. I knew it.
“Jane.” Eric’s eyes swam with love. “I didn’t get to read this at the church, so I’m going to do it now.”
He pulled a familiar piece of paper from his pocket. I stared at it. It was the crumpled poem he had given me just before the ceremony, slipped around the edge of my door—the wedding vows he wouldn’t be able to say in the traditional manner but wanted me to see anyway.
“Where did you get that?” I’d kept the poem with me during the wedding, tucked in my tiny beaded clutch. I hadn’t even told him it was there.
Eric winked. “I have my ways, pretty girl.”
Warmth glowed in my belly. That term was his way of calling on the side of me that only wanted to do his bidding, usually in ways that had me bent over a table, ready to receive whatever “punishment” my insubordination required. Except it wasn’t really a punishment at all to be Eric’s pretty girl. Not one bit.
He unfolded the paper and held it up while he spoke into the microphone:
Pretty girl. Woman. Siren. Fiend.
She with her
Lipseyescheekshairlegspussyskinshouldersarmsbreaststhighsback
But more than that her
Mindgazehumorsmartstonguewordstalentkindnesscandor
Makes me
Crazydevotedfrustratedsated
Inloveinlustinheatintrustin
All you are, Jane, all yours.
This is my
Hate vow
Love vow
Sex vow
My vow is that
Forever
Always
I belong to you.
The guests clapped, maybe too loudly considering they had just listened to this man describe our sex life, among many other things, in front of a bunch of strangers. But I didn’t care. His words made me hum.
“I read that because I wanted to be clear,” Eric said. “I wanted the nature of my relationship with this woman to be obvious.” He held out his hand, gesturing for me to get up. “Jane.”
I stood, and he pulled me flush to his solid body. His five-o’clock shadow gilt his square jaw, and his full lips smirked. Desire must have been written all over my face.
“I just want to say one thing.” His low voice was amplified by the mic, but I felt like I was the only one in the room. “All of this,” he said, waving the vows tenderly through the air toward the festivities. “These words I wrote for you?”
“Y-yes?” I asked, unable to look away from his deep gray eyes, the ones flecked with brown in the right light.
Eric held the mic closer to his mouth so everyone could hear him. “It’s complete and total crap.”
I blinked, about to kiss him until the words registered. Then fear crackled over my skin like an eggshell knocked by a spoon. “What—what?”
He dropped his arm from my waist, and I fell back into the chair, staring as Eric smiled widely at our audience.
His grandmother, Celeste, nodded knowingly from her table. “I knew it,” she mouthed to Eric’s aunts and cousins, who all nodded back, a row of pristine puppets.
“We knew it,” they said like a fucked-up Greek chorus of perfect blonde hens.
“We knew it,” said the crowd.
I stood again, my limbs trembling. “What—why? Why are you doing this?” I backed away from the banquet table that was suddenly empty except for my single plate of unfinished food. The room behind me never seemed to end.
“Because,” Eric said with that nonchalant shrug that always equally infuriated me and turned me on. “You know the truth, pretty girl. You never belonged here in the first place. And you never will.”
I whirled around, looking for Skylar. I didn’t know what was going on. I wasn’t sure I cared. I just needed to get out of here.
But instead of a hug, my best friend appeared with a can of bright red paint.
“How about a splash?” she asked with a wicked grin before tipping the bloody crimson all over my feathers. A row of children dressed in white snickered behind her.
My glasses fell off—which was strange, since I was wearing contacts before, wasn’t I? Then, before the screams could erupt from my throat, the floor of the ornate hall fell out from under me. I caught myself on the edge with just a few fingers, my feet flailing under me. One shoe fell. Then the other.
“Goodbye, Jane,” Eric said with a haughty wave. Then he pushed the toe of his shiny black Oxford against my fingertips, dislodging one at a time. For the last one, he kicked. Hard.
And I fell into the hole. Into utter darkness.
* * *
Ding. Ding. Ding.
I blinked my eyes open, squinting into the early morning light bouncing through my bedroom, twinkling off the condensation gathered on the windowpanes.
That dream. That fucking dream. I’d had different variations of it every night for the past ten days, since the world really had dropped out from under me. Sometimes we were at a courthouse. Once it was in the middle of Central Park. But it always amounted to the same thing. Eric smiling. Eric leaving. Eric kicking me away. And I fell, always fell, out of control.
Like my entire life now.
Ding.
My cell phone alerted me with another message—I thought. Was that what had woken me up this time? It sure as shit didn’t sound like silver on crystal in the harsh light of day.
I rolled over onto the goose-down pillow in Skylar’s guesthouse, where I’d been holed up since being left at the altar of the biggest wedding New York had seen in years. Thank God for wealthy friends, was all I could say. Thank God for Skylar and Brandon’s giant estate in Boston, with its private granny flat and stone-walled security that kept out the prying eyes of Page Six. Thank God for the space they offered for me to relive my anguish, frustration, and rage time and time again without people watching.
Because, just like it did every morning, the whole nightmare flooded back.
Getting ready at the Waldorf, eager as a new bride should be.
Overhearing that once upon a time, Eric had slept with my nemesis and neglected to tell me.
Having a massive fight in the echoing chapel of St. John the Divine.
And then, just as we were about to finish the ceremony through gritted teeth, being interrupted by the tall, impossibly arrogant John Carson, who had announced himself as my long-lost father, objected to the wedding, and then beckoned Eric with a single Latin phrase: “Deorum vocas.”
Whatever the hell that meant. Not, I supposed, that it really mattered. Because with two more words to me—“I’m sorry”—Eric followed the man out of the church before the minister fully pronounced us married. His grandmother Celeste had collapsed in the front row…but Eric had kept walking. And no one had seen him since.
This wasn’t real life. It was a plot lifted straight from Dynasty or Days of Our Lives. We were Jerry Springer guests with big bank accounts.
I pushed a hand through my hair—still black, but with that new streak of red I’d kept on Eric’s request. I’d dyed my earlier color—a full head of pink-hued rainbow—back to my natural black-brown to present a version of myself I hoped would fit more with the glitzy, polished world of the de Vries family. But Eric demanded I put at least some color back in. He wanted the girl he fell in love with, he said. And like a fool, I believed him.
I flipped through the messages on my phone. There were four new voicemails from my mother, which I immediately deleted. I still hadn’t forgiven her for keeping such a massive secret like my biological father from me. Not. Ready.
The rest were from Skylar. Some sent from the main house this morning while she and Brandon got ready for work. A few others probably from her office in downtown Boston. It was now eleven in the morning. Those two workaholics had probably been at it for at least three to four hours, even with two small children.
The phone buzzed in my hand, flashing with the wry, arch-browed face of my best friend. Wow, she was really not going to let this go today.
With a long, tortured sigh, I answered it.
“Sky, you are obnoxious, you know that? Some of us really don’t have anything better to do than lounge around until noon. And we like it that way.”
“You need to get up.” Skylar’s husky voice was sharper than usual, leaving no room for jokes.
I pushed off the big goose-down comforter and padded into the bathroom, where I set the phone on the sink. “What’s so urgent that I have to be up by the crack of noon?”
I yawned as I put on my glasses—my favorite gold Guccis today—then scowled at my reflection and immediately took them off. My dark circles looked like checkable suitcases, and another night of tossing and turning had not been so good for the old mane, which would have looked right at home in an eighties hair band video. I could have doubled for Slash with the right top hat.
“Eric’s back.”
I stood up mid-wash of my face, water dripping down my chin. “He’s back?”
“He called the firm this morning. And so did the de Vrieses’ lawyer. Everything is set for the funeral this weekend.”
I collapsed onto the toilet seat. Immediately following Eric’s impromptu exit, his grandmother—the same grandmother who had concocted this whole marriage scheme to begin with—had collapsed right there in the church, dead before the paramedics arrived. She was in poor health, having fought cancer for several years, and Eric running out was just too much for her frail body. Her heart gave out. In seconds, the matriarch of the de Vries clan, one of the oldest and most powerful families of the Upper East Side, was gone.
Without Eric, however, I hadn’t been allowed anywhere near the funeral plans or anything else to do with the woman with whom I’d become surprisingly close over the past six months. Celeste de Vries might have been the most Machiavellian schemer on the planet, but she and I had cultivated a sort of adversarial fondness for each other.
I was the exact opposite of what she’d intended by insisting her grandson get married to keep his fortune. The de Vrieses were demure where I was loud. Rich where I was poor. Eric’s family was well-bred, blond, and perfectly polished; I was a half-Asian mutt who practically cosplayed Rainbow Brite.
But after so many lunches to plan the wedding turned into trips to the museum or Bergdorf’s, I’d spent more time with the crotchety old matriarch in her final months than anyone in her family. And now that she was gone, I actually missed her.
Enough that when Eric’s family refused to let me help with any of the funeral obligations, I had fled to Boston to nurse my wounds. But in a way, it made sense. If Eric himself had walked out on their wedding, what right did I have to anything else in the family?
Still, it hurt. It hurt a lot.
Of course it does, peanut. That’s grief.
I shook my head. My own father’s voice—well, the voice of the man I’d thought was my father—tended to pop up in lieu of a conscience since his death last year. Yeah. I wasn’t in any place to be dealing with that.
The stab deepened as I realized that after coming back from…wherever he went…it wasn’t my phone Eric finally called.
“So that’s that, then,” I said, unable to kill the forlorn tone. “We’re officially communicating through lawyers now?”
I should have been happy. I should have been relieved. Our marriage was in a limbo state—a quick consultation with Skylar and the minister had confirmed it. While the minister had said he was happy to declare us husband and wife (as Eric and I had both spoken the key vows), the fact that neither of us had signed the marriage certificate (since the groom had basically sprinted away before his autograph was required) meant that the union wasn’t legal. Not in the eyes of the state.
I was dodging a bullet, right?
Then why did this phone call feel like I’d just taken one in the chest?
“He didn’t say,” Skylar said. “He asked if you were all right, though.”
“He couldn’t have asked me that himself?” I demanded, growling more than I wanted.
“I really don’t know, Janey.”
Skylar sounded defeated. This was an awkward situation for her—being in the middle of us always had been. Eric was her friend and business partner, but I was her ride-or-die bestie. I knew her loyalties were first and foremost with me, but she obviously had sympathies for both me and my errant...whatever he was.
“So is that it?” I stood up and rubbed my still-damp face more violently than necessary, turning my pale skin pink. “You’ve been texting me all morning to tell me the Great Disappointment didn’t actually fall off the face of the earth? He’s just been ghosting me like every other dude bro this side of the Mississippi?”
Skylar exhaled. “No,” she said. “The lawyer told me that Celeste made some changes to her will. Jane, he’s going to read it next weekend after the wake. And apparently, you’re in it.”
I sat down all over again, my bare feet slipping on the stone tiles. “You mean as Eric’s spouse, right?” I shook my head. “I thought that was part of the prenup. Twenty million, but only if we were married for five years.”
“No, no,” Skylar said. “This is different. Tom—that’s the lawyer’s name—told me this is specifically for you alone. And he also said that Celeste requested the will be read to everyone in the same room. At the same time.”
I stilled. That could mean only one thing. Eric would be at the funeral. The De Vries Shipping heir whose inheritance was dependent on his legal marriage to me was probably going to want to know whether or not his claims would be honored without his grandmother alive to verify them.
Honestly, I wanted to know that too.
“When?” I asked as I examined my single red bedraggled lock. Vaguely, I wondered if I would have time for a quick dye job, although almost immediately I realized I’d have to wait a while unless I wanted my hair to fall out completely. Suddenly I wanted this shit—this fucking reminder of Eric and his pretty girl bullshit—out of my hair, my life, my everything.
“The funeral is this Saturday.”
That was in tomorrow. I knew this. I’d known it for over a week at this point. But until now, I wasn’t actually sure I was supposed to be there.
“All right,” I said. “I’ll go. Of course I’ll go. But first I need to visit my beloved’s apartment here in town.”
I could practically see Skylar rolling her eyes in front of me. “Jesus, Jane, why? You didn’t even live in his Boston apartment with him.”
But it wasn’t what she thought. I wasn’t interested in shoving my face into Eric’s rows of designer suits, lolling around in his old icebox condo just to collect trinkets and remember better times. Fuck that.
“Because I’m done with his secrets,” I said. “And if I have to face the entitled little twerp, I’m doing it with my eyes wide open. I have a key. It’s not trespassing. Sky, it’s time to do some digging.”
