Bad Wedding (Billionaire's Club Book 9)

by Elise Faber

  Bad Wedding

  Billionaire’s Club #9

  Elise Faber

  BAD WEDDING

  BY ELISE FABER

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  This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters, and events are fictitious in every regard. Any similarities to actual events and persons, living or dead, are purely coincidental. Any trademarks, service marks, product names, or named features are assumed to be the property of their respective owners, and are used only for reference. There is no implied endorsement if any of these terms are used. Except for review purposes, the reproduction of this book in whole or part, electronically or mechanically, constitutes a copyright violation.

  BAD WEDDING

  Copyright © 2020 Elise Faber

  Print ISBN-13: 978-1-946140-69-2

  Ebook ISBN-13: 978-1-946140-70-8

  Cover Art by Jena Brignola

  Billionaire’s Club

  Bad Night Stand

  Bad Breakup

  Bad Husband

  Bad Hookup

  Bad Divorce

  Bad Fiancé

  Bad Boyfriend

  Bad Blind Date

  Bad Wedding

  Bad Engagement

  Contents

  Billionaire’s Club

  Billionaire’s Club Cast of Characters

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Epilogue

  Epilogue

  Epilogue

  Coming Soon

  Billionaire’s Club

  Billionaire’s Club

  Also by Elise Faber

  About the Author

  Billionaire’s Club Cast of Characters

  Heroes and Heroines:

  Abigail Roberts (Bad Night Stand) — founding member of the Sextant, hates wine, loves crocheting

  Jordan O’Keith (Bad Night Stand) — Heather’s brother, former owner of RoboTech

  Cecilia (CeCe) Thiele (Bad Breakup) — former nanny to Hunter, talented artist

  Colin McGregor (Bad Breakup) — Scottish duke, owner of McGregor Enterprises

  Heather O’Keith (Bad Husband) — CEO of RoboTech, Jordan’s sister

  Clay Steele (Bad Husband) — Heather’s business rival, CEO of Steele Technologies

  Kay (Bad Date) — romance writer, hates to be stood up

  Garret Williams (Bad Date) — former rugby player

  Rachel Morris (Bad Hookup) — Heather’s assistant, superpowers include being ultra-organized

  Sebastian (Bas) Scott (Bad Hookup) — Devon Scott’s brother, Clay’s assistant

  Rebecca (Bec) Darden (Bad Divorce) — kickass lawyer, New York roots

  Luke Pearson (Bad Divorce) — Southern gentleman, CEO Pearson Energies

  Seraphina Delgado (Bad Fiancé) — romantic to the core, looks like a bombshell, but even prettier on the inside

  Tate Connor (Bad Fiancé) — tech genius, scared to be burned by love

  Lorelai (Bad Text) — drunk texts don’t make her happy

  Logan Smith (Bad Text) — former military, sometimes drunk texts are for the best

  Kelsey Scott (Bad Boyfriend) — Bas and Devon’s sister, engineer at RoboTech, brilliant

  Tanner Pearson (Bad Boyfriend) — Bas and Devon’s childhood friend, photographer

  Trix Donovan (Bad Blind Date) — Heather’s sister, Jordan’s half-sister, nurse who worked in war zones, poverty-stricken areas, and abroad for almost a decade

  Jet Hansen (Bad Blind Date) — a doctor Trix worked with

  Molly Miller (Bad Wedding) — owner of Molly’s, a kickass bakery in San Francisco

  Jackson Davis (Bad Wedding) — Molly’s ex-fiancé

  Additional Characters:

  George O’Keith — Jordan’s dad

  Hunter O’Keith — Jordan’s nephew

  Bridget McGregor — Colin’s mom

  Lena McGregor — Colin’s sister

  Bobby Donovan — Heather’s half and Trix’s full brother

  Frances and Sugar Delgado — Sera’s parents

  Devon Scott — Kels and Bas’s brother

  Becca Scott — Kels and Bas’s sister in law

  One

  Molly

  She checked the bread that was proofing in the oven, not opening the door and risking a disruption of those teeny bubbles that were still forming, but peering through the glass rectangle on the oven door and making sure those pale globes of bread were rising as they should.

  Her homemade rolls were a top-seller, usually gone before ten in the morning.

  That was because they were delicious, if she said so herself.

  And she did say so, she supposed, snorting at her pun.

  But puns were all she had at zero-dark-thirty in the morning. Zero-dark-thirty, otherwise known as four A.M. It was a stupid hour to be up and about, but she owned a bakery and that meant she had to get up early. Molly’s—yes, she was egotistical enough to own a place named after herself, though in fairness, she hadn’t come up with the name—served breakfast and lunch, with a limited staff and menu for dinner.

  That limited menu meant she didn’t have to work at dinnertime.

  A good thing, too. Otherwise, she might as well live at the restaurant.

  And while she loved Molly’s, she also loved having a life.

  Not that you’ve had much of that lately.

  True.

  But owning a restaurant in a big city was difficult, and even more difficult was to keep owning it. Molly had investors to reimburse, loans to pay off, wages to cover, and supplies to purchase.

  So, that meant filling in if her evening cook had a date or got sick or worked only five days a week. Okay, so if she were being truthful, that meant she all but lived at the bakery an average of four days out of said week.

  But that was better than seven, so there was that.

  Seeing that the rolls were doing well, Molly turned back to the counter to finish up the rest of her prep. She had to toast some walnuts, get the mise en place ready for her soups—which were basically fancy words to say she was chopping up the onions and carrots, celery and potatoes and peppers, measuring stocks and creams, roasting cobs of corn.

  Her rolls dinged, and she grabbed them out, switching them to the preheated oven, doing a little dance of adding another baking sheet in to proof, pulling out a tray of croissants that were done from a different oven and replacing them with peach turnovers. She packed up the mise en place and stored them in the fridge, then prepped several bowls of muffin batter—today would be lemon poppy seed, peaches and cream, blueberry, and double chocolate.

  Once the turnovers were done, she divided the muffin batter into various tins then began rocking through baking them off while stocking the glass case next to the counter. It was a familiar routine. Her doors opened at five, but that was mostly for her few straggler early birds, and that wasn’t typically more than five or six people, so she mostly let the first bell tinkling above the door let her know when she needed to pull her ass out of the kitchen. Which meant that she had to have the first batch of everything baked off before that.
After her first employees clocked in at six-thirty, she could stay in the kitchen like she preferred.

  Baking was her favorite.

  The people weren’t bad either. She loved getting to know them, to see them change, their lives grow full and happy, their kids get older. She loved feeding people, even if they weren’t regulars.

  There was absolutely nothing better than seeing someone’s happy smile when they bit into something tasty.

  Speaking of, the bell above the door tinkled as her first customer of the day strode into the bakery.

  “I’ll be with you in a second,” she called, continuing to fill the case with lemon muffins.

  “I did always love to see you like this.”

  Molly jumped, eyes shooting up.

  It had been so long since she’d heard that voice.

  I love taking bites out of you.

  It had rumbled back then, too, rasping along her skin, skating down her spine, and making her shiver.

  The first man she’d baked for.

  The man who’d given her the money to open this place.

  The one who’d named it.

  And the one who’d left her at the altar. In the white dress. With the venue booked. With the caterer and the DJ set up. With the guests packing the pews on both sides of the isle.

  Jackson Davis.

  Jackson Fucking Davis.

  “Jackson,” she murmured and slid the back of the case closed.

  “I’m back, honey.”

  She’d regret her actions later, but in that moment, with the memories of the full church and the people and their pitying expressions and this man. Not. Fucking. Showing. Up.

  Molly snapped.

  She threw the baking sheet at his head.

  Two

  Jackson

  In fairness, he used to react faster.

  His Molly seemed sweet and kind and levelheaded to the rest of the world, but with him, she always had a slice of fire.

  He’d ducked a cookie sheet or twenty in their years together, but he’d been too long out of practice, too long away to remember how quickly she could launch that rectangle of steel, how it could unfailingly fly in perfect rotation toward his head.

  Then it was there, inches away.

  Jackson ducked at the last second, so the sheet glanced off his shoulder instead of his face.

  Ouch. That was going to leave a bruise.

  “Oh, my God,” Molly said, hands coming up to cover the horrified expression she wore.

  That was new.

  The horrified reaction.

  She never used to feel any remorse for losing her temper, for launching a sheet in his direction or cursing him out. For one, he always moved well before the sheet came close. For two, he always deserved her reaction.

  He’d curated her reaction—poked and prodded and needled until she snapped.

  Because there was something about seeing Molly pissed, watching the flush crawl over her cheeks, seeing her pale green eyes fill with sparks. She was beautiful normally, but she was absolutely stunning when she was pissed.

  Not to mention her being pissed was usually trailed by angry sex.

  And angry sex with Molly was the best.

  Although . . . he didn’t think angry sex was going to be on the plate with her today. Her hands dropped away from her face, those sparks faded away, and her pretty green eyes went damp.

  “What the fuck, Jackson Davis?” she said. “What. The. Fuck?”

  Then she spun on one heel and disappeared through the swinging door.

  He stood there for a moment, staring after her, his heart hurting from the sight of her tears, regret a jagged and icy knife in his gut. He should have leveled with her from the second he’d found out, shouldn’t have . . . done a lot of things.

  Jackson sighed, shoved a hand through his hair.

  He’d fucked up good.

  Never let it be said that he didn’t give it his all.

  The bell above the door dinged and after a few seconds, he heard Molly’s voice trail out of the back. “I’ll be right out!”

  Warm. As sweet as her cinnamon rolls and twice as calorie-laden. Or at least, that was how it had always felt to him. She just had to speak, and he was filled to the brim.

  And he’d ruined that.

  Fucking hell.

  It was just after six in the morning. The case next to the register was full of various breakfast treats—croissants and muffins, fruit-filled Danishes, even a row of immaculately decorated flower cookies, the brightly-colored frosting punctuated with carefully placed sparkling sprinkles.

  He knew she’d probably placed them with tweezers.

  Because if there was one thing Molly was good at, it was caring about the details.

  He’d once been one of those details.

  Molly pushed through the door, another tray in her hands, her formerly askew ponytail carefully straightened and secured. She set the tray on the stainless-steel counter behind the case and smiled.

  Not at him.

  At the man who’d just walked through the door.

  Fuck, Jackson didn’t like that at all—her smiling at other men, even men who were well over seventy, had barely enough hair to cover an inch above each ear, and hobbled slowly in with a cane.

  But he’d fucked up.

  So, he didn’t have a right to feel anything about her smiles.

  “Ronnie,” she said, still smiling, her eyes sliding deliberately past him, as though Jackson were nothing more than a piece of furniture, and an ugly one at that. “You want the usual?”

  “Mornin’, beautiful,” Ronnie said then pointed at Jackson. “This young man was here first.”

  Molly smiled, though this time it was tinged with ice. “Oh, I’ve already helped him plenty.” She tilted her head toward the windows. “Go sit at your table. I’ll bring out your muffin and coffee.”

  “Black,” Ronnie said.

  “With only a half a pound of sugar,” Molly added with wink. “I know, honey. I’ll warm you up a lemon poppy seed to go with it.”

  “You always know how to treat a guy.” Ronnie put a five on the counter. “I wish I was forty years younger so I could marry you. Any man would be lucky to call you his wife.” Then he grinned and made his halting way over to what was apparently his table, a small round top tucked into one corner.

  It did not escape Jackson’s notice that there was already a newspaper carefully laid there. One that Ronnie apparently expected, because he sat down and immediately got to reading.

  It also did not escape Jackson’s notice that Molly had stopped breathing.

  That her face had paled, and pain had crawled across her eyes.

  Because he’d once been the man who’d been lucky enough to marry Molly.

  Fuck.

  “Sweet—”

  Her eyes flashed to his, hurt disappearing behind a mask of anger. “I think I made it clear when I sent you the paperwork. I don’t want anything to do with you. Not now. Not ever.” She bent, sliding open the back of the case and pulling out a muffin. Her movements were efficient, practiced, but wooden, and he knew she’d done the same thing a thousand times before.

  She’d done the same dance many times over while hurting.

  Because he’d hurt her.

  Jackson didn’t speak until she came back behind the counter. “Molly—”

  Her head whipped up, but this time there wasn’t hurt or anger on her face. Instead, it was determination and, fuck, he liked that expression even more than sparking furious eyes. “If you want more money,” she said. “I’ll find it. But I want you out of this business, Jackson.”

  Yeah, he was reading that loud and clear.

  He’d gotten the papers the day before, couriered to his office, placed unceremoniously on his desk by his assistant, and they’d fucking pissed him off. An emotion he didn’t have one right to feel about the situation, since it was entirely of his making, and yet, one he was furious about anyway.

  What right did
Molly have to cut this last tie between them?

  What fucking right?

  Every right. She had every right. He knew that. He got that. He—

  Couldn’t bear to actually let her go.

  A fucking joke considering he was the one who’d pulled the plug on their wedding, but also the truth.

  Which is why he said, “I’m not going to let you buy me out,” when he probably should have told her that he would sign whatever papers she wanted if she would only give him another chance.

  But that wasn’t his style.

  Jackson wasn’t altruistic. He wasn’t good. He was selfish.

  And he wanted Molly.

  Green eyes sparked fire at his words, lush lips that fit perfectly against his flattened out, a muscle in her jaw ticked. She sucked in a breath, opened her mouth, and—

  The bell jingled.

  They both turned and watched a trio of men in suits walk through the door. Then the bell sounded again as another customer slipped inside. And then another. And another. They approached the counter, anticipation on their faces.

  To talk to Molly. To eat her delicious food. To just soak in the warmth of her presence.

  Jackson knew the feeling. He’d been stifling that urge for years.

  Only he’d gotten really good at pretending he wasn’t ruled by those urges, that he didn’t need the woman standing on the other side of the counter, her unruly hair escaping her ponytail, her curves unhidden even beneath the shapeless pastel pink apron she wore, the scent of all the delicious things she conjured up in the magical kitchen of hers surrounding him.