Starting Over (Nugget Romance 4) Read online

  Jeez, a person could get a contact high just from the stink.

  Sam quickly shut the door and found her way to the dining room, where finishing touches were being made to the centerpieces. Helen stood in the center of the activity, directing traffic.

  “Do you need any help?” Sam asked, and Helen looked at her like she spoke a foreign language.

  “I’m fine, Samantha.”

  “You wouldn’t happen to know where Royce is?”

  Helen coughed. “I thought he was with you.”

  “No, I haven’t seen him all evening. I checked his room, but he wasn’t there.”

  Perhaps it was Sam’s imagination, but Helen looked uncomfortable. She failed to make eye contact, studying the table settings instead. Could just be hostess nerves, Sam supposed.

  “I’m sure he’s somewhere around here,” Helen said, and darted off in search of a missing fork.

  But Sam didn’t see him until dinner was served. In typical society fashion, she wasn’t even seated next to him. When he threw her a kiss from the other end of the table, her stomach seemed to settle. And during the dancing he was quite attentive.

  “You look fantastic,” he said as he waltzed her around the dance floor, trying to peek down the front of her dress.

  “Where’ve you been?” she asked, trying to modulate her voice so it sounded like a casual inquiry. Not accusatory. Even though she had a funny feeling about his earlier absence, a tiny tickle that something wasn’t right. Yet, she couldn’t identify why and told herself she was crazy.

  “At dinner with you,” he said.

  “Before dinner?”

  “Showering, getting dressed, you want a full accounting?”

  “No,” she said. “I just missed you.”

  “Don’t worry.” He playfully dipped her in the center of the dance floor and waggled his brows. “We’ll make up for it later tonight.”

  Royce pretended to like sex, but from what Sam could tell he wasn’t that into it. Often it was a quick affair, just long enough for him to climax. Still, it never stopped him from acting like they had amazing chemistry in bed. Perhaps he honestly thought they did. Sam convinced herself that they could work out a more satisfying love life with time.

  “I just wanted to make sure you’re okay,” she said, but he didn’t respond, distracted by something across the room. “What’s wrong?”

  “Uh, nothing. Just someone I haven’t seen for a while. You mind if I go say hello?”

  “No, of course not.” But she wondered why he hadn’t suggested introducing her. She was his fiancée, after all.

  He escorted her off the dance floor, deposited her with a group of women she knew, and disappeared into another room. After what seemed like forever, her curiosity got the best of her and she went looking for him again. But he wasn’t in any of the public rooms. She felt awkward pushing through private doors, chasing after him like an insecure girlfriend, so she went back to the ballroom. An hour later, he reappeared, his eyes bloodshot with a hint of eau de cannabis clinging to him.

  Mystery solved. “Were you getting high all this time?” she asked, trying to sound calm.

  He smiled at her sheepishly. “Yeah. So?”

  “What are you, eighteen?”

  “What are you, a fucking nag?”

  She flinched. He’d never used obscenities like that in her presence.

  Realizing his mistake instantly, Royce wrapped his arms around her and nuzzled her neck, whispering, “Come on, this party is stuffy. Come with me, we’ll smoke a bowl and . . .” Again with the eyebrow waggle.

  The party really was excruciating and for a few seconds she was tempted. Not to get stoned, but to steal away and spend some quality time with him. It seemed like they never did that anymore.

  “We can’t, Royce. Look, your mother is glancing our way. She’d notice if we suddenly ducked out.”

  “Yeah.” He sighed. “You’re probably right.”

  And for the rest of the night, Royce lavished her with attention. A cynical person might’ve thought it too much. Sam just felt relief.

  In December, two weeks before the wedding, Royce announced that he had business in New Orleans—some kind of brokers’ conference. “I’d take you,” he told Sam, “but you have your hands full with the wedding. Besides, it would be boring, just a bunch of guys talking shop.”

  The conference lasted five days, but Royce decided to stay an extra two to catch up with a few friends. As much as Sam tried, she could never reach him. No answer in his hotel room, and his cell seemed to have gone dead.

  So, distracted by her MIA fiancé, she left the last details of the wedding to her bridal consultant. By this point, even her father seemed annoyed.

  “After the wedding, you’ll whip that boy into shape,” George told Sam over coffee. “But this is a good match and Royce has lots of potential. All he needs is a good woman to set him right.”

  She wanted to tell him that she was plagued with second thoughts and that she didn’t want to set anyone right. That by thirty-seven, Royce Whitley should’ve had his shit together. But George patted her on the back like she was an Irish setter and said, “You’re a good daughter, Samantha,” and walked out of the dining room.

  Royce barely had time to unpack when he returned from New Orleans before he boarded a plane to Jamaica for his bachelor party. He and twenty of his best friends planned to enjoy white-sand beaches, reggae music, and something stronger than Blue Mountain coffee. Sam just hoped her future husband didn’t wind up in a Caribbean prison.

  “You and your girlfriends should do something,” Royce told her. “Hire a stripper. I don’t care. I trust you completely.”

  Too bad she couldn’t say the same for him.

  The closer the big day came, the more melancholy Samantha got. At her last fitting, Sam’s mother’s gown practically swam on her. She’d lost that much weight, an unprecedented feat given that Sam liked to eat.

  On Christmas Eve, the Whitleys hosted a combination holiday and rehearsal dinner for three hundred guests at the Four Seasons. Royce was on his best behavior, but Sam could barely choke down her Sweet Gems salad. Nothing about this felt right.

  One of the Greenwich matrons accosted her in the bathroom. “Samantha, I heard you’re wearing your mother’s gown. What a traditional and lovely tribute. You’ve always been such a good girl.”

  “You and Royce Whitley,” one of her father’s cronies bellowed in the hallway. “Fantastic match, my dear girl.”

  Back in the ballroom, her co-chair on the debutante committee air-kissed her on both cheeks. “Oh my God, Sam, you look almost thin. Royce is such a good influence.”

  Sure. He was probably in one of the men’s stalls right now, burning a fatty.

  Twice she had to pop outside for air, because inside she felt suffocated. On one such trip, she found Royce cloistered in a ring of women. He snaked his arm out, wrapped it around her waist, and pulled her inside the circle.

  “Where have you been?”

  “Mingling,” she said, and he tugged her over to the bar for a drink.

  “You need to loosen up,” he gently reprimanded.

  She couldn’t help herself and blurted, “Are you really ready for this, Royce? Because you don’t seem ready.”

  “I’m ready, Sam, and you’re just nervous, which is perfectly normal. I went through it last month, but I’m primed now, baby. This marriage is going to be so good. You and me, a team.”

  “We’ve never even talked about family, Royce. I have no idea how you feel about children.”

  Royce looked around the room, clearly afraid of being overheard. “Let’s take this some place private.”

  He got them each a martini and found a quiet corner. “Of course we’ll have kids. It’s all my parents have been hounding me about since I turned thirty.”

  “Don’t you want to know how I feel about having children?”

  “What’s there to know, Sam? Of course you want kids. All women want kids.
Stop working yourself up. All you need to know is that I love you and that I plan to make you the happiest woman alive.”

  “I want to make you happy too, Royce. I’m glad we’re talking. I wish we would’ve talked more. We haven’t even discussed where we’ll live.”

  “Relax,” he said, and kissed her. “Where do you want to live? New York? Connecticut? We could keep my place in the city and buy a house in Greenwich or live at your dad’s place. Whatever you want. After the honeymoon, we’ll figure it out.”

  Shouldn’t they have already made these pertinent decisions, like children and living arrangements? It seemed to Sam that they’d been engaged nearly four months and hadn’t talked about anything important. Having these conversations the night before their wedding seemed absurd. Or could it be that she was just psyching herself out?

  “Sam, honey, take deep breaths,” Royce said. “We’re all good. Everything is going to be fine. I love you.”

  “Okay,” she said, somewhat mollified, sure that it was just pre-wedding nerves.

  “Did I mention that you look absolutely gorgeous tonight?” Royce kissed her again and then glanced at his watch. “Look, a couple of the guys and me have a tradition. Before one of us gets married we each do a shot of tequila and make a toast. It gets a little ribald, so we’re going to take it up to my room. You okay with that?”

  “Of course,” she said. “But I’ll see you later, right?”

  “Save the last dance for me.” He dashed off, looking virile and handsome and happy. And Samantha’s tensions started to melt away.

  For the rest of the night she enjoyed herself, reveling in her father’s pride and the myriad praise and compliments being tossed at her by the guests, like bridal bouquets.

  She went to get a second martini and the bartender asked, “You the bride?”

  “I will be tomorrow.”

  “That guy who got you the drink earlier, he the groom?”

  “He is.” She scraped the olive off the skewer with her teeth.

  “Congratulations,” he said, and smiled, but the smile never quite reached his eyes. Maybe he had a thing against marriage.

  She gazed around the room, saw that the party had thinned considerably and wondered why Royce hadn’t returned. From the looks of the band members, who appeared ready to wilt, the last dance wasn’t too far off. Besides, she had to get up early for hair and makeup. The ceremony was at eleven o’clock at Trinity Church with a reception to follow at the Carlyle. The Dunsburys’ and Whitleys’ inner circle had been invited to return to Greenwich for Christmas dinner.

  Sam decided to go up to Royce’s room and bring him down for their last dance. Knowing him, he and the boys were enjoying more than tequila. Earlier, she’d gotten an extra key card to Royce’s room so her bridal consultant could deliver the groomsmen’s gifts. She took the elevator to the eleventh floor, found the suite without any difficulty, and knocked on the door. No one answered. But voices and loud laughter came from inside. Someone was having a good time, Sam thought and let herself in. The suite was larger than most people’s Manhattan apartments. Royce’s rumpled tux jacket lay over a chair in the front area, a spacious living room with plump couches and a flat-screen TV.

  She followed the noise through a hallway and quickly stopped when someone said, “Here’s to the man who’s marrying the woman with the best tits in the tri-state area.” Sam rolled her eyes and pressed her back to the wall.

  “Here’s to a shitty life of fidelity,” another one roared, and Sam considered whether to announce herself.

  “Fidelity? Ha! Not in this lifetime.” It was Royce’s voice. Sam stayed pinned to the wall, out of sight. “I just hope being married is as much of an aphrodisiac to women as being engaged. Man, I’ve never gotten more tail.”

  “I saw you with that little tattooed chick at your parents’ house, Thanksgiving. Who was that?”

  “One of the caterers,” Royce said, and Sam felt ready to hyperventilate.

  She wanted to leave before anyone saw her, before they could witness her mortification, but her feet couldn’t seem to move.

  “You missed out on Jamaica, Ryan.” This from a voice Sam didn’t recognize. “Royce here did us proud.”

  “You’ve been screwing around on her the whole time?” It sounded like Ryan, but Sam couldn’t be sure.

  “I had to finally break it off with Lindsey.”

  “Lindsey from bookkeeping?” someone asked.

  “Yeah. She went ballistic about the engagement and threatened to blow the whistle on us to Sam. Apparently she was under the false impression that screwing me twenty ways to the moon ensured her place as the future Mrs. Whitley. Can you imagine? The woman’s father is a friggin’ plumber from New Jersey.”

  “What about Sam? She suspect you of catting around? Because in my experience they always find out.” That was Reynolds Howl, who was on wife number two.

  “Nah, the woman’s delusional enough to think that I’m madly in love with her,” Royce said. “I’m doing this to get my parents off my back. They think I need to settle down. Fine, I’ll fucking settle down. All I have to do is clinch the deal tomorrow. But the dumb cow is nothing more than a for-show wife. After the wedding we can live in separate houses for all I care.”

  Sam shoved a fist into her mouth to keep from crying out, ran out of the suite and down the staircase, eleven flights, and hailed a cab to the Upper East Side, where she locked herself in her bedroom and sobbed her eyes out. All the doubts she’d had about Royce came to the surface. He was a lying, cheating, smarmy scumbag. But she was worse. She was gullible and pathetic. Everything about her life was a cliché—right down to the people with whom she kept company. Rich, neurotic, superficial, selfish bastards.

  Like Royce.

  Deep down inside she knew he’d done her a gigantic favor by exposing himself as the degenerate that he was. But how would she fix this? Make it right? Make her life right?

  A glimpse of her mother’s bridal gown, hanging on a dress form, pressed and perfect, caught her eye. The sudden urge to rip it to shreds became so overwhelming that Sam searched high and low for a pair of scissors. When she finally found one, she used it on her hair instead, going at her long red locks like a maniac. Hacking and chopping. It should have felt destructive or masochistic, but it felt cathartic, as if Sam was shedding her old skin, like a caterpillar.

  But when she caught her reflection in the mirror, she looked demented, which would only make it more embarrassing when she had to show up at the church in the morning, get up before twelve hundred guests and cancel the wedding. That’s when the idea of running began to take hold. The spectacle of Royce standing at the altar, waiting and waiting and waiting for her to walk down the aisle, his face flushed with embarrassment, seemed like poetic justice.

  Her humiliation for his.

  But thinking of her father made her reconsider. George would also be humiliated and that was the last thing she wanted to do to Daddy. She waited for him to finally stumble in the door and met him in the den, where she knew he’d have a nightcap before turning in for the night.

  “Good God, girl, what have you done to your hair?” He inspected her with a sniff as he poured himself two fingers of scotch.

  “Daddy, I need to talk to you.”

  “Nice party,” he said, talking over her. “Helen doesn’t have the same flair as your mother did, but she puts on a good affair. Excellent turnout.”

  “Daddy, I need to talk to you about the wedding.”

  “Samantha, it’s late. Can’t we do this in the morning?”

  “I’m not going through with it,” she said, and threw herself down onto the couch, watching him down his drink.

  He let out a long breath, sat next to her, and patted her knee. “Pre-wedding jitters, my dear girl. Get a good night’s sleep and you’ll be raring to go in the morning.”

  “No, I won’t, Daddy. Royce isn’t the man you thought he was.” She wouldn’t tell him everything. It was too demea
ning. But she would tell him enough to make him understand.

  “You mean that he’s a spoiled, narcissistic brat?”

  “That and he’s not loyal, Daddy.”

  “Oh, Samantha, tell me something I don’t know.”

  “Daddy, how can you want me to marry a person like that?”

  “You’ll make him a better man.” It was George’s mantra. Like all she had to do was sprinkle fairy dust on Royce and he would no longer be an asshole. She knew better. “Sam, I expect you to do the right thing, here. You made a commitment, and Dunsburys keep their word.”

  “But Royce hasn’t kept his word.” She locked looks with her father, silently begging him to understand.

  “After tomorrow, it’s your job to make sure he does.” He stood up, his way of saying he was finished with the discussion, and kissed Samantha on the top of her head. “Good night, sweet girl, and merry Christmas.” On his way out, she heard him humming the tune “Get Me to the Church on Time.”

  For the rest of the night Samantha tossed and turned. By morning she was a mess. And by the time her hair and makeup people arrived, she was in Pennsylvania. Ohio flew by. But when she pulled into Illinois, the FBI had put out an all-points bulletin. Royce had told them that she’d been kidnapped for ransom. Of course, Honest George told the feds that news of Sam’s kidnapping had been greatly exaggerated.

  So on the day she arrived in Nugget, California, “Pride of the West,” as the sign decreed, she was free. Truly free to do or be whatever she wanted.

  Chapter 10

  Nate didn’t say much on the ride back to Maddy and Rhys’s. They’d gotten Sam’s kitchen clean and he’d found some extra screening in his garage to replace her torn one. By June, she’d definitely want to open her windows at night. As cold as it got in Nugget, it could be very hot in the summer.