Page 70

Chapter 22

Holly

Holly found Cole dutifully getting dressed, adjusting the sleeves of his suit coat and fidgeting with his hair—fixing wave by individual wave with his very expensive curler/blow-dryer.

“Nicholas Fraser, are there lobsters embroidered on your suit? For a Jewish wedding?”

He grinned. “I asked Rabbi Ruth and they assured me it was hilarious.”

Holly eyed him. “Is hilarious what you were going for?”

“Holly Siobhan Delaney, letting people think I’m hilarious is how I get away with everything. Also, it’s fun.”

How did he know her middle name? She suddenly realized he’d probably run a full background check on her, to protect Tara, without telling either of them.

She didn’t ask. Instead, she told him, “You’re a beautiful blond, blue-eyed cis white man with millions of dollars, Cole. That’s how you get away with everything.”

“I mean, you’re obviously not wrong, but—wait, we should definitely have a conversation about the ways in which the kyriarchy both enables and tightly restricts behavior, but not today! I have to go take pictures, and watch my BFF get married, and dance with my cute boyfriend.” He picked up his blow-dryer again, and Holly took it out of his hands.

“Your hair looks perfect. As long as you were going for majestic surfer waves. If not, we need to start over.”

He looked in the mirror. “Do you think there’s time to start over?” he fretted.

“No. Put on your tie and let’s get moving.” She put the tie in question in his hands.

He snatched it up, twirled it around, and began to tie it around his neck with a deft hand. He had, apparently, done this a time or two. “So,” he said, “how are things going with you and Tara? Any inconvenient feelings developing?” He waggled his eyebrows at her.

“Look,” she sighed, “it would be hard not to develop some romantic feelings for Tara. She’s one of the most incredible people I’ve ever met.”

Cole pumped his fist in the air. “Honestly, everyone who’s not obsessed with her is wrong.”

“It’s not that simple, Nicholas. We’re way too different for it to ever work.”

He made a scoffing noise. “That’s fake. Look at Sawyer and me. We’re wildly different people. He’s an upstanding local politician. I’m…” He trailed off, clearly trying to decide how much to say about what he actually did.

She smirked. “I hate to tell you this, but local politicians and criminals have been in bed together since time immemorial.”

“But I love the ocean, and he loves the mountains! I’m an Episcopalian who almost went into the priesthood and he’s an atheist! I want us to commit to forever, but he doesn’t believe in marriage, and I would never invite the government into my sex life!”

Counting on her fingers, she countered, “You’re very rich, so you have a sailboat on the coast and you go there whenever you want. You can have a nice Unitarian commitment ceremony with a humanist minister and never file a marriage license, everyone wins. You almost went into the priesthood?!”

“Tara’s also very rich, which I’m sure can solve several of your problems. We don’t talk about the priesthood. If I look too closely at the call to ministry, it gets louder, so we pretend it’s not there.”

“You’re a really odd duck,” Holly told him. “Good, but odd.”

“It’s because I’m a swan,” he said seriously, as if this made everything about him make sense. And, honestly, maybe it did. “Look, I’m not saying there’s nothing standing between you and Tara. I know Tara. She self-sabotages like it’s a full-time job. I don’t know you well enough to know your fatal character flaws yet, but I’m sure you have them.”

Holly gasped in mock indignation. “I’m practically perfect in every way.”

She straightened his bow tie, patted him on the arm, and pulled him out the door. Once he was safely deposited with the photographer, she watched him pose with the brides and goof around with Tara. He said something to her that made her fold in half with laughter. She hadn’t even known Tara’s spine bent that way. Or that she was capable of laughing that hard. Holly wondered how Tara thought she could ever be happy living half a country away from Cole. Maybe the long-term separation would make her start to realize that there was nothing in Charleston that made her happy.

“She seems to fit here, doesn’t she?” Elijah Green asked, coming to stand next to her.

“I wish I could convince her that she could be professionally and personally fulfilled here,” Holly said. “Her family is slowly poisoning her, and I really like her, but I know if we got involved, it would poison me, too.” She looked over at Elijah, who was listening politely. “Sorry, that’s so much info I just dumped on you.”

He raised one shoulder elegantly. “I wouldn’t hang out with this group if I didn’t sort of enjoy people dumping their drama on me. It’s a hobby. Come to Carrigan’s, make some popcorn, hear the mess.”

“Aren’t you, like, a very busy lawyer and a parent to young twins and a competitive Scrabble player in your spare time? Do you have time for other hobbies?” she asked him.