“I’m putting that out there in the universe,” she mumbled later as she rode the train to her office. “Again.”
However, when she walked over to her cubicle—ignoring the curious looks and barely whispered comments from her coworkers—and found an empty cardboard box on her desk, she knew the universe was team Evil Twin. It had to be.
The light on her phone blinked on a second before her boss’s voice came through on the intercom. “Hadley, can you please come see me?”
She didn’t have to ask what about. The box kinda made that pretty apparent.
“I’ll be there in just a minute,” she responded, calling up the reserves of her fake-it-until-you-make-it pride that she wasn’t sure she had enough of for this moment.
Then she packed up the personal items on her desk into her now-full box and carried it to her boss’s corner office, head held high and sniffles on lockdown because if faking it had ever meant something, it was right now.
The only thing that kept her from losing her shit right then was the memory of Will’s shocked expression when he’d realized what they’d done. If she could survive Will thinking for even a moment she was into him, she could survive getting fired.
She hoped.
…
The Holt family country home was two and a half hours north of Harbor City. It was also a million miles from the responsibilities of being one of the two most eligible bachelors and sole heirs to the fortune Jeremiah Holt had begun amassing during a crooked poker game in a half-burned-out speakeasy in the very woods Will was staring at while trying to figure out how to get his brother to ghost that woman.
She has a name.
No. He was not going there. Not again. He’d done that too many times since that kiss at the fundraiser and it had—without a single exception—ended up with him rubbing one out like he’d never made out with someone in a coatroom before. He had. Many times. Okay, that might be an exaggeration, but it wasn’t like Hadley was special.
Shit.
Her name. He ground his teeth, the ache in his jaw attesting to how much he’d been doing that lately. This time he would not give in. He would not remember. He would not think about her soft lips, her needy little moan, her silky-smooth thighs, her— Dammit, Holt. Get your shit together.
His brother, Web, cleared his throat as he glanced down at the cutting board in front of Will as they both stood in the kitchen. “Now, I’m not much of a cook, either, but I think that onion is chopped.”
Will looked at the minced-within-a-millimeter-of-its-existence onion for the chicken cacciatore. “Just making sure.”
“And the grumbling to yourself?” Web took two beers out of the fridge, popped the tops, set one down next to the cutting board, and took a drink from the other. “I mean, if this is stressing you out, we can just order Thai.”
“I was not grumbling to myself, and I’m not stressed,” he grumbled.
Web just raised one eyebrow and pointedly nodded toward the onion Will was apparently chopping—again.
Will set down the knife. “The recipe says ‘finely diced.’”
“Do you just want to talk about it?” Web asked, needling him the way only a brother could. “You know, unpack your feelings and admit you feel guilty that Hadley lost her job because of you and that I’m going out to Nebraska to be her plus-one for her sister’s wedding.”
There was nothing—nothing—about that sentence that didn’t make Will’s gut churn. Unpack his feelings? Admit guilt? Hadley? Nebraska? He grabbed the beer and downed half of it.
“It wasn’t my fault. I talked to her boss.” It hadn’t gone well, but he’d done what he could to isolate Hadley from the fallout of a pissed-off ex-fiancée with an eternal grudge. “I can’t help it if Mia, who is on the company’s board of directors, made all sorts of assumptions.” And, if the doorman-to-doorman gossip was to be believed, all but demanded that Hadley be fired. Thank God Web hadn’t outright asked him if the gossip was true. Surprisingly, he seemed to think Hadley would never even consider making out with Will.
He was tempted to tell Web the truth about why Hadley was so determined to spend time with him, why she always brought up how she could really help steer the Holt Foundation in a better direction. How she was so focused on the money that she brought a full-on spiral-bound prospective report. Then, whenever she and Web went anywhere besides that hole-in-the-wall place after rugby games, Web always picked up the tab. That she was always short for the cab ride home when Web insisted on covering the full fare. Plus, there was all the dream apartment shopping she did online, down to posting pictures on Insta of how she’d furnish her fantasy place. And the way she always seemed to be mentioning that she was between paychecks? Yeah, it sounded a little too much like the way Mia had set Will up to play the sucker with the sole purpose of marrying him for his money. That’s why he couldn’t stop thinking of Hadley. He had to protect his brother.
He needed to come up with a better way to break up Hadley’s gold-digging plans for Web.
Like admit to your brother that you kissed her?
Damn, he wished he knew why he couldn’t, but no matter how many times he’d tried today, he couldn’t get the words out, and that’s how he’d ended up with micro-diced onions. “Why do you care so much about her anyway? I’m your brother. You should feel bad that I got dragged into it.”
“You’ll be just fine,” his brother said. “And she’s my best friend who lost her job.”
The snort of uh-huh-sure came out before Will could stop it.
“Why is that so hard for you to believe?” Web asked. “What are you, some kind of asshole who doesn’t think men and women can be friends?”
No, but had his brother somehow miraculously never set eyes on Hadley’s ass? “Are you trying to say you aren’t attracted to her?”
Web shrugged. “She’s not my type.”
Considering the fact that Web’s type encompassed just about every woman, Will had a real fucking hard time believing that his twin wasn’t into Hadley. The woman obviously had to have her claws firmly planted in his brother’s balls if Web was willing to go to Nebraska, of all the godforsaken places, for Hadley’s sister’s wedding. And that was why he was dicing the shit out of onions to make Web’s favorite dinner as a way of softening him up and getting him to see the light. If a good meal couldn’t get Web to refocus his mind, then Will was going to have to do something drastic. He was the oldest, if only by five minutes, and the last living member of the Holt family besides his brother. Therefore, it was his responsibility to protect Web from what no one had been around to protect Will from: Hadley the gold digger.
Later that night, though, it was more than apparent that the most important thing to protect Web from at the moment was him dying of food poisoning. Will knocked on the bathroom door after the sounds of the latest round of gut hurling stopped.
“I swear to God, I didn’t give you food poisoning on purpose.” Sure, he was an asshole, but he wasn’t a murdering asshole. “I feel fine.”
Not even a twinge in his stomach, apart from the sympathy gagging whenever Web made puking noises.
“Great,” his brother said through the door. “So because you have the ability to ingest undercooked chicken, then I’m at fault here?”
Fuck. That was not what Will meant. “I followed the recipe and used the meat thermometer. My chicken was cooked all the way through.”
Web let out a long moan that would have sounded made up if he hadn’t spent the past ten minutes puking his guts up behind closed doors. “I’ll be sure to let my lawyers know.”
“Nut up, Web. You’re not going to die.” People didn’t die from slightly undercooked chicken, did they?
“I have a plane to catch tomorrow morning,” Web said, sounding pathetic and weak.
It was like the clouds parted and the sun appeared after a month of rainy days. In a heartbeat, he was smiling big enough to make his cheeks hurt.
“So don’t go.” There, problem solved. He should have poisoned his brother sooner.
“Fuck you, Will. There is a thing called loyalty.” There was more rustling behind the door, like his brother was shifting on the bathroom floor, and then a loud groan. “I promised Hadley I’d be her fake boyfriend at her sister’s wedding so she wouldn’t be so overwhelmed by her relatives. I can’t leave her to face her family alone.”
“What are they, cowboy zombies?”
How in the hell could they be worse than the woman herself? Short answer? They couldn’t be.
“They’re just a lot to take all at once.” The sound of more groans came through the door. “I guess I’ll just suffer through. If this lingers, I’m sure she’ll take care of me. It’ll give her an excuse to hang out alone with me so she can avoid her family. Really, you did her a favor.”
Oh hell no. Abso-fucking-lutely not. Hadley wasn’t going to tighten her hold on Web even more by being the one to nurse him back to health.
“I’ll take your place.” The words were out of Will’s mouth before his brain caught up.