“I know, I know. I’m sorry. We’ve been … antisocial.”
His eyes found Maribel through the window. She was shored up on either side by her mom and dad, and all three of them were laughing at something that someone outside the frame had said. The way her parents had embraced their news, even though they didn’t know him that well, was touching—not a hint of concern that Maribel and Finn were moving too fast, or that they’d soon be moving even farther away. They seemed genuinely happy that Maribel was so happy, and Finn took it as an honor that they would trust him so completely with their daughter. A smile spread across his face as he watched the three of them turn to greet another small circle of guests.
“I can see why,” Caitlin teased. “You’re smitten.”
“Well, you’d better be if you’re going to tie the knot, right?”
“Touché.” A hint of sadness passed across Caitlin’s face but was instantly replaced by one of her practiced smiles. “You know,” she said, “George and I never really got a chance to have that hibernate-and-be-lovey phase. He travels so much for work, and then when he is home, there’s always something with his family. You would have thought when his father retired from the Senate, the all-family appearance schedule would die down. But he’s still always getting some award, hosting some charity benefit, whatever, and wanting George there for ‘support.’”
She glanced down the sidewalk, but there was no sign of George yet. “Really, I think his dad just likes to show him off, the prodigal son gone out to conquer the international business world. Sometimes I wonder if he wants him to run for office, too.” She gave a nervous little laugh. “I’m not cut out to be a senator’s wife. I’m still not sure how he ended up marrying me at all! A girl from the suburbs.”
He laughed. “Come on. It was a nice suburb.”
“It was no estate on a hill.”
“You know George doesn’t care about that stuff. That’s what’s so great about him.”
“Whether he cares about it or not doesn’t change the fact that our entire first floor would have fit inside their horses’ stables.”
Finn knew what she meant. And while George didn’t care about that stuff, Caitlin’s family had pulled back from her a bit once she’d become a Bryce-Daniels. Her sister and brother lived in their parents’ neighborhood now, about forty minutes outside of Cincinnati, and her move to the city after college made her the odd one out even before she’d married George. His family’s largesse only widened the chasm. “I think my family is intimidated,” she’d told Finn. “And I can’t blame them, because so am I.”
When Caitlin first met George, at a black-tie function she was covering for the PR firm that had hired her out of school, she took him for a “silver spoon snob” who’d bought his way into the Ivy League and his high-ranking job. “He probably bought his good looks, too,” she’d told Finn, and even then he had to hide a smile, so obvious was it that this mysterious Bruce Wayne character had lit a fire in his friend. George was soon revealed to be brilliant in his own right, bitingly funny, and generous almost to a fault, and if all that didn’t win Caitlin over, the way he doted on her as if she were a rare artifact did. George saw to it that Caitlin’s life blended seamlessly, at least on the surface, into his. Beneath it, Caitlin sometimes seemed to be scrambling to keep up—though oddly, Finn got that sense more when George wasn’t around.
Finn hadn’t grasped the extent of the Bryce-Daniels wealth until the bachelor party in Sunny Isles last year. He grew uncomfortable, squirmy, though nobody treated him as if he didn’t belong. On the contrary, it was their willingness to talk openly in front of him about their untouchable lifestyles that took him aback and made him feel like an imposter. Only then did he become fully aware that Caitlin wasn’t marrying only George but also his father’s legacy. He imagined joining those ranks wasn’t as easy or as enviable as people thought. A mere couple days of it had left him making excuses to get away.
Meeting that woman on the beach had been like coming up for air. Sometimes, he still imagined what might happen if he were to run into her one day—loading bags into her trunk outside the grocery store, or pedaling down the bicycle trail in his direction, her Camp Pickiwicki T-shirt taut against her body in the wind. There was no denying there’d been some spark between them, so he wondered what he’d say to her if their paths ever did cross again, how he’d put a stop to it before she could even start toward him. It was almost as if he felt he owed her an explanation. “Well, see, it’s so great to run into you this way, but I have a fiancée now. She is the one who answered the ad I placed when I was looking for you, actually … Yes, I did, I know it sounds crazy … But I really love her and I apologize that it worked out wonderfully for everyone but you.”
Of course, he had no way of knowing it hadn’t worked out well for her too. He hoped that it had. After all, he owed her his own happiness. If it hadn’t been for her, he would never have met Maribel.
“You know…” Caitlin’s voice faltered, and when he raised his eyes to hers, she offered him a sideways smile and held his gaze. “I never really told you—”
“There he is!” George came striding up the sidewalk with a bottle of champagne in one hand and a small silver gift bag in the other, and Caitlin and Finn both got to their feet. He held the bag out to Caitlin as he leaned in to kiss her, as if it had been hours, not minutes, since he’d last seen her. That was one of the perks of spending so much time apart, Finn supposed. When George and Cait were together, they’d draw envious looks from every woman in the room—and some of the men, too—for all the affection George showered on her, how attentive he was, a rare combination of first-date politeness, old-world gallantry, and marital intimacy.
“Forgot this under your seat,” he said good-naturedly, and she turned and handed the bag over to Finn as she looped her arm easily around George’s waist.
“The champagne is for everyone,” she told Finn. “The bag is for when everyone leaves.”
“The champagne is for the everyones you really, really like,” George corrected. “This stuff is top-notch.”
Finn was peeking through the tissue paper into the bag when he heard the storm door creek open behind him. “There you are!” Maribel called to Finn. “Oh—George! Caitlin! So glad you could make it.”
“Hey, love, could you come out here for a minute? With four glasses.”
“Actually, the toasts are about to—”
“Just for a minute?”