If she had ever thought of her wedding, that dream had been buried somewhere deep even before her mother died. She knew that when her father left, it had cut her mother deeply. If that was love, Sabrina decided, she wanted none of it.
Her parents separated when she was a toddler. They divorced when she was thirteen, but it wasn’t because her dad had been at all present in her life during the intervening years, but just because he hadn’t gotten around to it sooner.
And the liaison that produced Alex hadn’t been anything to write home about either. Sabrina had never met the guy who’d been her mom’s boyfriend, who’d promised marriage then ran out when her mom fell pregnant. Lily met him through her job, was all her mother had said.
Sabrina could barely remember whether she harbored any Cinderella-type dreams as a young girl. She had stopped believing in happily ever after a long time ago. None of those aspirations had survived the reality of day-to-day.
Now she was faced with the prospect of marriage to a man who thought she had the morals of an alley cat and was greedy and treacherous to boot. She was really quite the fantasy fiancée. Believing those things as he did, Vlad was simply anxious to wrap up the PR extravaganza with a splashy media ceremony so that he could prove to the world, especially those in his homeland, that he was a man who cared for his supposed child.
For her part, she would marry Vlad because not to do so, meant Alex would suffer if they were forced to leave the city and start all over. From the bottom. She couldn’t do that to him. She knew only too well the stark choices her mother had made. Whether to buy groceries or pay rent, the midnight flights from relentless landlords, settling in at a school only to leave when a promising job made their commute too long. They had lived on the edge for so long.
She knew that when they married, Alex would have security and the opportunity to go to top schools, to live, literally, at the pinnacle. And you will, too, a little voice inside her head piped up. Yes, she answered the voice. Very true. It sounded fabulous. She should have been doing cartwheels at her financial good fortune. But it just wasn’t enough. It left her cold to think of the empty years ahead, the security obtained at the cost of everything else. She had once thought that financial security would mean everything. But she had to admit she didn’t feel very happy right now. Could it be she believed in love after all?
****
Sabrina picked up her phone at the now familiar ring. She’d given Vlad a Batman ringtone as her own private joke in the beginning but now, it helped steel her resolve not to reveal her reaction to his dark voice when she answered. She hadn’t seen him in nearly two weeks, but unlike the previous week of complete non- communication, after he called and dropped the bomb that the wedding would take place so soon, he started to call her every day.
Deprived of every other part of him but his voice, she cherished the low, faintly accented way he caressed the syllables of her name. Just his deep voice alone sent erotic chills up her spine. The kind of chills that her body remembered without prompting. The kind that sped up her heart rate, brought her breasts to painful fullness, and caused blood to pulse through her body in readiness for a possession that didn’t take place. She had to acknowledge the shameful conclusion that her body had learned to hum and throb simply to the sound of his voice.
“What are you doing?”
“Um, catching up my coursework.”
She was determined to do everything she could to complete the remaining twelve credits of her degree. Now that Alex was in preschool and all of the time-consuming, challenging, and mundane chores of her former life were being completed by Vlad’s willing, cordial, and highly paid staff, Sabrina had the time.
If not the energy.
She wasn’t sleeping. Vlad’s absence from her days and nights was starting to tell on her. Without the worry of making ends meet, working a fulltime job with overtime and caring for Alex, she should have been well rested. She should have been bouncing off the walls. But that wasn’t happening. She was tossing and turning, and she couldn’t figure out what she could do about it. She couldn’t change her situation. But she prided herself on not being a princess. About not whining when her life to anyone on the outside looking in, resembled a dream come true.
“Are your courses preventing you from assisting with the wedding preparations?”
There was a harder edge to his voice now. One she was a bit more familiar with. Vlad the demanding, perfectionist boss.
“No. I’ve done everything on the list.”
“My assistant tells me you sent the planner an email giving him carte blanche on all of the decisions, invitations, music, food, everything. That won’t work.” He sounded put out that she had relied on the planner he had chosen himself.
She smiled to herself. Vlad was a micromanager as well as an overachiever. It would have served him right if she had taken the reins from the staff and chosen a hideous dress or intentionally botched other details. But she was, if she dared admit it, happy he had thought to ask for her input, but she left the experts to it. She had taken a personal interest in her own wedding dress— what woman wouldn’t?—and she had opinions about the flowers, Lacey was a talented if amateur flower arranger, and she had contacted a great photographer. Other than that, she wanted him to have what he considered an impressive event because that was what he was going for—the flash and the splash.
“Just because I gave some of those tasks to your very capable planner doesn’t mean I haven’t worked on the rest. Your Type A is showing, Vlad,” she teased. “You can check them all off your list. I have a dress, flowers are chosen, and I’ve booked a photographer. I can’t promise that I’m gonna look like your perfectly pedigreed red carpet women, or the super-toned mommies from Alex’s preschool, but it’s all done.”
****
Did he detect a hint of insecurity in her tone? That was laughable.
She was just sassing him. He knew she’d look perfect, and the wedding couldn’t happen fast enough. His self-imposed exile from her bed was even tougher than he’d imagined it would be, but necessary if he was to regain and retain some control in this alliance. This was a business arrangement with plusses on both sides. She got to live in the lap of luxury with her son. And he got her, as well as the blessing of the government in his homeland to continue his outreach projects and assistance there.
But he couldn’t just have her. He had discovered he could only have her in her place, in doses. He had it all figured out. They would go on a brief honeymoon where he was sure, surrounded by crew on his yacht, he would be able to re-consummate their relationship without the desperate frenzy that had overtaken him the night of the Gala.
Every time he closed his eyes, he saw her—naked in his library, eyes wide, her lush lips reddened from his and her skin marked by the strength and excess of his passion. He had lost control and hurt her. From now on, it would be different; he would keep his cool. Their relationship would be on his terms, signed, sealed, and with his passion contained.
She abruptly broke into his thoughts. As usual. “I’ve been meaning to ask you something.” “Yes?”
“I need my phone back. My old one. My cell that you took off me when we were on Long Island in the hurricane.”
“Really? What’s wrong with the one I gave you?”
“It’s great.” It was state of the art everything and
had every app preloaded and ready. “It’s just that I have photos on the other one. Photos of Alex, and I want to look at the more recent ones I took and maybe print a few. I’ve been printing photos of him since he was an infant, kind of like a chronicle.”
“Those photos on the wall of your apartment? Of Alex? Those are yours?”
He was astonished. “Um, yes.”
They’d stood out like gold among the dross of mismatched, dusty furniture and toys all over the place. His penthouse with its designer everything paled against the life in those photographs.
“You have to know they are of professional quality? Exceptional professional quality?”
“Well, I…I just have done them since he was born, kind of as a keepsake.”
‘As the photographer who created that work, you must know you are very talented.”
“Yeah, well, I like photography. But my mother didn’t think it was practical to get a degree in anything too artsy. So we compromised and I’m almost done getting a graphic design degree.”
“But you’re a natural, an artist photographer. Try to drum up a little more enthusiasm for your obvious talent, Sabrina. Most people would kill for an ounce of what seems to be natural ability in you.” He chuckled. “Okay, you’re getting the graphics degree. But you are an extremely gifted photographer. I can’t believe you took those with a cell phone. Have you ever tried anything but portrait work? Have you ever used a real camera?”
“No, just the cell camera. I like taking photos of people mostly. Actually, I took photos of my friend for her modeling portfolio,” she recalled.
“And?” he persisted.
“And yeah, Lacey, my friend, she got the job. I’ve done some landscapes, and, sometimes, and you know I do fiddle with them once I put them on a computer, they can be enhanced in various ways, that’s technology, not me.”
“Sabrina, don’t devalue your work, they’re good. Your work is exceptional. All of the photos from your place were boxed and brought to the apartment. They’re stored in one of the hall closets. You can set them out around the apartment or have them put up on the walls as you wish.”
“No way. Wow, you have genuine art in there.”
He had a stunning series of modern oils depicting an Italian seascape at various times of the day in the Living area. Then there were the Turners in the library. “I would never want…”
“My designer chose those for me. I didn’t actually select them. Your work belongs there. We’ll live there together. Display them however you choose.”
“I…okay. So we’ll live together? I kind of got the idea lately that we would get married just for, you know, appearances, and Alex and I would live on our own at the apartment.”
“Missing me, ko’shechka maja?” His voice turned deeper.
“What does that mean?” Her voice dropped, too. “It means little cat. Your eyes remind me of a
cat’s.”
And the way you lick your pink lips with your pink tongue, he could have said. Or the way you stretch out those long jean clad legs on the sofa. But he kept the rest of those observations to himself.