Page 6 of The Marriage Bid
“Both. They’re a year apart. I know Tyler best.”
Kayla and Malaya exchanged a glance again.
“Oh, come on,” I rolled my eyes. “Stop looking at each other like that.”
“See. I told you all rich people are like one degree separate from each other,” Malaya said to Kayla.
“You know I am here, right?”
Kayla took a sip of her drink. “So you went to school together…”
“And,” I sighed. Their minds had already raced to filthy lanes, so I might as well give the two a bone. “And I had a crush on Tyler Hawthorne.”
Malaya’s eyes widened.
“He was like several grades ahead of me, and nothing happened between us.” At least not in high school. “Anyway. I sent him a letter. Like an actual letter asking him to prom, and he said no in the worst way possible.” The day flashed in mymind as if it were yesterday. The hope, the fear, the final courage to do it, and the humiliation.
“Well, don’t leave us hanging.”
“So I wrote a letter to him. A love letter basically telling him I had a crush on him, and I put it in his locker. Come assembly time, which was held weekly, he and his friends were doing a presentation. Part of that presentation was reading love letters written between people asking each other to prom. It was a time-honored tradition at our school. But guess whose letter magically ended up in the pile?”
Kayla gasped. “No!” She clutched her neck like an overdramatic Southern belle, temporarily betraying the country roots she desperately tried to hide.
“His friend took the letter from him and read it to the entire school. And he didn’t stop him or try to play it off. He had the audacity to be angry with me.”
Malaya held her hand to her chest. “Aw, Saff. Maybe he was nervous too. He was a kid as well.”
“That would have been fine if his friend hadn’t asked him whether he would go out with me or not, and he had not responded with, ‘I don’t fuck around with stalk-legged freaks.’ His exact words, by the way. And after that, no one called me Saffron anymore. I was Stalky until I finished high school.”
Kayla held out her hand and took mine in hers. Malaya frowned. “Weren’t you popular in high school?”
“It took me years to rebuild my reputation, but the name Stalky stuck. By senior year, I had reclaimed it as a badge of honor, but the pain of being reminded of that was still raw.”
“Damn, no wonder you hate the guy,” Malaya said, “but it’s not him we will be dealing with. We’ll be working with his brother.”
“Yeah, but Tyler is the other H in H and H,” Kayla stressed. “We will have to deal with his snotty ass at some point.”
“Right.” Malaya took a sip of her drink, staring off into the distance. “Seb was so nice, though. A gentleman through and through. Is he different from his brother, or was that a mask he put on?”
I shrugged. I never paid much attention to Sebastian or any of Tyler’s six siblings. My eyes were always on him, and after we got married, I never saw him or anyone with the last name Hawthorne. Even in my modeling days, I avoided contracts that had to do with the domineering Hawthorne Corp. They had a chokehold on the fashion industry, and working for them meant doors would be open to you, and still, I avoided them like the plague. I did not want to be as indebted to them as I already was.
“But that doesn’t mean we can’t work with them,” Malaya added. “Even if they were mean boys in the past.”
Kayla nodded, her hands back on her cocktail glass. “Yeah. It’s not like we have a choice. You guys are knee-deep in bills.”
Malaya snorted. “What do you mean, you guys? You’re one of us.”
“Last I checked, I was only an employee. And even though I am employee number one, it doesn’t mean I am a partner, unless?” She leaned in closer, wiggling her eyebrows.
“Unless what? Employee number one?” Malaya scoffed. “You mean employee only one.”
“Hey! Have more faith in your business. After this deal, y’all will be on a hiring spree.”
“Amen to that,” Malaya raised her glass for a cheer. Kayla enthusiastically clinked hers with Malaya’s while I gave a tentative tap to each of their glasses. I was still thinking about how I was going to tell them my story with Tyler didn’t end there. How were they going to react when they found out I married the guy? I will tell them tomorrow. There was no use dampening their celebratory mood now.
Chapter 4
Saffron
