The Wedding Date Disaster Read online

  “That’s why I was so determined to move to Harbor City, but even there I’m still someone who’s an outsider, different, other…and people aren’t afraid to let me know.”

  Wow. She would not have put “confessing her biggest insecurities to her nemesis” on her bingo card for weird things that would happen during her sister’s wedding week.

  “I’m guessing I’m on that list,” he said, giving her an apologetic smile that in this light looked genuine. “I admit it, I can be an asshole, but I have my reasons.”

  “Because of Mia.” It wasn’t a question. He’d covered it up well enough at dinner the other night, but an ex-fiancée would sting even for someone like Will Holt. “What happened?” The question popped out before she realized it was bubbling up inside her. “Wait!” She reached out, her hand brushing his chest before she pulled it away, fingers tingling. “You don’t have to tell me. It’s not like we’re friends.”

  “Just two people in the foxhole together,” he said with a wry chuckle.

  “Yeah,” she said. “Something like that.”

  Something like a whole lot of losing my mind.

  She rolled onto her back, wondering if it was socially acceptable to pull the covers over her head and scream silently. Not only did she not need to be in his business, she didn’t want to be in his business. She wasn’t going to be fooled by fake cowboy Will, who she happened to have had sex with in PawPaw’s bathroom! Oh God, she was never going to be able to use that bathroom again. Good thing she only visited a few times a year.

  You. Are. So. Naive.

  She had no clue how to break the awkward, heavy silence that enveloped them, punctuated only by the creepy coyote calls that sounded like babies crying for help, so she opted for staring at the ceiling. Maybe she’d get lucky and a chunk of plaster would come crumbling down and put her out of her misery.

  “She refused to sign the prenup after telling me she was pregnant—which I found out later she most definitely was not,” Will said, his voice an unexpected boom in the dark. “That wouldn’t have been a big deal, but she let it slip that this was basically going to be an arranged marriage anyway, so she should get one thing out of it. Turns out our engagement was a scheme cooked up by her family and my grandmother as some kind of melding of two old-money Harbor City families—only one of whom still had cash—and all the relevant parties knew it for what it was except, of course, me.” He grimaced and went quiet for a second, working his jaw back and forth as if he were chewing on the distasteful realization that he’d ever believed it. “I thought the whole thing was real.”

  “I’m sorry.” Sliding her hand across the warm cotton sheet, she didn’t stop until her fingers were intertwined with his. “That’s awful.”

  “I lived. I learned. I know better now.” The words came out cold and unyielding. “I should have known better then. Our grandmother has never been interested in anything but herself and her own interests. She’s made it abundantly clear in nearly every interaction with us since she shipped Web and me off to boarding school a month after our parents died.”

  He locked eyes with Hadley and she shivered, the temperature in the room dropping to arctic levels.

  “Her schedule didn’t allow for children, let alone two who were grieving,” he said, answering her question before she could have asked it.

  “Will—”

  “It is what it is,” he cut her off and flopped back on the bed, his gaze turned toward the ceiling. “So trust me, being on the inside of Harbor City society isn’t always so great.” The words came out slowly, as if he’d never before put it into words. “Everything is so close, so in your face, that you can’t see the stars at all and it’s easy to still feel like you’re the only one there.”

  “But you have Web,” she said, giving his hand a squeeze.

  “And you have an entire extended family who want you around so much, they’ll handcuff you to keep you close. I don’t think you realize how lucky you are for that.” He let out a harsh breath and pulled his hand away. “If you think Web’s money will give you that sense of belonging, I hate to break it to you, but it won’t.”

  Hadley lay there, an angry white buzzing noise filling her ears, her cheeks burning with heat as if he’d smacked her across the face with his words. She didn’t want anything from Web other than his friendship, and if Will couldn’t see that, he could go jump in a lake because she wasn’t about to justify his wrongheaded belief with a response.

  She rolled onto her back and pulled the covers up to her chin. “Good night, Will.”

  She forced her eyes closed and timed her breaths with his long, steady ones. Miraculously, her thoughts got slower, the blanket got heavier, and before she realized it, she was being woken up by the not-so-gentle nudging of her brother Knox poking a stick against her shoulder.

  “Wake up, sis,” Knox said, keeping his volume low.

  Hadley glanced over at Will. His eyes were still closed, his breathing even, and he had his hands tucked up under his chin. Before she could stop herself, she let out a mental awwwwww.

  Come on, Hads. Wolves probably look sweet when they sleep, too.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked in a harsh whisper, giving him the bug-eyed, twisted-mouth, get-the-fuck-out-of-here face.

  Forever the youngest brother, Knox ignored her silent leave-now message and lifted the two large sticks in his hands. “Time to go snipe hunting.”

  Oh, for the love of hazing the city slicker. “You cannot do that to him.”

  Knox shrugged and grinned. “It’s a tradition.”

  “Since when?” Oh my God, the ridiculousness of this whole situation.

  He looked down at his watch. “About five minutes ago.”

  “Knox,” she whisper-shouted, reminding herself that her parents would be really pissed if she killed him. “I’m warning you—”

  “I am awake, you know,” Will said.

  “Good,” Knox said, dropping any attempt at whispering. “Let’s get on out there. Best time of the day to catch snipes is right after dawn when they’re tired after staying up all night. Not that you two would know anything about that.”

  “Shut up, Knox,” she said.

  “You’ve known me your whole life; you know that’s not gonna happen.” He headed toward the door. “Let’s go, you two.”

  Sitting up, she tried to figure out how to explain that her brothers weren’t wanting to make a fool out of him so much as bust his chops in a way that they’d no doubt document on video so the whole family could watch later. “There’s something you need to know.”

  “Is it about your intentions toward my brother?” Will said, his voice rough with sleep.

  He left the “and his bank account” unspoken, but it hung between them anyway. And here she was going to do Will a solid before he made a total fool of himself by explaining there was no such thing as a snipe. She should have known better. He was, after all, the evil twin incarnate.

  “Good luck catching the snipe,” she told him, covering her annoyance with a sickly sweet tone.

  “You’re not coming?” he asked.

  She hadn’t planned to, but after that comment? Oh yeah, she was going to be there to make sure they got all the angles of Will making a snipe-hunting fool of himself on video. “I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Will was turning into a sucker. That was the only explanation that made any sense to him as to why he was playing along with this snipe-hunt country hazing. There was no way in hell that banging two sticks together while whistling in three short bursts with exactly thirty-three seconds of silence between each trio was going to result in capturing anything, let alone a fake animal. Especially not while walking in the middle of a field where the cows were looking at Will like he was three bales short of…whatever hay bales added up to.

  Not
to mention the description of a snipe kept changing.

  On the drive out to the cow pasture, he’d gotten about ten different descriptions, all varying just enough to make the whole thing completely ridiculous. He would have called them on it, too, but Hadley was walking ahead of him and he kept getting distracted by the view. She had her hair braided, the end coming out from underneath a baseball hat advertising Feed and Seed, and she was wearing a pair of jeans that just might give him a heart attack.

  “What did you say these things looked like?” he asked for the millionth time to see what kind of answer he’d get. Really, listening to their descriptions of the snipe put it somewhere between a feathered weasel and a rabid penguin.

  “They’re birds,” Hadley said, twisting the end of her braid around her fingers as she slowed her pace so they were side by side. “But they don’t fly very well.”

  “They consider cow patties a delicacy,” Knox said. “So be sure to get as close to one as you can, then stand real still and whistle.”

  There was no way to take Hadley’s youngest brother seriously. Knox had been cracking jokes the entire ride out here in his truck. They weren’t even good jokes—they were dad jokes.

  Will whacked his sticks together, which he’d been told earlier was the key to attracting a snipe’s attention. “And why are you using your phone to video this?”

  “It’s part of the family game night Ironman.” Knox grinned at him, not even trying to pretend any of this was real. “If you catch a snipe, you win the whole thing, no matter how many games you’ve lost.”

  He had two choices here. Call Knox and Hadley on their bullshit or keep playing along and use this opportunity to get more inside dirt on Hadley. Maybe if he could figure out what made her tick, he could find a way to convince her that her plans for Web’s money weren’t going to work out. He’d tried the direct route. It hadn’t worked. He needed to go a more subtle route, which really was not his forte. He’d always been the bulldozer and Web had been the charmer.

  “You ever think that you take this a little too seriously?” Will asked.

  Knox, who was practically a Labrador in human form, happily shook his head as he started recording again. “Nope.”

  “So why aren’t you hunting, Hadley?” Really, why should he be the only one going through this? “Wouldn’t that increase our chances of catching a snipe?”

  Turning, she stopped walking and stared him down. “I don’t hunt.”

  “Oh, come on, Hads,” Knox said, obviously thrilled at the idea of making fools of both of them. “It’s not like you’d keep the little fella. This is a catch-and-release operation.”

  Will paused, resting the large sticks against his shoulder, and let his gaze travel from the rounded tips of her well-worn work boots to the frayed brim of her baseball cap. “I never took you for someone who backed down from a challenge.”

  “I don’t know,” Knox said, laying it on thick. “Maybe city life has made her go soft.”

  “Really?” She stood there, one hip cocked out, her arms crossed, and glared at them both. “That’s what you’re going with?”

  Taking full advantage of the response he knew she’d give, he turned to Knox. “Don’t suppose she was this stubborn growing up?”

  “You have no idea.” Knox pocketed his phone with a chuckle. “She walked away from dessert for a week rather than take one bite of butternut squash.”

  “And here I thought she’d never been in trouble a day in her life.” Hard to be in trouble when you were trouble.

  “Oh, that is so not the case. There was the time she got caught sneaking back in the house after—”

  “Knox!” Hadley—her cheeks pink—hollered at her brother.

  “Fine.” Knox shrugged. “It’s not like we’re telling about the time you ate raw pie dough because you couldn’t admit you’d made a mistake.”

  She closed her eyes and groaned. “You just did.”

  “Oops.” Knox, a huge grin on his face, turned to Will. “So she insisted she didn’t need any help making pie from scratch, but she forgot to prebake the crust—”

  “That was not on the recipe card,” Hadley interrupted.

  “So when it came out of the oven and we all took a bite, the crust wasn’t completely raw but it wasn’t done, either. The rest of us took a polite bite, then said we were full. Meanwhile, Miss Always Right over there ate her entire piece, the whole time insisting the crust was supposed to be like that.”

  Okay, that Will could imagine without even trying. In the year he’d known her, he’d never seen her allude to things not being completely perfect or that she was ever wrong. He pivoted toward her, a comment about just that on his lips, when the look on her face stopped him. Her chin was tilted just a little too high, her smile a little too tight, and her posture a little too rigid. Knox may not have meant anything by his teasing, but it was clear as the blue sky above them that it had struck a nerve.

  This is where you slide that knife home.

  But he didn’t. Instead, for reasons he didn’t understand beyond the twist in his gut, he held up his sticks. “I’m not getting any traction here with the snipe. Can you show me how it’s done?”

  She shook her head. “No way.”

  “Come on,” he cajoled, holding out the sticks to her. “I’m obviously fucking this up. Usually, you love to tell me all about how I should be doing things, so give me a lesson.”

  The corner of her mouth twitched upward as she took his sticks and started banging them together and whistling. He should have been taking that opportunity to gain more intel from her brother to figure out what vulnerabilities he could exploit to get her to back off Web—did he need to cut a check, offer her a job, buy her a condo in Boca?—but he got distracted by her ass again. He couldn’t help it.

  She’d ass-notized him.

  …

  Hadley was not laughing on the bumpy ride from the cow pasture a half hour after her brother had ratted her out for making the world’s worst pie. She was not enjoying the fact that all the jostling meant she was sitting thigh to thigh with Will to maintain her balance. Also, she was not in the least bit bummed out about regaining her own personal bubble when Knox pulled the truck to a stop in front of the old barn where Adalyn’s reception was going to be.

  Peeling paint and all, the barn looked gorgeous set against the pasture behind it and the big blue sky above. Off to the west were a few out-of-commission work buildings and a small cabin like the one she was staying in with Will.

  “The four-wheeler is around back,” Knox said as she and Will climbed down from the truck’s cab. “You can ride that back to the house.”

  Wait. What? Her pulse jacked up and she spun around. “You’re not decorating?”

  Knox shook his head. “I have other obligations, but I’ll see you back at the house tonight for part two of game night. We have you guys in Pictionary.”

  Oh God. When that wasn’t the worst bit of news she’d gotten in the past sixty seconds, that was saying something, because her artistic skill was so bad that stick figures were a reach. Since it wasn’t an option to hold on to the open truck door and beg Knox not to leave her alone with Will because she didn’t trust herself, she shut the passenger door and Knox drove off.

  You can do this, Hads. You can ignore the way he looks in those jeans and the way his T-shirt fits with just the right amount of tightness across his shoulders. You will not fall for the packaging. Oh God. Package.

  Her gaze dipped down to his jeans’ zipper before she could stop herself.

  Dammit, Hads. This is not part of the plan.

  What was the plan? Hell if she could remember.

  “Are you two coming in?” Adalyn called from the open barn door.

  Shoulders lifting, Hadley let out a relieved sigh that evened out her janky blood pressure.

  Thank you, baby
Jesus.

  Hadley was always thrilled to see her little sister, but seeing her now was like finding the oasis in the desert—a chance at survival. She rushed over and gave her sister a bear hug.

  “You just saw me last night,” her sister said, her voice muffled, since her face was squashed against Hadley’s shoulder.

  Taking a step back, because suffocating her sister was not on her to-do list, Hadley said, “I know, but you’re gorgeous, your wedding is in a few days, and I’m so excited to help.”

  The doubtful expression on Adalyn’s face and the knowing smirk on Will’s all but confirmed that Hadley wasn’t pulling it off, but she didn’t care as long as they all just went with it. Mercifully they did—at least for the moment—and walked into the old barn.

  For as long as she’d known about it, the building had been called “the old barn.” It was one of those old-fashioned, curved-roofed red barns with a hayloft and horse stalls. Knox must have been out here with his renovation plans, though, because the musty, grimy, splintery, unused barn had been transformed. Most of the stalls at the back had been removed to create an open space big enough for a dance floor, long tables that went down both sides, and a raised dais for the wedding party to sit at. The remainder had been outfitted with booth seats that wrapped around the U-shaped half walls of the old stalls to offer a quieter space for guests to sit and chat.

  The result was a unique reception area, pretty enough in its country charm to be Instagramable without even having to use a filter.

  While she and Will took in the place like a couple of tourists, Adalyn stood in the middle of the barn with her arms wrapped around her waist, her hair up in a bedraggled ponytail, and dark circles under her eyes. Tension rolled off her in waves as she looked around at the etched mason jar vases on the tables and the strings of fairy lights hanging from the haylofts above them. Weddings were stressful, everyone knew that, but this wasn’t the usual jitters and nerves. How could it be with her fiancé still a no-show? The urge to drive to Denver to smack that man upside the head was strong, but she stuffed it down. That wasn’t what her sister needed at the moment.