Faking a Fairy Tale
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Teri Wilson
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19
Chapter One
Fashion closet. Now!
Daphne Ballantyne’s glitter-manicured fingertips tapped out the frantic group text as she rushed past a rolling rack full of designer wedding gowns. With her head bent over her phone, a wisp of gossamer-thin, embellished fabric hit her in the face—just another occupational hazard of working at Veil, Manhattan’s premier bridal magazine.
Daphne brushed the organza aside, stilettos clicking on the smooth marble floor as she rushed toward the fashion closet in a whirl of furious, sparkling indignation. Jack King had done it again, and this time, he’d really gone too far. Daphne was going to lose it, albeit in exquisitely groomed fashion.
As the magazine’s beauty editor, it was Daphne’s job to keep up with the latest trends in cosmetics, skin care and body care, and Daphne did so with unbridled enthusiasm. Just this morning, she’d added fresh sparkles to her hair with the bedazzling tool that had gone semi-viral online after she’d featured the device in the June issue of Veil. She had an appointment after work to get new eyelash extensions. Daphne was in the middle of writing a feature on various lash options for brides and had been offered a trial run from a popular salon in Chelsea that had styles ranging from the demure, understated Blushing Bride all the way to the dramatic Bridezilla. Daphne fully intended to take the Bridezilla lashes for a spin. Go big or go home.
First, though, she had a war to wage right here at Veil.
“What happened? Is everything okay?” Addison England, the magazine’s deputy editor and one-third of the trio of best friends who called themselves the Veil crew, was ready and waiting when Daphne stormed into the fashion closet.
Everly England Aston—Addison’s younger sister, who’d recently been promoted to features editor—breezed in right on Daphne’s heels.
“Of course the pregnant lady is the last one to get here. What did I miss?” Everly asked, gaze swiveling back and forth between Daphne and Addison as she rested a gentle hand on her ever-expanding belly.
“Nothing—” Addison said with a shrug “—yet. We just got here too.”
The sisters both turned curious eyes on Daphne.
“Spill,” they said in unison.
Daphne hadn’t expressly stated that she was currently in crisis mode when she’d fired off the group text message. The urgency of her situation had been a given because the words fashion closet said it all.
The Veil closet was an enormous space within the magazine’s sleek, Upper East Side headquarters where articles of clothing that had either been gifted or loaned to Veil were stored with meticulous care. Couture wedding gowns and bridesmaid dresses hung from the maze of rolling racks crisscrossing the closet. The walls were lined with shelves upon shelves of designer shoes and custom drawers containing wedding veils stitched from fine organza, illusion tulle and exquisitely crafted Burano lace. Somewhere among the miles of bridal white fluff was a small collection of bespoke men’s tuxedos...supposedly. None of the Veil crew had actually set eyes on it, but rumors of its existence abounded.
Daphne couldn’t remember exactly when or how the fashion closet had become a place of refuge for her, Addison and Everly. But whenever one of them needed a shoulder to cry on or just a place to vent, they gathered on the closet’s enormous white silk damask tufted ottoman. It was hard to be upset surrounded by all of those exquisite gowns. Being in the closet always made Daphne feel just a little bit like a princess—even today when she was royally ticked off.
“It’s him.” Daphne fumed. “Again.”
“Oh, boy. This is going to take a while, isn’t it?” Everly kicked off her Audrey Hepburn-esque ballerina flats and lowered herself onto the ottoman. For a woman who was expecting twins in less than two months, she still moved with an impressive amount of grace.
“What did Jack do this time?” Addison said as she picked an invisible speck of lint from her ivory and black tweed skirt suit.
Was it Daphne’s imagination or was her girl gang acting unusually blasé about her state of unease?
Daphne crossed her arms and shot an indignant glance at her friends. “Neither of you seems to be taking this very seriously.”
“We are.” Everly nodded with a yawn. “So seriously.”
“I’m going to overlook the yawn because you’re with child and all, but you—” Daphne’s gaze swiveled toward Addison, who was now inspecting her perfectly polished nails. The color looked like Essie’s Ballet Slippers, a favorite of brides the world over. Daphne would’ve bet her entire paycheck on it. “—Where’s your sense of outrage on my behalf?”
“First of all—” Addison raised a single Ballet Slipper-tipped finger “—you haven’t even told us what he did yet. And second...”
Everly finished for her. “Jack isn’t such a bad person. He sent me a really nice text when my first feature article went live. Everyone in the office seems to like him.”
Daphne arched an irate brow. “With one very notable exception.”
“Everly is just trying to explain that we don’t quite understand why you two can’t seem to get along,” Addison said.
“This.” Daphne slapped the yellow Post-it note she’d been clenching in her fist down onto the ottoman. “This is why.”
Addison and Everly leaned over the offending square of paper and peered down at it.
Daphne smoothed the creases out of the Post-it until Jack’s annoyingly perfect penmanship was clearly legible. Then there they were, his four favorite words in all of the English language.
We can’t print this.
Everly frowned. “Did he shoot down another of your articles?”
“Yes, he most definitely did. And this time, he didn’t even have the decency to e-mail me an explanation. He just stuck a Post-it on my pages and left them on my chair for me to find first thing this morning.” Daphne’s head hurt. She couldn’t deal with this before her morning cup of coffee.
Although, Addison always joked that Daphne put so much flavored creamer in her brew that it no longer resembled actual coffee. Whatever. All Daphne knew was that there was a cookies-and-cream flavored caffeinated beverage sitting in her cubicle, waiting to be consumed. She just needed to eviscerate Jack King first.
Metaphorically speaking, of course.
“This is the third time he’s pulled one of my articles,” Daphne said.
“That’s really not so bad, Daph.” Everly shrugged. “He’s been at Veil for at least five months by now.”
“The third time this week,” Daphne clarified.
“Ouch.” Everly winced. “Point taken.”
At long last, Addison cast Daphne a properly sympathetic look. “I can see why that would be frustrating.”
She had no idea.
Daphne sighed and glanced from Addison to Everly and back again as she collapsed into a dejected heap on the ottoman. “How many times has he done this to you two?”
“Actually, he’s never pulled one of my articles,” Addison said.
Everly shrugged. “Me either.”
Daphne wanted to scream into one of the white satin ring pillows stacked on the shelf immediately to her right. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
And just like that, she was on her feet again, pacing around the cramped space. For some reason, all the bridal white taffeta, airy organza and shiny little beads were doing nothing to calm her nerves this morning. When couture fashion and a bit of sparkle failed to make Daphne feel better, she knew there was something seriously wrong.
“He’s making me crazy.” She threw her arms in the air, narrowly missing a Monique Lhuillier mesh tulle dress with blue floral appliqué.
Daphne paused for a beat to admire it. She refused to let Jack steal her appreciation for a wedding dress with a touch of color. If Daphne ever got married, she wanted her gown to look like a designer puff of pastel cotton candy.
Not that she had any intention of walking down the aisle in the foreseeable future. Maybe not ever. Dating was usually a prerequisite to getting married, and Daphne hadn’t been on a real date since high school. Plenty of men had expressed interest in the years since, but she had no desire whatsoever to go down that humiliating road again.
“Daph, you know I adore you, but fact-checking is Jack’s job,” Addison, ever the voice of reason, said. “It’s right there in his title—fact-checker. If every word of an article can’t be verified, he has no choice but to intervene.”
Daphne knew this, of course. She’d been working at Veil for a decade already, straight out of high school. She’d started off working the night shift with the cleaning crew while she attended community college classes during the day in Queens, where she’d still lived at home with her dad. The moment she’d set foot in the glamorous office, Daphne knew she wanted to work on the staff someday. She spun stories in her head about the beautiful gowns she spied hanging in the fashion closet while she emptied the trash bins and dusted cubicles. To her father’s bemusement, she started reading the Vows section of The New York Times, learning everything she could about weddings and bridal fashion. And when the time came to choose a major at school, Daphne selected journalism without the slightest hesitation.
When a receptionist job at Veil became available during her junior year, she spent every spare dime she had on a knockoff Chanel suit and all but begged Colette Winter, Veil’s editor in chief, for the position during her interview. It paid even less than her cleaning job, but the first time she took a seat behind the magazine’s glossy white reception desk, Daphne cried actual tears of joy. She’d done it—she was a Veil girl.
She finished her degree by switching to night classes. Three years after taking the receptionist job, she got promoted to an assistant position and she’d been working her way further up the glittery, glamorous ladder at Veil ever since. Sometimes she had to pinch herself to believe how far she’d come. Other days, all it took was a simple Post-it note to remind her that, unlike the rest of the staff, she hadn’t gone to a fancy Ivy League university or grown up on the Upper West Side.
Perhaps she was reading too much into her ongoing battle with Jack King. Then again, maybe she wasn’t.
“I knew it.” Daphne felt like crying. Either that or strangling a certain fact-checker. “He’s targeting me.”
“I really doubt that. Fact-checking is a touchy business. Also—” Addison pulled a face “—you two might want to at least try and get along. People are starting to talk.”
Daphne blinked. Seriously? Everyone at the magazine loved her. Almost everyone, anyway. “What people?”
“Literally everyone in the building,” Everly oh-so-helpfully added. “We’ve all heard you and Jack arguing about your copy.”
“It’s only a matter of time until Colette notices, and you know how she feels about staff members not getting along.” Addison bit her lip.
As much as Daphne loathed to admit it, Addison was right. Their editor in chief ran a tight ship, and Colette was fundamentally opposed to anything that disrupted the workplace.
Everly nodded. “If there’s one thing Colette hates, it’s drama.”
“And sensible shoes,” Addison said.
“And casual Fridays,” Everly added.
Addison arched a knowing eyebrow. “And white after Labor Day.”
They were getting way off track. Daphne didn’t need help writing a listicle about Colette’s likes and dislikes. She needed Jack to leave her alone. Or, preferably, to leave altogether and take a job someplace else—like Robot Monthly, maybe, since he had about as much personality as a washing machine.
Daphne had never once seen the man smile. Nor had he ever taken a single bite of the wedding cake samples that popped up from time to time in the break room. What kind of monster didn’t like cake?
Daphne groaned. “What am I going to do?”
“For right now, I think it’s best to just lay low and do whatever it takes to get along with the guy. I know you think he’s impossible, but Colette loves him, and the last thing you want is to get on her bad side for any reason whatsoever.” Everly shot her a meaningful look. “Trust me on this.”
“I hear you,” Daphne said. She had, after all, witnessed every painful moment of Everly’s recent struggles at work. Colette had even demoted Everly for a while, but Everly had risen to the top, just like cream. Because she loved her job.
Just like Daphne loved hers. She couldn’t let Jack ruin things at Veil for her. She wouldn’t.
“Okay, the new game plan is to smother Jack with sweetness,” she said. She couldn’t keep bickering with him if everyone in the office was chattering about their feud. It wasn’t as if all the quarreling was doing any good, anyway.
Addison’s eyes narrowed. “You don’t mean smother him in the literal sense, do you?”
“No, of course not.” Although the idea wasn’t without its appeal.
“Good, just checking,” Addison said.
“You should also avoid Colette at all costs until things settle down between you and Jack.” Everly folded her arms over her pregnant belly. “Just saying.”
Daphne took in a deep breath. “Done.”
Then the door to the fashion closet swung open, and Colette’s assistant rushed inside. When her gaze landed on Daphne, the assistant’s slim shoulders sagged in relief. “Oh, good. Here you are.”
“Me?” Daphne’s hand fluttered to her heart. She swallowed, fervently hoping there was some invisible person standing behind her.
Alas, there wasn’t.
“Yes. You, Daphne.” The assistant waved her toward the door. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you. Colette wants to see you in her office right away.”
“Oh, she does? Great.” So, so great. This couldn’t be good. Daphne’s legs went wobbly as she stood and smoothed down the front of her retro-inspired dress. The bubblegum pink fabric was decorated with tubes of lipstick and bright red kiss marks. Her career might be on the brink of going down in flames, but at least she’d look cute as it burned.
She shot a parting wave at Addison and Everly, who’d both gone slightly wide-eyed.
Text us, Everly mouthed.
Daphne nodded. Will do.
As she followed Colette’s assistant toward the editor in chief’s office, Daphne concentrated on breathing in and out, just like she’d advised nervous brides to do in the article she’d written last month called “Say I Do to Pre-Wedding Yoga.” Jack had made her omit two full paragraphs from that piece, because of course he had.
Stop thinking about him, her subconscious screamed. He’s utterly unimportant to your life or your career.
That last part wasn’t quite true, though. If she wasn’t careful, Jack and his irritating pad of Post-it notes could fully torpedo her standing at Veil...
But only if Daphne let him.
She took in a ragged, non-yoga-like breath as she passed the cubicle area of the office. A few curious faces swiveled in her direction, and she forced herself to hold her head high. Whatever Colette wanted probably had nothing whatsoever to do with their ongoing feud. The last time Daphne had been unexpectedly summoned to her boss’s office, she’d been offered a promotion. And a raise. This was probably a good thing. She really needed to stop letting Jack get inside her head.
Except the second she stepped through the doorway of Colette’s office, she realized all her efforts to forget about Jack would be futile. He wasn’t just in her head...he was right there, sitting across the cream-colored lacquer desk from their boss with his annoying backside planted in one of Colette’s white faux fur chairs.
Daphne wished she hadn’t noticed that his backside, while every bit as annoying as the rest of him, also looked quite nice in a tailored suit. Unfortunately, she’d come to that realization on his very first day at the magazine. His chiseled face wasn’t any less appealing, even though the set of his jaw was typically so hard that it looked as if his pearly white molars could cut coal into diamonds with minimal effort.
Stop thinking about him, she repeated to herself. And definitely stop thinking about his backside.
What was wrong with her?
Daphne stood rooted to the spot. One thing was clear: this meeting wasn’t about a promotion. Quite possibly, it was about the opposite. Colette had certainly demoted people before. If ever there was a time to smother Jack King with kindness, it was right here and now, while the editor in chief was watching.
Jack swiveled in his chair, glittering gray eyes settling on Daphne with a perfectly inscrutable expression. The man was dead inside. She managed to paste a smile on her face, but it felt more like a snarl. Then the corner of his mouth twitched into a reluctant looking half grin. Super. Stony-faced Jack King, lover of obscure facts and hater of cake was laughing at her.
Daphne smiled so hard that her head hurt.
What was he doing here?
What was she doing here?
Jack King blinked against the assault of glitter sparkling at him from Daphne Ballantyne’s hair. As per usual, the beauty editor looked like she’d had a run-in with a chandelier on her way to work. Also as per usual, she was glaring at him as if he’d just kicked a puppy.
Jack hadn’t kicked a puppy, obviously. Never had and never would. Not that Daphne cared, as she seemed to have somewhat of a loose relationship with actual facts.
“Jack,” she said as she took the seat beside him. For some reason, she appeared to be trying her best to smile at him. Clearly it pained her.
Jack couldn’t help feeling the slightest bit amused. Was that an immature reaction? Probably. Then again, Daphne herself hadn’t exactly been a beacon of professionalism yesterday when she’d barged into his office, accused him of being a control freak and purposely rearranged his carefully organized office supplies in an attempt to rattle him.
Jack had definitely been rattled. Fine, he could admit it: he liked things orderly and predictable. Was that really such a bad thing? The last time he checked, neatness was a positive trait in the workplace. Daphne might want to try it sometime. Earlier this morning, when Jack tried to stick a Post-it note to her desk, there hadn’t been a square inch of available space to affix it to. Her cubicle was filled to overflowing with makeup brushes, cosmetics, hair products and more bottles of hand lotion than he could count. And glitter! Glitter everywhere.
Jack had very carefully pressed the Post-it note to her pages and left them on the seat of Daphne’s chair. Even so, he’d somehow found himself plucking specks of glitter from his necktie half an hour later.
“Daphne,” Jack said to her in return. He stood while she took her seat, because in addition to liking things neat and orderly, Jack also had manners.
“Oh, were you just leaving?” Daphne asked as he towered over her. Her smile suddenly seemed more genuine.
“No.” Jack sat back down, spine ramrod straight. “I was simply being polite.”
She snorted and then tried to cover it with a cough.
Jack’s jaw involuntarily clenched. The woman was a bewitching, bedazzled, thorn in his side. He truly didn’t know why he let her get to him the way that she did.
He swiveled to face forward, focusing all of his attention on Colette. Still, Daphne shimmered in his periphery, about as easy to ignore as a disco ball.
“Good morning,” Colette said. She folded her hands on the surface of her pristine, cream-colored desk. There wasn’t a laptop or even a pen in sight—only a tasteful bouquet of white roses in a vase on the desk’s far right-hand corner. Minimalism at its finest. With any luck, Daphne was taking notes.
“Morning, Colette,” Daphne gushed beside him.
Jack cleared his throat. “Good day.”
A trickle of unease snaked its way up his spine as Colette’s gaze flicked back and forth between them. What was the purpose of this meeting, exactly?
“Thank you for coming in. There’s something very important I need to discuss with both of you,” Colette said.
“Yes, of course,” Daphne said.
Jack remained silent. He was beginning to get a bad feeling about where this conversation could possibly be headed.
“How would you say the two of you get along?” Colette asked.
And there it was.
He and Daphne had been hauled into the editor in chief’s office like two schoolchildren who’d been ordered to see the principal. Jack didn’t know whether to be mortified or furious.
Both.
Definitely both.
This wasn’t him. Jack took his job seriously. He didn’t engage in petty work squabbles. In prep school, he’d been voted “most likely to become a workaholic,” and he’d been the top-ranking student in his class at Yale. His work ethic was legendary.
He was a model employee, damn it. Or he had been...
Until his world had been turned upside down six months ago.
Jack was getting back on track, though. He really was. The only visible cracks in his composure came about when Daphne Ballantyne was in the immediate vicinity.
“We get along great.” Daphne beamed at him. “Jack is wonderful. So fastidious.”
He narrowed his gaze at her, ever so slightly. “Yes, we work very well together. Daphne is undeniably...colorful.”
They sat staring at each other for a beat, gazes locked in silent warfare. Then Daphne licked her lips, and Jack’s attention strayed toward her mouth—accidentally, of course. But for a strange, nonsensical moment, he couldn’t bring himself to look away.
“Good, I’m glad to hear it,” Colette said.
Focus, Jack’s subconscious ordered. He snapped his head back toward his boss, tugging slightly at his shirt collar.
“Because I have to say, I’ve sensed a bit of animosity between you a time or two, and this is never going to work if that’s the case.” Colette held up her hands.
“What?” Daphne sputtered out a laugh. “Animosity? No, absolutely not. Honestly, Colette, I’m not sure where this is coming from. Right, Jack?”
“Correct.” He gave a wooden nod. Jack had always been a terrible liar—again, something he’d always considered to be a positive attribute.
Not so, if the momentary spark of fury in Daphne’s aquamarine eyes was any indication.
She sighed and turned her gaze back to Colette. “Please don’t fire us.”
Jack pinched the bridge of his nose. They couldn’t pretend to like each other for longer than two minutes, even when both of their jobs were at stake. What was this? Kindergarten?
“Fire you?” Colette’s brow furrowed. “I’m not following.”
“You just said this is never going to work if Jack and I don’t get along.” There was an unmistakable tremor in Daphne’s voice that made Jack’s body feel leaden all of a sudden. Or maybe that was simply a by-product of his pending unemployment.
“We can make it work,” he said, tongue tripping only slightly on the word we. As if the very thought of being part of a collective with Daphne was so inconceivable that his mouth refused to cooperate.
“Still not following.” Colette shook her head. “At all. Regardless, I have no intention of firing either of you. You both do excellent work.”
Daphne’s knee, just out of Colette’s sight, gave Jack’s thigh a sharp nudge. He could practically hear her internal squeal of triumph. Did you hear that, Jack? I do excellent work.
He sighed mightily. What was it going to take to get Colette to cut to the chase so he could get out of here? He longed for the solitude of his office, where his stapler was always situated precisely one inch to the left of his leather desk blotter, and he knew exactly what was expected of him from one minute to the next. Fact-checking suited him. Verifying information was black and white, with no room for gray. No room for confusion. No room for surprises or chaos.
Which had a lot to do with why he excelled at it.
“Colette, if I may...” Jack said, ignoring Daphne’s invisible eye roll in response to his formality. “Clearly there’s been some confusion. What is it, precisely, that Daphne and I need to make work?”
“Your engagement,” Colette said, as if that made a lick of sense.
“Our w-what?” Daphne sputtered. She’d gone deathly pale, those luminous, blue-green eyes of hers huge in her delicate face.
Jack’s chest went so fiercely tight that he couldn’t breathe. Maybe they’d both heard Colette wrong. Maybe he’d just had some sort of stress-induced auditory hallucination. Maybe he needed to pack up his stapler and his desk blotter and find a new job.
“I beg your pardon?” he managed to utter.
“Your engagement,” Colette repeated, this time with a sense of finality that settled like a rock in the pit of Jack’s gut.
He didn’t dare look at Daphne. In fact, he preferred to pretend she didn’t exist altogether. Whatever this was couldn’t be real. In no universe could Daphne Ballantyne be his fiancée.
“I’ve chosen the two of you to go undercover for a Veil special assignment,” Colette said, as if they’d both just won the lottery. Then, oblivious to their mutual suffering, she flashed Jack and Daphne a wink. “Congratulations! You’re betrothed.”
