I’m single by choice. Well, perhaps not entirely by choice. But when your best friend turns down your proposal and marries another man, you tell yourself it’s by choice.
In the world I live in, everyone knows exactly who I am, what I do, and what I want.
Which is why this has to be a joke.
What else can I believe when my entirely sane, incredibly competent assistant of ten years calls to say something like this?
But just in case . . . “Say that again?”

I lean forward and watch the red light on the phone’s speaker. The black office phone sits unobtrusively on my dark walnut desk—a massive antique piece my father, my grandfather, and my great-grandfather, all the way back to my great-great, too many greats grandfather, sat behind to run the esteemed Barone Jewelry International (as far back to when it wasn’t international, it was just a man with a dream).
The desk matches the office. Dark burgundy walls, heavy navy curtains framing the view of Lake Geneva, the Jet D’eau sending up its endless spray of water, and the tour boats gliding past. Even with the late morning sun reflecting off the lake and the cloudless pale blue sky the office is still drafty, cool, and dark. It’s always been dark.
Dark navy-and-burgundy rug, dark leather chairs, a wall of shelves full of dark leather-bound books. The decades-old scent of tobacco and cognac sunk into the walls and furnishings. It smells just like my father, and probably just like his father before him.
Sometimes I think about gutting the office, airing it out and filling it with light. I’d paint it white, put the behemoth furnishings in storage, open the windows to feel the breeze and hear the gulls on the water, the hum of the traffic, and the tour boat announcers as they pass . . .
“On your right you’ll see Barone Jewelry, the largest family-owned jeweler in the world. Note the four-foot circumference engagement ring above the door. It’s covered in twenty-four-karat gold leaf. And the glittering stone? That’s the largest crystal gemstone in the world, a foot and a half in diameter, 315,000 karats, with 124 facets. Ladies, if you’re looking for a husband, Maximillian Barone is quite the catch.”
I can hear them when they sail by. Their script is always the same. I took a tour boat cruise once with Fiona and her daughter Mila. While two dozen people snapped photos of my building and bet on which one of them would “catch me,” Fiona covered her mouth to keep from laughing out loud.
None of them would “catch me.” The only woman I’d ever wanted to marry was Fiona. She was perfect for me. We’d been friends for years, we trusted each other, we would never hurt each other. That was all I ever wanted.
No passion. No sparks. A heated love affair is my idea of hell. They’re both hot, and they both will torment you to no end.
There isn’t anything I want or need from that horrific state called l’amour.
If I ever said to a woman, “Tu es ma joie de vivre—” (You are the joy of my life.)
If I ever claimed, “Tu es l’amour de ma vie—” (You are the love of my life.)
—something would be deeply, desperately wrong with me.
That may surprise some. Surely a man who makes a living from selling engagement rings and expensive jewelry would be a connoisseur of passion. An aficionado of desire. An arbiter of amour.
Right.
Well, if this office is any indicator, the allure of romantic love doesn’t extend beyond the showroom. The glittering light of all those diamonds never quite penetrates this office. Which is fine by me.
I leave the decor of the office the way it is to remind myself exactly why I feel the way I do.
No passion. No heated love. No wife.
Life works better when you aren’t carelessly tossing out landmines to step on.
Which is why I ask my assistant to repeat what she said. “Come again?”
She clicks her tongue in annoyance. “Your wife is here to see you. Shall I send her in?”
That’s what I thought she said.
Just to be clear, I do not have a wife.
I’ve never had a wife.
I’ve never even had a fiancee.
Asking Fiona to marry me was the only time I’ve ever considered that state of matrimonial bliss everyone is so keen to dive headlong into. Half of them (at least) end up bashing their brains out when they finally hit bottom, but they keep trying, poor fools. I’m not interested.
Which is why I say with complete authority, “I don’t have a wife, as you know, although I appreciate the levity.” Perhaps Agathe is having a late mid-life crisis and has decided to try her hand at stand-up comedy. “I need
the Swiss National Bank report sent—”
“Mr. Barone,” Agathe says, and for the first time in our history together she sounds on edge, “Mrs. Barone is here and she is quite distressed. Shall I send her in?”
I lean back in my chair and raise my eyebrows, looking around the office as if I’ll find an answer in the bookshelves or the nineteenth-century oil paintings, or perhaps hiding behind the heavy navy curtains. There’s no answer, just a cold draft seeping through the stone walls, and a long, blaring horn from a truck stuck in traffic down below.
“Agathe,” I say carefully, twisting my family’s signet ring on my fourth finger. “Enough. I’m not married. I have no wife. Let’s move on. For the conference call at one, I need the—”
“Your wife. She’s here!” Agathe hisses.
I jerk back and then turn to look at the heavy oak door to my office. The hair on the back of my neck stands on end, and suddenly I know something isn’t quite right.