I did, of course, still have my penthouse bachelor pad. Camilla had wanted me to get rid of it. I had lied and told her I was in the process of selling, but in reality, I had never contacted a realtor. Maybe it was my subconscious telling me something wasn’t right with Camilla.
Before I could go to my penthouse, I needed to stop by my sister’s condo for the spare set of keys I kept there.
“Oh my god, Evan!” Mika exclaimed when she opened the door. She wrapped me in a hug.
“You only just saw me yesterday, sis,” I said, hugging her back.
“I thought something terrible had happened to you!” she cried. Then she punched me. “Where were you? We’ve been up all night looking for you. I thought—” She clamped her mouth shut.
“You thought that I had thrown myself off a bridge because I was so heartbroken over Camilla?” I asked, raising an eyebrow.
Mika looked up at me.
I patted my little sister on the head. “Just go ahead and say it.”
“I’m so glad you’re not dead,” Mika told me.
“No, the other thing.”
She punched me again.
“Ow!”
“I told you so! I told you Camilla was a lying, scummy bitch.”
“You did,” I said, rubbing my arm.
“Where were you, anyway?” Mika hissed as I followed her back into her open living room and kitchen. “I had to spend the entire night with our family.”
“Evan!” my stepmother said, hobbling over to me. She was still in her wedding outfit and looked like she was on her third bottle of the wine that Camilla had imported from Italy with a custom label of our faces and everything.
“Yesterday was an endurance test. Honestly, how could the wedding planner have let that happen?” my stepmother asked dramatically.
“Excuse me,” I interjected, stepping back from my stepmother. “Ivy had nothing to do with this. She is the furthest person to have anything to do with this. Camilla cheated on me with two men, one of whom is my own father and your ex-husband.”
My stepmother rolled her eyes. “Men like him cheat. You would have cheated on Camilla eventually too. It’s part of our world.”
“I would not,” I growled. “I honor my promises. I can’t believe you’re so blasé about this.”
My stepmother patted me on the shoulder. “Your father is who he is.”
“He’s a dick.”
“You’re his son,” she said. “Besides, I’m sure you were off somewhere cooling off.” She smirked at me.
I screwed up my mouth. “I was trying to clear my thoughts,” I growled.
“And now that they’re gathered, surely you can go through with marrying Camilla.”
“Excuse me? No, I will not be marrying her. In fact, she needs to vacate my condo.”
“You’re so dramatic,” Imogen, my half sister, said. She was at Mika’s kitchen island, flipping through images of flower arrangements for her own upcoming wedding.
“You tell Camilla next time you see her,” I told her. “She needs to get out.”
“Tell her yourself.”
“I’m never going to talk to her again. Or Dad for that matter.”
“You’ll see him at my wedding.”
Mika and I looked at her askance.
“You can’t be serious,” Mika said.
Imogen turned on her, snapping, “It’s my wedding, it’s my big day, and I want my father to walk me down the aisle. If you can’t handle it, then you don’t have to be in my wedding party!”
“Now Imogen,” her mother soothed, “you have already removed too many bridesmaids.”
“I didn’t remove them, they abandoned me!” Imogen shrieked.
A headache started; I was getting flashbacks of Camilla.
“They weren’t being supportive. I can’t have a bridesmaid who isn’t supportive of me,” Imogen continued.
“You’re hyperventilating,” Mika said, handing her a brown paper sack.
Imogen slapped her hand away. “I can’t have a smaller wedding party than Serena’s,” Imogen said then started crying.
I looked around for the exit. But before I could escape, Imogen grabbed my sleeve. “You have to be in the wedding party,” she said, hiccupping.
“I’ll be one of Teddy’s groomsmen, sure.”
“No,” Imogen said, shaking her head. “You have to be my man of honor.”
“Uh—”
“She fired her maid of honor,” Mika said to me under her breath.
“I didn’t fire Kaitlyn, she quit!” Imogen yelled. “She got pregnant, and she cannot be a maid of honor if she’s pregnant, because she’s going to take all the focus off me, and it’s supposed to be my special day. She could have waited to get pregnant; a real friend would have.”
“Why can’t Mika be the maid of honor?” I suggested.
Imogen glared at Mika. “She’s the matron of honor. She’s too overweight to be the maid of honor.”
Jesus.
“I’ll think about it,” I said, backing away.
Thought about it, and no. No way in hell. I’m done with weddings.
“I just need the key to my penthouse,” I told Mika.
I followed her into her home office, and she handed me my keyring, wallet, and phone. “Courtesy of Sebastian,” she told me. I checked my phone. There were a hundred missed calls and two hundred text messages. I deleted them all.
“Can you please be the man of honor?” Mika begged. “You don’t know what it’s like. Imogen is awful.”
“Then quit; you don’t have to participate,” I told her.
Mika stared down at the floor dejectedly. “I sort of feel like I have to.”
I knew what she meant. When our mother had died, our stepmother had looked after us. She could have let our father send us to boarding school in Austria, but instead she had insisted that we remain in the USA.
“If you won’t do it for her, just please do it for me?”
5
Ivy
I scowled at the spot on the bed where Evan had been.
“I am done with billionaires and entitled men in general. There will never be another man in my house,” I declared.
Fergus made a hacking noise. I didn’t have time to grab him before he coughed up another hairball.
“Argh, I should have sent you off with Evan,” I told the traitorous cat, “especially since you seemed to like him so much.”
Fergus hissed at me and hid under the bed.
I made his breakfast then shimmied to the balcony. There was about an hour every day when I got any direct sunlight in my condo. I moved the few plants that were still clinging to life into the light, sipped my tea, and looked at my inspiration board.
It had changed over the years. First I had wanted to be a princess and live in a palace. I now live in the furthest possible thing from a castle. Then I had wanted a successful business, but given that I couldn’t even make clients pay me, that dream was slowly dying. My latest dream that was soon to be broken was owning an insane penthouse at the top of the Brookview Hotel, one of the Greyson Hotel Group’s projects. It was in a former factory building that was capped by a clock tower that had been converted into a condo. The faces of the clocks on the four sides of the tower were big round windows that let in a ton of natural daylight.