“Right. The influencer circus.”
I say nothing.
Because I’m already regretting it.
Agreeing to let my younger brother throw a wedding on my property was… not my best decision. But Mason asked. And he never asks for anything. After years of being the carefree screw-up, he’s finally settling down—andmarrying someone who makes him want to be better. I respect that.
Mason always was the golden one.
Not in the achievement sense—that was me. I was the straight-A student, the debate team captain, the one who graduated law school at twenty-four and never looked back. But Mason? He was the one people gravitated to. The one who smiled easy, laughed loud, made everything look effortless.
We grew up in a house where silence was prized and emotions were… edited. I learned early how to shrink myself into something palatable. Mason never did. He was chaos with a guitar and a crooked grin, and somehow, he always got away with it.
So when he asked me for a favor—for the first time in years—I said yes.
Letting him and Ivy host their wedding here, I was told, would be simple. Was told that she’d be here for one week, ten days tops. I’d keep my distance. Let the planner do her job.
I didn’t know the planner would be a woman with a megawatt smile and legs that go on for miles.
“Eight. And don’t screw it up,” Gideon barks. “This client is your ticket.”
I hang up without saying goodbye.
Because he’s right.
This client—the founder of a media empire currently going through a scorched-earth divorce—is high profile, high maintenance, and watching every move I make. If I win this, I’ll be the youngest name partner in the firm’s history. If I lose… I won’t.
But I don’t lose. I’ve spent years making sure of it.
And I donothave time for wedding guests, or table linens, or the bossy wedding planner currently invading my space.
I have a deadline, my little brother’s wedding looming, and a stranger in the guest house.
This week is going to be hell.
***
The scratching starts just after six.
Two short huffs, one long.
Then a pause—just long enough to make me think she’s given up—before the snuffling starts again, lower to the ground, like she’s trying to inhale her way under the door.
I exhale through my nose and open it.
Muffin waddles inside with all the self-importance of someone who pays rent.
She does not.
She’s wearing the thunder vest again, which probably means someone in the neighborhood used a leaf blower today. Her toenails click against the hardwood as she trots toward me. She’s small, but overweight. Like a beige throw pillow that occasionally farts.
“You weren’t invited,” I say.
She sneezes once and flops dramatically onto the rug, letting out a long, performative groan, panting like she’s run a marathon. She hasn’t.
I close the door behind her.
“I thought you were staying with Nadine this week.”
