by Alina Jacobs
“I’m not making any excuses for my behavior. For what it’s worth, I did have a private investigator look into it a few weeks ago when Stella Rose first contacted me. Brea and Memphis Eve are not related to your Uncle Walter and therefore not to you or me. So you won’t be going to jail for incest. That’s good news, right?” my father joked.
“That is not funny,” I snapped at him.
“Mark,” he said gently. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you, but you were so happy. I thought I could just clear it up and then you wouldn’t have to worry.”
“I’m a grown man.”
“I know,” my father said. “But you’ll understand when you have kids someday. You’ll do anything to protect them. Especially since you seemed…you were really bad after that fire. You wouldn’t talk to anyone. You would disappear into your office; you practically lived here! We thought we might lose you.” My father patted my head. “Then Brea showed up, and I’ve never seen you so happy. Your mom was so relieved! I just don’t want to see you retreat again.” Jack tried to pull me out of my seat. “Come on, I’m going back to the condo. You can ride home with me.”
“I’m not living there anymore,” I told him.
“Where are you going?” my father asked, brow furrowing in concern.
“I bought a new place.”
“Where?”
“I’m not telling you,” I said nastily, “because I don’t want all of you in my business.”
“We’re your family, Mark,” my father said with a sigh. “We’re doing it because we care.”
“Well, I don’t care. I want to be left alone.”
Though I didn’t want to return to my old condo, I decided I should think about reselling the new penthouse. I had bought it because I’d thought Brea would move in with me, but now she would not be doing so.
“At least she’s not your sister or your cousin,” I reminded myself as I took Beowulf back to my old condo. There was no way I was going to be able to sleep. It was the middle of the night, and I was wide awake, as if I’d just drunk one of those coffee concoctions Brea was addicted to.
“Might as well start moving,” I told the puppy. I looked around my condo. It felt as if everything was contaminated with Brea. There was the kitchen that she had been so happy to cook in. There was the couch where we’d sat to share a meal. There was the table where we had had all those ridiculous wedding-planning meetings.
I needed to escape.
As I pulled two suitcases out of the hall closet, I found a familiar box. It contained all the knickknacks and antiques Brea had brought by to decorate with. There was a note stapled on it in her handwriting.
To be reused for Mark’s new penthouse so people don’t think he’s a robot!
I sank down on the floor and opened the box. Inside were various antiques, including a statue of a boy and a dog who looked like Beowulf, an abacus, and a framed image of several Victorian men performing some sort of experiment. They were all things I actually wanted to put up in my condo. Tucked against the side of the box was a framed picture of a selfie Brea had taken of us at the gift bag session. A caption on a little card under the picture read, Mark learns that he believes in weddings.
“What am I going to do?” I asked the dog.
He raced under the couch and came back with the large, sparkly, half-chewed dildo I’d spent five hundred dollars on.
“Fuck, even a way-too-expensive dildo is making me nostalgic.”
I needed to hold the grudge though.
“Don’t be weak,” I chastised myself. “You cannot let this happen again. There is clearly something wrong with you. You attract the wrong sorts of women.”
I packed up my car with Beowulf’s dog paraphernalia and then a few suits, grooming products, and a sleeping bag. I also took Brea’s box with me.
“Sentimentality,” I chastised myself as I placed it carefully in the front seat. But I couldn’t part with it.
The city streets were empty as I raced down the wide avenue to my new home. When Beowulf and I arrived, however, it seemed a lot larger and emptier and colder than I remembered it being with Brea there.
“At least my family isn’t here to bother me,” I told Beowulf.
All of the staging furniture had been taken out. I had asked the real-estate agent to do that, thinking Brea would want to put her own stamp on the place. But now I wished I had a couch.
I spread the sleeping bag on the floor. Beowulf immediately peed on it.
“No!” I yelled at the dog and dragged him out to the balcony. Fortunately, there was still a patch of sod out there where he could finish.
“Fuck,” I cursed as I washed off the sleeping bag. I wanted to text Brea and complain then have her make a joke about men claiming their new space or something.
I looked around the empty living area. The city lights twinkled like distant stars through the two-story-high windows. Was this really how I wanted to spend the rest of my life?
I checked her Instagram out of habit. Brea had liked a photo from Ivy showing Brea and her friends working on a wedding. There was a shot of several of them at the Weddings in the City office.
Hold a grudge, the rational part of my brain insisted. But its heart wasn’t really in it. I missed Brea.
“I’m just going to see her,” I promised myself as I scooped Beowulf up. I was not leaving him alone to destroy my new penthouse. “I’m just going to see her, and we’re going to talk. No promises.”
52
Brea
I was sniffling in the Uber on the way to the Weddings in the City office after leaving Mark. “How could I have been so stupid?” I chastised myself. “I should have just told Mark what had happened.”
I wanted to go home and wallow, but there was a wedding to put on tomorrow. I hated that my family drama was going to cast a shadow over the happy event. I had been texting and apologizing to Liz all evening.
Brea: I am so sorry.
Brea: I will totally quit and not be there if that’s what you want.
Brea: Tomorrow is supposed to be about you and Wes.
Liz: Are you kidding??? I cannot survive tomorrow without you!
Brea: But what about Mark?
Liz: *le sigh* Wes said he talked to him. He’ll be there. I think he’s just shaken. Give him a bit to cool off.
At the Weddings in the City office, Ivy was doing the calligraphy on the last of the name cards while Grace was double-checking all her camera equipment. Normally Sophie and Elsie would be finishing up the cake and prepping the food. But they were all there waiting on me.
“Oh my God, Brea, what in the world?”
“So, good news,” I said, blowing out a breath. “Mark and I aren’t related. Bad news—he hates me for lying. And I basically ruined Liz’s wedding. And our shot at doing any more high-society weddings.” I sagged into a chair.
“Leftover wedding cake scraps?” Sophie offered. “Elsie saved some crab cakes for you.”
“We’ll survive the bad publicity,” Ivy assured me. “Dana is going to give us a reality TV show.”
“Ugh, no,” Elsie said.
“Well, it’s up for discussion. Point being, people will move on. Especially since you aren’t related.”
“I shouldn’t have lied to Mark,” I said.
“Honestly, he overreacted if you ask me,” Amy said. “I mean, what were you supposed to do, tell him the truth?”
“Yes?”
“No. Men are delicate creatures. You can’t come to them hysterical with problems. They will self-combust.”
I thought about Mark’s yelling at me earlier in the evening. It had been a long night. It was now the wee hours of the morning, and I was starting to get that loopy feeling. My mental spinning out about Mark wasn’t helping. I needed a nap. But we had a wedding in less than twelve hours.
“No kidding!”
“You need to move on from him,” Sophie insisted. “There are better billionaires crawling around in the toxic sludge of Manhatta
n that you can snag.”
Amy snickered. “The Svensson brothers were at my grandpa’s farm yesterday, asking me about you and wanting to know if you and Mark were having any problems. You could totally snag one of them.”
“Memphis Eve and I would both be dating Svensson brothers? No thanks,” I said, pacing as I slurped my coffee. “My life is crazy enough already. I’m not putting my vagina wherever hers was.”
“Well,” Amy said, shoving her phone at me. “You’ll be pleased to know that Wilder dumped Memphis Eve. Apparently one of his older brothers found out about the drama at the rehearsal dinner and pulled the plug on that relationship.”
“How do you even know that?”
“Harrogate has a Facebook group. All the juicy gossip is on there. Ooh nooo…” Amy said. “There’s a rumor that alcohol is going to be banned from town hall meetings. People are mad!”
“Small-town drama aside, you need to move on from Mark,” Elsie suggested.
“But I like him,” I complained and ate another piece of cake. The sugar and caffeine and lack of sleep were making me jittery.
“He’s never going to change,” Elsie told me.
“You’re right,” I said dejectedly. “And I clearly made him miserable. We just aren’t good together.”
The elevator dinged.
“Uh…” I counted, and all of my friends were there. “Who is that?”
The elevator opened to reveal Mark.
I crossed my arms.
“Uh,” Mark said. “Hi, Brea. Can we talk?” Mark shifted his weight.
“Honestly,” I said. “I don’t think there’s anything left to say.”
“I overreacted,” Mark began.
“No, I screwed up,” I told him. “I should have told you. I didn’t want to hurt you. But I did anyway.”
“It’s okay,” he insisted.
“It’s not,” I replied, blinking back tears. “Mark, you’re right. I don’t think this is going to work. You need a therapist, and I need to get my life together.”
53
Mark
What was I going to do?
“You really blew it,” I chastised myself. Brea didn’t want anything to do with me. And could I blame her?
Though I wanted to wallow, it was almost morning; the wedding was going to start. I grabbed my tux from my penthouse and placed Beowulf in his carrier. Dogs were allowed at the wedding, much to my mother’s chagrin.
I needed a way to fix this. I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life alone. I also couldn’t imagine spending it with anyone other than Brea. But I had been mean to her. And now she wasn’t even mad at me, which I could have dealt with. Instead, she just seemed resigned, as if she had accepted that our relationship wasn’t going to even be worth fighting for. As if I had let her down.
I had to show her that we were worth another shot. I needed a grand gesture. And to make it, I needed my family.
Grant and Wes were in the sitting room of the Holbrook estate when I drove up. The workers were already arriving to start setting up for the wedding.
They looked at me in shock as Beowulf bounded over to pounce on Gus, Grant’s corgi, who was napping. That woke up Wes’s dog, Kal, who grabbed Beowulf, pinned him down under his paw, and went back to sleep.
“We weren’t sure if you were going to come,” Grant said in concern.
“I wasn’t going to miss the wedding,” I said. “Not when I’ve invested so much time in planning it.”
Wes smiled. “Did you talk to Brea?”
I nodded. “She doesn’t think we’re a good idea together.”
“You can’t let her go without a fight,” Wes insisted.
“I have an idea,” I said slowly. “But I need your help.”
“We’re family,” Grant assured me. “We’re always in your corner.”
Carter padded in, yawning, wearing a blanket, and carrying his little white dog.
“Allie made me get up,” he complained, crawling onto the couch and pulling the blanket over his head. “I don’t know why, because it’s ass crack o’clock in the morning, and the wedding isn’t until this afternoon.”
“We have to help Mark plan a grand gesture,” Grant informed him.
“Fireworks!” Carter suggested.
“No!” Wes and I said at the same time.
“Buy her a purse,” Grant suggested.
“Buy her a car,” Wes countered.
“No, jewelry.”
“Actually, I already know what I want. I just need you all to help me retrieve it.”
“This is so far away!” Carter complained as we drove to Harrogate. There was an estate sale out there, and the website advertising it had said steamer trunks would be for sale.
“We have to get in and get out,” I told them once we arrived, handing them printouts. “I have a five-point plan. The trunks are on the third floor. We find them, secure them, pay for them, then leave. Everyone has to follow the plan. No deviations.”
“I was in the military,” Grant bragged. “This is a piece of cake.”
“You I’m not worried about. Carter is going to be the problem,” I told him.
“I was in the Marines too!” Carter protested.
“Yes, and on multiple occasions, I had to bail you out,” I said impatiently.
I had thought that we would be early considering it was barely seven in the morning, but the old Victorian house was packed. There was a line of seniors waiting to get in. Ida was there with a gaggle of older women.
“Those are my new boyfriend’s grandkids,” Ida announced loudly, waving us over. “Good-looking guys like you can cut in line.”
“Thanks. We’re here for an apology present,” I told Ida.
“The best kind,” Ida said.
None of the seniors looked as if they were going to be spending fifty thousand dollars on an antique steamer trunk, but one couldn’t be too sure. And there were a few people trickling in who had the steely-eyed look of seasoned antique dealers. But what really clenched my throat was when several blond Svensson brothers showed up.
“Are they ones you know?” I whispered to Wes, hoping he could cash in on some goodwill.
He peered at them. “I don’t know any of them except for Hunter. He’s still pissed off at your dad. Once he figures out what we’re buying, he’s going to take it out of spite.”
“New plan,” I hissed, pulling up the estate sale website on my phone. “There are supposed to be some other expensive items here like a Tiffany lamp. You two,” I pointed to Carter and Grant, “go for those as a distraction. Wes, you’ll come with me to grab the trunk.”
The estate agent unlocked the doors promptly at seven thirty, and we streamed in.
Hunter Svensson had immediately zeroed in on me. “Here for something in particular?” he asked me, his brothers surrounding me.
Wes held up his hands.
“Come on, guys. I invited you—well, some of you—to my wedding.”
“You only invited Carl, Josh, and Eric,” one of the Svensson brothers complained.
“Oh, Mark! Yoo hoo!” Ida hollered across the room. “Dottie said that the steamer trunk is actually in the living room!”
“Ha!” Hunter said and pushed past me.
I raced him to the living room. “It’s mine!” I yelled, sprinting for the trunk.
Hunter body checked me, and I crashed to the floor. “You and your family stole my company. I’m about to ruin whatever scheme you have going here,” he said, grabbing the trunk by the handle.
I kicked him in the shin, and we rolled around, wrestling on the floor.
“What in the world?” a cool, professional voice said from somewhere above us. The deputy mayor of Harrogate was looking down her nose at us.
Hunter scrambled to his feet, hastily rearranging his clothes. “Hey, Meg. I was here because they had those creepy antique figurines you collect. I was going to buy one for you.”
“I already bought them.”
“
How come you were allowed in so early?” Carter complained, skidding into the room. He carried a tacky lamp with a base shaped like a dog.
“I told him that you wanted us to get the Tiffany lamp,” Grant said, coming up behind him.
“What? This lamp is a masterpiece!” Carter insisted. “It looks just like Margot.”
Meg tapped her foot. “The city is running this estate sale, seeing as how poor Mr. Grimshaw did not have any descendants or relatives. He left everything to the Harrogate Trust.”
“I need to buy this trunk,” I said to her.
“I need to buy it,” Hunter countered.
“What are you going to do with it?” Meg asked derisively. “Your little brothers will just tear it up.”
“I was going to…give it to you. As a present.” Hunter grinned at her.
Meg scowled.
“No, I need it for an apology present,” I begged. “Please sell it to me. I have cash.” I motioned to Wes. He took the envelope of money out of his pocket.
“I’ll pay you double,” Hunter countered.
“Triple!” Carter shouted.
Triple was a lot for that steamer trunk.
“Sold,” Meg said.
Oof.
“Did you bring your credit card?” Wes asked me under his breath. “We don’t have that much cash.”
“Meg,” Hunter said, clearly hurt. “You chose the Holbrooks over me? How could you?”
“You made a snide comment in the town hall meeting yesterday,” she said primly as one of the senior citizen volunteers wrote out a receipt, took the cash, and ran my credit card for the remainder.
“I didn’t make a snide comment,” Hunter argued with Meg as my cousins picked up the trunk to take it out to the car.
“Yes, you did; you complained about the recycling laws, and then when I shut you down, you just went, ‘Well, I don’t know why you are so upset about a little plastic…’”