It Happened One Wedding (3 page)

“I asked Simon to drop me off so we could talk. You know, just the two of us.”

Sidney smiled, less surprised now. Despite a five-year age gap, she and her sister had always been close. Having been raised by a mostly absentee father and a revolving door of nannies and stepmothers, they’d been the only constant in each other’s lives. She and Isabelle had talked and Skyped constantly while she’d been living in New York, but she’d nevertheless missed this—being able to talk in person.

She led her sister into the living room and plunked down on the couch. She was eager for all the details she hadn’t wanted to ask in front of Simon and his oh-so-special agent brother. “So? Were you totally surprised when Simon asked you to marry him? I mean, it has only been three months.”

Sitting on the couch next to Sidney, Isabelle curled her feet underneath her. “Yes and no. The subject came up when we were having a conversation about something else.”

“What sort of ‘something else’?”

“I’d just told Simon that I was pregnant.”

Wait—
what
? Sidney blinked. “Oh my god.”

A smile peeked at the corners of Isabelle’s mouth. “That was pretty much my first reaction. Simon’s, too.”

Wow. Her sister—her little sister—was
pregnant
. Sidney didn’t know where to start, she had so many questions. “So this was obviously unplanned, then.”

“Um, yeah. Three weeks ago, I’d decided to give Simon a drawer of his own in my bedroom. You know, so he could have a place to keep his things when he slept over. We’d opened a bottle of champagne to celebrate—because at that time,
that
was a big step in our relationship—and we got a little tipsy. The details are somewhat fuzzy, but I’m kind of thinking we didn’t get the condom on fast enough.”

Oops.

Sidney reached for her sister’s hand, still getting up to speed. “How are you feeling about all this?”

Isabelle took a deep breath and exhaled. “It’s been a bit of a whirlwind since I found out, and I’ll obviously have to juggle some things around with my clients once the baby comes,” she said, referring to her social work practice. “But I think Simon and I are starting to wrap our minds around it now.”

“Is this why you want to get married so quickly? Because—not to sound all big sister here—you don’t
have
to get married just because you’re having a baby, Izz.”

“I know.” Isabelle looked at her earnestly. “But the thing is, I knew I wanted to marry Simon after our second date. He’s the one, Sid. And getting married before the baby comes is really important to him. So, sure—maybe things are happening faster than I’d envisioned, but we’re rolling with it.”

Sidney searched her sister’s face for any sign of uncertainty. “You’re sure this is what you want?”

Isabelle nodded, without any hesitation. “Positive.”

Sidney’s big-sister protective instincts relaxed a bit. “Okay, then. I guess we’d better get going on those wedding plans.” She clapped her hands excitedly. “What do we have? Eight months to pull this off? Maybe seven, to be safe?”

Isabelle pursed her lips. “Well, see, here’s the thing about that. Apparently, Simon’s mother is a very traditional Catholic. He’s worried she’ll be disappointed if she knows that I’m pregnant before we get married, so we’re kind of hoping to have the wedding before we tell her about the baby.”

“Oh. So you’re eloping?”

“I threw that out as a possibility, but Simon says his parents would be crushed if we did that. So, instead we’re thinking about having a wedding here before I start to show.”

“That’s great, Izz. But I’m thinking Simon’s mom is going to figure out the situation when—
hello
—a baby shows up five months after your wedding. Unless you’re planning on telling her that the stork now offers expedited shipping?”

Isabelle threw her a look.
Ha, ha.
“Obviously, we’ll have to tell her before that. I just don’t want her to be upset before the wedding.” She paused. “I mean, I’ve never met the woman, and I don’t want her first impression of me to be that I’m the girl who trapped her son into marriage by getting pregnant after dating him for only three months. That’s not how it’s supposed to go the first time I meet my future mother-in-law. My in-laws are supposed to be happy that I’m marrying their son, and my mother-in-law is supposed to . . . I don’t know . . . pass along family recipes to me, and maybe show me how to make a perfect piecrust, and help me pick out the baby’s baptism gown, and just . . . do all those things that moms do.”

Sidney’s throat suddenly felt a little tight, knowing exactly where Isabelle was coming from. Both of them had missed out on so many of those kinds of moments, since their mother had passed away from breast cancer when Sidney was nine years old and Isabelle only four. And since their father was . . . well, their father, he hadn’t provided much by way of a “typical” nuclear family experience.

“I just really want Simon’s parents to like me.” Isabelle smiled cheekily. “Once they see how adorable I am, and how perfect Simon and I are together, we’ll spring the news on them. And, in fairness, it’s not just Simon’s parents. This pregnancy is something special, something personal between Simon and me. I don’t want a bunch of people talking about how I got knocked up before getting married. They can say what they want after the wedding—but for now, Simon and I want to keep this between us. Well, and you.”

Sidney squeezed her sister’s hand. “You know what I think? I think it’s nobody’s business whether you’re pregnant. You tell people when you’re ready. When Trish was pregnant, she waited until she was out of the first trimester to tell anyone. You’re just extending that a little.”

“Exactly,” Isabelle said emphatically.

“So, three months, huh? It’s going to be tight, pulling that off.” Sidney winked. “Lucky for you, you happen to have a kick-ass maid of honor to help.”

Isabelle bit her lip, suddenly looking hesitant for the first time that evening. “So here’s the part where you need to be totally honest with me. I looked everywhere in the city for availability in the next three months—but not surprisingly, things are booked. I did find one venue that happened to have an opening the Saturday before Labor Day. It’s a beautiful place, too.”

“Great. So what’s the problem?”

“It’s the Lakeshore Club.”

Sidney paused, hearing that.

Oh.

“I knew it was a terrible idea,” Isabelle said immediately. “Forget I even asked, Sid.”

Terrible
may have been a bit extreme. But admittedly, Sidney hadn’t expected her sister to say she wanted to have her wedding at the Lakeshore Club—the place where Sidney had planned to have
her
wedding reception, just six months ago.

Given how that experience had turned out, with Sidney calling off the wedding two weeks before the big day, the idea of Isabelle having her wedding there was indeed a little . . . weird. But was she really going to let a little weirdness get in the way of her sister’s plans? She knew how much Isabelle wanted to pull this off, and besides, the Lakeshore Club was indeed a great venue.

As she had many times in the last six months, Sidney took sentiment out of the equation and fell back on pragmatism.

And a pragmatist would say that her pregnant sister shouldn’t be stopped from having the wedding of her dreams just because Sidney’s ex-fiancé had been screwing his twenty-four-year-old personal trainer.

That decided, she answered Isabelle with a deliberately easy smile.

“Not a terrible idea at all. The Lakeshore Club it is.”

MONDAY MORNING, SIDNEY
sat at the head of a sleek, gunmetal-gray granite table in one of the conference rooms at the downtown offices of Monroe Ellers. Six pairs of eyes stared back at her, belonging to men and women who were among the best and the brightest graduates of their MBA programs, who now had successful careers as associates and analysts at one of the finest private equity firms in the country.

Men and women she would now lead.

For the past few weeks, she’d been settling into her new role, acclimating herself to the company, and working with the other directors in closing the fund and bringing in the last of the investors. They’d raised four billion dollars, a good-sized fund, from a combination of clients that included corporate investors, university endowments, private investors, and teacher pension funds.

Now it was time to get the ball rolling. They had the money, so the next step was for her to find companies that her clients should invest in. It was time for her to step up to the plate and show that she was as good as the partners at Monroe Ellers believed she was.

“Who at this table has found me the next Dunkin’ Donuts?” she asked the group.

Six pairs of eyes glanced worriedly at each other, undoubtedly not having expected this question.
Shit, she expects us to have an answer to
that
?
Dunkin’ Donuts was one of the most successful consumer product private equity turnarounds in recent years. The company had been on the verge of being wiped out by Krispy Kreme until it was purchased by several private equity firms—who then stepped in and changed the marketing plan to focus on coffee and beverages instead of doughnuts. It turned out to be a brilliant strategy: six years later, the private equity funds nearly doubled their investment by selling Dunkin’ Donuts for almost two billion dollars in profit.

But no director, no matter how good, should ever expect from her associates—nor guarantee to her clients—that kind of return on an investment. “I’m kidding, guys. You all looked so serious, I couldn’t resist.”

She saw them relax a bit in their chairs. This was their first team meeting, and she understood their nerves. They had no idea what to expect in terms of her management style and expectations. They’d probably heard some things about her, how she’d established herself as a consumer product specialist while vice president at her former investment bank, and likely assumed that she would be aggressive and eager—as many New York investment bankers were—to make her mark in her new role here. And they would be right about that.

But.

There was a difference, as she’d come to appreciate these last eight years, between being led by someone who was aggressive and eager, and someone who was simply a jerk. So this first team meeting was her chance to set the tone, right from the start, of what these associates and analysts could expect while working for her.

With that in mind, she folded her hands on the table. “Over the last few weeks, I’ve met with all of you individually, and we’ve had general conversations about some possibilities I want to explore with this fund. But, seeing how this is the first time we’re all sitting down together, I thought we should discuss my specific vision for this project.

“When I first began talking to the partners about the possibility of coming to work for Monroe Ellers, they asked what my strategy would be in running a successful fund. My answer was simple: I told them that I like to grow companies. I look for businesses that have potential—maybe an established company that’s struggling and needs a new direction, or perhaps a smaller business that has a marketable idea but doesn’t have the resources to expand. That’s where we come in—we find that potential and we cultivate it. And, hopefully, we make a lot of money for our clients in the process.”

Sidney saw a few smiles at that. The room was nodding along and appeared to be responding well to her speech. Then again, five out of the six people at the table had huge coffee cups in front of them, so it could’ve just been the caffeine kicking in. “So the four-billion-dollar question becomes, which companies do we believe have that kind of potential? As it so happens, I have a few ideas on that front.” She fired up the PowerPoint presentation she’d prepared on her laptop, which sat in front of her.

A photograph of a storefront popped onto the white screen in front of them. “Vitamin Boutique. Primarily a Midwest-based specialty retailer of, you guessed it, vitamins, with 125 stores across twelve states. I met last week with the investment bankers representing the company. They tell me that they’re looking for an opportunity to grow beyond the Midwest, expand into other distribution channels, and significantly bolster their online presence. They made it clear that they’re interested in a buyout.”

Sidney saw that the associates and analysts around the table had begun diligently taking notes. “By the way, you’ll be dividing into two teams and splitting this list, so start thinking about which companies you want to spend the next four weeks learning inside and out. Standard due diligence: all their financials, pending lawsuits, who their corporate lawyers are, and how big of a pain in the ass those lawyers are going to be if we do the deal.”

One of the associates, Spencer, let out a bark of laughter. Then he stopped abruptly as if uncertain.

Sidney nodded encouragingly. “No, you were right, that was another joke. Let’s not hold back here, people, we’ll be working together on this project for the next five or six years. Feel free to chuckle away at these witty little comments of mine whenever it strikes your—hey, there we go, now the room’s warming up . . .” Over their laughter, she clicked the touchpad on her computer and the logo for another company popped onto the screen. “All right. Next up, Evergreen Candles.”

The meeting continued for another thirty minutes, after which the team members dispersed. Sidney hung around the conference room for a few minutes to talk with an associate who had some questions, then made her way back to her office.

She heard a knock on her door a few minutes later and looked up just as Michael Hannigan popped his head into her office. The youngest of the three partners on the firm’s investment committee, he’d been the one who’d recruited her the most aggressively and had become a mentor to her since she’d started working at Monroe Ellers.

“I heard you killed it in your first team meeting,” Michael said.

Sidney never ceased to be amazed by the rapidity with which information could spread through an office. “How could you know that already? I just finished the meeting about five minutes ago.” She cocked her head. “Did they actually say ‘killed it’?” Admittedly, she’d been trying hard to have a good vibe with the group, but she didn’t want to
look
like she’d been trying hard. Kind of like a good first date. If memory served.

“Stacy has the desk right outside the conference room,” he said, referring to his secretary. “She tells me that’s what people were saying as they left your meeting.” He winked before leaving. “Can’t wait to hear your plans for the fund.”

Sidney smiled after he left, thinking that she did indeed have plans. And not just with respect to work.

This upcoming wedding had given her clarity on a few things.

 • • • 

AT LUNCHTIME, SIDNEY
met Trish at a restaurant between their offices, eager to share her plan with her best friend. But first things first.

“How’s your first day back at work going?” she asked Trish, who’d just returned to her media relations job with United Airlines after a four-month maternity leave.

“I’ve already had three crises to deal with. I love it,” Trish said with a laugh. With her blond hair newly cut in a stylish bob, and her navy power suit, she looked ready to take on the world. “But wait, I need to get my hourly fix.” She pulled out her cell phone, and both she and Sidney
aw-
ed at the cute pictures of her son, Jonah, that the nanny had texted that morning.

“How was the rest of your weekend?” Trish asked, after putting her phone away.

“Quite interesting. I have some news. Isabelle is getting married.”

Trish’s expression conveyed her shock. “What? I didn’t realize your sister was seeing anyone that seriously.” Having been best friends with Sidney since the third grade, she’d known Isabelle for years.

“Actually, she and Simon haven’t been dating that long. She met him three months ago,” Sidney said.

“Three months? And they’re already engaged?”

Sidney shrugged casually. Trish was her best friend, and she didn’t like keeping secrets from her. The only thing that trumped that, however, was her loyalty to her sister—which meant keeping Isabelle’s pregnancy news on the down-low. “She says she knows Simon is her Mr. Right. They’re going to get married Labor Day weekend. At the Lakeshore Club.”

“The Lakeshore Club?” Trish studied Sidney carefully. “That’s a little odd, given your history with that place.”

Well . . . yes. “Isabelle asked if I’d be okay with her having the reception there.”

“And
are
you okay with her having the reception there?” Trish asked.

Yes. No.
Sidney had waffled all weekend on this. But she’d given Isabelle her blessing, so now she would make the best of it. “Sure. In fact, this whole situation has given me extra incentive to get my personal life back on track. I’m kicking this plan to start dating again into high gear.”

“Glad to hear it,” Trish said enthusiastically.

“I knew you’d be on board.”

“Assuming you’re truly ready to be dating again, that is.”

Sidney pulled back in surprise. “Me? Of course I’m ready. It’s been six months. I’m thirty-three years old, I can’t wait forever before throwing myself back out there. I’ve got plans, desires, biological clocks ticking.”

Trish raised an eyebrow. “And that’s all that’s driving this new ‘extra incentive’ of yours?”

“Yes.” Sidney saw Trish’s look and conceded. “Okay, fine. Admittedly, given the circumstances, I would prefer
not
to show up dateless to my younger sister’s wedding. If I do, somebody is going to give me the ‘Poor Sidney’ head-tilt. And you know how I feel about the head-tilt.”

“That I do.”

The “Poor Sidney” head-tilt was her nickname for the look her former New York colleagues had given her after she’d ended her engagement. Because she and Brody both had been investment bankers in Manhattan, the scintillating tale of how she’d discovered his cheating had spread like wildfire through their professional community. After that, she’d gotten a lot of sympathetic looks around the office; and several well-meaning people had called, e-mailed, or dropped by to ask how she was “hanging in.” And while she’d known that her friends and co-workers had been simply trying to be nice, she’d found the whole thing incredibly embarrassing.

It was not an experience she wanted to repeat at her sister’s wedding.

“I’ve got my dating profile up, and that’s a start, but I realized this weekend that I need a more specific plan of attack. Brody’s ‘excuse’”—Sidney made mocking air quotes—“for cheating was that he panicked over the idea of getting married. That he freaked out at the idea of ‘forever.’”

Trish snorted. “Have I ever mentioned how much I intensely despise the man?”

That made two of them. “So this time around, I’m not making the same mistake. No more commitment-phobic men, no more player types, no more guys with issues or drama or whatever. I knew about Brody’s reputation before we started dating, but I let his charm cloud my judgment. That’s not happening again. From now on, I’m taking the same approach that I do with work: no matter how good a candidate looks at first blush, if I spot any red flags, he’s out.”

“What kind of red flags?” Trish asked.

Sidney smiled, prepared for exactly that question. “I did some due diligence this weekend.” She took her iPad out of her purse and pulled up the list she’d created. “This is a compilation of the various articles I researched.”

Trish read out loud. “‘Signs he’s not ready for a commitment.’” She scrolled down. “Oh my gosh, there have to be thirty things on this list.”

“Thirty-four. Although a few are somewhat redundant.”

“‘If he moves too fast into the relationship, he’ll likely exit it fast, too. But if he moves too slow, he’s likely either not sure about you or still hung up on a previous relationship.’” Trish continued reading. “‘He’s not available on weekends. He doesn’t introduce you to his family or friends. He doesn’t talk about the future. He doesn’t talk about his past. He’s not settled at work.’” She looked up. “What’s that about?”

“According to my research, men need to feel confident and secure in their ability to provide before being ready to commit to a long-term relationship.”

“I see.” Trish moved farther down the list. “‘He talks poorly about his ex, he won’t talk at all about his ex, he’s not on stable emotional footing with his parents, the majority of his friends aren’t in committed relationships . . .’”

“Because men typically choose to spend their time with people whose values they share,” Sidney explained.

“Uh-huh.” Trish kept reading. “‘He doesn’t ask about your day, he doesn’t handle adversity or criticism well at work, he doesn’t call when he says he will . . . ’” She trailed off, skimming through the other items. Then she set the iPad down on the table and paused for a moment, as if thinking carefully about her next words. “This is a very . . . extensive list. And no doubt, there’s some good advice here.” She reached over and squeezed Sidney’s hand affectionately. “But Sid, sweetie, there’s never any guarantee that you won’t get hurt in a relationship. No matter how vigilant you are for red flags or how much due diligence you do.”

Sidney thought about that. She thought about the day that her life had been turned upside-down, how she’d been blindsided, how the story had spread to virtually everyone she knew, and how for months she’d felt weak and foolish and gullible and not at all like herself. Because the Sidney Sinclair she’d always known was a strong, confident, savvy woman. But in one fell swoop, Brody had managed to make her doubt all of that.