You will live in Rush Creek during your tenure and take over the planning of these weddings. All of them must actually culminate with the planned ceremony.
“Technically that was my idea,” Weggers crows. “About how they had to actuallyhappen. To make sure you didn’t infect the couples with your cynical views. Brilliant, right?”
“I don’t have cynical views!”
I’m aware I’ve lost the calm that’s the hallmark of my lawyerly success. I never lose my cool in court. I definitely never sound like a whiny teenager.
My fucking grandfather.
“You’re a divorce attorney,” Weggers points out.
“You make it sound like I’m breaking up marriages willy nilly because it’s fun for me,” I say. “When in fact, I’m only helping people end marriages that are already disasters for them.”
It’s why I’m a divorce lawyer. To keep women like my mother and my aunt from getting destroyed by powerful men.
I’m good at it, too. I’ve only failed once.
“We believe what we want to believe,” Weggers tells me primly.
“You know this wouldneverhold up in court.”
He gives me a sage look. Or, more exactly, a look that he thinks is sage. In reality, it’s more constipated. “And you know you would never take this to court.”
“Just because I haven’t yet…”
The smirk is back. “If you’re determined to be the first Hott brother who can’t get the job done and lets Blue Mining get its hands on the family land…”
Frustration coils in my belly—not because he’s wrong, but because he’s right. None of us have obeyed the will because we actually believe it’s legally airtight. We’ve done it because it’s a form of atonement. A way to show Hanna that we’re sorry—for not being there for her for so many years.
And Weggers, the fucker, knows it.
“What if the people decide they don’t want to be married? You can’t force two people who have nothing to do with this situation to get married if that’s not what they want.”
Weggers sniffs. “In the unlikely event that any of the couples decides they don’t want to be married,andI can ascertain for sure that your actions had no bearing on the outcome, I’ll take that under advisement.”
I know it’s the best I’m going to do, unless I want—as Weggers says—to bethatHott brother.
Even knowing I’ve lost, I make one more stab at escape: “I can’t drop all my responsibilities in New York. I have court dates scheduled.”
“And those are more important than helping your sister out of a fix?” he asks.
We both know it’s not a real question. My shoulders slump.
He holds out a hand and, mutely, obediently, I return the Asshole Granddad letter to him.
“If I were you,” he says, folding and pocketing the letter, the smirk returning, “I’d start postponing some of those court dates.”
2
Eden
“Ihave to tell you something, and I need you to stay as calm as possible until we talk it through.”
These are the first words my wedding planner, Hanna Wilder, says to me when I arrive at her office for our two-weeks-before appointment.
I instantly start dredging up worst-case scenarios: The officiant has taken a last-minute ministerial sabbatical to Bali. The baker dropped the wedding cake, and there’s a worldwide shortage of ganache. Hanna accidentally double-booked the venue with one of those teen-wunderkind summer circuses, and we’ll be getting married to a backdrop of fourteen-year-olds hanging from scarves.
“Ohhhkay,” I manage.
