The Wedding Date Disaster Read online

  “What could I say?” She set her travel mug down and marched three paces to the end of the kitchen and three paces back, her cheeks burning at the memory of the look her boss had given her over Will’s shoulder. It was the same look her mom had sent her way whenever she’d taken a practical joke too far and was in for it. “I got the hell out of the you’re-going-to-get-fired-this-very-moment zone and did my job like the professional I am.”

  “So you hustled triple-time in order to be too busy to have an uncomfortable discussion with your boss?”

  “Pretty much.” Haley slumped against the fridge, the magnet clip holding up the invitation to her sister’s wedding stabbing her in the back, and let out a miserable groan. “Oh God. I’m going to lose my job for being unprofessional. Whoever the hell I pissed off in a former life, I offer up all my apologies.”

  Fine. She was the overdramatic one. Right now, she was totally all right with that, because if kissing her nemesis and then having her entire professional world think she’d probably done a helluva lot more than that with him in the coat closet and was therefore banging her way into getting donations wasn’t the situation in which one should be overdramatic, then she had no clue when it was.

  Fiona tapped her straw against her chin. “Maybe this is fate working for you.”

  “By making me lose my mind and do something as ridiculous as kissing Will Holt?” Oh God. It sounded worse when she said it out loud.

  “Well, that was probably just for giggles, but—” Fiona held up her hand as if to stop Hadley from protesting, which she totally was about to do. “Hear me out. What if this is a nudge from the universe to finally start your own consulting firm? You’ve been talking about it forever—maybe this is the time to make it happen.”

  Oh yes, The Donavan Agency. Somewhere in a box stuffed under her bed, she had business cards and everything. There was a fully formed business plan in her Dropbox. She’d even worked out a potential client list, determined a charitable-giving area of specialization, and had a finished website just waiting to be launched. What didn’t she have? Money—for an office, for employees, for health insurance, for client acquisitions, pretty much for anything beyond the basics of food, shelter, and Netflix. Well, mostly.

  “Yeah right.” Hadley sighed and pushed off the fridge, going straight for her travel mug waiting for her on the counter because like it or lump it, she had to go into the office today if she wanted to get paid. “You need money to make money and in case you forgot, you’re still waiting for my half of the utility bill.”

  Which was why she was depending on twice-run-through K-cups for her caffeine intake.

  “Today’s your payday,” Fiona said. “I know it’s coming.”

  Travel mug in one hand and phone in the other, Hadley gave her roomie and friend a quick hug, careful not to spill any weak coffee on her. And to think when she’d answered that ad for a roommate three years ago, her only hope was that she wouldn’t be rooming with a serial killer. For once, the reality of her life in Harbor City had far exceeded her hopes. If only the rest of her big city existence had lived up to her dreams when she’d left her small-town Nebraska home…not that she’d be admitting that to her family back on the ranch anytime soon. They already thought she was a few hay bales short for leaving in the first place.

  “What did I do to deserve such a sweetheart of a roommate?”

  Fiona squeezed her back. “Obviously something spectacular.”

  It was true, and it had to have been in a past life because this one was kind of a mess—and definitely not the shiny, happy, perfectly Instagramable version she shared with her family. When failing wasn’t an option, a person faked it until they made it. That had been her game plan since she’d arrived in Harbor City, and she had no plans to change it. As long as she could keep up that perfect-life pretense, it would happen.

  “I’m putting that out there in the universe,” she mumbled later as she rode the train to her office. “Again.”

  However, when she walked over to her cubicle—ignoring the curious looks and barely whispered comments from her coworkers—and found an empty cardboard box on her desk, she knew the universe was team Evil Twin. It had to be.

  The light on her phone blinked on a second before her boss’s voice came through on the intercom. “Hadley, can you please come see me?”

  She didn’t have to ask what about. The box kinda made that pretty apparent.

  “I’ll be there in just a minute,” she responded, calling up the reserves of her fake-it-until-you-make-it pride that she wasn’t sure she had enough of for this moment.

  Then she packed up the personal items on her desk into her now-full box and carried it to her boss’s corner office, head held high and sniffles on lockdown because if faking it had ever meant something, it was right now.

  The only thing that kept her from losing her shit right then was the memory of Will’s shocked expression when he’d realized what they’d done. If she could survive Will thinking for even a moment she was into him, she could survive getting fired.

  She hoped.

  …

  The Holt family country home was two and a half hours north of Harbor City. It was also a million miles from the responsibilities of being one of the two most eligible bachelors and sole heirs to the fortune Jeremiah Holt had begun amassing during a crooked poker game in a half-burned-out speakeasy in the very woods Will was staring at while trying to figure out how to get his brother to ghost that woman.

  She has a name.

  No. He was not going there. Not again. He’d done that too many times since that kiss at the fundraiser and it had—without a single exception—ended up with him rubbing one out like he’d never made out with someone in a coatroom before. He had. Many times. Okay, that might be an exaggeration, but it wasn’t like Hadley was special.

  Shit.

  Her name. He ground his teeth, the ache in his jaw attesting to how much he’d been doing that lately. This time he would not give in. He would not remember. He would not think about her soft lips, her needy little moan, her silky-smooth thighs, her— Dammit, Holt. Get your shit together.

  His brother, Web, cleared his throat as he glanced down at the cutting board in front of Will as they both stood in the kitchen. “Now, I’m not much of a cook, either, but I think that onion is chopped.”

  Will looked at the minced-within-a-millimeter-of-its-existence onion for the chicken cacciatore. “Just making sure.”

  “And the grumbling to yourself?” Web took two beers out of the fridge, popped the tops, set one down next to the cutting board, and took a drink from the other. “I mean, if this is stressing you out, we can just order Thai.”

  “I was not grumbling to myself, and I’m not stressed,” he grumbled.

  Web just raised one eyebrow and pointedly nodded toward the onion Will was apparently chopping—again.

  Will set down the knife. “The recipe says ‘finely diced.’”

  “Do you just want to talk about it?” Web asked, needling him the way only a brother could. “You know, unpack your feelings and admit you feel guilty that Hadley lost her job because of you and that I’m going out to Nebraska to be her plus-one for her sister’s wedding.”

  There was nothing—nothing—about that sentence that didn’t make Will’s gut churn. Unpack his feelings? Admit guilt? Hadley? Nebraska? He grabbed the beer and downed half of it.

  “It wasn’t my fault. I talked to her boss.” It hadn’t gone well, but he’d done what he could to isolate Hadley from the fallout of a pissed-off ex-fiancée with an eternal grudge. “I can’t help it if Mia, who is on the company’s board of directors, made all sorts of assumptions.” And, if the doorman-to-doorman gossip was to be believed, all but demanded that Hadley be fired. Thank God Web hadn’t outright asked him if the gossip was true. Surprisingly, he seemed to think Hadley would never even consider making out wit
h Will.

  He was tempted to tell Web the truth about why Hadley was so determined to spend time with him, why she always brought up how she could really help steer the Holt Foundation in a better direction. How she was so focused on the money that she brought a full-on spiral-bound prospective report. Then, whenever she and Web went anywhere besides that hole-in-the-wall place after rugby games, Web always picked up the tab. That she was always short for the cab ride home when Web insisted on covering the full fare. Plus, there was all the dream apartment shopping she did online, down to posting pictures on Insta of how she’d furnish her fantasy place. And the way she always seemed to be mentioning that she was between paychecks? Yeah, it sounded a little too much like the way Mia had set Will up to play the sucker with the sole purpose of marrying him for his money. That’s why he couldn’t stop thinking of Hadley. He had to protect his brother.

  He needed to come up with a better way to break up Hadley’s gold-digging plans for Web.

  Like admit to your brother that you kissed her?

  Damn, he wished he knew why he couldn’t, but no matter how many times he’d tried today, he couldn’t get the words out, and that’s how he’d ended up with micro-diced onions. “Why do you care so much about her anyway? I’m your brother. You should feel bad that I got dragged into it.”

  “You’ll be just fine,” his brother said. “And she’s my best friend who lost her job.”

  The snort of uh-huh-sure came out before Will could stop it.

  “Why is that so hard for you to believe?” Web asked. “What are you, some kind of asshole who doesn’t think men and women can be friends?”

  No, but had his brother somehow miraculously never set eyes on Hadley’s ass? “Are you trying to say you aren’t attracted to her?”

  Web shrugged. “She’s not my type.”

  Considering the fact that Web’s type encompassed just about every woman, Will had a real fucking hard time believing that his twin wasn’t into Hadley. The woman obviously had to have her claws firmly planted in his brother’s balls if Web was willing to go to Nebraska, of all the godforsaken places, for Hadley’s sister’s wedding. And that was why he was dicing the shit out of onions to make Web’s favorite dinner as a way of softening him up and getting him to see the light. If a good meal couldn’t get Web to refocus his mind, then Will was going to have to do something drastic. He was the oldest, if only by five minutes, and the last living member of the Holt family besides his brother. Therefore, it was his responsibility to protect Web from what no one had been around to protect Will from: Hadley the gold digger.

  Later that night, though, it was more than apparent that the most important thing to protect Web from at the moment was him dying of food poisoning. Will knocked on the bathroom door after the sounds of the latest round of gut hurling stopped.

  “I swear to God, I didn’t give you food poisoning on purpose.” Sure, he was an asshole, but he wasn’t a murdering asshole. “I feel fine.”

  Not even a twinge in his stomach, apart from the sympathy gagging whenever Web made puking noises.

  “Great,” his brother said through the door. “So because you have the ability to ingest undercooked chicken, then I’m at fault here?”

  Fuck. That was not what Will meant. “I followed the recipe and used the meat thermometer. My chicken was cooked all the way through.”

  Web let out a long moan that would have sounded made up if he hadn’t spent the past ten minutes puking his guts up behind closed doors. “I’ll be sure to let my lawyers know.”

  “Nut up, Web. You’re not going to die.” People didn’t die from slightly undercooked chicken, did they?

  “I have a plane to catch tomorrow morning,” Web said, sounding pathetic and weak.

  It was like the clouds parted and the sun appeared after a month of rainy days. In a heartbeat, he was smiling big enough to make his cheeks hurt.

  “So don’t go.” There, problem solved. He should have poisoned his brother sooner.

  “Fuck you, Will. There is a thing called loyalty.” There was more rustling behind the door, like his brother was shifting on the bathroom floor, and then a loud groan. “I promised Hadley I’d be her fake boyfriend at her sister’s wedding so she wouldn’t be so overwhelmed by her relatives. I can’t leave her to face her family alone.”

  “What are they, cowboy zombies?”

  How in the hell could they be worse than the woman herself? Short answer? They couldn’t be.

  “They’re just a lot to take all at once.” The sound of more groans came through the door. “I guess I’ll just suffer through. If this lingers, I’m sure she’ll take care of me. It’ll give her an excuse to hang out alone with me so she can avoid her family. Really, you did her a favor.”

  Oh hell no. Abso-fucking-lutely not. Hadley wasn’t going to tighten her hold on Web even more by being the one to nurse him back to health.

  “I’ll take your place.” The words were out of Will’s mouth before his brain caught up.

  “No way,” Web said, not sounding half as horrified as his words promised—no doubt he was trying not to throw up again. “You cannot be serious. And it’s not like you can stay away from being the always-in-control CEO for a whole week.”

  “Why not? We used to switch spots all the time. And believe it or not, I can loosen my grip on Holt Enterprises for five days. The company won’t fall apart in a week, and it’ll give you a chance to recover from the food poisoning.” And it’d give him a chance to break whatever spell Hadley had over his brother. He was a fucking genius.

  “It’s a crazy idea.”

  That’s where his baby brother was wrong. So very wrong.

  Chapter Three

  For Hadley, the temptation to hide out right here in the Denver airport rather than go home to the family ranch was pretty overwhelming.

  It wasn’t that she didn’t love her family—she did—but being around all of them at the same time under the not-stressful-at-all (sarcasm alert) conditions of her little sister’s wedding could shake the strongest of women. They’d want to do everything together, from making breakfast in the morning to brushing teeth at night—okay, maybe not the last part, but family togetherness and the ranching way was pretty much her family’s motto. Simply put, Hadley’s family was exhausting, and they would all be there for the festivities leading up to her sister’s big day.

  All.

  Of.

  Them.

  Every single person, from all of twenty billion branches sprouting from the Donavan-Martinez family tree, would be at the wedding. More than that, most of them would be staying at the ranch. It would be wall-to-wall Donavans, Martinezes, and Donavan-Martinezes until the cows came home.

  All of that meant that the family-mandatory-fun-time-togetherness was going to be at epic levels, leading up to Adalyn’s wedding in a week. If it wasn’t for how much she loved her baby sister and wanted to see her say “I do,” Hadley would definitely be saying “I don’t” to a full week wrapped in her family’s well-meaning but claustrophobic embrace.

  Her phone vibrated in her cross-body purse as she pulled up short to avoid getting run over by a group of people rushing toward the TSA line. She pulled it out and hit Talk, keeping her eyes on the constant flow of human foot traffic, hoping to spot Web walking out of the arrivals area.

  “Oh good,” her sister, Adalyn, said with a relieved sigh. “You haven’t lost cell signal yet.”

  That would happen about four hours into the five-hour drive from the airport when she turned off the main highway and onto the long, gravel-covered county road leading to Hidden Creek Ranch. Service would get spotty and texting would become an imaginary dream of the future until she got about five miles out from the ranch and the signal from the towers improved.

  “I’m still at the airport,” Hadley said, dodging a seven-year-old pulling his own miniature wheely
suitcase before it went right over her toes.

  Adalyn—always the dramatic one—let out a groan. “You have to save me from Mom. She’s lost it.”

  That was no surprise. No one wanted things to be perfect more than Stephanie Donavan-Martinez. There was no way her daughter’s wedding would be any different. If the woman was sleeping at all between rounds of stress cleaning and prepping food for a small army of people, Hadley would go into shock.

  “Is she recleaning the bathroom after Dad already did it again?”

  “Worse.” Adalyn took a dramatic pause. “She’s stopped all cleaning and is locked in her crafting room.”

  Hadley jolted to a dead stop in the middle of the airport, her jaw slack. Their mom had gone into hibernation with the entire family about to converge on the ranch? This was very not good. “Oh God, what did you guys do?”

  With the exception of herself, the suspects to get on Mom’s last nerve were all there: her sister, her brothers Weston and Knox, and her dad in all but actual DNA, Gabe. Mom loved them all, but there was no denying they each had a special gift for making their mom a little batty.

  “Me?” Adalyn asked, her pitch going higher. “Why would I have done anything?”

  “Because that’s what little sisters do. They cause trouble.” She almost got that out without a giggle. Adalyn was forever the people-pleasing—if a little over-the-top—one. It was Hadley who was forever the child most likely to cause trouble.

  “Nice try.” Her sister laughed. “I am the good daughter while you are the one whose name is followed by a soft sigh and gaze turned heavenward.”

  “Just because I’m the only one to move out of the state.” And didn’t go into ranching or marry a rancher or listen to country music or…the list went on and on.

  “Plus, you’re single at thirty,” her sister teased. Adalyn altered the cadence and tone of her voice to mimic their mom with damn near perfection. “Not that a woman needs a man, but…”

  Hadley chuckled. “Don’t do that again; you sound just like her.”