Page 87 of Tuxedos and Tinsel
You don’t need the spotlight. All you really need are a few people who care.
Susan’s smile had felt more like home than any stadium or spotlight ever could. She’d believed in him. Understood him. He hadn’t needed the spotlight to win her support.
And he’d sent her away. Since when did he not go after what he wanted? He was Champagne Lewis Matolo, for crying out loud!
He pulled out his wallet. “Do me a favor, will you?” he asked Darcus. He handed the man a hundred-dollar bill. “You take this and buy David the best football cleats and shin guards money can buy. Tell him his friend Lewis owes him for making him see something very important.”
If the company Christmas party had taken place in a winter wonderland, then Thomas and Rosalind’s vow renewal was being held in its more glamorous cousin. Her brother had spared no expense in making the Christmas Eve ceremony special, right down to the grand piano he’d had installed in the living room for the occasion.
“I may have gone a little crazy,” Thomas admitted as he took Susan’s coat along with the bags of Christmas gifts she’d brought for the next morning.
“Rosalind would have been happy renewing our vows in the middle of a field, but Maddie wanted to have a sparkly wedding.”
Susan took in the myriad of lights and candles, enough to rival the Kew Gardens display. The regular lighting had been turned off because the decorations provided more than enough illumination.
“Good thing you don’t overindulge your daughter,” she said.
“Hey, it’s Christmas Eve. If you can’t go crazy with decorations at the holidays, when can you?” He kissed her cheek. “Merry Christmas. You look lovely.”
“Thanks.” She’d splurged on an evening gown for the occasion. Silver with sequins. No more hiding herself in the corner. If she was to be a square peg, she was going to own her edges. “I’m afraid I don’t feel very lovely though.”
“No word from Lewis?”
“Afraid not. We had an interview withPersonal Magazinescheduled for yesterday, but I got a call from his agent saying the interview was canceled.”
No surprise there. For a short while she’d hoped they might go through with the interview to contradict the negative publicity, but apparently not. Like Lewis had pointed out, how did you contradict the truth?
The answer was, you don’t. She had this pipe dream that Lewis would use the article to make their casual encounters into something more. But he hadn’t.
The fallout from Scam-pagne Gate, as it was lovingly called in the press, was swift and loud. Radio stations all over the UK commented on the story all weekend, which in turn, led to the morning shows holding roundtable discussions about celebrity ethics and England’s search for gossip. Lewis was once again a bad boy while her reputation vacillated between coconspirator to besotted victim.
As for Collier’s? The company was experiencing their best holiday season in years so either people didn’t care that she was involved with Lewis or her being involved with Lewis had helped the company project a saucy, youthful edge. Either way, at least something good had come out of the scheme.
Thomas eyed her with concern. “Are you going to be okay?”
“I feel like a right idiot,” she said. She’d fallen for a man when she’d known from the start he wasn’t interested in a long-term relationship. “But, I’m not the first person to have had their heart broken. I’ll survive.” It killed her when she thought of how good she and Lewis could have been together, but she couldn’t make him love her. As magical as the past few weeks had been, she deserved more. First and foremost, a man who loved her back.
“Yes, you will,” Thomas replied. “Just remember, you’re not alone. Your family will always stand by you.”
She smiled. “I know.” Now.
Perhaps more than one good thing had come out of the debacle.
Rosalind’s dose of reality had been hard to hear, but it also gave her a lot to think about. It made Susan take a good look at her behavior over the years. She’d become such an expert at pretending she didn’t care about being an outsider, that she failed to see all the times she’d been offered a place inside. She had brothers who cared about her. Sure they were all completely different, and she would never mesh completely with them in a million years. But as Thomas showed the day she and Lewis were outed, when the chips were down, they had her back.
“By the way,” Thomas continued, “we found out how the paper got the story. Turns out one of the bartenders at the hotel has a cousin who writes for theLooking Glass. She overheard Courtney and Ginger talking at the bar and convinced them to tell her the entire story. She then turned the info over to her cousin.”
“Lewis warned me there were spies everywhere. What are you going to do about Ginger and Courtney?”
“Since I don’t handle personnel issues anymore, I told senior management that while I wasn’t happy with their behavior, I would leave the final decision to them. And you.”
“Me?”
“Last time I looked, you were the one who handled human resources,” he said. “Plus, you were the victim. If anyone should weigh in with an opinion, it’s you.”
In other words, Courtney’s and Ginger’s fates lay in her hands. How circumstances had changed.
Over the week, she’d thought quite a bit about the gossipy twosome. She finally realized that their need to put her down said more about them than it did her. What their reason was for disliking her, Susan didn’t know, but that didn’t mean their opinion was correct either. In fact, a long talk over coffee with Maria proved their opinion was in the minority. Susan was simply so busy wrapping herself in protective distance that she hadn’t noticed.
