Page 3 of Baby for My Ex's Brother

“And make a scene at a wedding in my hotel,” he cuts in. “In front of two hundred guests, a third of whom have a professional relationship with me.”

“I wasn’t going to make a scene?—”

He looks at me, an eyebrow raising.

“It’s a very dignified speech,” I continue, “One I designed to surgically eviscerate your stepbrother in front of his new child bride.” Which gives me pause. “Okay, maybe I was going to make a tiny scene?—”

“Right.” He reaches into the interior pocket of his jacket, produces a slim silver case, and I think for a surreal moment that he’s about to offer me a cigarette, but he just opens and closes it once—a thinking gesture, maybe—and puts it away. “Hugo has recently made things very difficult for me. Professionally. This marriage is a problem I didn’t need and didn’t consent to.” He pauses. “We had words, before the ceremony.”

I think about Hugo and this man having words and decide that it must have been a very specific and probably one-sided kind of words. Like an Italian Greyhound going up against a Mastiff.

An angry Mastiff.

“He said some things,” Ivan continues, “that I would prefer to respond to personally.”

“And what does that have to do with me?”

He looks at me then with the full weight of those almost-black eyes, and I become briefly and intensely aware that I’m in a very small space with a very large, very serious person who has, by his own account, reasons to want Hugo Dumas to suffer, which puts us in rare and somewhat alarming company. At some point, Hugo cared about me. If this giant wants revenge…

“Um—”

“You want him to see you happy. Unbroken. With someone he cannot compete with.” He says this without vanity, which somehow makes it worse. Or better? I can’t decide. “I want him to understand that his position is not what he believes it to be. That his choices have consequences.”

It clicks. “So you want to use me to upset him at his own wedding.”

“I want to offer you the opportunity to upset him at his own wedding. A speech is all well and good, but what is the old phrase? Show, don’t tell?”

Feels like a pity to waste all that time on a speech and not use it.

But the same is true of this dress. If I go in there and do my speech and leave, what was the point of the dress? What was the point of any of this, if I don’t ruin his big day properly?

I purse my lips, and then take the bait. “Okay, what exactly are you proposing then, Ivan?”

He looks at me in the warm, dim light of a coat closet in his own hotel. “Play my date tonight, and we’ll show Hugo what it means to regret. Together.”

A dozen thoughts come to mind. Cherry would want me to ask follow-up questions. Uncle Marty would tell me to try any approach I wanted, because he supports me no matter what. My therapist, if I had one, would strongly advise against doing any of this, because it’s crazy.

Which is all the answer I need.

I smile up at Ivan. “Yes.”

2

IVAN

Luna Ambrose walksinto a room the way a match strikes, and now, Hugo is on fire.

He notices us the moment we cross the threshold. The color drains out of his face in a way that is, I will admit, deeply satisfying. He’s standing near the head table with a glass of champagne and his new father-in-law, looking exactly as he always looks—polished, handsome, and performative.

And when we walk in, the performance stuttered.

Luna makes a small sound beside me. “Look at his face?—”

“No.” I keep my eyes forward, nodding to a man I recognize from the hotel’s catering contract. “If we look, then he knows we’re doing this for him. Let him wonder what is going on. Let him stew on it.”

She glances away. I can feel the effort it takes her. She smiles at a passing guest she has never met in her life with the warm ease of someone who belongs here entirely, and I revise my estimation of her upward by several degrees.

For all his bitching about this woman, Luna is rather impressive. She takes my cues well, not faltering in the slightest. I wonder how long she’s been performing for rooms, too. That kind of talent comes from years of practice.