“It’s adorable you brought your husband to help!” she said.
“Better him than me!” Brea, Grace’s friend who had sewn the wedding dress, remarked. “Sometimes she makes me climb up on a ladder and hold the diffuser.”
“He didn’t do that great at the last shoot,” Grace said, adjusting her lens, “but sometimes you just need a strong man!”
The bride giggled. “At least he’s a good-looking assistant! Now I’m super glad I hired your company to plan my wedding!”
“We aim to provide the best service possible,” I said with a smile.
“Arms up, Chris!”
“Had enough?” Grace asked in bemusement several hours later when Brea had led the bride off to help her out of the wedding dress.
“We have how many more of these?” I asked desperately.
Grace reached up and ran her hand along my jaw.
“That hysterical edge in your voice is adorable.” She carefully wiped down her equipment and packed it away. “We’ll eat lunch then head over to set up for the anniversary party.”
“Is that easier or harder than this?”
“Parties are a little less tedious than portraits, and since this isn’t a wedding reception, we don’t have the pressure of making sure we capture every single shot. I do have a list of the photos I want,” Grace explained.
“I’m not sure you want me behind the camera,” I joked as I picked up the heavy lights.
“I have an even more important job for you!”
“Is there going to be more equipment holding?”
“Better!” she said. “You’re going to play keep-away with the bride’s great-aunt.”
I looked askance at her.
“Apparently,” Grace said as she strapped her bags around her shoulders, “the bride’s great-aunt thinks she’s a photographer. At the bride’s wedding last year, the aunt was in like half my shots with her camera trying to take pictures! I finally had to let the bride’s little brother post a picture of me on his Snapchat and tell everyone I was his wedding girlfriend in order for him to keep the great-aunt occupied so I could do my job.”
She smiled at me.
“But you’re more good-looking than a pimply college freshman, so you should be able to make my night very easy!”
“I’m offended you only want me for my good looks.”
“And all your muscles!” she joked, running her hand along my bicep as we walked out to the waiting car.
Her touch sent shocks through me. It had been a while since I’d gotten laid. Normally I didn’t wait this long. But I was married to Grace now, officially, and I couldn’t of course cheat on her. That would definitely spell the end of my hedge fund.
Unfortunately, my brain had latched onto Grace as the only way to get laid anytime soon, especially if the inevitable divorce proceedings stretched out.
Which they won’t if you don’t complicate things and sleep with her.
“There’s a park down the road. We can eat there,” I suggested. Nothing sexy about lunch outside—bugs, sunburn, sex on a blanket among the flowers…
I shook my head.
“Are you going to make it?” Grace teased.
You are strong. You run a multi-billion-dollar hedge fund. Not sleeping with your wife should be a piece of cake.
“Sure, just starving.”
“This is a nice park!” Grace exclaimed when the driver opened the doors for us.
“With the amount of money I paid, it better be nice.”
“You built a park?”
“It’s attached to one of my developments,” I explained, pointing to a mid-rise glass building. “The trick to getting a development through in a high-society Connecticut community is to include a park. I went a step further and built a butterfly garden. No one is going to say no to a butterfly garden; they’d look like a monster. This place even attracts hummingbirds during their migration.”
“Never took you for a bird watcher,” Grace said as she strolled around the grounds with me. “You’re a lot softer than the hardened tycoon the magazines paint you to be.”
“I’m totally a steely investor! The next time I build another development, which if you put in a good word to your friend Nancy Holbrook since for some reason you’re better connected than I am, you’ll see me in action,” I said lightly.
“I’ll put in a good word for you,” she said with a laugh, “depending on how good of an assistant you are at our next two events.”
“I’ll be even better once I eat,” I promised.
“The purpose of a Bauernfrühstück,” Grace said as we made our way back to a bench where my driver had put a bag with the lunch I had