Page 18 of Now That It’s You (The Can’t Have Hearts Club #5)

“ S o what did your agent say?”

Kendall grabbed one of Meg’s cucumber and salmon crudités and took a bite, propping her feet on the edge of Meg’s coffee table.

“She said it’s after ten p.m. on a Saturday on the East Coast, so she needed a little more time to track down the legal team.”

“But does she think you ought to fight it?”

“Of course,” Meg said, glum at the thought of fighting anything. She just wanted to curl up in a ball and savor the notion that someone besides her mom and her best friend had read her cookbook.

“Good,” Kendall said, taking another vicious bite of the crudités. “You did all the work on that damn book. You deserve to reap the benefit.”

“Not all the work?—”

“Honey, you paid off your debt to anyone else who had a hand in it. That graphic designer you bartered with to lay the whole thing out—she’s not showing up on your doorstep demanding a cut, is she?”

“Of course not. I catered her wedding for free.” She shrugged. “I did send her flowers the other day though, and thanked her for doing such a beautiful job making the book pretty.”

“See? Debt settled. Just like it was with Matt. He took those photos as a favor to his fiancée. Just because you didn’t walk down the aisle doesn’t negate the fact that he’s the one who volunteered to do the pictures.

How many of his office parties did you cater without ever expecting a dime from him? ”

“Too many to count,” Meg admitted. “And you’re right, it’s not like I ever demanded a share of the business deals he closed over my bruschetta.”

“Exactly. It’d be like the guy who fixed your laptop showing up to demand a share of book sales because you couldn’t have written it without him.”

“Not exactly like that,” Meg pointed out, feeling a pinprick of guilt between her ribs. “I paid the laptop guy with cash. It’s the barter system that keeps this from being a clear-cut case, according to my agent.”

“Tit for tat,” Kendall muttered. “Or in this case, tit for pic.”

“Ew.”

“Well, it’s true.” Kendall flopped back on the couch. “You two were sleeping together. You were engaged to be married. In a way, you were both swapping sexual favors for each other’s work on a regular basis.”

“Thank you. Bringing prostitution into the equation is exactly what we need to make this less complicated.” Meg sighed. “If I’d finished paying off that damn bill right away, this might not be an issue.”

“You were paying off the wedding, ” Kendall pointed out. “Some arbitrary photography fee he imposed just to get back at you was hardly your top priority.”

“Yes, but it’s the backbone of their lawsuit now. The fact that he hadn’t been fully paid when he passed away.”

Kendall chomped another appetizer. “It’s too bad you never had any sort of contract.”

“I never thought we needed to. We were getting married, and we’d had a joint checking account for years by then. Any proceeds would have just gone into that account, and then the book didn’t sell any copies anyway and?—

A knock sounded at the door, cutting off the defense that was starting to sound weak even to Meg’s ears. She and Kendall both turned toward the foyer, gazes fixed on the large figure standing on the other side of the frosted-glass panel in her door.

“Ten bucks says it’s your closet kissing companion,” Kendall murmured.

“No bet.”

“I still can’t believe you ditched me for thirty minutes this afternoon to lock lips among the cleaning supplies.”

“I told you, I was only in the closet ten minutes. The rest of the time I was being cornered by Chloe and the clones.”

“Yeah, after meeting her, I can’t blame you for wanting to run off and gargle bleach.”

The knock sounded again, and Meg pushed herself up off the sofa and headed for the door.

Part of her hoped Kendall was right and Kyle would be standing on the other side.

She’d wanted to flee the funeral right after Sylvia’s confrontation, but it had taken her a while to find Kendall.

Then she’d had another run-in with Chloe, and in all the confusion, she’d never said a proper goodbye to Kyle.

She heard Kendall on her heels, and turned to see her best friend slinging her purse over her shoulder. “You’re leaving?” Meg asked.

“Assuming that’s Kyle, you’re going to need some time alone together. And I need some time alone with my vibrator. Call me later with the details.”

“Ew,” Meg said, swinging open her front door.

“Bye-bye,” Kendall said to Kyle, patting him on the shoulder as she breezed past. “Go easy on her, bud. She’s had a rough day.”

“Unlike the guy who just buried his brother?” Meg muttered, looking up at Kyle. “Sorry about that. She doesn’t think sometimes.”

“It’s okay. He wasn’t buried, anyway.”

“Cremated. You know what I mean.” She bit her lip. “Are you okay?”

“Fine. All things considered, anyway. I wanted to talk about what happened today.”

Meg snorted. “You might have to narrow that down a little. You mean the part where Chloe got drunk and called me a filthy whore before your dad dragged her out to the car?”

“Technically, she called you a filthy hoo-er,” Kyle pointed out. “Thanks to the aforementioned drunkenness, there was an extra syllable in the word.”

“Which let me enjoy it twice as much.” She cleared her throat. “Then there’s the fact that you kissed me in a closet.”

“Technically, you kissed me . But I’m not here to talk about that, either.”

“So that leaves your mom.” Meg gripped the door a little tighter, not sure she wanted to be having this conversation right now.

But there was no avoiding it, was there?

She sighed. “Or I guess I should say, your mom’s decision to hit me with both a bouquet of daisies and a lawsuit in the middle of a funeral reception. ”

“Her timing and presentation could have used some work,” he admitted, peering over the top of her head toward her living room. “Are those the smoked salmon appetizer things you used to make?”

“Yes. Would you like one?”

“Please.”

“Come on, then.”

She turned back toward the living room and headed for the sofa, conscious of Kyle right behind her.

Having him close was giving her flashbacks to the kiss, which was a lot more pleasant than the flashbacks she’d been having all evening.

Her ears still rang with the sound of Sylvia lecturing her on artists’ rights and the importance of honoring commitments, her voice so high and shrill that everyone had turned to stare.

Meg sat down on the couch and waited for Kyle to join her. He seemed to hesitate, then sat on the loveseat instead.

“Keeping your distance?”

“Look, Meg?—”

“No good conversation has ever started, ‘Look, Meg . . .’”

He sighed and picked up one of the crudités, but he didn’t bite into it. “I know my mom caught you off guard, but she has a valid point.”

“What point would that be?” she asked, feeling her temper flare. “You mean the one where she said I’d be nothing—I repeat, nothing —without Matt? Or the one where she called me an ungrateful bitch? Or the one where she said she always hated my cooking?”

He winced and looked down at the apps. “You have to admit, all that name-calling kept the funeral from being too dreary.”

Meg folded her arms over her chest, annoyed he didn’t seem more upset by his mother’s insults. “Forgive me if I’m not feeling honored by the opportunity to provide some levity.”

Kyle sighed and set the snack back on the platter. “I know my mom can be a jerk. God knows that’s her default setting most of the time. But as an artist, I think she has a valid point.”

“Come again?”

“Matt did take those photos. His artwork is a big part of what makes that book so amazing.”

Meg swallowed hard, ordering herself to breathe. “I’m not disputing that. I’m only saying the debt’s been paid already. Like I told your mom, I put the last check in the mail two days ago.”

“Right,” Kyle said, his voice equally strained. “And according to my mother, it hasn’t shown up yet.”

“Well, I sent it. It’s for eighteen hundred dollars.”

Kyle frowned. “According to the records, you still owed close to three thousand dollars.”

“That’s not true,” Meg said, hating the panicky note in her own voice. “I tried to get electronic records of the canceled checks from my bank, but apparently there was some sort of technical glitch when they got bought out by a bigger bank last month.”

“So you don’t have any proof.”

She glared at him. “It’s not like Matt was sending me a receipt every month. Look, I’m sure that’s what was left. I’ve been scrimping and saving and mailing those damn checks to Matt every month for two years.”

“I don’t want to quibble about dollar figures, but Matt’s accountant disagrees about what you still owed.”

Meg gritted her teeth and stared at him. “The bill was bullshit in the first place, Kyle. Ten thousand dollars for something he offered to do for free in the first place?”

“What did you do with your engagement ring?”

The question startled her so much it took her a moment to remember.

Before she could answer, Kyle had picked up the appetizer again and shoved it in his mouth.

“In a lot of cases of broken engagement, the bride-to-be keeps the ring with the idea that it was given as a gift, and legally, the gift can’t be revoked. ”

“Exactly,” Meg said warily, not sure if Kyle was taking her side or luring her into some sort of complacency.

“But did you know there have been plenty of court cases where the bride has to give back the ring? The legal argument is that it was a conditional gift, contingent upon the marriage taking place, and the acceptance of the proposal is an agreement to those terms. If the wedding doesn’t happen, the conditions haven’t been met and the ring goes back to the giver. ”

Meg folded her arms over her chest. “Not that it’s any of your business, but I researched this when we called off the wedding. There’s something called a fault-based approach where the courts determine who caused the broken engagement and the other person keeps the ring.”