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“You know, you don’t have to gossip behind my back,” I told them.
“Oh, we plan to do it in front of you too,” Meredith said. Cade’s wife was just as feisty as he was. And she’d slowly adopted every new girlfriend/fiancée over the years. Which was why I wasn’t surprised when she said, “I want to meet Allison. We all do. We need to give her a proper welcome to the family.”
Her words struck a chord. This was bizarre. I wanted Allison to feel at ease with all of us Whitleys, but this was nothing more than a charade, after all.
“I’ll talk to her and set something up,” I assured her.
Meredith tilted her head. “Good. Because we have some questions for both of you about the city hall thing. But we’ll give you time to organize yourselves first.”
“How magnanimous of you,” I taunted.
“Oh, it is,” she said. “It really is.”
I spent the entire day with my family and didn’t check my phone once. We’d moved on from the topic of my impendingmarriage to other things, thankfully. I only checked my messages after I left Essex.
Allison had texted a few hours ago.
Allison: How did it go? What did your family say?
I grinned as I replied.
Nick: As expected. They all pointed out how batshit crazy this is. But we have their support. And they might show up at city hall too. Gran refuses to miss a wedding.
Allison: But this isn’t real!
Nick: Doesn’t seem to matter. Might legitimize it more. I’ll start all the formalities and let you know how it’s going.
Allison: Thanks a lot!
This was happening. Allison and I were getting married—and I was looking forward to it.
Chapter Thirteen
Allison
Nick: I’m taking care of everything related to the marriage license. I should have everything ready this week.
What a way to begin my day. I hadn’t even started sipping my coffee, yet my heart was already in overdrive. Then again, the past two weeks had been slightly insane. I felt like I was going through the motions. Every day seemed to blur into the next one. Even for a simple marriage, there were still a ton of things that needed to be taken care of.
Allison: Thanks for organizing this.
He called me the next second.
“Good morning.”
I chuckled. “How do you sound so chipper?”
“I’ve already had enough caffeine that I could run a marathon. Listen, Frances, my assistant, says that city hall needs us to choose which room we want to have the ceremony in.”
I blinked. “I thought it was going to be based on how many guests there are.”
“Yeah, about that.”
I found myself smiling for no reason. “You couldn’t talk your family out of joining.”
“Honestly, I didn’t even try. Whitleys love weddings.”
“Even a fake one?” I double-checked. “They know it’s fake, right?”