The Girl and the Genie (26 page)

“And we won’t have to deal with the paparazzi, huh?”

Emily nodded and showed a weak smile. “It was hard enough dealing with them when I left St. Patrick’s earlier.”

“If we’re going to hang out together, it’s something you’re going to have to get used to.”

“I know,” Emily said. “But maybe not tonight?”

“Okay, not tonight,” Derek agreed, and followed Emily into her apartment.

That night Emily felt every bit as comfortable and relaxed with Derek as any other time. The pizza was a hit, although Derek insisted he could take her to places in Chicago that rivaled the best that New York had to offer. They drank the wine that Emily had opened earlier, and although Derek squinted hard at the label, he seemed to enjoy it even though it wasn’t in the same neighborhood, let alone the same zip code, as the champagne he had served the other night. Afterward Emily made them French Roast espresso, and then they moved to the living room where Derek picked a Frank Sinatra CD for them to listen to.

“This is nice,” he said while they sat together on the sofa with Emily curled up and her head resting against his chest. “Really nice. It’s been a long time since I’ve spent a quiet evening like this.”

Before too long they were kissing, and Emily didn’t want the night to end. She could’ve spent the rest of her life like this and been happy. Curled up on the sofa in Derek’s arms. After a long while, Derek told her that he’d better leave if he was going to protect her virtue as he had promised. “Otherwise I’m going to either go insane or drop dead on the spot.”

Emily’s eyes were half-lidded, her lips parted slightly. “You don’t have to leave,” she said. “Or worry about going insane.”

“You don’t know how badly I want to stay, or how badly I want to rip off your clothes right now.”

“I think I know,” Emily said in a hushed whisper.

Derek looked like he was going to weaken for a moment, but then with a hard resolve settling in his eyes he pushed himself off the sofa. “A promise is a promise,” he said.

“I didn’t ask you to make that promise.”

“It will be worth it. I swear.” Derek checked his watch and made a face. “Besides, it’s midnight now, and I have an early morning shoot.”

Emily walked Derek to the door. They made plans to see each other the following night, and before Derek left, he gently took hold of Emily’s chin so he could lift her face and give her one last passionate kiss, a kiss that left her wanting more than anything for Derek to carry her back to her bedroom and rip off her clothes like he wanted to. But instead she whispered goodbye to him and watched as he left her apartment and disappeared down the hallway.

Chapter 27

Someone pounding on her apartment door woke Emily up. Groggy, she squinted at her alarm clock and after a few seconds her eyes were able to focus enough to see it was three thirty. The pounding continued and she could also make out Derek’s voice calling for her. She reached over and turned on the night table lamp. Winston was lying on the bed next to her, snoozing away.

“Some watchdog you are,” Emily muttered as she pushed herself off the bed. Winston stopped snoring and his ears twitched, but he kept his eyes closed.

Emily wrapped a flannel bathrobe around herself, then stumbled out of the bedroom, down the hallway and to the door so she could try to keep Derek from waking up the rest of the building, if he hadn’t already. When she opened the door Derek almost fell into the apartment, but was able to regain his balance. He stood grinning at her, and seemed unsteady on his feet staggering slightly as if he were standing on a boat in unsteady water. His complexion had a pastiness about it, his eyes covered by a dull sheen. He also now looked more rumpled than dashing. He fell to one knee in a stumbling-type motion. His grin remained plastered across his face.

“Emily, my love,” he said, his words slurring, “I’m so glad you’re still up.” He reached blindly into his pants pocket, frowning severely before breaking into another wide grin and pulling out a diamond ring. “I had to buy this off a lass, but I’ll be replacing it later with a far grander ring more worthy of you. So Emily, my love, will you do me the honor of marrying me?”

“You’re drunk,” said Emily, wrinkling her nose. The alcohol stench coming off of Derek was nearly overpowering.

Derek exaggerated a wounded look over the accusation. “Drunk? No, my love, not even close. Maybe I had a few shots to help work up the proper courage, but I assure you this is a most sincere proposal.”

“I’m not accepting a marriage proposal from someone who’s drunk,” Emily said. Concern wrinkled her brow. “How did you get here?”

Derek appeared confused for a moment, as if he were trying to decide whether to answer her question or to argue with her about his being drunk. “A limousine brought me here,” he finally said. “But trust me, I’m cold, dead sober right now, and this is an honest proposal for marriage if there ever was one. Now hold out your finger so I can slip this on.”

“Is the limousine still outside?”

Derek showed more of his confused look. “I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe it is, but I can’t remember whether I asked the driver to wait or not.” He grinned drunkenly at her. “Perhaps I was thinking I’d be spending the night here, so I might’ve told the driver to get lost.”

“Wait here,” Emily said.

She moved quickly past him and down the staircase leading to the front door. There was a limousine waiting out front, and Emily waved to the driver. When the man lowered the passenger window, she told him that she needed help getting Derek back into the limousine so he could be taken back to his suite at the Plaza. The driver nodded, got out of the car and gave Emily an apologetic look.

“I didn’t think it was a good idea him coming here,” the driver explained, “but I couldn’t talk him out of it.”

They found Derek inside Emily’s apartment. He had found Theodore Anderson’s liquor cabinet and was pouring himself a glass of brandy. While he initially protested the idea of being taken back to the Plaza, with Emily and the limousine driver coaxing him, he allowed himself to be taken out of the apartment. As the limousine driver half carried Derek down the hallway, Derek shouted to Emily that his proposal was still good and he was expecting an answer from her. Emily didn’t bother responding.

Once she was back in her apartment with her front door closed, she summoned Jack. The genie first looked around his surroundings with a curious expression as he previously had only been summoned within the den whenever Emily was inside the apartment. When he turned to face her and saw her pinched expression, his lips pursed and his eyes sparkled with bemusement.

“Miss Mignon, is something wrong?” he asked with a false sincerity.

“I think you know exactly what’s wrong!”

He raised an eyebrow at that. “Do I?”

“You sent Derek here drunk to propose to me!”

The genie shrugged at that. “You made a wish and I did what I needed to see it carried out,” he said.

“I’m not accepting a drunk marriage proposal.”

“That’s your choice,” Jack said, his bemusement drying up quickly.

“My wish wasn’t for Derek to propose, but for us to be married.”

“I did what I was asked by you to do,” Jack stated stubbornly. “If you accepted his proposal you would’ve been married within the week. As far as I’m concerned, I granted the wish you asked for, and the fact that you short-circuited it is beyond my control.”

“And as far as I’m concerned, unless I’m married to Derek within a week, you have not granted my wish!”

The genie shook his head. “Miss Mignon, we’ll have to agree to disagree on this point—”

“I think it’s pretty simple,” Emily cut in, her frustration with Jack nearly choking off her voice. “You’ll either carry out my wish or you won’t. In this case it’s not even you distorting my wish. It’s you not even honoring it!”

Before Jack could utter another word, Emily said ‘good night’ to him in a shaking voice and turned on her heels so she could walk quickly away.

The next morning Emily stopped off at a newsstand and found pictures of herself in the Daily News, the Post and the Sun, all identifying her as the mystery woman with the English Bulldog that Derek had run off with earlier. Butterflies fluttered in her stomach as she saw the photos on the gossip pages, but at least none of them had her name. With her hands shaking, she checked two of the national tabloid newspapers, and they ran pictures of her also, with one of them offering a five thousand dollar reward for her name. Seeing that made the butterflies flutter all that more furiously in her stomach. The middle-aged, balding man working at the newsstand glared at her for thumbing through all the papers without buying any, but if he recognized her from the photos he didn’t show it.

At work other editors and staff came by her cubicle, all curious about a copy of the Daily News that was circulating around the office, but Emily remained tight-lipped about it as she felt herself feeling very self-conscious about being in the public eye like this. When she went to Mr. Pish’s office to deliver the report that she owed him, he was likewise tightlipped about it, not mentioning anything about the photo, Derek Cole, or the errand she needed to run the other day. Before lunch Sally called to ask how the mystery girl was doing. “People at work see any of the photos?” she asked.

“Yep. Everyone.”

“Anyone going to out you?”

“I hope not.”

“So are you going to tell me why you were at St. Patrick’s and what’s been going on, or am I going to have to beg?”

The papers all mentioned that Derek’s movie was being filmed yesterday at St. Patrick’s Cathedral and had speculated that the mystery girl with the Bulldog had a part in the film, so Emily told Sally about her small role, and about the two dates she had with Derek, although she didn’t tell her about Derek showing up drunk at her apartment at three thirty in the morning to propose to her, or about the sickening feeling she had that what she and Derek had was irreparably damaged by him doing that.

The butterflies never left her stomach that day as she sat anxiously hoping that Derek would call her. At least a dozen times she almost called him before deciding at the last moment not to. She couldn’t help thinking if she tried calling him and he didn’t answer that would be the end of things between them. It was seven thirty when she left the office, and Derek still hadn’t called her.

She didn’t summon Jack that night. She felt too angry at him to see him. She was even angrier at herself. She never should’ve made the wish she had and given Jack the opportunity to mess things up between her and Derek. She tried sitting in the den and reading one of the manuscripts from work that she needed to read, but she was too distracted, and found herself jumping at every little noise, even when Winston’s stomach rumbled.

The next four days went pretty much the same way with Emily swinging between nervously waiting for Derek to call to feeling utterly hopeless about the matter. She didn’t summon Jack any of those nights. Instead she spent them holed up in her apartment, too distracted to do much of anything.

The next night she summoned Jack. When he appeared he gave her a nonchalant look as if there were no issues between them. “Miss Mignon,” he said with a nod. “I believe it’s been a few days since you’ve summoned me last.”

“Almost a week,” Emily said, coldly.

“Is that so?”

“Yep, very much so. And it’s looking to me as if you’re not going to be honoring my wish.”

The genie closed his eyes as a look of frustration settled in. “We went through that already,” he said with a forced patience, his voice sounding as if the subject exhausted him. “Miss Mignon, let’s assume you had wished for a million dollars, and I delivered the money to you in a suitcase. If you had let the suitcase sit where it was and never bothered taking possession of it, you can’t then blame me for not granting your wish and keep insisting that I send you another million dollars. The same is true here. I had that actor propose to you. If you accepted his proposal you’d be married now. The fact that you didn’t is not my fault. Your wish was granted, you just chose to keep it from happening.”

“It’s not the same thing. I wished for a wedding, not a drunken proposal.”

The genie muttered something under his breath.

“What was that?” Emily asked.

“Simply that your being stubborn about this isn’t going to change things. I granted your wish. You scuttled it. It’s done.”

Jack began to turn from her so he could make a show of browsing Theodore Anderson’s book collection, but Emily stopped him by telling him that she decided she’d rather be alone that evening after all.

“Very well,” the genie said, his jaw muscles clenching tightly. He disappeared then amidst a louder and angrier burst of blue smoke than usual.

By the next day Emily had given up hope of anything happening with Derek. She thought about using another of her wishes, this time being more careful and specific with how she was to be married to Derek, but she decided against it. She really didn’t want to see Jack right then, and she also knew he’d find a way to ruin her wish regardless of how careful she was. Also, she wasn’t happy that Derek had chosen to ignore her after coming to her apartment drunk the way he had—even if he did so only because of Jack. It shocked her later that day when she heard someone clearing his throat outside of her cubicle and saw that it was Derek. He dropped to one knee. Winston had been lying by Emily’s feet, but he pushed himself up so he could waddle over to Derek and push his nose into Derek’s face, all the while wagging his tail. Derek playfully wrestled Winston to the floor with one hand while he pulled out from his bomber jacket pocket a diamond ring with his other hand. This was a different one than he had had shown Emily earlier. This one was much bigger, much classier, and looked far more expensive.

“Emily, I’m stone cold sober right now,” he said, a twinkle in his eyes almost as bright as the sparkle in the diamond ring. “Will you marry me? Today, in fact, as I badly want you to be my wife. I booked us a flight to Las Vegas that leaves LaGuardia in one hour, and as soon as we step off the plane we’ll head right to the chapel. That’s if you’ll have me.”