Fifteen
A week and a half later, Chloe stood at the foot of a cobblestone path leading up to an expansive conservatory.
She watched as a male peacock pranced across the manicured lawn in front of her, a train of gorgeous feathers gliding behind him. All about her was an Eden of flowering trees, babbling brooks and the cool rays of the morning sun.
Chloe had a special love for this place, a private botanical garden on Long Island that was peaceful, quaint and wondrously romantic. She only used it when matching up couples for whom privacy from paparazzi and the public eye was paramount.
This was where Brad and Lia had first laid eyes on one another.
And, hopefully, this would be where Vikki and Ian would begin their journey of love, marriage and baby carriages.
Her phone buzzed. She answered it without looking at the caller ID.
“Hello?”
“Hey Chloe, your second guest just arrived. Cool to let him in?”
Oh, thank baby Cupid! Chloe thought, breathing a huge sigh of relief.
A small part of her had feared Ian would wake up that morning with skittishly cold feet and end up being a no-show. Sometimes the hardest part of her job was getting both parties to show up. Everything else from there on out was a breeze.
“Yes, Freddie. Thanks,” she replied.
“Anytime.”
The garden boasted two gated and guarded entrances, which was especially useful on days like this wherein she could direct each soulmate to arrive at staggered times and different gates. She normally spaced them about fifteen minutes apart. And the guards always called her before granting them entrée, to ensure neither soulmate ended up running into the other prematurely.
She wanted their rendezvous to be as intimate and romantic as possible.
After her tough conversation with Ian days before, and after he had finally agreed to meet his soulmate in person, she had circled back with Vikki, who had been skeptical yet intrigued when Chloe shared that she knew someone who was perfect for her.
Chloe imagined that, in the battle between Vikki’s innate curiosity and her journalistic skepticism, curiosity had won out in the end.
Chloe also intuited that the dating game was, no doubt, especially hard for a woman like Vikki. Most men would find her IQ, her feminism, her looks, or the whole witty, vivacious and strong-willed package incredibly intimidating. And the remaining few could probably be divided into men who were only interested in seeing her in bed; men who wanted the prestige of dating a semi-celebrity; and a teeny-teeny-tiny subset of men who were interested in getting to know the real woman behind the Vikki Hot Lips brand.
Chloe knew Ian was smart, mature and confident enough to cherish a woman like Vikki. And, underneath the ruby red lipstick and va-va-voom persona, Vikki was the kind, adventurous and down-to-Earth woman Ian desired.
Vikki had arrived ten minutes before, her aura calm yet apprehensive.
Chloe had greeted her with a warm hug and a reassuring smile. Then she escorted Vikki inside the conservatory to a stone bench, where she left her in wait of her soulmate – like a modern-day Juliet.
The same reassuring smile spread across Chloe’s face when Ian rounded a bend and came into view. He looked tired and nervous, as if he still was not sure he wanted to go through with this.
Chloe was just grateful he had shown up. To her that meant that, subconsciously, he was definitely ready and eager to fall in love with his soulmate.
Their client-matchmaker relationship may have started out under false pretenses, but the end result would be exactly what Ian had been craving for far too long.
“Hey,” she said, giving him a warm hug. “Happy Sunday!”
“Happy Sunday,” he said, his voice bereft of emotion.
“So… are you ready to meet your soulmate?”
He gazed down at her, his eyes forlorn. She could tell he was holding on to doubt simply because of his lingering feelings for her.
“Are you sure about this?” he asked.
“One hundred percent,” she replied.
Ian breathed a deep, long sigh as Chloe escorted him to the glass doors of the conservatory, which were frosted with moisture from the humidity inside.
“She’s waiting for you by the orchids,” she said with an angelic grin as she opened one of the doors, inviting him to step inside…
Ian squared his shoulders and crossed over the threshold into the conservatory’s warm embrace. Chloe closed the door behind him, leaving him alone in a foreign land where eau de fleurs hung heady in the air.
He began to walk down a cobblestone path that meandered through verdant cocoons of exotic flowers, trees and vines hailing from jungles and rainforests throughout the Southern Hemisphere.
As he drew nigh to the rear of the conservatory, he rounded a corner and saw a woman standing before a wall of orchids.
Though her back was to him, he recognized her immediately.
It was Vikki, out of disguise. Her hair was pulled back in a simple ponytail and she was clad in jeans, a boat neck top and high-heeled sandals.
“Vikki,” he breathed as he wrapped his mind around the revelation that Victoria Marie Gjrnovic, a woman he had known for over a decade, was his soulmate.
Vikki turned at the sound of his voice and stared back at him, stunned.
“Ian…. What are you doing here?”
He thought about the few occasions he had been tempted to ask her out but never followed through – convincing himself that dating a co-worker was too risky a proposition. Then, years later, when he had moved to Veritas, convincing himself that the newly reinvented Vikki Hot Lips was way too high maintenance for his taste.
“The same reason you’re here,” he replied.
Vikki’s lips, which were glossed a pale pink instead of her signature ruby red, dipped into a frown. “I’m afraid a cruel joke is being played on us.”
“Why would you say that?”
“Chloe knows who you really are, and that you’ve been deceiving her for weeks.”
Ian could feel the pit of guilt still toiling in his stomach. Chloe may have forgiven him, but he was not quite ready to absolve himself just yet. He hated that he had caused her any pain or sadness.
“I know,” he said, solemnly.
“She told you?”
He nodded.
“Did she tell you I was the one who told her?”
Ian blinked with surprise. “No.”
“So she didn’t tell you about the other night?”
He shook his head.
“When I saw you at the children’s hospital press event, I had a sneaking suspicion you were working on something related to Chloe and Maylis, so I had one of my PIs follow you.”
Ian’s eyes smiled. Of course Vikki had private investigators on retainer.
“I wasn’t sure what you were up to, but I figured that if you had gone undercover, you must be working on something big, something I’d missed. So last weekend, I donned one of my disguises and shadowed the two of you to that backyard comedy club, then the restaurant. When Chloe went to the ladies room, I followed her, struck up a conversation and discovered that the two of you were, supposedly, on some kind of date. Then I left the restaurant, went home and, to my surprise, the next morning, Chloe Daniels materializes in front of my desk, demanding to know why I had been following her in disguise.”
Ian pursed his lips. So that explained how Chloe had seen the two of them in close proximity.
“So,” Vikki continued. “Seeing how both of us have a history of deceiving her in the interest of a story, I imagine this is her way of getting back at us.”
He shook his head. “She’s not like that.”
Vikki gave him a look. “Everyone’s like that.”
“She’s not.”
Vikki furrowed her brow and stared at him for a long moment. “So you believe her? You believe her when she says we’re soulmates?”
Ian was struck by how quickly and easily his feelings for Chloe and Meaghan and all the other women in his past faded away as he gazed upon the woman he was destined have and to hold for the rest of his life.
Feelings come and go. True love lasts forever.
“I do,” he said, softly, taking a few steps towards her.
“Are you willing to bet your Pulitzer on that belief?” she asked, nervously clutching the strap of her purse.
“I am.”
She gazed into his eyes. “You’re serious,” she whispered.
He nodded, stepping into her orbit and closing the distance between them.
Ian watched as her lashes, free from extensions or mascara, slowly fell to the floor, shielding her eyes from his gaze. “You know, I’ve always had a thing for you. But you never seemed interested,” she said, her voice shy.
“I was always interested. I just… never acted on it. Something I’m really starting to regret right now.”
“Why didn’t you?” she asked.
“Because…” he said, searching for the just-right word. But all he could come up with was…
“I’m an idiot.”
Vikki giggled.
Ian took her hands in his. “I can’t believe you’ve been right in front of me all this time.”
Vikki’s lashes lifted. Their eyes locked.
“Kiss me,” she said simply, as if she needed more than just words to absolve her fears and her doubts.
Ian reached up to caress her cheek. Her eyes shuttered at the feel of his skin against her own. He brushed his thumb across the blush of her lips. They were soft and warm and irresistibly inviting.
Long gone were thoughts of kissing Chloe or any other woman for that matter. All he wanted in that moment was the hot lips of Victoria Gjrnovic, his soulmate.
He leaned in close, intoxicated by her scent, amazed that this was the woman he was destined to spend his life with.
Then he tilted his head just so and kissed her, just as she had commanded.
As their kiss deepened, he wrapped his arms around her waist and pulled her in close. And for the first time in his life, he found in that kiss something he had never felt with any of the women who had come before.
He felt at home.