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“You always have a great excuse for going off course.”
“I’m not anywhere near off course,” I assured him. I pointed my beer bottle to the iced tea he held, “I may not be like you, engaged to mother’s next choice for the perfect female specimen, but I’m most certainly not off course for drinking a fucking beer.”
“Now you’re going to give me shit for asking Pollyanna to marry me?”
I chuckled, “Even her name is something Mom would’ve chosen if she’d had a daughter.”
“I’ll kick your ass,” he said with a laugh.
I sighed, becoming somewhat serious. “Do you really love her, though?”
He sighed, chuckled, and nodded his head. “I wouldn’t have asked her to marry me if I didn’t.”
I leaned forward, resting my elbows on my knees and looking over at him, “I’m serious, Mark. Do you?”
“Yes, jackass,” he said, looking at me like I’d grown two heads. “Why the hell would you even ask me that?”
I shrugged and sat back in my chair, “Who knows, maybe my beer is making me feel a little sentimental.”
“Well, I’ll be sure to ask if you’re really happy when the day comes for you, baby brother.”
“God,” I took a larger drink with that statement. “You can save your concerns for someone else because my ass is not settling down now or ever.”
“Not even your sweet little niece can warm you up to the idea of at least dating?”
I looked at him and laughed, “I deliver babies all day, watching couples welcome their little ones into this world, and I can safely say, that life doesn’t tempt me in the slightest. I’m happy to be adventurous and carefree.”
“Sure,” Mark said mockingly. “Trust me, you’ll get sick of doing shit alone one day, and you’ll want a woman you love to join you on your sky-diving and rock-climbing trips.”
I raised my eyebrows, surprised that my brother believed my happiness depended on a woman joining me in one of many things I loved doing in my downtime.
“You may act like this now, but before you know it, you’ll be in my shoes, and our mother will never be happier that her baby is finally doing the right thing to honor our family,” Mark added, trying to be funny but managing just to sound awkward.
Maybe I should’ve asked Polly, his fiancé, if she was happy or just marrying my brother because her parents insisted. The guy was good-looking, as my brothers and I were both blessed with my father’s handsome genes, but still, being a dud was something that looks couldn’t even make up for.
“Trust me. I don’t need to marry a woman to be happy doing anything I want to do. I’m fine dating them for a short period of time and moving on to the next.”
“That shit will catch up with you,” Sebastian, my older brother, said, hearing that last part while walking out with a glass of pink champagne.
“Dear God,” I said with mock horror, “if you think I’m going to walk around with a chick drink like a bitch, talking about how much I love my wife, then you don’t know me at all.”
He ruffled the top of my hair and leaned his shoulder against one of the porch pillars. “Oh, I know exactly who you are.” He slipped a hand in his pocket, mimicking my father as he always did, “I know that once you get that lifestyle you chose out of your system, you’ll be back in New York, or perhaps in France at one of our estates, helping Mark and me keep things running.”
“One day, all of you might give me some credit for donating my genius mind to the medical field and appreciate that my calling is in my profession and not in producing enough wine to keep France in business.”
They both laughed, and I just stood my ground with a confident smile. “Say what you will,” Sebastian teased, “you’ll come crawling back home where you belong soon enough.”
“That’ll be the day, pal,” I said.
Try as I might to convince them otherwise, my family viewed my career as a meaningless distraction that they were waiting for me to get bored of.
“All right,” Sebastian said. “I was sent out here to retrieve you two. The guests who flew in for the celebration are arriving, and John needs to get out of his boardshorts and put on some civilized clothes.” He gripped my shoulder when I stood, “I swear, it looks like California chewed you up, digested you, and spit you back out.”
I laughed. “Hey, California is doing some pretty amazing things for me. Maybe if I stay in these boardshorts, little Miss Socialite, Rebekah, will steer clear of my ass while she’s here with her family.”
“Yeah, but Margaret won’t,” Sebastian said.
“God, she and her family better not be coming to this. She’s your ex-girlfriend, for Christ’s sake,” Mark said.
