She didn’t reach out and snake her fingers around my neck, but it felt like she did when she said in a low, feral voice, “I will make your life hell if you say anything to him about your mother and my father.”
I had absolutely no plans to tell James anything else about our shared and super-sordid past. If I started revealing stuff on my own now, then everything could come out, and I wouldn’t —and, moreover, couldn’t—risk that. But letting Veronica know that I was technically on her side where this particular issue was concerned didn’t seem right.
“Your ten minutes are up,” I said. “I need to get back to rehearsal. But thanks for stopping by. You can let yourself out the back door.”
Her face didn’t change, but I could almost feel her go from cool to fuming in zero seconds flat. Now the whole room and everything in it was hot and sticky. Including Veronica.
I rushed out of there, before she could say anything else or offer me any more checks. As conditionally brave as I had learned to be over the years, I doubted that I could bring myself to tear up two fifty-thousand-dollar checks in one day.
I could feel her eyes on my back as I left the room.
My internal clock felt like I had just spent an eternity in that dressing room, but my watch told a different story. Only seven minutes had passed.
Once I had cleared the door, Stage Davie slipped away. Truth be told, she’d barely been hanging on. I ducked into Nicky’s office and spent the next three minutes just trying to breathe.
Talking to Veronica again was like confronting every single fear that I had ever had in high school. Terrifying. She terrified me.
And the truth was, in my heart, I knew she was right. James was not meant to marry the girl that Veronica still called Monkey Night. I had just turned down fifty thousand dollars for something I knew could not possibly work out. And now I was in my boss’s office hyperventilating about it.
God, I hated Veronica Farrell.
. . .
Which is why I looked at James like he was telling me a very bad joke when he invited me to his house for dinner with Veronica and the rest of his family. In fact, I said it. Yes, I said it: “Have you lost your damn mind?” I asked him just like Nicky asked Veronica two days before.
We were spooning, having just had morning sex in my bed, and I had been in a good mood until he dropped the bomb that not only was his entire family in town but that they also wanted to have dinner with us the next night.
He pulled me deeper into his arms. “They’re in town for a couple more nights. You’re my girlfriend. You should meet them.”
“They tried to pay me off,” I reminded him. “That doesn’t exactly scream dinner party.”
“Yeah, that was more Veronica’s idea. The rest of my family just went along with it because—well, because she’s Veronica.” He shook his head with a smile in his eyes as if Veronica was just an obstinate family pet. Like Marmaduke or something. Not a complete viper. “But I’ve talked to them, and they really want to meet you.”
I sat up in bed. “James, are you just not getting that Veronica hates me?” Because frankly, I was beginning to wonder if maybe this oblivious thing of his had reached a new level. I mean, even Andrew McCarthy stopped taking Molly Ringwald around his friends after they treated her like shit at that one party in Pretty in Pink.
“Veronica will be on her best behavior,” he said, sitting up in bed, too. He sounded so confident that I knew that he must have already had a conversation with her regarding this dinner. “And it’s only going to make things worse if you don’t come over for dinner.”
“Worse how?” I asked.
He had looked tired when he showed up at my door earlier. Had his family put that weary look on his face? Were they saying the same thing as Veronica: that I wasn’t good enough for him?