Page 89 of Some Like It Hott

Julie looks startled. “Um, sure,” she says.

“No business talk,” I warn them. “Or at least no promises you don’t know if you can keep.”

“Come with us,” Thompson says.

“I’d love to,” I say, “but I have work to do.”

I’m exhaustedby the time I get back to my apartment. My talk with Anjali went a lot longer than I thought it would. It’s almost ten.

The last thing I’m expecting—or wanting—when I open the door is to see Shane, Quinn, and Rhys sitting on my couch.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” I ask.

“Staging an intervention,” Shane says.

“I’m not,” Rhys says. “I’m only here because they asked me to be here.”

“I don’t need an intervention,” I say.

“No, you really, really do,” Shane says.

I look at Quinn, hoping he’s prepared to be the saner of the two of them. But he just nods. “You do.”

“The thing is,” Shane says, “I know you think we’re full of shit, but there’s something to the grandfather matchmaking thing. And we’re not just saying that because it happened to work twice. We’re saying it because we saw you with Natalie, and it was—” He stops.

“You were—” Quinn attempts.

They both stare at me like I’m supposed to know what they’re saying.

“We think you should come back to Rush Creek and tell her you’re in love with her,” Shane says.

I snort. “You’re too late.”

Rhys lets out a deep sigh of relief. “I’m so fucking glad to hear you say that,” he says. “You can save yourself so much time and money by never getting married in the first place and never having to get divorced.”

Shane and Quinn glare at him.

“Don’t say it’s too late!” Shane says. “It’s never too late! It’s never too late to realize that you’ve been a tool and a dick. You can tell her you never should have put all that energy into trying to prove shit to Granddad and that you’re all done. You’re letting it go and you want to be with her.”

“No,” I say, “Iknow. I get all that. I mean you’re too late to convince me to try to make things work with Natalie.”

“She’s so great, Pres—you can’t mean that,” Quinn says, and it’s Quinn, man of few words and fewer big emotions, so that means a lot coming from him.

“No,” I say again, because why is it so hard sometimes for two people to have a conversation about the same thing? “I mean you’re too late to convince me because I already had my big revelation. Probably while you were in the air over the Midwest. I already gave notice to my boss.”

“You—what?” Quinn and Shane say simultaneously, even though I’ve just, as far as I can tell, done exactly what they were trying to convince me to do.

Rhys shakes his head in disgust.

“I had this big come-to-Jesus moment about how the best mergers are between the most unlikely companies—you know, opposites attract and all that—quit my job, put my apartment on the market, and I’m moving back to Rush Creek.”

“Oh,” Quinn and Shane say and exchange a glance.

“That was an expensive trip for nothing,” I say sympathetically.

Rhys glares at both my other brothers. “Told you,” he says.

“Yeah,” Quinn tells him, “but you were wrong about everything else.”

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