Page 113 of The Backup Bride Proposal

Chapter

thirty-one

It had beena long weekend. The wedding on Friday went off without any complications, and fortunately it had ended by eleven, which meant they had all the guests out and were done cleaning up by midnight.

Weddings always hyped Mae up and it was hard to come down from that. She wished she could have hung out with Kane, but he’d texted her earlier in the day and told her they were filming all through the day on Saturday, and she figured he’d gone to bed already. So she’d done the same thing, though it had taken her a while to go to sleep. They had two weddings on Saturday so she’d been busy the entire day and night without a break, and she hadn’t seen Kane at all. She’d barely had time to eat. By the time the evening wedding had finished she’d been so exhausted she’d gone right to bed.

On Sunday, she slept in. When she woke there was a text message from Kane saying he was catching up on filming with Everly and he’d be tied up the entire day.

Well, damn. They had planned to spend Sunday together,but now that wasn’t going to happen. But, whatever. She spent the day cleaning her room—which, technically wasn’t really hers. In fact, now that she wasn’t filming anymore, she could move back to her apartment. She’d deal with that later, though. Instead, she did all her laundry and made some notes for the meeting tomorrow. The family was coming over for dinner, so she took a shower and put on leggings and a sweater, heading downstairs when she heard voices.

Brenna and Finn had come in at the same time as Honor and Owen.

“Hey, everyone,” she said. “How’s it going?”

“I don’t know about you,” Brenna said as she poured herself a glass of wine. “But this weekend was intense and I’m exhausted.”

“Me, too,” Honor said. “I slept hard last night.”

“Same,” Mae said.

Erin and Jason came in, and Maureen ran over to take JJ from them and disappeared into the living room.

“Hi to you, too, Mom,” Erin said, shaking her head. “It’s like I don’t even exist anymore since I had JJ.”

“Yeah, you really don’t,” Jason said, earning a jab in his middle from Erin.

Mae smiled at how much Maureen was enjoying being a grandma.

Erin took a seat at the dining room table and started scrolling through her phone, obviously deciding to ignore her family.

“Hey, I saw that the dress you liked was on sale,” Honor said to Mae as they made their way to the table.

“Oh. The red one?”

“Yes. The one you said you wanted to get for Christmas.”

“Send me a link?”

“I will.”

“Whoa,” Erin said, looking over her. “Mae. Did you see this?”

“See what?” Hopefully another sale. She did love to shop.

“There’s a story on the gossip sites about Kane.”

She gave Erin a wry smile. “I’m pretty sure there’s always a story on the gossip sites about Kane.”

“No. This one is about him and his co-star. With pictures.”

“Yeah, Everly finally showed up. They’ve been filming all weekend. The paparazzi probably got pics of the two of them doing a scene together.”

“From the looks of it, that’s not all they’ve been doing. I’ll send you the link.”

Her phone pinged with the link, so Mae clicked on it. Frowning, she studied the pic. It definitely wasn’t taken on the property, but rather somewhere in the city. She wished she could figure out where but it was outside some restaurant. And Kane—was it Kane? It had to be him, though it was a view of the back of his head. But same height, same dark hair, dark jeans, and he had Everly in his arms, kissing her.

Her stomach knotted.

---