Page 101 of Merry Fake Bride

I’m about to hang up on her, but she won’t stop, so reluctantly, I answer.

“Hello?”

“Oh, so you’re not dead,” she snaps. “Could have fooled me.”

“What do you want?”

“Is that any way to speak to your mother?”

Tension bleeds through me but before it reaches my heart with the painfully familiar barbs, Devon’s thumb runs over my knuckles and I’m soothed.

“I already told you I can’t make dinner. Anything else can wait until morning.”

“This can’t,” she replies shortly. “If you’d come to dinner, then I would have told you in person, but the board decided you should give a speech on Saturday.”

“Saturday?”

“Yes! The Christmas gala? Our yearly tradition? The highlight of my festive calendar? Don’t tell me you forgot!”

Her exasperation grates on me and I wince.

“I didn’t forget,” I assure her with a half-lie. “This month has just been going so quickly that I thought it was still weeks away.”

“Hmm. Well, your suit fitting is tomorrow. Don’t be late.” She hangs up and Devon’s head tilts, observing me with curiosity.

Her words, as cut off as they were, swirl in my mind.

She’s right.

We are from different worlds and this entire time, I’ve been keeping her a secret.

But she has a meeting about the bakery on Thursday, which will end this dilemma once and for all, and the gala is on Saturday.

My smile widens. “Want to come to a party?”

Her eyes light up. “Like a fancy party?”

“Mmhmm.”

“Yes, please.”

26

DEVON

Thursday arrives, and I spend most of the morning puking up from nerves.

When my lawyer was handling everything, the fight for the bakery seemed much less intimidating, but today is decision day.

I have to stand in front of a judge with my lawyer by my side and lay out my case, hoping they will take my side.

“You ready?” My family lawyer, Augustus, stands by my side with a briefcase in one hand and a mountain of papers under the other arm.

“No,” I say hoarsely. “I can’t move.”

“I know it seems scary.” He chuckles. “Your father used to always have a shot of whiskey at the bar around the corner before he faced down any judge.”

I meet Augustus’s twinkling eyes, blind to all the other well-dressed people hurrying around us. “My father?”