Private Party (2 page)

—”

She wrenched out of his grip, and a surge of rage violently snapped her out of her state of shock. It was exactly the sort of excuse Brian would come up with—one absolving him of all personal responsibility, eliciting sympathy rather than blame. Suddenly, so furious she feared her head might burst into flame, she yelled, “An addict? For an addict you sure haven’t had a problem keeping your hands off me!” Brian walked towards her determinedly, and she backed away and tried to skirt around him. “Can you blame me for trying to avoid a permanent case of frostbite?” he muttered so only she could hear. But for the crowd he said, “How can you turn away from me when I need your support?” Every eye was riveted to the drama playing out on stage.

“Get out of my way, Brian.” She had to get out of that room, away from everyone and everything that had forced her into this public humiliation.

He moved again to grab her, and she instinctively reached behind her, her fingers coming into contact with the smooth surface of the cake. Turning slightly, she grabbed the surprisingly heavy top tier. Using every ounce of strength in her body, she ground it into Brian’s shocked face.

“You might want to zip up your fly,” she sneered.

She straightened her shoulders, and raised her chin haughtily, as she, Julianna Driscoll, the perfectly poised princess of the D&D hotel empire, removed her wine-stained, cake-smeared, wholly enraged self from the ballroom.

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2

“D
amn him, damn him, damn him!”

Julie ripped the veil from her head, and cursed again as nearly half her hair detached from her scalp in the process. Hairpins sprang from her head like confetti as her perfectly smooth French twist was decimated, leaving her chin length blond bob sticking out in heavily sprayed clumps. She kicked off her custom-made Manolo Blahniks as she stomped to the bathroom to find a brush.

The reflection that greeted her was startling, to say the least. Her face was flushed with a combination of anger and the champagne she’d consumed. Her hair stood out, Medusa-like, in an approximation of the worst bed head she’d ever seen. A semi-insane laugh bubbled up from her throat.

Her gorgeous strapless dress, perfectly tailored to fit her petite frame, bore a giant wine stain on the bodice and a big black smudge on the skirt from where it had caught in the elevator doors in her frantic flight to her room.

How could this possibly be happening?

She wasn’t normally the type to indulge in self-pity. How could she when she had more than any woman had a right to ask for? Involved, if not particularly affectionate, parents and a handsome, successful fiancé—make that husband. A job she loved as the senior special events manager at the Winston, and a generous parental supplement to her income that allowed her an adorable two-bedroom flat in Pacific PrivateParty

Heights.

But was it really asking too much that she be her husband’s only sexual partner on their wedding night?

Suddenly her chest grew tight, her breath short. The bodice of the dress prevented any air from entering her lungs, and she frantically clawed at the buttons that ran down the length of her back.

She grunted and strained, but her trembling fingers couldn’t negotiate the silk covered buttons. Her hyperventilating accelerated, and Julie knew she was moments from passing out. With her luck, she’d knock her head on the toilet and sustain massive brain damage.

“Stupid dress,” she panted as she tried in vain to reach the buttons. Why did they have to make wedding dresses so hard to get in and out of? What kind of sadistic tradition was this to put a woman in a garment she couldn’t put on or take off by herself in an emergency?

If she could find her nail scissors, she could cut her way out. She dumped the contents of her toiletry bag on the floor and was frantically clawing through the pile when a knock sounded on the door of her suite.

“Go away,” she yelled as she sorted through the contents of her bag with shaking hands. Where were the damn scissors? Wendy had used them this morning to cut a stray thread from the hem of her skirt—

maybe they were in the sitting room…

“Let me in.” It was Wendy, her voice firm through the heavy wooden door.

Julie clenched her hands in the fabric of her skirt. “Go away. I don’t want to talk to anyone right now.”

“Jules, if you don’t let me in, your mother will get the manager to give her a key.” Julie slumped to the bathroom floor, defeated. She had no doubt her mother would do precisely that, and Julie didn’t have it in her to deal with Barbara Driscoll’s hysterics right now. She had to let Wendy in, if for no other reason than to block the door.

“I’m coming.” She came slowly to her feet, stepping on the hem of her skirt in the process. She heard a loud tearing sound and looked down to see a four-inch rip in the seam where the skirt of the dress met the bodice. Really, for twenty thousand dollars, you’d think a dress would be more durable.

She opened the door. Her best friend had a look of wary concern in her big brown eyes. Without a word, she stepped over the threshold and pulled Julie into her arms.

“Are you okay?”

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Julie gently but firmly pulled out of her friend’s embrace. While she appreciated the gesture, she feared she would fly apart at the slightest touch.

“You look like hell.”

“Yes, I know.”

She could well imagine the picture she made, especially in contrast to Wendy. Wendy looked glamorous and sexy, her tall figure and dark hair set off perfectly by the floor length lilac bridesmaid dress.

A fresh wave of anxiety swamped her as she remembered that over five hundred friends and relatives were no doubt still downstairs, wondering what the hell was going on. Her breathing accelerated, and she clawed at her dress again, desperate to rid herself of the cumbersome garment.

“Get this thing off of me!”

“Hold on, hold on.” Wendy grasped her shoulders to still her frantic movements. Spinning her around, Wendy made quick work of the buttons, as well as the hooks of the French lace bustier underneath.

Julie sucked in several deep breaths, reveling in the ability to breathe freely as her dress fell in a frothy white puddle at her feet. She opened her eyes and angrily kicked it aside. Pulling the equally restrictive bustier from her torso, she went to the closet to retrieve her purple chenille bathrobe. Nearly ten years old, tattered and faded from too many washings, it was as comforting as a baby’s security blanket.

“Brian hates this robe. He said it made me look like a grandma.” Julie relished the sharp sense of satisfaction she got as she pulled the sash tight around her waist. “He made me stop wearing it in front of him, and I was going to get rid of it after tonight.” She sat down on the edge of the bed next to Wendy and put her face in her hands. Her favorite comfy robe seemed like a symbol for everything she’d been willing to give up in the course of her relationship with Brian. No longer hiking in the hills of Marin because Brian wanted her to exercise under the strict, regimented eye of her trainer at the Olympic Club. Never wearing cute, trendy clothes because she needed all the help she could get to look older and more sophisticated. Trading in her cute little VW bug for a BMW five series because it was “more appropriate for the image she needed to cultivate.” So many things, big and small, but all of them things she liked, things that were a part of her. She’d given them all up in her quest to be the perfect daughter, the perfect girlfriend, the perfect everything.

“I can’t believe he did this to me,” she said. “Can you believe he did this to me?” Julie stared at Wendy.

Wendy’s raised eyebrow and consoling pat on Julie’s knee were more than sufficient in conveying her utter lack of surprise.

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“I feel so stupid. I really thought, after I caught him last spring, that he would be faithful. But I bet he never stopped cheating this whole time.”

“Nope, he didn’t.” Wendy’s conviction sent a prickle of irritation across Julie’s shoulders.

“How do you know for sure?”

“Jules, I saw him all over the city.” Unlike Julie, Wendy was an enthusiastic party girl, and loved to explore San Francisco’s hottest restaurants and clubs. But despite her best efforts, it was a rare occasion that Julie joined her for a night on the town. “At least once a week, I’d see him with some woman at the Bubble Lounge or the Redwood Room. And if he didn’t arrive with someone, he left with someone.” There were times when Julie really appreciated Wendy’s bluntness. This wasn’t one of them.

“Why didn’t you say anything?” To be fair, Wendy wasn’t to blame for Brian’s behavior, but she couldn’t believe that the woman who’d been her best friend for the past five years would ever keep this kind of information from her.

“I did tell you,” Wendy said, exasperated. “More than once. And you took him back every time. You knew all along that he was never going to change. If you were willing to look past his affair, it wasn’t my business to try to talk you out of it.”

Julie’s stomach knotted as she silently acknowledged the truth in Wendy’s words. From the minute she’d met Brian, Wendy had disliked him. He was too much of a slickster, she said. He was too smooth, too polished, an Eddie Haskell in a better looking package. She had tried, sometimes subtly—but mostly not—to convince Julie that she should dump him. Once after a party, Wendy had even claimed that Brian had made a pass at her with Julie in the next room. The accusation had so enraged Julie that she didn’t speak to Wendy for a full month.

The friends finally mended fences, but from that moment on, if Wendy disapproved of Brian, she kept it to herself.

But despite her strict “no comment” policy, she couldn’t keep quiet earlier this spring. She’d seen Brian leaving the Clift hotel early one weekday morning when he was supposed to be in Seattle on business, with a sultry brunette practically glued to his side.

By that time, Julie was firmly entrenched in planning their fall wedding, racing full bore into her future as Mrs. Brian Dennison. She’d convinced herself that Brian had slipped up, just that once. And since Julie had been forced to admit, if only to herself, that their sex life was less than spectacular, part of her wondered if it wasn’t partly her fault. After that she’d vowed to try harder to be the kind of lover he wanted to prevent any future lapses in judgment.

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But in her heart she’d always known it hadn’t been the first time, or the only time. Which was why her attempts at spicing up their love life had amounted to a huge pile of expensive lingerie and two rather lackluster encounters in the past six months. But she did like her sexy new undies, even if Brian hadn’t seemed to appreciate them.

After that, she’d resigned herself to a comfortable, if not passionate, marriage. There were more important things in marriage than sex, after all. And by marrying Brian she would be instrumental in joining the two families, cementing their business relationship and raising the company’s public profile.

Even if she’d wanted to back out, she couldn’t possibly do so without making a huge stinking mess.

Still, the mess had managed to find her.

“God, I am such a doormat,” she groaned, flinging herself across the bed. Then she sat up, fists clenched, and said, “I want to go down there and kick him in his perfectly capped teeth.” Wendy laughed sharply. “Let’s go. I’ll hold him down. But don’t forget to stomp his balls, too.” A knock sounded at the door. “Julie, let me in.”

Julie winced at the quivery, slurring voice. Great, not only was her mother her usual emotional basket case self, she was also half in the bag. Usually it was Julie’s job to calm her mom and talk her down from whatever emotional tree she’d gotten herself up, but tonight she just didn’t have it in her. She grabbed Wendy’s shoulders. “You have to get rid of her.” Wendy went to the door and motioned Julie to hide in the suite’s kitchenette as she answered the door.

She could hear Wendy’s muffled voice, then her mother’s shrill one.

“It’s chaos down there,” her mother sobbed. “Everyone keeps asking me what’s going on, and I don’t have any idea. Grant disappeared with Brian, and Julie needs to come downstairs to quiet everyone.” Barbara’s voice cracked, and Julie heard the muffled honking sound of her mother blowing into her hankie. “And all of the local media are here. What on earth am I going to tell them? There’s no one around to tell me what to say.”

“Mrs. Driscoll, why don’t you go to your room and have a little coffee. I’ll call the wedding coordinator and have her straighten everything out.”

“But Julie—”

Julie peeked around the corner, and Wendy moved to physically block the doorway with her body.

Luckily, Julie’s mother shared her daughter’s petite frame, so Wendy had no problem acting the PrivateParty

bouncer. “Trust me, Mrs. Driscoll, it’s best for her not to see anyone right now. Who knows what else she might do?”

Easily overwhelmed under normal circumstances, the stress of the evening had clearly drained her mother’s meager reserves. With a small, pitiful sob and a plea for Julie to visit her when she felt up to it, Barbara agreed to retire to her room for the evening. Julie made a mental note to have a stiff martini sent up.

Julie breathed a sigh of relief when she heard Wendy close the door and slide the dead bolt. Wendy walked back into the suite and slipped her arm around Julie’s shoulders.

“This is it. My mom’s finally going to have a nervous breakdown, and it’s all my fault.”

“She’ll be fine. First thing tomorrow all of her friends will call her and ooh and ahh over what a scandal you’ve created, and she’ll get to wallow in all the sympathy and attention.” Julie snorted. “Think they’ll spare a little sympathy for me?”

“You know you’re better off, don’t you?”

Julie shrugged and sat down on the bed. “I think we could have made it work. We’ve known each other forever. We move in the same circles. I’ve never had to worry that he was after my money.”

“Or your body.” Wendy went straight for the minibar, emerging with an armful of tiny bottles.

“For some people—”