Page 1 of One Wealthy Wedding

1

Cat

Rich people make the worst customers. Trust me, I was one once. Now I’m just a regular girl, albeit one with few life skills beyond naming Essie shades without looking at the label and pulling the perfect Guinness without watching the tap. If you’d asked me a year ago whether I could learn how to tend bar in just a few short months, I would have laughed in your face. Now, I know better. Desperation is the finest motivator.

So when Blair says “Incoming. And they look rich. Rich and drunk,” I wince. My best friend is like a general marshaling her troops, except Daryl and I are just twentysomethings tired after a long shift of serving light beers to blasted hockey fans.

Rich means tips, but rich also means demanding. I should know. I haven’t been rich since my parents kicked me out and disowned me, but I remember what the worst people in my parents’ circle were like— filled with utter disregard for service people, expecting their wishes would be granted before they even had the opportunity to voice them.

“Shouldn’t they be somewhere—” The words die when I see the group. A few guys in expensive jackets, women in short dresses, and Theo fucking Archer. He hasn’t seen me, but any second, he will, and he’ll have a cutting remark. Or maybe not. Maybe he’ll pretend I’m not there, like he did that night all those years ago.

I stare for one second, my eyes slowly widening, like a stunned deer in front of a semi, before I sink behind the bar. “Shit.” My leg makes contact with the sticky mat, and I flinch.

What the hell is Theo doing here? This is one of the shittiest bars in Midtown. He should be at the Garden, watching his superstar brother play hockey from the VIP box. I squeeze my eyes shut. Maybe it’s not him. Maybe I’m imagining things. It wouldn’t be the first time.

I somehow manage to compare every man I meet to Theo Archer, the object of my teenage infatuation and my only friend as a child. Until he kissed me, stomped on my heart, and disappeared. I haven’t seen him in years, but I’ve seen his face in countless articles about cheating scandals and yachting off Monaco. Theo spent last month surfing Bondi Beach and hanging out with similarly irreverent playboys who are a mix of minor royalty and hangers-on to minor royalty.

And yet I can’t stop seeing his shadow in every man I’ve kissed. I compare their lips to his sinfully soft ones, their shoulders to the breadth of his broad frame. I don’t even like the man, and I still think about him far more than can be healthy.

“What’s wrong?”

I open my eyes to see Blair crouching next to me.

“Theo Archer,” I say faintly. “He’s here.” Blair knows about Theo, since she met me the September after the summer I spent pining for him.

“That guy you were seeing the summer before junior year?” she asks.

“Seeing is the wrong word. He was my family’s housekeeper’s son. We grew up together. He doesn’t like me.”

Blair’s open-mouthed surprise is gratifying. “He’s in this bar? Really? Isn’t he super rich?” No rich person would come to Sylvia’s. It’s one of the things that makes this job perfect—no chance of running into anyone from my prior life.

“He is, and I don’t know why. Maybe he’s slumming it. Did he see me?”

“I’m not sure.” She pops up, tells Daryl to man the bar, and then crouches back down. “He’s hot,” she says bluntly.

“I know.” My voice sounds like it’s coming from underwater. “He’s probably here with a date.”

“Oh, sweetie,” Blair says.

I shake my head. “No. It’s not like that. It’s just—not today of all days.”

“Because of the interview.”

I nod, savoring the cool steel of the fridge behind my head. I was rejected from another internship today, and I’m going to fail the most important class for my MBA because of it. My father got to the interviewer first. Again. Like he has with the last fourteen I’ve met with. I can only assume the thirty-seven rejections before that were thanks to Gregory Peterson’s interference as well.

“The interview, the situation with my family, the townhouse. It’s too much.”

By this time next week, I’ll be failing out of my MBA program, disinherited, disowned by my family, and kicked out of my apartment.

And unmarried. That’s the real kicker. I don’t even want a husband, yet I’ve spent the last twelve months searching for one, just to satisfy the archaic marriage requirement in my grandmother’s will.

The last fifty-one fruitless weeks have yielded exactly zero suitable candidates. And not because I’m picky. I don’t care about looks. I don’t care about wealth. All I need is a person with a pulse, whom I can manage, and who can stand up to my family.

And therein lies the rub. Everyone, and I mean everyone, is firmly in Gregory Peterson’s deep, deep pockets.

Blair, because she’s in line for sainthood, offered to let me stay on her couch while I look for an apartment. She might be the only person in New York City that my father hasn’t gotten to.

“You can do this,” she says encouragingly. “Just stand up, smile that smile I’ve seen you give our most persistent regulars when they want another shot and they’re over the limit, and offer him a drink. Hell, I’ll even let you give him a free one, which you know I never do.”

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