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Eden

“ I have to tell you something, and I need you to stay as calm as possible until we talk it through.”

These are the first words my wedding planner, Hanna Wilder, says to me when I arrive at her office for our two-weeks-before appointment.

I instantly start dredging up worst-case scenarios: The officiant has taken a last-minute ministerial sabbatical to Bali.

The baker dropped the wedding cake, and there’s a worldwide shortage of ganache.

Hanna accidentally double-booked the venue with one of those teen-wunderkind summer circuses, and we’ll be getting married to a backdrop of fourteen-year-olds hanging from scarves.

“Ohhhkay,” I manage.

“I promise everything’s going to be all right. I’ll be there every step of the way, overseeing things from the sidelines?—”

“Are you okay?” I ask, gesturing in the general direction of her relatively small but definitely pregnant belly. She’d warned me that her previous pregnancy had been high risk and promised smooth sailing even if she had to go on bed rest.

“Oh, I’m totally fine.” She waves a hand dismissively. “It’s just—” She closes her eyes. “Have a seat.”

Warily, I do, and she closes her office door and sits behind the desk across from me. Photographs of beaming couples line the walls, and favors from weddings she’s coordinated clutter her desk. She leans forward. “Have you by any chance heard anything about my grandfather’s will?”

“There were some rumors,” I say carefully. Now I wish I’d listened more closely.

“Right. Here’s the thing.” She bites her lip.

I realize this is the first time I’ve ever seen Hanna look nervous, and that twists my own nerves into a bundle.

“My grandfather’s will requires each of my brothers to do something…

out of character, or there will be…consequences.

To me. Well, to all of us, really. So far, because they’re not total dicks—well, about sixty-seven-point-eight percent of the time anyway—they’ve always complied with the will.

And in this case, my brother…” She shakes her head and stops.

“I can’t believe this is my life,” she says and then points down at the floor.

“You’re a real bastard, you know that?” she asks the wide planks. “I hope you’re enjoying yourself down there.” She returns her gaze to me. “I know you and Rhys have a history?—”

Oh, shit .

To be clear, Hanna’s brother Rhys and I don’t have a history history. He and I weren’t an item or anything like that.

Almost the opposite.

Rhys represented my asshole ex-husband in my ugly divorce when I still lived in New York City.

Picture Heathcliff—or better yet, picture a young, short-haired Severus Snape.

Tall, dark, broody, and so deeply scornful he barely acknowledged my presence.

I think he made eye contact with me once, and when he did, he looked away like I was a sixty-year-old guy who’d exposed himself on the subway.

And meanwhile, he dismantled everything that mattered to me with a ruthless precision.

Savings: gone.

Inheritance: gone.

Business: nearly gone, but for a last-minute save by my lawyer.

And my beloved Milo—my adorable, snuggly rescue pup—in half-time custody with my ex, who didn’t even want us to get the dog in the first place.

He deprived me of six months a year with my dog .

So whatever Hanna is about to say about Rhys, if it concerns me and my wedding, it’s definitely not good.

Hanna’s eyes scan my face like she’s trying to read something there, and then she heaves a big sigh and says, “I’m so, so sorry, Eden, but because of my grandfather’s will, Rhys is taking over the final stages of planning your wedding.”

“You’re joking.”

“I assure you, she’s not.”

The voice is deep. Smooth. Commanding. It sends a ripple of sensation over my skin, like a warm breeze at the beach, and I turn. The man standing in the doorway is six foot four of scowling antihero—dark hair, dark eyes, and a slight, cruel curve to one side of his mouth.

And two years later, he still won’t meet my eyes. Instead he pins his gaze on his sister, eyebrows slightly lifted.

“This is my brother Rhys Hott,” Hanna says unnecessarily. “Rhys, this is?—”

“I know who she is.”

Right.

He crosses his arms. If someone can sneer without altering the lines of their face at all, Rhys is doing that.

Yeah, this should be fun.

He’s wearing—as always—a suit. This one is either linen or light wool—I can’t tell for sure—in a gorgeous light brown. The jacket hugs his bulky shoulders and clings to his biceps.

It always felt like adding insult to injury that in any other circumstance, Rhys would be hot .

“I can take it from here,” Rhys tells Hanna in that clipped, arrogant way he has. Like he won’t waste a syllable on talking to anyone who doesn’t merit his five-hundred-dollar-an-hour time.

(My attorney cost one hundred sixty-five dollars an hour, sliding scale.

You could probably have predicted who would “win” that divorce before we ever stepped in a conference room.

Not that she wasn’t amazing. She was terrific.

But. One of Rhys’s suits costs more than her total bill for the entire divorce.)

Money wins.

“I did everything I could, Eden,” Hanna says, her voice unsteady. “I know this can’t be comfortable for you. But I’m hoping since there are only two weeks till the wedding?—”

“I can take it from here, Han,” Rhys grits out.

They engage in a prolonged glaring contest. I’m betting on Hanna, one of the toughest, most unflappable women I’ve ever met—but in the end, she looks away first.

Even his own sister can’t win.

“He’ll do a good job,” she tells me. “My brothers are pains in my ass, but they love me and want what’s best for me, and Rhys will absolutely do what has to be done.”

I’ve definitely seen evidence of that. Ruthless. Relentless. Savage.

“I’ll be in the waiting area if you need me,” she says, ducking her head.

She leaves the door open, but as soon as she’s gone, the office feels—absurdly—smaller. How can a person leaving shrink a room? But it has. Rhys now fills all the available space and takes all the remaining air. My chest tightens.

“Fuck my life,” I blurt.

“You and me both,” he mutters.

“What do you mean you and me both ?” I demand. “You’re the one who took my money and my dog?—”

“I didn’t take ?—”

“You reallocated them to my asshole ex-husband! My dog can’t even come to my wedding because it’s Teller’s turn for custody and he won’t give me visitation!”

He doesn’t try to argue with that. “Point taken,” he says in that crisp dismissive way of his. “So let’s get through this wedding, and in two weeks we’ll never have to see each other again.”

“Isn’t there another way?” I ask.

He shakes his head. “Believe me,” he says, “if there were another way, I would not be in this room with you.”

I wince. Even though I was well aware of his feelings toward me, the outright admission stings. I tried, even when we were adversaries, to be kind to him. But I could sense his impatience and contempt in every tight, disciplined line of his body.

I now regret every ounce of decency I showed him.

“I have to plan your wedding, so I’ll plan your wedding,” he says. “Anything else I do screws Hanna.”

“The planning’s basically done,” I say. “If it weren’t, I’d have canceled the contract the instant you walked into the room.”

He doesn’t react to that, not even a flinch. I remember how implacable he always was. Nothing seemed to ruffle his surface, to put even a tiny dent in his absolute, perfect control.

“Today’s meeting was to nail down the last stuff, and then you just have to make sure everything runs smoothly the day of?—”

“Which I’ll do,” he bites out.

“I don’t doubt it,” I say. “I never doubted your competence. Just your soul .”

Is that a flinch?

I’m not sure I’ve ever been deliberately unkind to someone. But then no one has ever taken my life down to the studs with utter, ruthless efficiency while also treating me like I barely existed.

There’s a first time for everything.