Page 53 of Fool Me

Monique ran her tongue over her teeth so slowly Sadie wondered if she was counting them. “It’s fine,” she said matter-of-factly, “but where should we hold it? Every place decent will be booked for the next year unless we pay a premium.”

“How about right here?” Rick said.

Sadie sucked in a breath. “In the diner?” She looked at Grant, and he nodded enthusiastically. Letting her eyes travel the space that had been her weekly refuge with her sisters, she imagined the wedding possibilities. The morning light beaming into these windows outshone the finest stained glass. “Oh, could we?” she asked Rick.

Rick dipped his graying head toward her. “Of course! I’m sure it won’t be the first diner wedding, but it will be the best one ever and probably the most famous.” He pushed his errant glasses up the bridge of his nose. “Speaking of which, I seem to recall someone hiding under this table just last Sunday. You’ve certainly made yourself known in a week’s time!”

“I didn’t mean to get famous in a week, but yeah,” Sadie said. “The wedding video is up to thirty million views last we checked.”

“Whoever monetized that is sitting pretty today,” Monique said, sipping her coffee.

Ginny began plunking the ice from her water glass into her coffee. “How much do you think they’ll make? Must be a nice gig to sit around and watch money roll in.”

Monique briefly shifted her X-ray glare away from Grant and toward Ginny. “Don’t start dreaming about creating your own online channel. It’s notthatmuch. Even if youcouldmanage thirty million views on something—and that’s like a bolt of lightning hitting the same spot twice—you’d still need a job.”

Ginny shrugged. “Too bad.”

Again, silence stretched on between them for a little too long. Sadie wanted to talk about their diner wedding, hoping to loop Monique into the excitement of it, but how best to re-introduce the topic? Everything she thought of seemed like something Monique, in her current mood, would take negatively. She sent the tiniest panicked look toward Grant.

“So, what’s it like being godfather to these three?” he asked Rick.

Rick belly laughed again. “I gotta say, it was all pretty straightforward until the Spinster Pact thing.” As one, Sadie and her sisters stiffened stared at Rick. “Oops,” he added. “Is itstilla secret?”

Grant tilted his head, his leading man features suffused with confusion. “Spinster Pact?”

“Uh…it’s nothing” Sadie said. “I’ll explain later.” She planned to tell Grant all about it, but not during their first twenty-four hours as newlyweds.

“Yeah, and it’s over with anyway,” Ginny said, giving an unconvincing shrug.

Monique set her coffee onto the table with a clunk. “It’s not nothing and it’s certainly not over—not for Ginny and me. The will treats us each as individuals.”

“Will?” Grant said. “Who’s will?”

For the next few minutes, Monique, Ginny, and Rick took turns filling Grant in on man-hating Great Aunt Lydia, her will, its requirement they remain single till age thirty, and Rick’s role as witness. Grant interjected with occasional questions as Sadie pulled nervously at her curls and contemplated taking up permanent residence under the booth again.

“You gave up a million dollars for me?” he said finally to Sadie.

“Not for you,” she said. “For me—so that I could have you.” Sadie felt a tinge of worry. Would he be upset she’d done this without telling him beforehand? It was a lot of money. Instead of frowning, his lips hitched up at the corners.

He winked at her. “So, what you’re saying is…I’m worth a million dollars?”

“Each one of these is worth a million.” She leaned forward and stole a kiss from his delectable lips. “And in the end, we don’t even need it, do we?”

Monique let out a sound somewhere between a growl and a retch as her eyes barrel-rolled inside her skull. “Right, because all you need is love. Remember that when you come asking me for a house down payment from the million dollars I’m definitely getting.”

“No,” Sadie said, “because Ronny negotiated a million dollar advance onSurf Summerfor Grant.” Even Monique’s jaw went slack upon hearing that, and Sadie thoroughly enjoyed the visual. It wasn’t every day she could impress her older sister—at least, not when it came to money.

“A million?” Monique asked. “For one movie?”

Grant nodded as he added, “But I turned it down.”

Monique’s face twitched like a robot short circuiting. “Youwhat?”

Grant shrugged it off as no big deal, but the glint in his eyes gave away his delight at this little opportunity to toy with his exacting new sister-in-law. “They only offered Sadie a half million, but we all know she’s going to act circles around me and steal the movie, so I made them give her the million and me the half.”

Monique’s angry countenance melted like ice under a hot lamp. Smiling a real smile for the first time since she’d arrived, she raised her water glass. “To my little sister who, despite all my vision boards, beat me to becoming a millionaire.”

“You’ll get there when you turn thirty,” Sadie said when the glass clinking ended, “as long as there’s no hidden Grant Mason’s in your past.”

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