At the Weddings in the City office, Ivy was doing the calligraphy on the last of the name cards while Grace was double-checking all her camera equipment. Normally Sophie and Elsie would be finishing up the cake and prepping the food. But they were all there waiting on me.
“Oh my God, Brea, what in the world?”
“So, good news,” I said, blowing out a breath. “Mark and I aren’t related. Bad news—he hates me for lying. And I basically ruined Liz’s wedding. And our shot at doing any more high-society weddings.” I sagged into a chair.
“Leftover wedding cake scraps?” Sophie offered. “Elsie saved some crab cakes for you.”
“We’ll survive the bad publicity,” Ivy assured me. “Dana is going to give us a reality TV show.”
“Ugh, no,” Elsie said.
“Well, it’s up for discussion. Point being, people will move on. Especially since you aren’t related.”
“I shouldn’t have lied to Mark,” I said.
“Honestly, he overreacted if you ask me,” Amy said. “I mean, what were you supposed to do, tell him the truth?”
“Yes?”
“No. Men are delicate creatures. You can’t come to them hysterical with problems. They will self-combust.”
I thought about Mark’s yelling at me earlier in the evening. It had been a long night. It was now the wee hours of the morning, and I was starting to get that loopy feeling. My mental spinning out about Mark wasn’t helping. I needed a nap. But we had a wedding in less than twelve hours.
“No kidding!”
“You need to move on from him,” Sophie insisted. “There are better billionaires crawling around in the toxic sludge of Manhattan that you can snag.”
Amy snickered. “The Svensson brothers were at my grandpa’s farm yesterday, asking me about you and wanting to know if you and Mark were having any problems. You could totally snag one of them.”
“Memphis Eve and I would both be dating Svensson brothers? No thanks,” I said, pacing as I slurped my coffee. “My life is crazy enough already. I’m not putting my vagina wherever hers was.”
“Well,” Amy said, shoving her phone at me. “You’ll be pleased to know that Wilder dumped Memphis Eve. Apparently one of his older brothers found out about the drama at the rehearsal dinner and pulled the plug on that relationship.”
“How do you even know that?”
“Harrogate has a Facebook group. All the juicy gossip is on there. Ooh nooo…” Amy said. “There’s a rumor that alcohol is going to be banned from town hall meetings. People are mad!”
“Small-town drama aside, you need to move on from Mark,” Elsie suggested.
“But I like him,” I complained and ate another piece of cake. The sugar and caffeine and lack of sleep were making me jittery.
“He’s never going to change,” Elsie told me.
“You’re right,” I said dejectedly. “And I clearly made him miserable. We just aren’t good together.”
The elevator dinged.
“Uh…” I counted, and all of my friends were there. “Who is that?”
The elevator opened to reveal Mark.
I crossed my arms.
“Uh,” Mark said. “Hi, Brea. Can we talk?” Mark shifted his weight.
“Honestly,” I said. “I don’t think there’s anything left to say.”
“I overreacted,” Mark began.
