Page 114 of Handsome Devil
And did he look familiar?
I didn’t recall the teeth, but I’d definitely seen him in passing at some Dirty event or another. But that wasn’t it.
Shit…Did I go to school with him, too?
Yup. That was it. I was pretty fucking sure that Dane’s cousin was part of his rich-boy posse in high school. He was younger, like a grade or two below us. But yeah, I was sure of it.
Fabulous. It was like a frickin’ reunion in here.
I glared at my husband-to-be. “You were supposed to bringoneguest.”
“Um, Lex has worked for Dirty for a few years,” Katie put in gently, trying to make me feel better.
“I go where Jude sends me,” Lex said, pulling a folded magazine out of his back pocket. He stretched back in his seat and crossed his ankles.
Right.More like Dane told Lex this was happening and Lex called Jude, volunteering for the task.
Dane returned my gaze, deadpan. Like,Hate me all you want, but let’s not make a show of it in front of my boys.
I sat back next to Katie and ignored him.
What followed was the weirdest, most awkward limo ride to a wedding ever, as the best man tried to make conversation with the matron of honor, the groom’s cousin read a magazine, the groom fiddled on his phone, and the bride stared out the window.
Many hours later, my best friend was sitting next to me in the back of an extended Cadillac Escalade with white leather seats. We were somewhere in the British Virgin Islands, the sun was just starting to descend, and I was marrying Dane Davenport tomorrow.
It hadn’t gotten any less weird.
Across from Katie and I sat two men who couldn’t have been more different: Lex, who apparently was ordered by Jesse and/or Jude to remain within three feet of Katie at all times, and Dane’s senior PA, Wiley, who was basically our wedding planner. Wiley had had an earpiece firmly implanted in his ear ever since we’d touched down, and was conversing loudly with whomever about appetizers. Lex was trying to read a car magazine he’d picked up on the jet and looked like he wanted to shove an elbow in Wiley’s ribs.
“This is weird,” my best friend said quietly, as she eyed the two of them.
Lex had earbuds in, too, was presumably listening to music or something, and I was fairly sure neither of them could hear us. Aside from the earbuds, there was the added fact that when the driver discovered we were Canadian, he’d said, “Ah! Shawn Mendes!” and now “Señorita” was playing on the Escalade’s sound system, on repeat.
“I know,” I said. “But it’s notthatweird. People get married for financial reasons all the time.”
“Yeah. That’s not really the weird part.”
“Isn’t it?” I said neutrally, sipping the champagne Wiley had poured when we sat down. I’d explained the whole situation to my best friend yesterday, several times, but I still wasn’t sure she got it.
All she knew was I’d just torn her away from her child, her husband, and made her fly to the British Virgin Islands with me on super short notice. On Dane Davenport’s dime.
To witness me marry a man I’d professed to semi-hate the last time she saw me.
I’d explained to her that if I was having a real wedding—you know, like one where I was in love with the groom—I’d happily invite her husband, her son and her entire family to witness it. However, this was not a real wedding, in the “let’s celebrate this and make special memories” sense.
“I just don’t get why you changed your mind about him so fast,” she said. “You didn’t seem to trust him. At all.”
“I didn’t change my mind. I don’t trust him. But I trust him enough in a business sense. I signed the prenup yesterday. He just amended the one he’d already had written up for his previous fiancée. My brother looked it over for me. It’s done.”
Katie gave me a sympathetic, cringey look. “How did Richard and Chandra take it? I can’t believe your parents didn’t freak out about this.”
“Oh, they did. Mom yelled at me last night over the phone and cried. I had to basically promise her I’d have a real wedding one day for her to come to, and to just think of this as a weird life choice she was never going to understand. You know, like when their only baby girl decided that instead of going to college she was going to work at a modeling agency, and instead of marrying some nice doctor or lawyer she was going to move out of their house at twenty-seven to move in with a gay roommate.”
“Poor Chandra. You think she’s gonna be okay?”
I sighed. “She’ll have to be. It’s a whole new millennium out there. When I got to the whole ‘don’t worry, he has money and a job’ part of the explanation, trust me, she settled down a bit. She’ll sleep a lot better knowing I’m tying the knot with a man who has money tomorrow. Even if I don’t love him.”
“Ugh, I feel bad for her, though.” Katie gasped. “Omigod, your poor dad. Richard won’t get to walk you down the aisle!”
