Nigel was proud of the fact that he was a businessman. This was his father’s company, built up from nothing, and it was now in Nigel’s hands. Well, mostly in his hands. Technically, he only had a tenuous grasp on it, but he’d have it completely in little over a year. He had spent the past eight months learning the ins and outs of his company and what had been done since his father died. Nigel was born to business, and it came naturally to him. His young face sometimes worked against him, but he knew what he was doing, and he was not about to be pushed around or manipulated. He had worked his arse off  in the past eight months in order to show that he was serious about his company and that he could handle it, and he was beginning to feel some respect from his employees.

“If you can’t separate the business from your emotions, perhaps you should look into finding an agent or a manager who can,” suggested Nigel. He didn’t really think he was being that personal. Seriously, he could get a lot more personal. A lot. He wasn’t exactly shy, and he didn’t get embarrassed easily. He was very tempted to ask some extremely personal questions, just to prove a point, but he refrained, if only for the sake of his friend. Even if his friend was not the greatest of friends. And had a horribly rude wife. She did not know the game; that much was clear. It occurred to him that perhaps that was the reason Nat had married her. She was different, at least.

“If there's something you want to know you should ask."

“I did,” he replied. “I want to know why he married you. I want to know who you are and if you are worthy of being his wife. I want to know how you even got involved and how much you know of the situation. I want to know what he was thinking, getting married after such a short time. Though,” he admitted, “I can answer that myself. The answer to ‘what was he thinking’ is always ‘he wasn’t.’” Nat was not renowned for his well-thought-out plans. Nigel had to wonder where he thought this one was going, as he himself could see about a million holes in it.

"I'm afraid I don't understand you.  Are you friends with my husband? Do you have some grudge against him?  I would hope that my friends would not speak as poorly about me as you do about your friends."

“I would hate to have such flimsy friendships that I didn’t feel free to speak the truth about my friends,” Nigel returned. Nat and Nigel had a complicated relationship: they had been friends for ages, and while they had a general fondness for each other, there were a lot of times they did not see eye to eye. Well, they never saw eye to eye, because Nat was ridiculously tall, and no one saw eye to eye with him. Nigel felt that knowing the important things in his friends’ life was completely his business, and he did begrudge Nat his secrecy. “We are old friends, but various life challenges have distanced us. I doubt he’s even mentioned me, quite frankly. I know you probably didn’t have a big wedding, but he could have at least sent some kind of announcement to his friends so that we didn’t just have to see it in the Prophet.” If Nigel had been too busy to read that paper, he probably still wouldn’t know about her.

“I do need singers for this event,” he continued. “And what better way to meet the missus? I might as well kill two birds with one stone, as they say, since I was probably going to hire you, anyway. I mean, unless you turned out to be a hideous, fat cow, or something. Obviously.”