“Where’s my happy bride?” Kai comes up behind his brother.
It’s like he can read my mind. Happy, my ass.
“She couldn’t make it. You’re stuck with me."
After our SUV leaves the garage, two more pull out following behind us.
“Is the whole stately procession necessary?” I’m being peevish, I know it. But people are turning to look at the three Maserati SUVs taking over the street. I don’t like attention. It’s never gone well for me in the past.
Kai ignores me, rapidly typing out text after text.
“Your security is extremely important,” Duncan says, leaning in with a grin. I bet he gets a lot of girls with that reckless, pirate-like attitude. “When the clan is under a threat as serious as this, we pull all the soldiers back into home base. No one goes out on their own.”
Pulling up behind a large government building, the driver scans the area around us as four more men in dark suits get out of the chase vehicles and surround the car.
“Ya ready?” Kai asks me.
“Not in the slightest.”
A blue-suited assistant type guides us through darkened hallways, empty like they cleared out the building for us.
“Know what this reminds me of?” I say it without looking at anyone.
It’s Logan who politely asks, “What does this remind ya of?”
“That scene inThe Sound of Musicwhere the nuns are hustling the Von Trapp family through the catacombs, fleeing the Nazis.” Of course, that movie had a happy ending where they were frolicking to freedom over the Alps in Switzerland. I have a feeling I’m getting locked back up in Kai’s palatial townhouse after this.
“Well, I can see those blue-bloods… wait. Uncle Lachlan has decided on a name for these wankstains.We’re calling them the Aristocrats. I can see theAristocratsbeing white supremacists,” Logan answers after some thought, “so the Nazi reference isn’t far off.”
“Why is your Uncle Lachlan calling the rich white boys the Aristocrats?”
Logan’s laugh echoes down the long hallway. “Ya dinna know the joke about The Aristocrats?”
“Do you meanThe AristoCats,the movie from Disney?”
“No, it’s definitely nothing Disney cooked up. It’s from the filthiest joke ever spoken and the punchline is, “We’re the Aristocrats!” He’s got his phone out and looking up a comedianon YouTube. “Here, this is the entire joke in all its fecked-up glory. I’ll turn up the volume and-”
Kai stops texting. “Ya will not show her that video. We’re not in a pub, ya arsehole!”
Logan sadly puts his phone away, mouthing “I’ll show ya later,” to me behind his brother’s back.
Stopping abruptly, Kai eyes my empty hands. “I should have bought you a bouquet.”
“That’s okay,” I shrug.Please, let’s not make this more of a sham than it already is.That’s what I really want to say but he’s got that cold, humorless thing going again so I walk past him and into my IRS audit- I mean, my wedding.
The Registrar is a very nice older woman named Moira Baird with silver hair and a sensible dress. I like how her eyes twinkle as she examines the two of us. “Ah, the happy couple then? Stand before me, if ya please.” I have a feeling she knows exactly what’s going on here, but she opens her book and begins.
There’s a bunch of words spoken, though her Scottish accent is so thick that I’m not quite following along. So, it comes as a shock when she says, “Repeat after me, Miss Jones?”
“Oh! Yeah, sure.”
“State your name, please.” Ms. Baird nods at me.
“I, Luna Jones…”
“I sincerely solemnly declare that I accept you, Kai uh…” I go up on tiptoe to whisper, “Do you have a middle name?”
“Robert.” He’s less icy now, probably enjoying my existential dread.
