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THOMAS
‘No strippers, no gambling, no nipple tassels.’ I look pointedly at Susan, Moore’s head of womenswear from across my office’s sitting area.
For the past hour Susan and I have been hammering out the finer details of my brother’s wedding. If Chase wanted the typical seedy and sad impromptu Vegas wedding, then he shouldn’t have made me best man. Because I’ve taken the small amount of power and responsibility that came with the title and multiplied it ten-fold.
Case in point – I hired Susan, head manager of woman’s luxury, to act as wedding designer and planner.
Susan, a woman in her sixties who doesn’t look a day over fifty, crosses one leg over the other, her houndstooth Yves Saint Laurent trousers falling perfectly over her chocolate snakeskin Jimmy Choos. ‘Do you honestly think I’d allow any of those things?’
‘No, but…’ I tilt my head at Chase who’s been lying on my office couch between us, his cat sprawled out on top of him, lightly dozing during our entire conversation. He’s still mad at me for my earlier interaction with Alice.
Susan’s pink lips twist into a wry smile. She knows full well what kind of mayhem my brother can charm his way into and out of. She concedes my point and concerns with a nod. ‘Noted.’
Another few minutes of double-checking that all facets of my brother’s ceremony venue are in place, all while my brother naps, Susan stands to leave. ‘I know you were worried about this wedding at the start.’ She glances at Chase, arm draped over his eyes as if exhausted by his charmed life, then back to me. ‘But with how you managed to talk the chapel into suspending services while you paid for renovations, renovations we’re in charge of—’ she places her palm on her chest, the forty years of service diamond bracelet I gave her three years ago glittering in the lights ‘—it’s going to be fabulous.’
‘Hmmm.’ I hadn’t talked the owners of the chapel into anything. I’d simply written them a check. They get a brand-new chapel facelift for their future weddings all for the low cost of a free week’s vacation.
Nothing about this wedding is a good ROI. Well – I glance at my brother, his usual smile in place even as he rests, a smile that has looked far more genuine since he met Campbell ‘Bell’ King – at least not a financial ROI.
Rising from my chair opposite Susan’s, I re-button my suit jacket and walk her to the door.
After closing it, I stride back to my desk, the foggy winter’s day outside the floor-length windows behind it mirroring my mood.
Meanwhile, my new office does not. Gone are the dark navy and burgundy as well as the heavy ornate furnishings from when it was our father’s office just a year ago. In their place is a mixture of honey-colored wood, emerald-green velvet and cream linen. It’s bright, clean, modern, and annoyingly refreshing.
‘It isn’t too late to have a respectable wedding, you know?’ I sit in my leather desk chair, its lines more streamlined and its cushion more comfortable than the previous throne-like monstrosity that it replaced.
Chase’s eyes pop open. ‘What could be more respectable than the King himself residing over our nuptials?’
‘Anything.’ I stare hard at the minuscule space between Chase’s shoes draping over the armrest and the light neutral fabric of the sofa. ‘Anything would be more respectable.’ And easier to control.
People like to think that New York is chaotic. And it can be, but it’s a chaos controlled by such power and influence. Power and influence the Moore family name wields. Even after last year’s unfortunate public family drama with my father’s incarceration. And to me, control is key.
Vegas is defined, both denotation and connotation, by its complete lack thereof.
I don’t need to experience it to know I’ll despise it.
Chase raises his knees toward him and curls up, dislodging Mike and coming perilously close to scuffing the soles of his shoes over my cushions. ‘But what’s the fun in that?’
‘Meow.’ With great indignation, Mike leaps onto the back of the velvet side chair I’d just vacated.
‘Marriage isn’t fun. It’s serious.’ Not that I’d know. I’ve never been married, but being the product of an unhappy, unhealthy and now broken marriage, I know it’s definitely not to be taken lightly.
But, I remind myself, if Bell and Chase want to elope to Vegas and have a polyester-and-rhinestone-clad imposter pronounce them man and wife until death do they part, then who am I to say no?
I should be happy that my little brother has found the perfect person to marry. And considering he and I have only recently reconciled, I should be thrilled that he not only invited me but asked me to be his best man.
I am. Really. My fingertips pound my keyboard harder than necessary as I check on yesterday’s earning reports, half of my brain running through the massive Vegas to-do list still left to accomplish before this weekend.
It’s redundant of me, and I hate being redundant, but I can’t help make one more appeal to common sense. ‘You should get married at home, where you and your wife plan to live, amongst friends and family. You should enter this marriage with the seriousness in which the commitment should be taken.’
Chase blinks in time with Mike. ‘Sometimes I think you time-walked from the eighteen hundreds.’
I give in to the sigh that’s been brewing since Susan and I reconfirmed which Elvis officiant from the twenty-five applicants would officiate the ceremony. ‘Sometimes I feel as if I’m from the eighteen hundreds.’
Mike, now at eye level, lifts his leg and licks.
George emerges from the ‘secret’ door Chase insisted on installing between our offices in one of his fits of whimsy. The secret door everyone knows about because Chase told them, so impressed with himself for coming up with the idea. ‘Mr Moore the younger?’
