PROLOGUE
Thatcher
“Thatcher, are you sure you want to go through with this? It’s never too late to back out.” My mother wasn’t helping my nerves. At all.
“Yes,” I snapped, tired of her second guessing me. “I love Carrie. I don’t know how many times I have to tell you that before it sinks in. I love her, and I’m marrying her. Today.”
Mom was pacing back and forth in her elegant mother of the groom dress. Even her Botox injections didn’t keep her from looking upset. She’d made her feelings clear for weeks now. Months, really. She’d made every single step of this wedding planning process as difficult as she possibly could.
“She’s just… so different. The women you’ve dated in the past are all tall and elegant, beautiful and cultured. They’re part ofour world.”
I closed my eyes. I was so sick of hearing this shit. “I know!” I yelled, making her stop walking and stare at me. I lowered my voice. “I’m aware that Carrie is not who you were hoping I’d be walking down the aisle with. But you’re not marrying her. I am.”
“Thatcher. She’s from this little nothing town in the middle of nowhere…”
“She lives thirty minutes from Atlanta. Quit being dramatic. Besides, her family is among the wealthiest in her town. She’snot totally clueless about ‘our world,’ as you call it. Doesn’t that count for something?”
My father, who’d been mainly silent to this point, snorted. “What the fuck is this town called again?”
“Indigo Falls.”
He chuckled. “You think being a wealthy family inIndigo Fallscompares to being one of the wealthiest families in Atlanta?”
“Well… no. Of course not. But it’s not like she’s from a run-down tenement crawling with drug dealers. She lives in an exclusive gated community with three- and four-story houses, for fuck’s sake.”
My mother wrung her hands. “Oh, I just wish you would’ve married Madison when you had the chance.”
My expression hardened as I tried to hide the pain her name brought up. Madison Welles and I had dated for years. I’d thought I was going to marry her. But then she’d canceled our wedding three weeks before we were scheduled to walk down the aisle. She chose a modeling contract in Paris over me. It happened a couple of years ago, but I still wasn’t over it. Even though I loved Carrie, I knew I would never be completely over Madison. To be honest, I was afraid Madison was the love of my life.
I rubbed the back of my neck. “Don’t bring her up on this day of all days.”
“I just think you should consider reaching back out to her…”
“She dumped me and ran off to Europe three weeks before we were supposed to get married!” I jumped up, just about ready to leave the room and find someplace else to go. Anywhere else, really, as long as my parents weren’t there.
“I’m sorry,” Mom said placatingly, sensing she was about to drive me away. “It’s just that I’m trying to keep you from making a terrible mistake.”
I rolled my eyes and looked at my watch pointedly.
“Karen, let me talk to him man to man for a minute,” my father insisted.
“Fine.” Mom threw up her hands. “I hope you have more luck than I have. Who would’ve thought our most outstanding child, the one destined to be CEO of Caldwell Financial, would turn out to marry some random girl whose family isn’t even in theSocial Register?” she hissed. She strode out, her shoes making extra loud sounds on the wood floors in the almost empty room.
I sighed. “What is it, Dad?”
“Thatch, I get it. She’s a fine piece of ass. But you don’tmarrya girl like her. You marry a girl like Madison and fuck a girl like Carly on the side.”
“Carrie.”
“What?”
“Carrie. The name of the woman I’m marrying is Carrie. And I don’t know why you and Mom are acting as if she’s a sex worker I picked up in a bar. She’s from a well-respected family in a nice town. Her dad is the mayor, for fuck’s sake. She isnot,” I emphasized, “side piece material.”
“Whatever. With those tits and that ass, I think we all know why you’re marrying her. Madison might be stunning, but she’s got the body of Olive Oyl from those Popeye cartoons. Not too much to hold on to while you fuck her, huh?”
My God. I didn’t even have a response for that.
I rubbed the bridge of my nose and hoped the headache that was building wouldn’t turn into a migraine. I don’t know why they acted like I had a choice in the matter. Madison leftme, not the other way around.
