Zander put up a hand as she scurried into the room, concern etched on her pale face.
“Just when is this wedding supposed to take place?”
“That’s the reason I’m calling you.”
Zander gritted his teeth. “When.”
“In two days.”
* * *
“Two days?” Claudia Benton cried. “There has to be some sort of mistake.”
Zander tore his gaze off the Persian rug at his feet to look at his mother. “It’s not a mistake.” He glanced about the large room, catching one horrified expression after the next. It had taken exactly three and a half hours to assemble an emergency family meeting at his place. Everyone had made it. Everyone, that is, except for Duke.
“I can’t believe he’d do something like that,” Mom’s boyfriend, Michael, said.
“I can,” snapped Grandma Lo. “He might pretend to be playboy, but I think Duke’s a romantic at heart. I’ve always suspected that about him.”
Zander fought back an eye roll and turned his gaze to the newlywed section. His sister, Betzy, and her husband, Sawyer, were seated on the leather sofa beside James and his wife, Camila. Without the other single sibling in the family, Zander was highly outnumbered. But, of course, if Duke stayed true to the contract he’d signed, he wouldn’t be single for long either.
Mom must have been thinking a similar thing because suddenly she gasped and brought a hand to her chest. “That will make three Benton weddings in a year’s time.”
“I’m going to kill him,” Zander hissed as he folded his arms.
“You can’t kill him,” Mom said, her voice tight. “Who knows if he’ll even survive Everest? People die there all the time.”
Zander was too angry to worry over his brother’s safety. “He’s just dodging his responsibilities. Who knows if he’s even attempting to climb it?” He looked over at James for backup.
“Yeah,” his younger brother said. “I agree. He’s probably not climbing it. That’s not something people decide to do last minute. They have to train for something like that.”
Zander huffed out a breath. “Let me just break this down for everybody since I don’t think we’re grasping the magnitude.”
He held up a finger. “There’s a camera crew lined up and ready to film a wedding that’s supposed to happen in two days.”
Zander held up a second finger. “There’s a woman—Lord only knows what she’s like—who’s known for nearly two weeks that the wedding was on. She has a dress by now, bridesmaids, you name it. What she doesn’t have…” He paused there, his gaze settling on Betzy in time to catch the fresh bout of horror on her face.
“Is a groom,” she finished for him, voice flatter than a deflated balloon. Her blue eyes went wide and worried. She stood to her feet suddenly. “We can’t let that happen. We’ve got to call the show and move the production date.”
But Zander only shook his head. “They’re filming live.”
That one earned a full chorus of gasps. “Live?” Grandma had lost her low and steady tenor. The single word had come out as more of a squeak.
Betzy’s shoulders dropped. “Great.”
Zander nodded. “Yep.”
The silence hovering over the air was thick with all the unspoken sentiments playing through Zander’s mind. The cost of a live production. The intense planning and costly promoting for such an event. They were in the business after all—the repercussions of messing with a live production could make Mount Everest look like the kiddie hill at a theme park.
“He has to be able to get out of it somehow,” Camila said, looking to James.
James squared a look at Zander. “You said Perry sent you the contract. Did you already have Miles go over it?”
It felt like bumper cars were crashing against Zander’s skull as he recalled the family’s lawyer spelling out the ironclad details. “Yep.”
“And?” James urged.
“Brutal. As long as Duke’s living, he’s liable.”
