Great Big Beautiful Life(96)
She couldn’t resist him. Not that innocent, eager expression of his, not the twang in his voice, not the smell of him all around her or the heat of his arm draped over her waist, or the lock of hair damp against his forehead. “Grace.”
“That’s beautiful,” he told her. “Maybe we’ll name our baby that. Grace.”
At that, she absolutely howled with laughter, but the joke was on her. They spent every day together for the rest of his time in Los Angeles—two and a half weeks—and, at the end of it, when he asked her to marry him again, it wasn’t really a question. They both already knew the answer.
The press had taken to tailing Margaret and Cosmo ever since the morning after that first date, when he’d gone to drive her home early, only to discover cameras waiting outside the gates. Every time they went anywhere after that, a crowd of reporters and fans alike seemed to find them, so they agreed to spend three days apart, a kind of distraction before they married at the courthouse. A faux breakup.
He told only his security guard and his manager—who tried to talk him out of it, of course—and Margaret told only her sister.
She and Laura had a miniature bachelorette party of sorts, staying up late eating snacks and candy and listening to records (not Cosmo’s though; Laura wasn’t there yet), then sleeping together in the tent in their playroom like they had so many nights when they were girls.
They woke before the rest of the house and crept out to meet the black car idling in the driveway, Cosmo Sinclair sitting behind the steering wheel in his chauffeur’s hat again, a disguise that would fool no one at this point.
A gaggle of paparazzi were waiting at the bottom of the House of Ives’s drive. A swarm of cars followed them to the courthouse like a marital parade.
Margaret was glad to have ridden with Laura in the back seat, where she could hold her sister’s hand tight as her anxiety mounted. Again and again, she whispered her gratitude for Laura being willing to do this, and all that Laura could really muster was a tense smile and nod.
“It will just take a minute,” Cosmo promised her, his eyes darting to the rearview mirror, his smile soft and reassuring.
It was more like ten minutes, in the end. As soon as the courthouse came into view, Margaret forgot, however briefly, to worry about her sister.
She felt only joy, rightness, and some amount of shock that the universe would grant her something so beautiful and precious as this without her having done anything to earn it.
Then again, maybe love was always a gift. The only thing that couldn’t be bought or sold or bartered for.
Cosmo opened the door for the girls and, with a calming smile, gestured for the cameramen to step back so he could hand Laura onto the sidewalk. He ran her up the steps and dropped her inside with the nearest security guard, then came back for Margaret.
When she stepped out onto the walk, she might as well have been floating.
She didn’t mind the attention. She didn’t care whether no one or everyone watched what happened next. She hardly noticed the crowd swelling around her on all sides, jockeying forward, shouting, grabbing.
Cosmo’s warm hand took hers, and he tucked her against his side, physically blocking them from getting too close. She’d never felt so safe in her life.
They were in and out of there fast. One of the other waiting brides was so awestruck at Cosmo’s presence that she’d handed over her bouquet to him, her mouth gaping open. He’d thanked her earnestly and passed the flowers to his new wife, and then they left through the back door to get in a waiting car Cosmo had hired, their luggage ready and in the trunk. He’d send someone for the other car later. Now he was eager to get back to Nashville to wrap up some business so he and his wife could take their honeymoon.
Margaret tried to convince Laura to join them for either or both portions of the trip, but she’d wanted to get home to her books and her letters with Dr. David. So the driver took Cosmo and Margaret to their waiting plane, where they each hugged Laura tight on the tarmac and said their tearful goodbyes.
“I’ll see you soon,” Margaret promised. “A month at the longest.”
“See you when I see you,” Laura said, kissing each of her sister’s cheeks, the wind from the engines billowing her hair across her face.
It was a month exactly before the newlyweds came back to Los Angeles.
They’d spent two weeks in Tennessee, during which Cosmo had canceled, delayed, or cut short every business dealing he had, aside from one hometown show, during which Margaret had watched from the wings, then made love to him in the dressing room like that first time. After that, they’d gone to Italy, a small town where they’d expected to find some privacy. Only the members of Cosmo’s team closest to them knew the exact details, and still they’d been swarmed by international press from the moment they touched down.
The Poor Man’s Elvis was rebranded as the Rich Man’s Elvis, a joke about his heiress wife. She didn’t care. She didn’t care either when they were dubbed “the Closest Thing Americans Have to Royalty.”
They’d been relentlessly followed and relentlessly observed. They tried more disguises. They tried scheduling reservations at multiple restaurants and going elsewhere. They tried assumed names. They tried firing the suspected sources of the leaks, but a new one always sprang up. Every time the paparazzi captured a shot of Cosmo looking hunted or glowering, the headlines asked, Trouble in Paradise?