Prologue
Teddy Ray Fletcher
“What’s up, tampon strings?”
Protests erupted around Teddy Ray Fletcher as a curvy bridesmaid appeared at the end of a pew, her inky black hair twisted into an elegant updo and her bright pink dress setting off the colorful tattoos on her light olive shoulders.
“Sunny Palmer, we’re in achurch—”
“I think that’s Nolan’s grandmother behind you—”
“And I,” declared Jack Hart, former porn star, living Ken doll, and the only wedding guest to have brought a dog to the ceremony, “am a body-safe menstrual cup, at the very least.”
Sunny narrowed her dark brown eyes, and Teddy sensed another outbreak of the long-standing war between the two, a war begun when Sunny took Jack’s ex-stepmother home from his wedding six years back. Rumor had it that the feud had been interrupted only once, for a threesome starring the heartbroken pop idol Isaac Kelly, but Teddy had long ago stopped trusting Uncle Ray-Ray’s rumor mill. Much as he loved his quirky littlealliance of sexpots, misfits, and flexible adventurers with even more flexible attitudes toward public decency laws, the people employed (or employed-adjacent) by Teddy’s porn production studio were prone to...
Well, there was no nice way of saying it. They were dramatic as fuck.
Besides, the notoriously broody Isaac Kelly and the plucky Sunny together? Teddy had seen a lot of things in his time, but that beggared belief.
“Is the trolley back yet?” Teddy asked, hoping to forestall yet another Sunny and Jack squabble. “We’re starving.” He had more important things to worry about than babysitting hungry porn stars. Like finding a way to propose to the pantsuited woman next to him, who was currently craning her neck to scan the emptying chapel. Even though they were here for the wedding of Bee Hobbes and Nolan Shaw—the adult content creator and the disgraced boy band member who’d met, fallen in love, and caused a scandal during the filming of a wholesome Christmas movie—the woman next to Teddy was still very much on the clock.
Steph D’Arezzo, talent manager, did not sleep on a chance to make money.
At least the distraction worked. Sunny huffed out a sigh. “Ronald is a slow driver.”
“Ronald is acarefuldriver, and a goddamned pillar of this community,” Jack countered. His decrepit dog—a half-blind critter with fur the color of old milk—growled weakly in agreement.
Teddy was inclined to believe Sunny in this, having been on a few of Ronald’s trolley drives since he started side-hustling cheesy holiday movies here in Christmas Notch, Vermont. But before Sunny had a chance to retort, Teddy’s son, Angel, appeared behind her with a panicked look on his face.
“The strippers,” he said, breathing hard. “They’re going to beat us to the trolley.”
The whole pew stood at once in a clamor, shoving and grumping at one another to get out. Bee and Nolan’s wedding had been beautiful, moving, stunningly designed, but the people were ready for food. And there’d been whispers of a nacho bar.
“Vixen will destroy those nachos before anyone else has a chance to eat them,” Jack warned, and for once, everyone was in agreement with Jack Hart. They had to get to the trolley before the strippers.
Because Teddy was a gentleman, he offered his arm to Steph, who took it, but only so she could twist around and look one last time at the sanctuary while he guided them safely down the aisle to the door.
“I don’t see him,” she said anxiously.
“Who?”
“Isaac Kelly! I need to talk to him before he disappears again!”
Steph was desperate to collect the last jewel of the boy band INK for her talent management crown. She’d already successfully restarted Nolan Shaw’s career and turned Kallum Lieberman into America’s premier dad bod thirst trap.
And the last boy bander standing was Isaac, the heartthrob with a broken heart, the handsome recluse who’d been unable to write, sing, or record since his pop star wife died four years ago.
Of course, the problem with coaxing a recluse into becoming your client was that you had totalkto the recluse first, and Isaac Kelly was a hard person to talk to, even after he’d left his gated Malibu home for a Gilded Age mansion here in Christmas Notch. This wedding was the first time anyone had seen him in public for a very long time (a certain threesome two years ago notwithstanding).
“He’s one of the groomsmen. I’m sure he’s with Nolan and Kallum taking pictures wherever Sunny just disappeared to,” Teddy soothed.
“But what if he doesn’t come to the reception?” Steph asked.
“He’ll be there,” Teddy said confidently. “Even former teen idols wouldn’t say no to a free nacho bar. Oh shit, I think the strippers are going to make it outside before we do.”
Steph narrowed her eyes at the gaggle of bouncy-haired women in front of them, all tottering on inadvisably high heels and wearing the kind of minidresses that made it hard to move your legs.
“Not if we have anything to say about it,” Steph said with grim pleasure, and then like a New York–honed knife through butter, she expertly cut through the crowd, dragging Teddy behind her.
