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“How was it returned?” I ask, my voice low.
A soft laugh. “Yes, I had a baby panda in my Lamborghini. No, it didn’t fit in the baby seat. Nor was it precisely a baby. It tried humping my leg while I was driving through New Jersey.”
“Oh my God.”
“I surrendered it at the Central Park Zoo, along with a very large check to keep the animal safe until it could be returned to its home in nature.”
“It’s official. Your family is actually more wild than mine.”
“You didn’t think it was possible, did you?”
Looking around at all the people I love, I huff a laugh. “No, not really.”
Daphne’s voice rises. She tries to assert herself, but she’s a people-pleaser at heart. She’s always struggled with disobeying our parents. Incipient tears thicken her voice. “I said we weren’t inviting more than five hundred people.”
My mother does her magic hand waving thing. “That was an estimate.”
“It was a limit,” Emerson says, his voice hard as steel. He’s obsessed with my sister, which is a point in his favor. But he wouldn’t hesitate to start a fight to defend her. Daphne is near tears, and this particular gladiator ring is about to draw blood if I don’t stop it.
“Seems to me that since we’re paying for this,” my dad says, “we get to decide.”
“We’re paying for it,” Emerson says, as if it’s final.
No one tells my dad what to do. Especially not a man who maybe kidnapped my sister barely six months ago. Sure, he gave her back, but it still leaves him on thin ice. I’ve spent enough time at his modern beachfront home to get to know him. To trust him. Leo makes a point of having Emerson and Daphne over to his house for dinner on a regular basis for the same reason. But over the past six months, other members of my family have considered locking her up in the Morelli mansion until she recovers from Stockholm Syndrome.
“Dad,” I say, my voice loud but calm. “Did you get my email about the foundation’s upcoming gala? I need you to give the keynote address this year.”
“Make Lucian do it,” Sophia says. “He’s the one who runs Morelli Holdings.”
“Thanks for volunteering me,” Lucian says.
The two siblings have a long-standing history of needling each other. Unfortunately, that also raises the tension in the room. After a power struggle at Morelli Holdings, my father lost his position as CEO to his oldest son. He’s never really accepted it.
My father stands up, looking fierce. “We are giving you our daughter’s hand in marriage,” he says to Emerson LeBlanc. “One would think you might be grateful.”
Emerson leans back, unbothered by my father’s aggression. People may underestimate him because he’s an art collector, but he had a hard childhood. It taught him to be strong in the face of bullies, even rich ones.
“You can’t give me what’s already mine,” he says.
Shit.
I stand up and put my hands out. “Listen.”
Even Tiernan looks pissed at Emerson now, which isn’t a good sign. He had a falling out with my father, but the truth is, he can’t so easily shed the position as his watchdog. And who knows what Lucian would do if a fight broke out. He’d be a wild card.
My father growls something that should not be repeated in polite company, and Emerson gets to his feet.
Daphne gives me a panicked look.
Fuck.
“I have an announcement to make,” I say, loud enough that the whole room stops to look at me. I take a deep breath, the same way I did before I exited the limo. This family is crazy and a little bit violent, but they’re mine. “An important one.”
And I have the next ten seconds to think of something.
There is no actual announcement. It’s just that they were going to fight, and I’m the person who breaks up the fights. The person who stops them from happening. The person who diffuses a thousand different situations in my family. Which means I need to think of something big enough to distract them from punching each other about Daphne’s wedding.
“We’re engaged,” Finn says, standing up, his hand going around my waist.
