Diva (28 page)

Gloria swallowed hard. She could hardly believe it—Marcus, getting married. “You’re my best friend, too. And it looks like my detective days are over, so now we might actually get to see each other.”

Marcus nodded. “And you’ll finally have a chance to get to know Ana. She wants to meet Jerome, too! She’s French—they’re all much more relaxed about that sort of thing over there.”

Gloria tried to smile back at him, but she couldn’t fake it. Marcus
was
her best friend. Which was exactly why she had to risk hurting his feelings. “Marcus, what on earth do you think you’re doing?”

He blinked. “What do you mean?”

“Do you even really know this girl? You got engaged so fast after you and Clara split.”

Marcus scooted away from her. “You could’ve picked a better time to voice your concern, Gloria.”

“I’m sorry!” Gloria placed her hands on his shoulders and stared directly into his eyes. “I was afraid of hurting you, and our friendship, by saying something. But now I know I wouldn’t be a real friend if I
didn’t
tell you that you’re making a huge mistake, and that you belong with Clara. So I’m asking: Do you still love her?”

Marcus shrugged her off and stood, walking halfway across the room. “Why are you asking me about Clara? I’m getting married to someone else. Maybe you’ve mistaken the occasion here. Did you even read the invitation I sent you? Come to think of it, I don’t recall getting your RSVP. If you were hoping to have the filet mignon for dinner, too bad—we’re fresh out.”

“Come on,” Gloria said, “don’t make a joke of this, Marcus. I’m serious.” Forrest had managed to dodge enough of her questions with questions—Gloria wasn’t going to let Marcus do the same. “It’s not too late to stop this. Not if you really love Clara.”

Marcus looked down at the floor for a long time, breathing hard. When his blue eyes rose to meet Gloria’s, they weren’t angry anymore. They were sad, hurt, and so confused. He looked just the way he had when he’d come to visit Gloria in prison, right after he and Clara had split. God, he hadn’t gotten over their breakup at all, had he? He’d just hidden away in this new whirlwind romance so he wouldn’t have to think about his feelings.

“I just don’t know, Gloria,” Marcus said softly. “I shouldn’t. I know I shouldn’t. But then she came to see me last week. I was so angry with her, at the lies she’d told me. She wouldn’t even apologize! And still I had to call security to make sure she left before I took her in my arms and kissed her right then.”

“Wait, you called security on Clara?”

“Not my finest moment,” Marcus said, chuckling. He paused. “I miss her so much, Glo. Nothing seems as fun, or interesting, or exciting without her. She just … makes life better, you know?”

Gloria did know. “That’s what the people you love tend to do.”

He let out a heavy sigh. “Clara doesn’t love me, though. She told me so.”

Gloria took her black beaded purse off her shoulder so she could smack Marcus with it. She didn’t hit him hard—just hard enough to make her point. “Don’t be an idiot. Clara is so clearly in love with you—if she told you otherwise, it was
for a reason, to protect you somehow. But that girl is sick with her love for you.”

There was a flickering of something in Marcus’s eyes—hope?—but then it faded. “It’s too late now. We’re at my wedding! People came all the way from Chicago for this. I can’t disappoint everyone out there. Not to mention Anastasia. That poor girl … what would she do if I backed out now?”

Gloria thought back to when she’d run away with Jerome. There was hardly anyone in her life she
hadn’t
disappointed by choosing her life with him. “Marcus, sometimes disappointing people is just a part of life. Just because you’re afraid of letting some people down, that’s no reason to marry a girl you don’t love! This is
your
life you’re gambling with. You should do what will make you the happiest.”

“Do you really—”

The door’s crystal knob turned and a man with dark golden hair peppered with gray stood in the doorway. Even pushing fifty, Mr. Eastman cut a very handsome figure in his tuxedo.

“Come on, Son, we’re waiting on you to begin,” Mr. Eastman called. “Oh, hello, Gloria!”

Marcus wiped the hopeful expression off his face and, without another word to Gloria, marched after his father down the hallway.

The first thing Gloria noticed as the bridesmaids went down the aisle to the band’s wedding march?

They were all so
tall
.

They were also all willowy blondes Anastasia had probably met at Barnard. The girls walked down the aisle of the ballroom toward the linen canopy in their pink sleeveless dresses. Fabric roses dotted the dropped waistlines of the dresses, and rows of flounces formed the skirts.

Every few seconds, a flashbulb went off. Gloria couldn’t imagine how many reporters were in attendance, though she could pick out at least a dozen photographers sitting in the rows of gold chairs. Some faces Gloria had only seen in magazines—senators, socialites, even literary bigwigs like playwright Marc Connelly and Ruth Hale, who had helped to get women the vote. Then there were Gloria’s old sort-of-friends from Chicago—witless Ginnie Bitman (now witless Ginnie Worthington), for example, who sat in the front row with her new, bored-looking husband on her arm.

The bridesmaids held the same white lilies that were in pale blue vases all over the ballroom. The bouquets were all tied with blue ribbons that matched the vases. A long stretch of white linen paved the girls’ way down the aisle, and Gloria couldn’t help thinking it was a waste of such beautiful fabric if people were just going to walk on it.

A full, white-suited orchestra sat beside the platform and played a slow, jazzy version of the wedding march with ambling piano and silky horns. The candlelight bounced off the
enormous mirrors on the walls and the crystal chandeliers above onto the guests, bathing them with a hushed glamour.

It wasn’t exactly the sort of wedding Gloria would’ve wanted. Gloria didn’t need crystal or designer dresses or enough candles to light every Christmas tree in the city come winter. But the feel of it—something quiet yet utterly sophisticated—appealed to her. It reminded her of a gilded version of the underground speakeasy world where she and Jerome had first met.

As the last of Anastasia’s bridesmaids neared the platform, Gloria stepped forward and whispered in Marcus’s ear. It was speak now or forever hold her peace—and she wasn’t too good at holding things in these days. “You need to fight for love, Marcus. Nothing wonderful in life comes easily. That’s why I’ll suffer anything to be with Jerome. And I know you’d do the same for Clara.”

As the wedding march swelled in the background, Gloria’s mind filled with memories of her own beloved fiancé: the first time she’d seen Jerome playing at the Green Mill, their first kiss, running away together to live in New York and almost losing him, that night at the Opera House when he’d proposed. What was it he had said to her the night they boarded the train and left Chicago behind them? Oh yes:
It won’t be easy. Easy is over with
.

And it certainly hadn’t been easy. Mobsters. FBI. Evil fathers back from the not-so-dead. But fighting for love with Jerome was worth it—it always had been and it always would be. After watching Forrest turn his back on Ruby and Marcus do the
same to Clara, Gloria was even surer of her love for Jerome. Men like Forrest and Marcus seemed to have everything—money, charm, good looks. But what was any of it worth without true love? The other trials Gloria could take. But a life without Jerome? Never.

Gloria absently felt for her engagement ring around her neck and pulled the necklace out from under her dress. She held her ring and prayed that Jerome wasn’t in danger, wherever he was.

She glanced back at Marcus. Her closest pal since she was little. She had to stop him from making the hugest mistake of his life.

CLARA

Marcus was getting married—to somebody else.

Clara’s only plan to stop him had more than a few flaws.

And she was sandwiched between “Benji” and Parker.

Could this wedding possibly get any worse?

“Just look at that jailbird standing up there with good, decent society like Marcus,” a woman’s voice whispered. “I’m surprised she’s not on the arm of that Negro boyfriend of hers.”

Yes. It could. The old women sitting behind her were gossiping.

“Let’s hope she doesn’t cause some kind of ruckus,” another lady scoffed. “She’s already tarnished the Carmody name enough. She doesn’t need to bring the Eastmans down with her.”

Clara studied Gloria, who was standing next to Marcus
and looking beautiful in a black-and-white number with buttons down the front. She was whispering something in his ear. What was she saying?

“We’re lucky she didn’t try to smuggle a gun in here! I heard she had a whole room of them in that Harlem hole she was living in.”

“I hear she
does
have a gun,” Lorraine whispered just loud enough for the row behind them to hear. “And that gossipy old ladies will be the first to go.”

That shut them up in a hurry.

Lorraine caught Clara’s eye, and Clara couldn’t help but smile. Then her gaze drifted to Melvin and the smile faded into a frown. A
nervous
frown.

His eyes were squinted into slits—the boy was nearly blind without his glasses. He looked ridiculous with his obviously drawn-on black mustache and his clashing red hair peeking out from under a hat that looked like a car had run over it. Clara had to hope Deirdre was as vision-impaired as Melvin, or they would most certainly be in trouble.

Clara turned her attention back to the processional and ran through each unsavory fact she’d learned about Deirdre Van Doren in her mind. She could only hope it would all be enough to rip Marcus away from the quiff for good.

The old biddies in the row behind them started up again. “Marcus looks so dapper—though not as happy as a groom should, eh?”

“Young men always get cold feet. And this was a short
engagement. I hear Bea Carmody and her bridge ladies didn’t even have enough time to change the dates of their annual retreat so they could attend. Thank goodness—avoiding that ruined woman at parties has become such a
chore
. Marcus got engaged right after he broke things off with … oh, what was her name? The Carmodys’ cousin who had that affair with Harris Brown and abandoned her baby?”

“Clara Knowles. Or was it Cara? Don’t recall. Anyway, she
lost
the baby. The scandals in that family … Marcus dodged a bullet, getting away from that one.”

The ladies’ voices drifted away as Clara focused on Marcus. He stood in the center of the platform beneath the canopy with Gloria and his groomsmen gathered behind him. His crystal-blue eyes were narrowed, and a bead of sweat rolled down the side of his sculpted face. He smoothed a hand over his already perfectly slicked golden hair and tugged a little at his white bow tie. Marcus’s dimples were nowhere to be seen—he didn’t look happy, he looked scared.

Suddenly Marcus’s eyes fixed on hers. It was hard to be sure at this distance—she was seated in the middle of a crowd of hundreds—but Clara swore she could feel the warmth of Marcus’s gaze on her. Why had she told him she didn’t love him anymore? Raine had been right. That night, in his dorm room, she should have told him the truth: that she was still head-over-heels, madly, truly, deeply in love with him.

Friends? No thanks. She wanted to be his girlfriend.

But now some other woman was going to be his wife.

Marcus continued to look in her direction. Was he just surprised to see her? His eyes held a lot more than surprise, though—Clara could see hurt, confusion … and yet his mouth turned up the slightest bit at the corners. His eyes were bright in a way Clara hadn’t seen since he had come to pick her up at Grand Central at the beginning of the summer. When the first words out of his mouth had been “I love you.”

Could he still love her?

She tore her eyes from Marcus’s and glanced back at Lorraine and Melvin. Melvin whispered something in Lorraine’s ear and she laughed. The old Lorraine wouldn’t have looked twice at a boy like Melvin, especially when he was wearing that silly disguise. Seemed like Clara wasn’t the only one who’d learned a thing or two about love since she’d arrived in New York.