The Wedding Date Disaster (Harbor City 4)

“Why are you here, Web?” Quite frankly, she couldn’t take another breakup from a Holt.

If Web was aware they were about to have a friendship breakup, he didn’t act like it. “To feed you and ply you with spicy liquor until you agree to do me a huge favor.”

“I’m not talking to Will.”

“Me either.” He grabbed two clean glasses from the drying rack next to the sink and poured the Bloody Marys. “No, this is for the Holt Foundation. I have a last-minute job, and I know you probably have other clients already lined up, but I’m desperate. We have an event on Friday to raise funds for the Best Buds organization and need someone to talk to potential donors about why it’s such a great opportunity.”

“That was the charity I recommended we work with before I got fired.” It paired shelter animals with kids newly adopted from foster care who helped to take care of them, the end result being that they bonded and it made the transition easier for both kids and animals.

The people at her old job felt the charity was too “downtown” and had opted to stay with their current projects of building hospital cardiac wings and adding libraries to university campuses.

“It was? Imagine that.” Web took a long drink of his Bloody Mary, looking anything but surprised. “Anyway, we’re not working with your last employer anymore and could use an innovative consultant to make sure we’re doing the most with our donations and the funds we raise at events.”

Damn. The tears were back. Sucking in a deep breath, Hadley stared extra hard at the kitchen cabinets to the left of Web. She didn’t want to turn down the chance to help Best Buds, but there was no way she could work with the Holt Foundation, not after what Will had said. Then she would just be using him, maybe not as a gold digger, but it was close.

“Web, you don’t have to—”

“But I do.” He took her by the shoulders, looking her straight in the face, his green eyes so similar to Will’s but not the same. “We only work with the best at the Holt Foundation, and that’s you. Please. I’m asking as a friend. I need your help.”

The sincerity in his words hit her right in the feels. Damn it. Why was it so hard to do the right thing when it came to the Holt brothers? “I don’t know what to say.”

“Tell me you’ll do it so we can toast with these Bloody Marys and then trash talk my idiot brother.”

“Yes.” The agreement came out before she had a chance to stop it.

Web, knowing he’d won, handed her a glass and clinked hers in a toast before they both took a big drink to seal the deal.

“He misses you, you know,” Web said a few minutes later. “I just wanted you to be aware that he knows he was an asshole. I wouldn’t be surprised if he showed up on your doorstep. Of course, I’m not g

oing to interfere in what happens with you two next. I’m not that type of guy. I let people take care of their own lives, and I stay out of it.”

Even with the extra-strong Bloody Mary starting to hit her system, Hadley knew bullshit when it was flung her way. “Web, what are you up to?”

“Absolutely nothing.” He pushed a to-go container of food and a set of plastic utensils across the table to her. “Come on, these eggs Benedict aren’t going to eat themselves.”

Hadley wasn’t fooled, not even a little, by Web’s protests, but the food from Medusa’s smelled too good to argue about it—at least at the moment. It could wait, because no matter how much she still thought about him, she was done with Will Holt. Period.

There was absolutely nothing that would change her mind.

…

Will hadn’t slept more than two hours at a time since he left the ranch, because every time he closed his eyes, he saw Hadley. It was like his subconscious was determined to make him relive every moment with her until he lost his fucking mind. Well, he was damn close. So much so that he was actually beginning to consider he might—might—have been wrong about her motives.

Pacing the length of his sixtieth-floor office, the high-rise-dotted skyline of Harbor City outside of the floor-to-ceiling windows, the unfamiliar sense of uncertainty crept up his spine like ants he couldn’t flick away. Had he been wrong? Had she been telling the truth the entire time? He’d spent his life imagining the worst, prepping for disaster, knowing before anyone else in the room what was going to happen next. It was the only way to protect himself and Web from a chaotic world where no one answered why. Bad shit just happened, end of story. He couldn’t have gotten it wrong. Not this time. Not when it mattered this much.

Then why can’t you sleep at night, dumbass?

“Damn, you look like shit,” Web said as he walked into Will’s office like he hadn’t been ignoring his twin for the past week.

“What, you’re talking to me again?” Will asked.

Web shrugged and plopped down in one of the two leather chairs in front of Will’s desk. “I figured you’ve had enough time to sit and marinate in your own idiocy and were ready to go grovel to Hadley.”

Grovel? Why in the hell would he do that?

Because you were a class-A dick.

“And to think people consider you the nice one,” he said.