Thought about it, and no. No way in hell. I’m done with weddings.
“I just need the key to my penthouse,” I told Mika.
I followed her into her home office, and she handed me my keyring, wallet, and phone. “Courtesy of Sebastian,” she told me. I checked my phone. There were a hundred missed calls and two hundred text messages. I deleted them all.
“Can you please be the man of honor?” Mika begged. “You don’t know what it’s like. Imogen is awful.”
“Then quit; you don’t have to participate,” I told her.
Mika stared down at the floor dejectedly. “I sort of feel like I have to.”
I knew what she meant. When our mother had died, our stepmother had looked after us. She could have let our father send us to boarding school in Austria, but instead she had insisted that we remain in the USA.
“If you won’t do it for her, just please do it for me?”
5
Ivy
Iscowled at the spot on the bed where Evan had been.
“I am done with billionaires and entitled men in general. There will never be another man in my house,” I declared.
Fergus made a hacking noise. I didn’t have time to grab him before he coughed up another hairball.
“Argh, I should have sent you off with Evan,” I told the traitorous cat, “especially since you seemed to like him so much.”
Fergus hissed at me and hid under the bed.
I made his breakfast then shimmied to the balcony. There was about an hour every day when I got any direct sunlight in my condo. I moved the few plants that were still clinging to life into the light, sipped my tea, and looked at my inspiration board.
It had changed over the years. First I had wanted to be a princess and live in a palace. I now live in the furthest possible thing from a castle. Then I had wanted a successful business, but given that I couldn’t even make clients pay me, that dream was slowly dying. My latest dream that was soon to be broken was owning an insane penthouse at the top of the Brookview Hotel, one of the Greyson Hotel Group’s projects. It was in a former factory building that was capped by a clock tower that had been converted into a condo. The faces of the clocks on the four sides of the tower were big round windows that let in a ton of natural daylight.
“I don’t know why I’m torturing myself,” I told Fergus as I looked at the listing online. The penthouse was still for sale; it hadn’t been bought yet. A part of me felt like maybe I could be given a surprise inheritance or win the lottery, then I would march over there and buy the penthouse.
I needed to face the reality of my situation though. I was never going to live in that clock tower. Hell, I was never even going to set foot in it. And if I was being honest, I probably wasn’t going to be living in my current tiny abode very soon either if I couldn’t find a way to pay off the two mortgages on the property.
Camilla’s family will pay, right? Surely they will.
I would wait a few days, as was polite, then gently ask to settle the invoice. That was good business. Then I would be done with that wedding. I wouldn’t have to see Camilla anymore, and I certainly would never have to see Evan ever again.
* * *
“So isthe half naked man still in your condo?” Amy asked when I set down my bag of wedding-planning supplies on the café table. Weddings in the City did not yet have an office. One of the reasons I dreamed about that clock tower penthouse was because we’d have a ton of space to work on the main floor with a huge reclaimed wood table to sprawl around.
I had started Weddings in the City as a collaborative so that brides could have a one-stop shop for a beautiful, high-class wedding. Yours truly was the wedding planner. Amy, short and bubbly, created beautiful, locally grown flower arrangements. Sophie baked delicious wedding cakes decorated with her signature sculpted sugar flowers. Elsie cooked the tastiest catering ever. Brea designed and sewed one-of-a-kind, ethereal wedding dresses, and Grace was the wedding photographer extraordinaire.
You’d think with this many awesome ladies, we’d be more put together, but here we were running our business out of a coffee shop in between complaining about how expensive Manhattan was, how terrible New York City men were, and how entitled the brides could be.
Grace scooted her chair over to me.
“Did you seduce naked hot dude with your feminine wiles? Is Evan so infatuated with you that he is now going to pay for a Weddings in the City office?”
“No and no,” I scoffed. “I kicked him out.”
“Did you at least make him pay for the wedding?” Elsie asked in irritation.
“Bride’s family pays,” Sophie said.
