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“Jill…” I say, like somehow I can keep her from telling me whatever this piece of news is that she has to share, but she blurts it anyway, in a big rush:
“I can’t renew your lease, Ivy. We’re turning the church into a wedding venue. Starting in three weeks.”
4
Shane
Hanna hands me her phone, a grim look on her face. We’re sitting in her office at Hott Springs Eternal.
“What?” I say.
“Just—watch.” Her lips flatten.
I recognize the background in the reel. It’s Christopher’s, one of my favorite restaurants in LA. January Stark and Tobias Bauer are seated together at a candlelit table, holding hands. Smiling.
“This is good, right?” I ask Hanna, my eyes flicking to her face for reassurance and finding none.
January and Tobias are my celebrity couple, the ones who’ll get married in a month and help me fulfill the terms of the will. Finding them was not easy. I spent five days driving all over LA like a guy trying to work the traveling salesperson problem, interviewing celebrity couples to make sure they were in love. Correction: to make sure they had the acting chops to convince Weggers they were in love.
Just when I thought I might be the brother who destroyed Hanna’s business and turned the Hott land over to environmental ruin, I found them. January and Tobias, young Hollywood up-and-comers who’d bonded over a shared affection for Shonda Rhimes, sushi, and rage rooms. They knew Hollywood could eat up couples and spit them out, but their love was different.
Which was good enough for me.
Since then, Tobuary/Janbias have planned their wedding under the sharp eye of Weggers…and passed muster.
Then this morning, Hanna texted me, Meet me in my office at 9. I’ll explain when you get here.
As I watch on Hanna’s phone screen, something catches January’s eye. She looks up and past her fiancé. The something enters the frame; it’s Lilla Thornton, Hollywood’s current It girl, dressed to kill in a lady-in-red dress that plunges so low in the front that I wonder if she has it on backward.
Lilla says something to January—out of range of the phone’s mic—and then January’s on her feet, reaching for Lilla’s throat. A moment later, the table flips, the women wrestle on the floor, and the tablecloth bursts into flame. The last thing you can see and hear on the reel is January shouting at Tobias: “It’s over! You hear me?! It’s fucking over.”
“No,” I say, staring at the wreckage, unable to look away as the reel starts over again with happy Tobuary.
Hanna frowns. “You seem to think that just by saying that word, you can keep bad shit from happening.”
“It works pretty well for me a lot of the time,” I admit, still unable to look away from the disaster that is my celebrity wedding.
“I got a call from January a few minutes ago,” Hanna says. “She canceled the wedding.”
“Nooooooo,” I howl.
She gives me a look. “Shane. It’s over. It’s done.”
“No,” I say, more firmly. “We are not giving up.”
Hanna folds her arms and closes her eyes briefly. “You have a month to produce a wedding, Shane, or we’re straight-up fucked.”
“We could ask Weggers for an extension? Or you know, like, an exemption. Or a rules change?”
The look of scorn she gives me could shame a nun. “No way Weggers will violate the letter of the law.”
“He might,” I say, but both of us know he won’t.
Hanna and I have gotten close over the last few months, bonding over this farce of a wedding, baby Eloise’s developmental milestones, and—following their low-key, friends-and-family exchange of marriage vows recently—bets on how long it will take Quinn and Sonya to make little Hotts. I have my sister back, and I won’t lose her again—let alone be the guy who destroys her business or ruins our land. “What if I call them and beg them to get back together? Does the will say I can’t bribe the celebrity couple?”
“It says they have to be in love,” Hanna reminds me.
I wave a hand. “It says Weggers has to believe they’re in love. So I just need them to make up…convincingly and publicly.”
