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“How is it?” Chelsea asked. “I made sure I got the top crunchy the way you like.”
I smiled. “You nailed that part.”
Chelsea beamed, and I was reminded of why I couldn’t bring myself to tell her that her cooking was criminal. Even if she did have horrible taste for marrying my brother, she was sweet. And some soft part of me liked that my brother had landed himself one of the good ones, even if he didn’t deserve it.
“Don’t like it,” Luna said. “Daddy’s food is better.”
“Luna,” Damon warned. “Your mother’s cooking is delicious.”
“To a goat,” Luna countered.
A snorting sound escaped me, and I had to cover my face to stop from laughing.
“Uh,” I said, hoping to save Chelsea from even more of Luna’s brutal honesty, “I checked out some dresses last night.”
“Yeah?” Chelsea asked. “Did Mindy enjoy that?”
“She wasn’t able to come. I had the wedding planner model the dresses for me instead.”
Damon and Chelsea shared a silent look of worry.
Damon set down his fork, giving me a look I didn’t need to be a detective to decode. “That’s all you did?”
“She tried on dresses. I waited outside the dressing room. I voted on them. End of story.”
Both my brother and Chelsea seemed to let out a breath they’d been holding. The original plan had been to keep even Chelsea out of the loop about our little fake engagement, but Damon had lasted less than a day before he told her. So she knew what was going on, and knew to worry that I’d wind up sticking my dick into trouble—A.K.A. the wedding planner.
Frankly, I was worried too.
“Were they pretty?” Luna asked.
“She looked great in all of them.”
“oooOoh,” Luna said. She started shimmying while making sleepy eyes and wiggling her eyebrows. “You like her.”
Damon and Chelsea were both glaring openly at me. To be fair, if a six-year-old was seeing through me that easily, it was probably a bad sign.
“You’re right,” I said. “The wedding planner my brother so expertly selected is really great at her job. I’m sure she’s going to make Mindy and I super happy on our wedding day.”
“You’re marrying Milly!” Luna sputtered.
“Mindy,” Chelsea said calmly. “Min-dee. Sweetie. Not Milly.”
“Oh.” Luna sat back, nodding. It wasn’t the first time she’d mixed the two up. “You should’ve picked a girl with a different name. It’s too confusing.”
I grinned.
“What’s the wedding planner’s name?”
“That’s not important,” Damon said.
“Belle,” I answered.
“Ooh, like the princess?” Luna put the back of her hand to her forehead and swooned. Then a serious look entered her face. “But Uncle Chris, you’re too cool to be the beast.”
“Beauty and the Dumbass.” Damon said under his breath.
Chelsea whacked his shoulder but was grinning.
“What did he say?” Luna asked.
“Nothing mature.” Chelsea got up and started gathering our plates, which I noticed were all still mostly untouched except Damon’s. Somehow, my brother had heroically cleaned his extra-large helping of lasagna. The things a man would do to get laid never failed to astound me. Sometimes, I thought mankind would’ve already made it to Mars if we knew we’d find pussy there.
Half an hour later, we’d put Luna to bed and cleaned up the dishes from dinner. I joined Damon and Chelsea on the living room couches.
“Well,” Damon said, throwing his arms out over the backrest. “Did you at least pick out a dress?”
“Sort of.”
“And why couldn’t Mindy make it? Doesn’t she realize this is her job right now? We’re paying her top dollar to take this seriously.”
“Then let’s fire her.”
Chelsea frowned. “Is that an option?”
“No,” Damon said firmly. “The whole point of this is to make it look like Chris has settled down. An engagement out of nowhere followed by a quick break up would have the opposite effect.”
“Maybe this plan was dumb from the start. I mean, who is going to believe I’m engaged to this woman I’ve hardly seen since our ‘engagement’ last week?”
“The press doesn’t know you haven’t seen her. And it wouldn’t kill you to make a public appearance with her a time or two, on that note.”
“Actually, it might.”
Chelsea looked thoughtfully at Damon. “Why didn’t you pick someone he’d like more? It seems like this would’ve been a lot easier if they got along.”
“I thought as long as the woman had boobs, Chris would try to sleep with her. How was I supposed to know Mindy wasn’t going to live up to his mysterious standards?”
“Mindy is fine,” I lied. “I’ve just been busy with the team.”
Chelsea and Damon both snorted at the same time.
“What? You two don’t think I take my work seriously?”
“Sorry,” Chelsea said. “I just kind of always got the impression that you showed up and let natural talent get you through it.”
I shrugged. For some reason, I never wanted to admit to anyone how hard I actually worked. I probably would’ve needed a psychologist to help me figure out why I tried so hard to convince them I didn’t give a shit. But like always, I shrugged and showed a care-free smile. “Okay. You got me. But hey, maybe I’m just trying to take this fake engagement seriously. Damon told me to keep it in my pants, so that’s what I’m doing.”
