Total pages in book: 118
Estimated words: 120838 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 604(@200wpm)___ 483(@250wpm)___ 403(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 120838 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 604(@200wpm)___ 483(@250wpm)___ 403(@300wpm)
If we ran out of food, I was going to kill Mum.
Though, as usual, it looked like Dair and Davina were fitting right in. Gal and Katie, Alex’s best friends, were sizing up Dair like he was a mountain they were determined to climb (and both of them were taken, he was just that sinful to women). And they’d made besties with Davina in what seemed like seconds.
Whereas I’d been regularly coming out to Prescott now for ages and it seemed they could barely tolerate me.
Sure, they were nice…ish.
But they’d been cackling with Davina for the last hour.
They’d never cackled with me.
So, I didn’t cackle. I was too…me to cackle.
But that didn’t mean I didn’t want to be a part of cackling, even if I didn’t cackle myself.
“You’ve barely said two words to him,” Mum kept at me.
I refocused on her. “Not true. I said five. They were, ‘What are you doing here?’”
Her eyes grew big and horrified.
They then turned to annoyed slits.
“Blake,” she bit. “Please tell me you did not.”
I got closer to her and lowered my voice. “Mum, they weren’t invited.”
“An oversight I’ll take you to task for since you cast yourself as your sister’s wedding planner,” Mum retorted.
“I didn’t cast myself,” I said. “Alex isn’t into that kind of thing. She asked me to do it for her. Since I am into that kind of thing, and she’s my sister, I’m doing it for her.”
“She should have hired someone,” Mum sniffed.
After saying that, her eyes got mean, so per usual, I braced, something I was very good at since Mum got mean a lot.
Alex learned early to check out.
I wasn’t that smart.
All my life (or, until recently), every sting from her hit its mark, releasing the poison.
I’d been infected with it for years.
It was only lately I’d started searching for an antidote.
That search, mind you, hadn’t been entirely successful.
But I was getting there (I hoped).
“You couldn’t even handle your own wedding preparations,” she noted snidely.
I wanted to bite, that bait was so juicy. I really, really did.
But, I told myself firmly, I was not that Blake anymore.
Helena Coddington-Sharp sure made it hard not to take a big bite, though.
With some effort, I changed subjects.
“The rehearsal dinner is for family and members of the wedding party,” I hissed. “They’re neither.”
“They’ve been family friends for decades,” she shot back. “Therefore, practically family.”
“Alex hasn’t seen any of them for years,” I returned.
“That doesn’t make them any less family,” Mum replied.
“Actually, it does. Newsflash, Mum, like my wedding wasn’t your wedding, even if you took it over, Alex’s wedding isn’t your wedding either.”
That made Mum mad, and she didn’t hide it. “I did everything as you’d wish it to be.”
“How do you know what I wished?” I asked. “You didn’t ask. Furthermore, you don’t know me. Back then, I didn’t even know me.”
“I know you made the biggest mistake of your life letting Chad Head slip through your fingers.”
I blinked, the shock I felt at her statement was so profound.
Then I stared.
“He cheated on me…a lot,” I reminded her.
“He didn’t put his ring on any of those women’s fingers,” she reminded me.
I knew she was crazy.
But that was insane.
“Mum, he cheated on me…even just days before our wedding. At a party celebrating our rapidly upcoming nuptials, he was fucking a friend of mine in a broom closet or something.”
“This is a woman’s lot,” she rejoined.
God!
She wasn’t to be believed.
“Maybe it was in 1567, when women had no power,” I stated. “Now a woman can tell a man who can’t keep his dick in his pants to go fuck himself.”
Mum opened her mouth, her eyes flicked over my shoulder, she jolted, then her entire countenance changed from infuriated to obsequious.
“Wallace, dear, how are you enjoying the party?” she asked.
Oh hell.
I turned.
And yes, there he was. All six foot four, muscled mass of him wearing a nice, chestnut-colored button down and jeans. If the damned man didn’t open his mouth, you’d think he’d been born in the desert mountains we were currently inhabiting.
By the by, Mum had always called him Wallace, and I didn’t know why. It felt like some nod to old aristocracy or something, even though her (yes, my) family were aristocrats, and the Wallaces were not. They were just filthy rich.
I sensed Dair wasn’t a fan of it, but he’d never said anything.
I took him in up close.
He wasn’t carrying another plate of food, thank God.
But those perfectly full lips in his tanned, rugged outdoorsman face were twitching like he was fighting a smile.
He’d heard what I’d said about Chad.
And it amused him.
God, I wanted to punch him.
I’d been wanting to punch him since I was six, and he was nine, and he’d taken me to that awful room in that horrible building on his family’s estate where they skinned all the deer they’d hunted that day, making me cry and gag and go screaming to my mother, who’d then forced me to eat venison that night.