Hopefully in a few weeks we will have an annulment.
Sophie: Well, he’s mine if you don’t want him.
Grace: I think Linneah is trying to stick her claws in him.
Ivy: Your backstabbing college roommate!?
Grace: The one and only.
Amy: This is your chance to get back at her! You’ve landed a billionaire, and she has, what? A guy who does NOT own a penthouse!
Amy: You totally need to sleep with Chris and pretend like you two are madly in love just to make Linneah freak out.
Ivy: Also, it might be good stress relief. You know, put you in the right frame of mind for dealing with Addison at the meeting tomorrow.
Brea: We’re officially upgrading her to bridezilla status.
Ivy: As much as I hate to put labels on people, she just spent an hour screaming at me on the phone sooo…
Grace: I hope we charged her a lot of money.
Amy: It’s never enough. You might want a big O to take the edge off things since the meeting will be in the morning and we can’t drink.
Elsie: Where there’s a will, there’s a way…
The texts about work had kicked up my anxiety. All I wanted to do was get to my computer. Maybe I’d order a pizza, too, blare some indie rock, and get in the editing zone.
I had just slipped off my shoes after I followed Chris into the penthouse when we were confronted by cameras.
“We need your nighttime routine footage,” Zane said. “Then we’re out of here.”
He handed me a smaller infrared camera. “We also need some after-dark footage of you two in bed.”
“In bed?” I said, horrified.
“Can you make out a little? We need a bit of black-and-white footage for teasers.”
“I’m not sleeping with him!” I shouted.
“No, no,” Zane said. “Just bounce around under the covers.”
“I can do more than bounce around under the covers,” Chris whispered in my ear as he followed me into the bedroom. I locked him out of the master closet while I changed into a robe.
He was shirtless and barefoot in black sweatpants when I walked out.
“Can’t you get dressed?” I squawked when confronted with his droolworthy chest.
“We’re supposed to do our get-ready-for-bed shtick,” he said. “This is how I operate. Besides, fair is fair. I got an eyeful of your tits, very nice tits by the way, so you should get a full look as well.”
“I am trying to relax for the evening,” I grumbled as he followed me into the luxurious master bath.
“Am I getting you all hot and excited?”
I ignored him and headed to my side of the bathroom where someone, I assumed one of Chris’s housekeeping staff, had set out all my skincare items.
“Hey, wait a minute!” he complained as I opened the first jar of cleanser. “You can’t have all this stuff out!”
“I have very few things in life that make me happy. That short list includes cake and facials. My nightly skincare routine takes forty-five minutes and includes twenty-five steps.”
“This is nuts,” Chris said as I smeared cleanser on my face.
“You don’t have to be in here,” I reminded him.
He scowled at the cameras as I poured toner on a cotton ball and slowly massaged it over my face.
“I feel like you’re doing this on purpose.”
“That anxious to crawl into bed with me?”
Chris grinned. “When you put it that way!”
I ignored him.
“I’m sure you have the footage you need, right?” he asked Zane.
Zane gave him a thumbs-up. “We just need a shot of you two getting into bed, then we’re good to go.”
I prepared my face mask.
“Can you just do the bed shot then put the face mask on?” Chris was shifting his weight on the balls of his feet in annoyance. It made his, ahem, package bounce up and down in a very distracting and unrelaxing way.
“I have a routine. There is a process.”
Chris swore and started pacing around the bathroom then into the master suite and back into the bathroom.
I gave a loud sigh. Chris and his bad attitude had already ruined the only relaxation time I had scheduled in the day, not to mention the cameras that were out there setting up.
“Why did I ever want to be married? This sucks. If I ever get married for real, having my own bathroom is a nonnegotiable.”
I set the face mask aside. The camera guys were antsy. I was sure they had families to get to and didn’t want to wait around for me to finish my ritual.
“Fine, you win, man-baby,” I announced, walking out into the master