Tiffany sighed, tired and typed more into the laptop on the desk in front of her.  It was late February.  She had gone through a month of this, and even gotten through the lonely Valentine’s Day blues with sappy romantic movies and strawberries and white chocolate.  Not to mention plenty of boxes of tissue, especially when she saw “While You Were Sleeping.”

It was odd…Christmas was one of the most depressing times for her, and yet, the past one was so wonderful…but this time, well, Valentine’s Day bit at her heart harsher than usual.  Maybe it was the unusually cold weather that had swept in, blamed on El Nino.  But Tiffany knew it had to do with the fact that she had a taste of something special at Christmastime, something that she almost wished she had now.

But she had things to do, of course, because she was the busy Attorney General.  But at the same time, she was distressed.  This evening, she had another social thing to go to, the Suzy Kwon ball thing in Richmond.  But she needed a date.  She was not about to go to find her mother and grandmother both asking her about whatever happened to her sweet heart. 

The problem with Suzy Kwon was that many of her friends were the mindless Hwang princesses, and Tiffany did NOT want to have them sneering at her all night, gossiping how the prince probably got back his eyesight after all, and was smart enough to abandon the sickly thing.

Tiffany wasn’t sickly, but the Hwang princesses did not like her too much, because they always called her the prima donna child, always requiring the best books, the best schools, and the biggest tuition.  The fact that Tiffany wore minimal makeup also bothered them as well, for she was pretty without the layers of glob, made them all believe she was a pale sickly thing for her lack of make up.  And another fact that peeved them was that she had beautiful black hair full of vibrancy and always shining.  Tiffany had beautiful hair, and they all envied her, for no dye job could get such perfectly colored hair.  Tiffany Hwang was beautiful, and she didn’t care for her appearance as much as she did for socks.  And that was why the other Hwang princesses despised her.

And Tiffany knew that if she did not show up tonight, they’d talk, and if she showed up without a date, they’d talk more.  There was already going to be enough talk when she showed up without Kwon.  And she only hoped that the princesses wouldn’t go after Kwon like wolves, for NO ONE deserved that. 
Kwon.  How quickly people can come into a life and interrupt everything that was happening.  He had changed EVERYTHING for her.  Though the holidays were wonderful, she’d made a point to avoid family things now, because the family would expect Yul Kwon to be there with her.  And he couldn’t be.  She wouldn’t allow it to be.

At that moment her secretary came on the intercom.  “Miss Hwang, the surgeon general is on the phone for you.”

Confused, she looked at the laptop screen blankly.

The Inaugural ball had been absolutely boring.  She had spent the evening dancing with various partners, and not one of them was Yul Kwon, to her relief, but not one was as interesting as him, nor as wonderful a dancer.  As she danced with partner after partner, she felt close to yawning.  In the end, she decided to just leave.  So she left a couple of hours early.  As she looked around her, she noted that Kwon had apparently gotten the same idea, for he was no where to be seen, and as she walked down the driveway of the White House, flagging for a cab, Kwon was getting into one.

“Miss Hwang?”

Tiffany came out of her thoughtful reverie.  “Yes?”

“What should I tell Dr. Kwon?”

“I’ll take the call right now, Lucy,” her heart started to pound, and her mind started to throb.

She heard a click, and she breathed lightly into the phone, “Hello?”

“Ice?” his voice, it warmed her. 

But she scowled at the name.  She HAD told him that she wanted everything back to normal, but…

She was an idiot.  He was simply keeping his word.

“Don’t call me that,” she scowled into the phone.

“Excuse me, your majesty the high empress of Ice, Tiffany Nicole Hwang.”

“Will you quit that?”  Tiffany rolled her eyes to the ceiling.

“Then what do you want me to call you, Hwang?”

“Hwang is just fine,” she stated coolly.  “Now why are you calling me?”

“You know what?  Forget it.”

“Forget what?  You never told me anything!”  Tiffany smirked.

Now THIS was an interesting conversation.  Too bad it only happened with Kwon; she was kind of hoping that her prince Charming would be conversational, only less insulting.  And too bad he was acting like this now…for she remembered that more than a month ago…

“Goodbye, Hwang.”

“No, Kwon, you called, and I’m curious.  The surgeon general does not just call the attorney general about business and just decide that he doesn’t need to.” 
“Look, it had nothing to do with business.”

Tiffany couldn’t breathe.  There was that really annoying thing in again.  She started to cough.

“Hwang?”

“Just fine, doctor, I don’t need your help.  I had something in my throat.  Now why did you call?  A call that has nothing to do with business?  You of all people know that this could RUIN my rep!” she laughed bitterly.

“I called to make sure your rep WASN’T ruined.  Have you seen today’s newspaper?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Look at the paper.”

“I don’t have a copy right here with me.”

“Get one.”

“Why don’t you tell me what’s on it?”

“You wouldn’t believe me.”

“All right, I’ll believe you.”

“Really?”

“YES!  Now are you going to tell me or NOT?”

“Aliens have invaded.”

“Kwon, look, if you want to joke around, I have better things to do…”

“Okay, okay, so that was a joke, but I think you have to look at the newspaper yourself.”

“You mean that aliens have really invaded?” she asked, feigning innocence. 
“No, now get that paper!”

“All right!  Just wait a second.”

She pressed the hold button and buzzed her secretary.  “I need today’s paper.” 
“I thought you already read it this morning, Miss Hwang.”

“Apparently not carefully enough.  Could you please bring it in here, Lucy, please?” 
“Sure, Miss Hwang.”

A minute later, Lucy walked in.  “You put it in the recycled paper bin, with shredded paper, so if there is any of that stuff in there, you know where it came from.”

Tiffany smiled to the woman who was slightly older than she, and decided that she’d save the newspapers until the weekend from then on.  She was only glad she hadn’t dumped the paper in the trash with the leaking bottle of rubber cement. 
As Lucy closed the door behind her, she pressed the button on her phone.  “All right, got the paper.  What do you want me to see?”

“Engagements section.”

“I’m starting to feel sick,” Tiffany began, “Who’s getting married? One of my bratty cousins?”

“You have to see it to believe it.”

As she opened the section, she read the names.  “Lisa Arnold to John Staton, Maria Cassinger to Luke Wood, and special notice for elite Tiffany Hwang and Yul Kwon…” for a minute, Tiffany stared at the page.  “Kwon, is this some sick joke?  What are you pulling?  I will go over there and kill you for what you just did.”

“Cool it, Hwang, I didn’t do it.  I wouldn’t want to ruin my life.”

“WHAT?”

“Look, we’re both extremely surprised now.”

“How many people will get this news?”

“Well, I believe that the marriage announcement is on its way to People magazine, according to my meddlesome great aunt, who figured she’d speed things up, since we’re getting married in the future anyway,” he said sarcastically.

“I will KILL Gretchen Kwon.”

“No, you won’t.  Number one, you’re a lawyer, and you know what that gets you.  Number two, you’re the attorney general, so I don’t advise it.  Number three, I won’t let you kill her.”

“Why?  Don’t you feel like you want to kill her to?  She just complicated our lives by ten million tons!”

“Number four, it’d mean you’d have to kill your grandmother too.”

“Grandma!  She wouldn’t do that…would she?”

“Gertrude Kwon and Gail Hwang announced the engagement last night at a function in Chicago.”

“Have you talked to your great aunt?”

“Yes, and that’s all she said.  She thought it was time I settled down, and that we were going to be engaged sooner or later, why not sooner and not later?”

“That is the dumbest excuse I heard, but my grandmother will use something like that on me.  She’ll say she’s old and is worried I’ll be all alone in the world when she “passes on” and give me a break there are about 150-200 Hwangs!  I won’t be all alone for the rest of eternity!  She’s seventy-four, and doc says she’s going to go on for longer than that! So what do we do?”

“I don’t know, Hwang.  The way I figure it, we could do one of three things.”

“And those would be?”

“We could pretend the engagement never existed…”

“I like that one.”

“I thought so too, but we’ll get into some turbulence when the news hits the magazines.  But then again, all we have to do is write up…”

“What are your other suggestions, Kwon?” Tiffany rolled her eyes to the ceiling.

“We could stage a fight for tonight…”

“That shouldn’t be hard.  We fight all the time.”

“But then we’d be thought very superficial for being engaged for only a while and argumentative.  Let’s just way we’ll never hear the end of the matter if we do it this way.”

“So what are we left with?”

“Well…um…”

“Just say it.”

“We could follow it through-“

“WHAT?” shrieked Tiffany.

Lucy came running in.  “What is it, Miss Hwang?”

“Funny, I didn’t think the Chicago Bulls could ever lose,” Tiffany laughed, putting a hand to her now sweaty forehead.

Lucy then closed the door behind her, and she frowned as she heard Yul’s laughter on the other side of the line. 

“Shut up Kwon!” she ordered coldly.  “I’m upset as it is already, I don’t need you to make it worse.”

“Creative thinker, Hwang.  You’re creative.”

“Thanks,” she sighed, sarcastically.  “I’m not going marry you, Kwon.”

“No, I wasn’t going to suggest that.  I just thought we could hold off the break up for a while, just to make the engagement believable.  Therefore, when we broke it off truly, then we could just go our own ways and everyone in our families would think we were so hurt, the matriarchs wouldn’t try to pull a stunt like this ever again.  You know, not a marriage of convenience, but more of an engagement of convenience.”

“You DO have a point.  If we pull this off, my family would really lay off with the matchmaking.  But you might be viciously pursued by my cousins after.”

“I can handle them,” he scoffed.

“So we’ll just use the engagement to our advantage.”

“Yeah.”

“There’s only one problem,” Tiffany sighed.

“And that would be?”

“We couldn’t possibly be a happily engaged couple, Kwon.  I don’t even LIKE you!”

“That’s quite a strong thing to say to your fiancee, ICE!”

“DON’T CALL ME THAT!!!”

“All right, all right, Honey.”

“I don’t like that either.  Stick with Hwang.”

“Fine.”

“But we can’t act like…fiancees!”

“We did at Christmas.”

“Christmas is another world…” she said, as her heart pounded.  To have him hold her again…“But then again, we just have to be slightly loving the first few months, and start having some problems with each other so that when the engagement break off comes, it’ll be expected.”

“Good, Hwang.”

“So how long will this last?”

“I have no idea.”

“When do couples normally break it off?”

“There is no such thing as a normal break-up time.”

“So when?”

“I don’t know!”

“Fine, let’s make it interesting, and contradict that gold mistletoe. I feel very poetic today.  I say we break up on Christmas Day, right at breakfast, in front of everyone.  You can get me a totally horrid gift and I’ll start crying about how horrible you make me feel in general, the gift only supporting my argument, and I’ll break it off.”

“But that makes me look like a jerk.”

“And you AREN’T one?”

“I resent that.”

“Besides, no one’s going to believe a man to be tearful.”

“Fine, you break it off.  After all, you have deliver the gut- wrenching news to Gail and Gertrude.”

“Don’t remind me.  We’ll let them be happy old ladies for now, but it most definitely won’t last.”

“So are you coming tonight, Hwang?”

“I’ll be there, but I think fiancees arrive together.  Also, I don’t want to face the curious press and the family alone.”

“All right.  How are you getting to Richmond?”

“Train.”

“Great.  I’m taking train too.  I‘ll stop by your office at noon, and we’ll leave for the train station.”

“But right now, it’s nine o’clock!”

“Yeah, grab your stuff from your apartment, and pack some work. You’d have to leave at this time to get there in time by yourself anyway, so don’t complain.” 
“You know, there IS a reason why I’m the LATE Hwang.”

“There’s also a reason why you’re the Ice Queen, but you don’t accept that, so I don’t accept tardiness.  See you later, HONEY,” he bit out. 

>Click.<

Tiffany hung up the phone and looked at the phone, then the newspaper.  She was engaged to Kwon. This would certainly be a year to remember.

Tiffany got out of her desk and left her office.  She met Lucy on the outside.  “I have to go shopping for a stunning dress.  I’ll be back at eleven thirty.  I think I’ll take today as a sick day.  If anyone calls, take the message, if Dr. Kwon calls, place his message on the top.  If the press calls, say no comment and hang up.”

Lucy nodded her head.

Tiffany left, her trenchcoat in hand, mission in mind.  Two and a half hours, and one absolutely eye-numbing dress.