My Super-Hot Fake Wedding Date

I frowned at him. “I don’t have time to get to know people because I work a hundred hours a week, and also, if I’m being honest, most of the men I meet underwhelm me. I have a best friend. I have a successful company. I don’t need to be with a guy just because ‘that’s what you do.’” I made air quotes. “My mother’s beside herself that I’m single, but you know what? Not everybody gets married.”

“So you don’t ever want to get married?”

I lifted my chin. “I didn’t say that. I just said I’m focused on my career. But honestly? Marriage isn’t all that important to me. Why does it seem like it’s all that’s important to everybody else?”

Chapter Seven

BOB

Chip stopped downtown, ran his errands, and hustled back to the car. We didn’t have much time left, so Madison and I kept talking.

“Not everybody has to get married,” I told her. But I felt as if she were waving a big red flag at me. I wanted to get married. I also wanted kids. I wanted a family sooner rather than later. Maybe that made me basic or something.

I glanced at the woman sitting next to me. She was very, very pretty, too pretty to be spending the weekend with under these circumstances. Ugh. Why did I yes to this? I vowed to keep my feet on the ground—not too much whiskey, not too many IPAs, and not too much slow dancing. I was a sucker for slow dancing, but not this weekend. No way, no how. I’d learned my lesson about playing with fire. I just got burned. I’d put five years into my relationship with Katie, even though she’d flown plenty of flags in my direction.

I’d learned the hard way.

The next time I dated someone, she was going to be a nice girl, someone sincere, one who didn’t care about how much money I had in the bank, one who loved me for who I was, one who wanted to settle down and have kids. With me. Not with my friend, not with my bank account, and not on some day far off in the future.

Chip turned off the main road into an upscale residential neighborhood. “We’re almost to the house.”

Madison bit her lip.

I patted her hand. “Don’t be nervous.” We might not be right for each other, but I could still be nice?

She shook her head. “You have my standing apology, okay? For however terrible my parents are.”

“Don’t worry. We’ll be fine.” My own father was a piece of work, but he was one of a kind. How bad could the Delaneys be?

Maddy pushed the button, and the privacy screen rolled down. “Hey, Chip. Did you get everything you needed?”

He eyed her in the rearview mirror. “I hope so. Your mother’s pretty…enthusiastic…about the wedding. So if I don’t have what she wants, I’m sure she’ll let me know.”

Maddy shook her head. “You’re a saint. I don’t know how you’ve worked for them for so long.”

He laughed, but it sounded perfunctory. “They’ve taken very good care of me. You know that.” He maneuvered the large SUV down a long driveway. All I could see were woods, but when the trees cleared, I sucked in a deep breath.

“Here we are.” Madison didn’t sound excited about it.

“Whoa.” She’d called it an estate. It was an estate on steroids. Or a small, ultra-elite neighborhood on one massive lot.

A green lawn fit for a golf course spread out on either side of the drive. I could see the Atlantic from here. Waves crashed toward the shore of what must have been a private beach. The Delaney mansion sprawled at the end of the drive, beckoning in its pitch-perfect level of opulence. The main house was enormous, replete with a widow’s walk and several connected wings. It looked as if it were five houses in one. Covered in slate-gray shingles with white shutters, it embodied the perfect Nantucket style.

I smiled encouragingly at Madison. “Looks like we’ll have plenty of room to spread out—or hide if we need to.”

“You’d think so, huh?” She sounded very doom and gloom, which was really something considering the beautiful home in front of us.

I’d thought my parents had money. They owned a chain of car dealerships on the South Shore. We’d lived in a nice house, always had money for vacations, and my parents had paid cash for our college tuitions. My parents belonged to a country club. I had a trust fund. But clearly, the Palm

ieris were not in the same stratosphere as the Delaneys. I’d never seen a house like the Delaneys’ except in the movies. We had money; they had an empire.

Plus, my family was proudly tacky. My father wore chubby gold rings, and we had a decorative fountain with multicolored lights in our front yard. I’d never understood the knack wealthy people like the Delaneys had for being understated. It was as if they showed their insanely good breeding by restraining themselves from having pet tigers stationed nearby and marble columns fake-supporting the edifice of their mansion. The absence of showing off put me on notice: these people were insanely, monochromatically rich.

“What does your family do?”

Maddy frowned. “My mother’s family had money. They invested in railroads.”

I raised my eyebrows. “Apparently it worked out for them.”