Sadie teared up and I was right there with a tissue, to make sure she didn’t get any mascara on her dress.
“Happy or sad?” I asked her while Stefan ordered his two assistants to get the dress off right away as he fretted aloud about possible tearstains.
“Sad,” she said, moving her arms out of the sleeves and stepping out of the dress. She grabbed her white robe that had bride emblazoned across the back and sat down in an armchair.
“What are you sad about?”
She let out a shaky breath, like she was trying to hold off big sobs. “When I imagined this moment, I thought my mom would be here. But she’s off somewhere with my aunt.”
I immediately felt guilty for not anticipating this. “You didn’t tell me you wanted her here.” If she had, I would have personally poured coffee down Brandy’s throat and then made sure she’d behaved.
“I know. I just thought she’d want to see me in my dress, and she said, ‘I’ll see it when you get married.’”
I pressed my lips into a thin line. Her mother was so selfish.
“But,” Sadie continued, “I think she was afraid Maybelle would be here today. I hate that my mom’s making me choose. Geoff is the only father I’ve ever known and I want both of them to be here and to just be happy for me.”
“I understand that. And I’m going to do my best to help that happen.” Her mentioning Geoff as a father made me realize this was another part of her life she’d glossed over and that I needed more information in case Camden went digging around again. “He married your mom when you were thirteen, right?”
She used the tissue to wipe away some tears. “Yes. Life was so hard before they got married. We were poor. Like, living in a mobile home with aluminum over the windows and gaping holes in the floor kind of poor. My mom always went from one man to the next, trying to find someone to take care of us instead because her drinking made it so she couldn’t hold down a job. Then she met Geoff, and she was on her best behavior for a few years. Our lives were so much better. But then she started drinking again and he couldn’t deal with it. So he left her and moved on.”
“That’s rough,” I told her.
She nodded, blowing her nose before continuing. “I decided that I was going to make my own money and never depend on someone else for survival. So I’m paying for this wedding through sponsorship and it means I’m giving up a lot of say-so, but it’s worth it to me to have this. I love Dan, and I don’t ever want him to think I’m after him for his money. Or that I can’t take care of myself.”
I one hundred percent understood this, but for different reasons. “He knows that. It’s easy to see how much the two of you love each other.”
“Sadie! Where are you?” Stefan stuck his head around the dressing screen. “Shoe time. Let’s get your dress back on and make sure the length is right!”
Sadie smiled at me and headed off to do as she was told, again, for the sake of her sponsors. To be honest, I’d thought her decision to use sponsors for her wedding had been self-aggrandizing, but it turned out that she’d done it to prove something sweet to her groom.
She was a bit different than what I’d first initially imagined her to be.
What if the same was true for Camden? Maybe there was something beyond the spy stuff.
I straightened my back, lifting my head. It didn’t matter if he was the world’s greatest guy and this was all a misunderstanding. I didn’t date men I’d met at weddings. A rule I’d set for the whole company.
I couldn’t ask the women who worked for me to follow one important rule that I was ready to ignore because of a pair of pretty eyes. As president, I needed to lead.
When I went looking for a soul mate, I’d have to find him somewhere else.
Later that afternoon Krista and I walked down to the bridal shower together, gifts in hand. We hadn’t picked them out; they’d been provided to us by event sponsors. I hoped Sadie was going to be excited about getting a bunch of alcohol and lingerie.
The first thing I noticed on the south lawn was the decorations. There were massive balloon arches of pale-pink and gray balloons, banners with Sadie’s name and their hashtags, a dessert table laid out with treats in various shades of pink, white couches with pink and gray pillows. It was like walking into somebody’s Pinterest board.
The next thing I realized was that there were men here.
“This is coed,” I said to Krista as an employee put a lei of pale-pink flowers around my neck.