Guilt stabbed me and I turned on my phone.
“How are you getting service out here?”
My phone still had zero bars.
“Just lost mine,” Paige said with a regretful sigh. “I’ll keep checking. We might get service in a day or two.”
It also occurred to me that producing a show starring my ex-wife who had interrupted our wedding, even if it was directed by my daughter and son, might not sit very well with Birdie.
And now she might be stewing in this knowledge for ten days, potentially impacting an easy angry fuck to reconciliation when I got home.
Damn
Phee came onto the deck, looking very pleased with herself, adjusting her dress so it showed even more of her oiled-up tits.
Paige and Hieronymus rushed to kiss her on both cheeks.
“Mother, you look impeccable,” Hieronymus said. “The picture of class and style. How could anyone resist you?”
She laughed and draped herself gracefully in a deck chair, her eyes on me.
“Forrest, darling, I swear you outdo yourself at every wedding. A custom-made ice sculpture of you and your newest pet of the week? Very droll. Too bad she smashed it, though.”
To hear her talking about Birdie was like rubbing salt on how pissed-off I felt.
“How did your latest divorce go?” I countered. “I see you got a parting gift of new tits from that Norwegian tech billionaire.”
She flushed angrily.
“This isn’t a breast job. I’ve been drinking beet smoothies.”
I shrugged.
“Mother, you should have seen her!” Paige giggled. “Every little detail was supposed to be just right. And she had to work like a dog just to get Daddy at St. Martin’s 30 minutes late. You know what he’s like. Artistic. Temperamental. He can’t be tamed.”
“We weren’t that late,” I said.
Was that the perception of my relationship with Birdie? That she had todragme into marriage?
“Yes, the two of us are the same, aren’t we?” Phee purred, stretching her long legs out on the deck chair. “Such intenselycarnal creaturesthat we must always chase our pleasures. Wherever they lead, and to hell with what societal expectation are.”
“Of course Daddy had an ironclad prenup anyways,” Paige went on, one hand dripping with diamond rings raised in the air. “Fromheretoherewith restrictions and limitations. You know him. He’d never let somerandom womanmade a dent inourfortune.”
“Daddyis a very clever man,” Phee said.
The look she gave me was challenging as hell, and I recognized it very well. It was that fuck-me look, that let’s-hate-fuck-it-look.
I could tell she wanted me to come over to her, was expecting those heaving, oiled-up tits to entice me, but I felt annoyed. Even the banter felt stale.
Of course, the prenup was only standard, but still. . .
Beautiful, sweet Birdie, who had signed the prenup my lawyer had given her without complaint.
I sat down into the deck chair next to Phee.
“What the hell was so important to say to me that you had to interrupt my wedding?”
I tore at my bowtie irritably. Birdie had been so insistent on a full tuxedo, but the details hadn’t registered much withme, and the sight of the bowtie she’d agonized over felt like an uncomfortable rebuke. Surely Birdie didn’t think she had to drag me into marriage? Quite the opposite was true. I never did anything I didn’t want to.
