The Billionaire and the Wedding Planner Read online

  Right then, he thought now as he half-listened to a nearly incomprehensible conversation about bridesmaids’ dresses, Jason had experienced a first inkling of the feeling that his stepdaughter’s hitherto-unshakable faith in her ability to get her own way could have been handled better. He didn’t know Quint very well, yet, but he seemed an amiable enough young man whose extensive sailing experience served him in good stead, as far as projecting a manly air went. But Jason’s worry that Emily would steamroll him at every marital turn, until the marriage fell apart, had received no consolation here today at the wedding planner’s.

  But, again, wedding planning existed in a lofty feminine realm into which grooms and stepfathers were called only as accessories, in a sense similar to the one used when speaking of fashion accessories: purses and scarves. Jason felt he had done sterling work simply in saying he would lay out… well, he didn’t like to think how much it would take to ‘persuade’ the current reservation holders to make way for the June society bride.

  Neither he nor Quint should try to get in Priscilla’s and Emily’s way here, it seemed perfectly obvious. He had felt obligated to speak up when the two women had started nearly to bully the charming Maria, who clearly knew what she was doing and just as clearly only wanted to help Emily have the wedding of her dreams.

  Watching Maria a little surreptitiously now, though, he wondered how many times he would feel the need to come to her defense, and came to the preliminary conclusion that the number might be greater than it would have been had her dark eyes not sparkled quite as vivaciously.

  * * *

  “I thought you’d be happy for me!” Emily said angrily to Georgia, that night at dinner. “Priscilla’s shower’s going to be so elegant!”

  “But I told you,” Georgia protested. “I told you that Dave got us tickets for the Red Sox that night. I said…”

  Jason decided he should just go ahead and start eating the swordfish dinner he had prepared for the special night at home with his stepdaughters that all three of them had seemed so excited for. They had planned to watch their old favorite movies and to talk about old times and especially about Anne and how proud she would be. Even the swordfish, Anne’s favorite food, was symbolic. And now this.

  “This was the only time Priscilla could do it!” Emily said. “Who cares about the stupid Red Sox? Dave can take a friend if he wants!”

  “Em,” Georgia cried. “I told you! This was really special. He’s so excited, and he got these amazing seats, and…”

  “I’m getting married,” Emily cried. “Do you just not care about that? You’re the maid of honor. You have to be at the shower, and that’s that.”

  “Em,” Georgia said again and burst into tears.

  Emily looked at Jason. “Jason, tell her, please.”

  But Jason had had enough. He put down his fork. “Emily, you’re not being fair. I’m sure Priscilla—”

  She interrupted him, to his complete astonishment.

  “She can’t. I keep saying that. This is the only—” Her voice had taken on the same unpleasant tone she had adopted at the wedding planner’s, somehow both domineering and petulant.

  Jason barely managed to keep his anger in check. At that moment he didn’t see how he could possibly get through the next few months. He hadn’t really meant it when he had asked Quint to take Emily off his hands. He loved his stepdaughters both for their own sakes—nearly impossible to see in Emily at the moment—and for Anne’s sake. But the escalating conflict between them had to find some cessation or none of them would be on speaking terms after Emily departed for her honeymoon on Bermuda.

  He was about to intervene with more sharpness than he had used in years, and actually threaten a consequence like refusing to pay for one of the many extravagances discussed that afternoon with Maria Sali, when Georgia took matters into her own hands in a way that made things so much worse that Jason knew he had to act even more forcefully than he had planned.

  “Em, with all due respect, you are turning into a fucking—”

  “Georgia!” Emily said, and she too burst into tears.

  “A fucking bitch!” Georgia screamed, clearly not willing to let anything stop her from delivering her opinion of the bride’s behavior.

  Anne Easton had hated coarse language—outside the bedroom, anyway—more than she hated almost anything else under heaven. After returning from her liaison with the girls’ father in California, she said, she had had enough four-letter words for a lifetime. Practically the only thing that had earned Emily and Georgia actual punishment, growing up, was bad language, though the punishment comprised being sent to their rooms and having their phones taken away for a few hours.

  “Georgia!” Emily said again. “I’m… I’m the…”

  “Right,” Georgia managed, in something between a sob and a scream. “You’re the fucking bride.”

  Jason almost intervened then, but he really had very little idea of how to do so, without going further than he really wanted to go. Unfortunately, it seemed drastic measures would be warranted, though, as neither sister backed down.

  “Yes!” Emily shouted. “I am the bride. And you aren’t, you fucking immature, selfish…”

  Georgia stood up and in one fluid motion reached across the table and slapped Emily in the face. The look of shock on Emily’s face, as the red marks of her sister’s fingers appeared vividly and almost instantly, would have done credit to an actress of the golden age of Hollywood film: her wide eyes and wide mouth seemed to tell a tale of domestic horror, with a terrible revenge to come.

  For better or worse, Jason decided right then that something more decisive was necessary, and that whatever spiral of anger might come from the slap must be interrupted here and now. “Georgia Easton,” he said, as calmly as he could, “you just earned yourself a spanking.”

  “A what?” The color seemed to drain out of her face, and then return in a hot rush of pink.

  “A what?” Emily echoed, her eyes wide and her own cheeks red.

  Well, at least Jason had managed to stop what had seemed the onrushing train wreck between the girls, and to focus their anger and horror on him instead of each other.

  “You heard me,” Jason said, able to keep his temper under control now a little better, since his announcement had clearly at least quieted the girls down. “Georgia, go up to your room and pull your jeans down to the middle of your thighs, then bend over your bed. I’ll be up to spank you in a few moments.”

  Georgia’s mouth hung open, and she clearly couldn’t find her voice to save her life—or her backside.

  “Jason, what the—” Emily hissed, then stopped herself. “What are you talking about?”

  “Emily, you’re a hair’s breadth from a spanking of your own,” Jason said quietly.

  “B-but…” Georgia managed to stammer at that point.

  “But you never got spanked when you were little,” Jason helped her, by continuing her thought. “But I never punished you at all.”

  Georgia’s mouth closed, her cheeks still flaming, and she nodded.

  Emily clearly didn’t like even the direction of Georgia’s questions, though. “What does that matter?” she asked angrily. “What matters is that… is that we’re eighteen, and…”

  She stopped, and Jason saw in her expression the intelligence and even the sense of responsibility that he loved in her.

  He finished her thought, too. “You’re eighteen, but you’re also dependent on me until you’re twenty-five, as specified in your trust fund. Your mother was a very wise woman.”

  “How can you say that?” Emily exclaimed. “Mom never spanked us!”

  “Maybe she should have,” Jason said quietly. “In any case, what just happened here is something both of you should be ashamed of. We’re entering a time when all our emotions are going to be running very high—yours highest of all, maybe, Emily, but clearly Georgia’s, too. You can curse me all you want to your friends and even your therapist, but I’m going to prese
nt you right now with a formal choice. If you girls want my financial support—and this includes the wedding, Emily—you are going to agree tonight to accept the consequences of your behavior in the way I think best for you. The old-fashioned way.”

  Chapter Three

  Emily still couldn’t believe her ears. How could this possibly be happening? Jason couldn’t really mean to spank Georgia, could he? And he couldn’t have just threatened to spank Emily, too, if…

  If what?

  If Emily kept being what Georgia had earned the spanking for calling her. Emily did realize that she had taken some positions on matters having to do with the wedding that some observers might have called slightly unreasonable. But a girl only got to be a bride once. Hopefully. Emily had dreamt of her wedding day since she had seen her first princess movie. She had talked about it with Georgia, with her friends, so many times, before she had met Albright and while she was dating him, the man Emily had decided she would marry. Now that he had finally proposed, and all the talk had become reality, it had to be exactly as it was in her mind, when she had talked about it, and dreamt about it…

  With Mom.

  Mom had known Albright, at least, before she went into the hospital for the last time. Actually, she had seen Albright, then, for the first time since Emily and Albright had attended a preschool together than neither of them could recall, though of course Anne and Priscilla remembered it vividly—especially how Emily had poured a bucket of papier-maché or something over Albright’s head.

  So how could Mom have said, so close to the end, “Don’t marry him for me, Emily”?

  Emily had pretended not to understand, as she stood by Anne’s hospital bed. “What are you talking about, Mom?”

  “I can see it in your eyes, when you look at him. I know you think it’s all love, and I do think there’s a lot of love in it, but…” Anne’s eyes had filled with tears. Emily had taken her hand, and started to cry herself. “You need someone firm, Emily. Firmer than I could ever be with you. I don’t know if Quint…”

  “Albright,” Emily had said automatically.

  Anne had crooked a wry smile up at her. “I think he likes Quint.”

  “But the shark movie…”

  “I think he likes the shark movie.”

  Then they had laughed, and the subject had thankfully dropped, and not been raised again. Emily’s final parting from her mother had been comforting and peaceful: a promise to find her truest self, and live it; a promise to accept Jason’s help in finding it; a promise to care for the people around her, to honor her mother’s legacy of loving service.

  Georgia had walked from the table, her face a bright scarlet and her eyes fixed on Emily. Something in those eyes accused Emily of bringing this humiliation on her sister, but Emily also saw in Georgia’s brow a strange air of meaning, as if her younger sister were saying, I told you so.

  For a moment Emily couldn’t think what it could mean, but then, with a blaze of heat in her face that exceeded even what she had felt the first time Jason had said a spanking, she remembered. Georgia had sworn that one night, just before Mom got sick, she had heard Jason spanking Mom. Georgia had said that she couldn’t figure out what could possibly be going on, that she felt sure Anne would call the police if her husband were hurting her. She had knocked on the door, and Anne had come to answer it, with a smile on her face, though Georgia said she did look like she had been crying.

  That couldn’t be what Mom had meant about firmer, could it?

  “Go on, Georgia,” Jason said. “Let’s get this over with.”

  The younger Easton girl turned back to her stepfather. “Could I have it with my jeans on, please?” she asked.

  Emily’s mouth hung open at her sister’s quiet tone, her apparent acceptance of Jason’s strange, awful bargain: continued financial support in exchange for an acceptance of some bizarre idea he had of discipline for adult women.

  “No, Georgia. Having your pants taken down, or your skirt raised, for punishment is a big part of the lesson you’re going to learn.”

  Emily looked at his calm face, at Georgia’s red one. “Georgia,” she said, hardly knowing where the words came from, since they were so unaccustomed to come from her mouth, “I’m sorry. I’ll talk to Priscilla.”

  “Yes, you will,” Jason said. “But your sister is getting spanked for what she did, not what you did. After her spanking, you can go to her room to comfort her, and talk it over, and she can apologize to you, too, for what she decided to say. Right now, Georgia, you need to get your naughty backside upstairs, and do as you’ve been told.”

  Tears were forming in Georgia’s eyes as she turned to obey. Emily said, “May I comfort her now?” hearing in her voice a respectful tone and not knowing from where it had come.

  “No,” Jason said. “Georgia needs to think about what she did, before she’s spanked.”

  Georgia gave a little sob at that, and ran up the stairs.

  Emily, chewing on the inside of her cheek, stared at her plate, utterly at a loss as how to respond to what seemed a strange but unavoidable new reality. Jason’s voice called her from her reverie.

  “If you need a spanking in the future, Emily. I’m going to give you a choice. I can give it, or I can tell Quint, and see what he decides.”

  She felt her brow pucker as the warmth again mounted into her cheeks. Anger blazed up alongside whatever else her suddenly wayward mind had decided to produce. She looked up at Jason and did her best to keep her voice steady, and to fill it with scorn. “Quint—I mean, Albright—would never spank me.”

  “Well, then,” Jason said, seeming maddeningly amiable now, “you’ll want to have me tell him, won’t you?”

  “No, I…” Why had she said that? She returned her eyes to the lovely swordfish Jason had made for this special dinner, which she saw now she had ruined, and she felt tears of her own starting in them.

  “You don’t have to decide now,” he said, and now his voice even sounded kind. “But if you’re going to continue to be what your sister called you, you should probably think it over.”

  * * *

  Emily couldn’t help herself, after Jason went upstairs. She followed, stealthily, so that she could listen. From halfway up the staircase she heard Jason knock, and she even heard Georgia’s muffled “Come in.” She heard the door open, and close.

  She went up the last few steps, avoiding the two creaking ones she had always avoided since high school and sneaking out to meet up with school friends. Not boys—usually. Only one boy, in fact, Bradley Salting—a lunkhead, but from a family with untold millions and blood nearly as blue as the Eastons’ and the Whites’ (Anne had been born a White). Bradley had been more than happy to take Emily’s virginity during her rebellious years, but he definitely hadn’t created much enthusiasm for sex.

  At least Albright cuddled really well, she reflected. Jason’s threat—for how could Emily perceive it otherwise—to tell her fiancé the next time Emily stepped out of line came into her mind and enhanced both the heat in her face and the strange, lightheaded feeling caused by being outside Georgia’s when she was about to get a spanking.

  Jason spoke in words that Emily couldn’t catch: his voice sounded calm, but also commanding. He must be telling Georgia something about her posture, or lecturing her about her offense?

  Georgia’s voice then, in a little wail. “Please, Jason. Not the…” What had her sister said? She couldn’t have said hairbrush, could she?

  Jason’s reply, again indistinct, but definitely saying that whatever Georgia had protested against would indeed occur. A final admonition. Keep this still? Is that what he had just said?

  Then the butterflies in Emily’s tummy took wing as they never had, because she heard the first smack of something against Georgia’s bottom, and she heard a yelp from her sister’s throat.

  Jason’s voice became fully audible. “Get your hand away, Georgia, or I’m going to give you extra.”

  Emily’s heart raced. Some
thing about the way Jason spoke convinced her finally and absolutely that Georgia had been right about their stepfather spanking their mother. Jason sounded so experienced at this, and for some reason that made Emily’s lightheadedness much worse.

  Another smack. Was it her sister’s hairbrush, the thing smacking against her panty-covered backside to make her cry out like that?

  Emily ran back downstairs, to the TV room, and turned it on at a volume high enough so that she could be completely sure she wouldn’t hear anything more from Georgia’s room.

  She found herself, however, unable to pay the slightest attention to the sci-fi series she usually loved. The aliens seemed to be speaking in actual alien languages rather than the English they always used otherwise, for reasons never explained.

  It was only a few minutes later, though, that Jason came in and put the TV on mute. “You should go up and talk to Georgia,” he said. “She’s ready to apologize.”

  Emily looked up with startled, frightened eyes. “Because you spanked her,” she said. She wasn’t even sure what she meant.

  “Yes,” Jason said, and now Emily could tell he had experience in this area, too.

  “You spanked Mom, didn’t you?” It came out as much more of an accusation than Emily meant it, perhaps because she didn’t know how to say that kind of thing without it being accusatory.

  “Yes,” he answered simply. “She agreed to it.”

  Emily felt her eyes and her jaw go wide at the same time.

  Jason seemed to hesitate for a moment, and then he said, “Your mother didn’t just agree to it, Emily. She wanted it. It’s not really an exaggeration to say she needed it.”

  Emily saw an opening and charged into it. “But we’re not agreeing to it like that, are we? You’re saying… you’re saying that you won’t pay for my wedding—the wedding Mom wanted me to have—unless you can spank me.” Now her voice had become even harsher—condemnatory, really—though she still had the strange feeling that her convictions weren’t actually behind her words. Georgia had said that Mom had been smiling, when she came to the door of her and Jason’s bedroom. Would Emily find Georgia smiling when she went upstairs?