“You hadn’t seen him in five years?” Judge Harris asked. “You two know each other?”
Oh, Lord. I had been hoping that just wouldn’t come up. “We grew up together. Her brother is my best friend. But we were out of touch for five years.”
The judge was shaking his head, and my heart sank. “This all sounds much more complicated to me than you two wanted it to appear. This wasn’t a dare. This wasn’t a joke. And I cannot in good conscience declare this marriage invalid.
“Lots of people try to save money on a divorce by trying this nonsense, and this does sound like an interesting situation, but invalid? This marriage? Not at all. You two are going to have to get a divorce.”
He banged his gavel, and that was the end of that.
Lyric stormed out of the building, tears sliding down her cheeks. She seemed just as furious with herself for crying as she did with the judge. And me.
“What the fuck happened in there?” she demanded. “You’re the big fancy lawyer and you couldn’t have made that work? I can’t believe you booked us the honeymoon suite, how stupid—why would you even do that! We’d been married by accident, how the hell could discharging it be so hard!”
“How was I supposed to know that the judge wouldn’t believe us?” I pointed out. “Sometimes you get judges that are against you. Lawyers complain about it all the time—who your judge is can make or break you sometimes.”
“So much for your law degree,” Lyric snapped, angrily wiping her tears from her face. “I can’t believe I was starting to—to trust you.”
That felt like a slap in the face. “You’re not exactly innocent here, either, Lyric. Which one of us had the bright idea of standing in place of the bride and groom? Which one of us was in charge of communicating with the priest?”
Two spots of bright pink appeared on Lyric’s cheeks and her eyes shone dangerously. “Oh, so the wedding planner who was trying to corral everyone so they’d know their places for the ceremony is to blame? Not your spoiled selfish immature cousin and his equally batshit bride, oh no, they’re not the ones at fault. And neither is anyone else who was there that day just standing around gossiping instead of helping me or paying attention. Definitely not any of their faults! It’s not the fault of the priest who screwed up what was happening and married us for real even though anyone with a brain could realize that this wasn’t a real wedding and I know I emailed him the actual date of the actual wedding and the rehearsal plans multiple times! And it’s not the fault of the lawyer who signed a wedding certificate without even looking at it first!”
Lyric’s voice was like a cracking whip. “Oh, no, it’s not the fault of any of those people, it’s the fault of the wedding planner, obviously! Because that’s always whose fault it is! Always just blame the wedding planner, heap it all on her, never on any of you!”
She turned, her hair whipping around in the cold air, and stormed off to the rental car.
Fuck. Okay, she had a point. Yes, Lyric could’ve paid more attention herself with this whole wedding debacle. She could’ve double-checked with the priest, and she could’ve looked at the certificate before she signed it. But I could’ve done all of that, too. Anyone at the rehearsal could’ve actually paid attention and been helpful. This wasn’t just on Lyric, this was on me, and on the priest, and several other people while we were at it. It wasn’t fair to point fingers.
But at the same time—there was no damn reason for her to be yelling at me like that and blaming me for the judge just being a stubborn asshole. Sometimes judges were stubborn! Sometimes they wouldn’t listen to you no matter what you did! Judges were people with flaws just like everyone else!
The arguing continued all the way back to the hotel. Lyric gave the room the stink eye as she entered and started to grab her things—clearly remembering that the judge had revealed I’d booked this room on purpose and not through a mix-up and being pissed because, well, that had contributed to our failure to get the marriage annulled.
“I don’t have time for this arguing,” she said, putting her things into her suitcase. “I’m heading to the airport. And don’t you dare follow me.”
On the one hand, Lyric had every right to expect some space and to do whatever the hell she wanted without my say-so. And if she didn’t want to see me, then she didn’t want to see me.
On the other hand, I didn’t want to let her go. Being angry right now didn’t change how I felt about her.
I didn’t want to keep arguing about who was to blame, either, though.
“Lyric…”
She looked up, giving me a withering glare. “I’m going, and that’s final.” She zipped her luggage shut. “You’re a divorce lawyer. Just—figure out the damn divorce and let me know when it’s time to sign the papers. I don’t care to arrange anything. Just a… a no-fault divorce, that’s what they call it, right? One of those.”
I opened my mouth, then closed it again. Unsure of what to say. “Sure.” Yeah, I could arrange everything with the divorce. If Lyric really didn’t want anything—and why would she—there were no assets to split up, no agreements to come to. We’d only been married about two weeks. Securing a no-fault divorce would be easy.
Lyric nodded. Her face softened slightly for just a second, but then hardened again. “Goodbye, Preston.”
She made it sound so final, and my heart did a painful flip as I moved out of the way for her to get past me. I had hoped this would be the start of something new and wonderful between us.
Instead, the door was getting slammed in my face.
20
Lyric
It was weeks later and I still hadn’t received the damn divorce papers.
You would think that Preston would be eager to get rid of me, especially after that whole fiasco in Vail. I thought that my points still stood. I had every right to be upset that Preston was putting all the blame on me. But I had also been putting all the blame on him. I’d been yelling at him for ages, didn’t he want to cut ties and have nothing to do with me? I sure would in his shoes.
Honestly, I regretted a bit how angry I’d been. It wasn’t his fault we had an annoying judge. And it wasn’t entirely his fault about the wedding. To be honest if we were really going to blame anyone it was the priest. But when you’re ninety years of age, a few screws knock loose.
The thing I was angry with was the hotel room. He’d lied to me and that had come back to bite us in the ass in court. Not that it would’ve helped too much overall but—still. What was his intention in setting us up in the honeymoon suite? Had he just wanted another chance to get into my pants? Was that all that had been about? I felt angry and confused, unsure about how I felt or what Preston’s intensions were.
And now—now he was dragging his feet on the divorce for some reason and it was driving me nuts. Surely, he’d want to get this over with as soon as possible. Surely, he wouldn’t want to be tied to me any longer than he had to be.
I didn’t understand it, but I sure as hell wasn’t going to call him up and ask him.
Today was Friday, so I tried to force myself into a better mood. I was about to get lunch with Tenor and Mom, and I didn’t want them to know that anything was wrong. We got lunch at the same restaurant every Friday, and they’d been getting suspicious of my behavior lately.
What the hell was I supposed to tell them? I wondered as I got ready, putting on a cute outfit and doing my hair. Tenor would want to fly to Boston and strangle Preston, and that would be the end of their friendship. Mom just wouldn’t understand. No, this was my mess, and I was keeping it my mess. I wasn’t letting my family get involved.
When I arrived at the restaurant, Mom and Tenor were already there. I waved, plastering a smile on my face. We had a spot outside on the front patio, so that Mom could people watch and Tenor and I could enjoy the fresh air. The waitstaff knew us and smiled at me as I walked up. I made myself smile back.
I was just so frustrated, and I had nobody to talk to about it. My friends would all
think that it was a great thing I was hitched to this gorgeous, successful lawyer. They’d wonder why the hell I wasn’t dating them. And I wasn’t about to tell any of them the truth about Preston and me at Amherst. Enough people knew that humiliating story already, thanks.
“How is everything?” I asked cheerfully, sitting down.
Mom immediately started gushing about her music career, as always, telling us this that and the other thing and how it was only a matter of time until she made it big and so on and so forth. I’d learned long ago to tune it out. The particulars changed, but the general tone was always the same.
Tenor gave me a shrewd look and I guessed that my happy demeanor hadn’t masked my overall frustration. “Are you feeling any better?” he asked, once Mom seemed to be losing steam.
“I’m feeling fine, like always,” I replied.
Tenor and I rarely lied to each other. We were all the other one had by way of family, really. We never knew Dad or even if we had the same father, and Mom wasn’t exactly the most responsible and supportive of parents. I knew he could tell I was hiding something from him, and that wasn’t like me to do.
Well, I could always tell part of the truth.
“The last event I did was a huge mess,” I said. “It was a wedding, in Vail, I think I told you—anyway there was a massive snowstorm, and the bride and the groom were a mess, and that was before the groom cheated on the bride with the stripper from this bachelor party. Just a huge mess. Bunch of crazy spoiled rich people.”
Tenor seemed to buy that, nodding in sympathy. “Yeah, sounds like a real mess. Sorry you had to deal with that.”
“It’s all right. I mean, it’s over and done with now, at least.” Once I got those damn divorce papers, anyway.
“What about your personal life?” Mom asked. “You know you’d probably feel better if you had a man to come home to.”
“Mom.”
“Or a woman! I don’t judge.”
“Oh my God.” Mom didn’t care what gender I was into, she just was obsessed with my romantic life. She was constantly trying to set me up with musicians she met.
Yeah, we already had one serial dater in the family, thanks, I didn’t feel like being another one.
“Lyric couldn’t get a man in town if she tried,” Tenor joked. “I’ve scared them all off.”
“Thanks, Ten,” I said sarcastically. Tenor’s overprotectiveness was the one point on which we seriously disagreed. I understood why he was like this but that didn’t stop it from being annoying as hell.
When I eventually did find someone to date, I was going to have to give Tenor a stern talking to. That macho what are your intentions with my sister bullshit was not going to fly, nuh-uh.
“I’m too busy to date,” I said. That had been my excuse for years, and I was sticking to it now, too, dammit.
Of course, while I was kind of too busy to date, I was also a bit hung up on the guy to whom I was… already married.
What a mess. How had my life become this insane?
“You’re going to work yourself to death, honey, honestly,” Mom said.
Tenor and I exchanged looks. As if Mom would know what a good work ethic was if it hit her over the head.
“Well, speaking of work,” Tenor said, heading the brewing argument about my career choices off at the pass, “I had a gig this past weekend…”
Mom would never understand why I hadn’t gone into music the way she had, the way Tenor had. She’d ‘given us our names for a reason’. It was best just not to talk about it.
Glad I’d dodged that whole dating bullet, I was on my way home from lunch when my phone rang. It was a number I didn’t recognize, but it had a Boston area code.
“Hello?” I asked as I answered. I both hoped and feared it would be one of Preston’s legal secretaries telling me that the papers were ready to sign.
“Hello, is this Miss Dean? I got your number from your company website.” The woman on the phone sounded professional and polite.
Oh, just a potential client. All right then. I wasn’t sure if I was disappointed or relieved. I switched into work mode and started answering her questions—turned out the woman’s law firm in Boston wanted to use my services for an event they were having. There was some big company merger-liquidation-thing, I wasn’t sure on the details, but the law firm’s corporate lawyers had handled the case and taken care of all of it and it was a big victory, so they were having an event to kind of celebrate and get the word out to other companies at what a great law firm they were to hire.
Companies did this sort of celebration-slash-advertising thing all the time. It was no problem for me to take the job, and a corporate event was much better than a wedding. I could actually relax a little. There was the occasional bratty CEO but generally corporations just wanted you to stay on budget and fit their theme and then let you do all the rest. The whole point to them of hiring someone like me was that they didn’t have to think about it.
I set up a meeting to look at possible venues next week, and ended the day in a much better mood than I’d started it.
This event would take me to Boston, right where Preston was. Maybe I could call him and stop by his office to check on the progress of the divorce. I wasn’t sure what I wanted out of that potential visit. Did I want him to say okay, here are the papers? Or did I want him to say that he wanted to give us a chance as a couple?
My stomach was all in knots about it, all week. The day of my job in Boston, I was far more worried about calling Preston than I was about the actual job itself. The woman I’d spoken to on the phone, Gigi, had been lovely, and I looked forward to meeting her in person and working with her.
The first venue I arrived at was at a hotel. Classic, easy to work with, and so a lot of corporate places would use them—but I felt it was a little boring. I was hoping to steer Gigi into letting me do something a little more original…
But that wasn’t Gigi standing in the lobby. Or any woman, actually, there wasn’t any woman at all, other than the concierge woman at the front desk. Instead, a man was standing there, obviously waiting for someone, looking around. When I realized who it was, my heart skipped a beat.
It was Preston.
21
Preston
Lyric walked into the lobby of the hotel looking as stunning as ever in a dark blue skirt with a lighter blue, flowing blouse on top, the perfect compliment to her red hair. She seemed upbeat and ready to go—at least, until she laid her eyes on me.
Shock, confusion, and then anger all flitted across her face and I braced myself. When I’d asked Gigi to use Lyric’s company for our upcoming event, Gigi hadn’t batted an eye. She had blinked a few times when I’d said I would take care of working with Miss Dean, but I’d easily explained that away by saying that as a newly-made partner I wanted to prove my worth and investment in all aspects of the firm.
Lyric walked over to me, her eyes flashing in that way that was now so familiar to me. I had to hide a smile. I probably shouldn’t have found it amusing that she was angry, or so amusing that I’d already seen her angry enough to recognize that look in her eye immediately.
“What are you doing here?” she asked, and then immediately interrupted herself. “No, never mind, don’t answer that. You were the one who had Gigi call me, weren’t you? It’s your law firm—I should’ve known, when she said it was for a law firm.”
Lyric looked away into the middle distance for a second, as if she was rolling her eyes at herself internally, and then looked back at me. “Why the hell did you lure me here under false pretenses? You could just have asked me to come over to deal with the divorce.”
Her eyes went a bit wide, as if she’d just gotten an idea, and she pointed her finger at me. “If you think for one second that I’m going up into a hotel room here with you—”
God, that was a tempting idea. If only.
“It wasn’t false pretenses,” I said, gently cutting her off. “I really do have an event coming up for the la
w firm. Being a good part of a firm isn’t just winning cases. It’s what kind of cases you win for the firm, it’s how you maintain relationships with clients, and it’s how you make yourself part of the public face of the firm.
“You really handled everything well with the wedding. Taking care of people like Bree and Chad isn’t easy. And you were so loyal to the wedding, I mean, Jesus Christ, anyone else would’ve given up the minute we were snowed in but not you. You were determined to keep everything ready and perfect for that wedding and you were going to try and make it happen come hell or high water. I had to practically force you to stop.
“This event is going to be an important one for our firm. We need to impress our clients and keep showing them that we’re the best firm to represent them. There are a hundred law firms in Boston and hundreds more just outside the city, and they all want a piece of our clients. It’s in our best interest that this is pulled off flawlessly. And I know that no matter what catastrophes get in the way, you’re going to do your best to make them work and you won’t just give up on us.”
Lyric stared at me, looking startled. No, completely taken aback. I didn’t think I’d ever seen her look so surprised before. Once again, I had to hold in a smile.
Yes, part of this was a chance to see Lyric and see if I could still win her over. But everything that I’d said was true. This was the first event I’d be a part of since making partner and I needed to impress. I knew I could count on Lyric for that.
“Will you help me?” I asked.
Lyric chewed on her lower lip, pondering for a moment as she looked around the lobby, as if from somewhere somebody would pop out of the woodwork with an answer for her.
Finally, she looked back at me. “You still didn’t have to hide behind your law firm. You could’ve just called me yourself.”
“I was worried that if I did, you wouldn’t have taken the job. You wouldn’t have shown up, would you?”
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