MATT HAD SPENT ALL day and evening Tuesday and Wednesday in the library for the first time since his first year. But it would be worth it so that he could spend the entire weekend with his whole focus on Bridget and their future together.
He could barely wait to put the nonsense about their marriage being real behind them. He was ready to tell Bridget he loved her, and he didn’t want to do it over the phone or text, so he’d turned those things off while he was working.
As soon as he turned his phone back on, he realized what a mistake he’d made. He had three voicemails from Bridget, each sounding a little more frantic. Shit. He’d never had to be available to anyone before. Not even Naomi.
He still didn’t call her back. It was Thursday, and he was meeting Bridget and the rest of the wedding party for a dance lesson. They weren’t doing anything elaborate, but Jack had said something about Hannah’s inability to take a lead. Besides, anything that would allow him to hold Bridget for two hours sounded like a lot of fun.
So, he was rushing out of the law library when he ran into Naomi—again.
“You look like shit.” If only she’d been this honest when they were dating.
He actually didn’t feel well, and was sorely hoping that he wasn’t coming down with the stomach flu that had been going around the law school. “I’m fine. What do you want to talk about?”
“I just have proof that your wife was only after you for your money.” He tried passing her, but she moved to block him. “You want to hear this.”
“No. No, I don’t.” He tried to pass her again, and she huffed at him. All of his trying to move around her made his stomach pitch. “Get out of my way. What’s it going to take for you to leave me alone? I get married to someone else, and you’re still after me.” He ran a hand through his hair and noticed how clammy his forehead had gotten. “Seriously, what do I have to do to be rid of you?”
“Well, you don’t have to blow up your whole life so you can be with Bridget Nolan. She was only ever after you for your family’s money.”
“We’ve gone over this, Naomi.” Matt sighed but realized that a deep breath was a bad move when he tasted bile. “Bridget doesn’t give a shit about my family’s anything.”
“You’ll see I’m right eventually.”
“The only thing about you I want to see is you leaving any room I walk into.” Matt turned and walked away, but Naomi followed him. He was starting to get dizzy and needed to get to his car. Away from his ex. “Get away from me, Naomi.”
“Are you okay? Do you need to sit down?”
At that point, he knew he hadn’t, in fact, escaped the stomach flu. And he just made it to the trash can to empty his stomach into it.
MATT HADN’T ANSWERED ANY of her calls, and he hadn’t shown up at the dance lesson for the wedding party. Combined with the disastrous lunch Bridget had had with his mother the day before, his absence made her mind go to all the wrong, dark places a mind could go. There might be an innocent explanation for it, but she couldn’t help but think of all the not-so-innocent ones.
What if his mother had told him she’d accepted the fellowship money? What if he believed her? What if the whole bribe-Bridget-to-go-away plan had been his idea all along? Ghosting Naomi hadn’t worked out so well, so maybe he was using his family as cover this time.
Sure, he could have just gotten busy with something at school and not charged his phone, but she didn’t feel great about the odds that that was the case.
At the dance lesson, she ended up dancing with one of the instructors, wishing he was Matt the whole time. And she didn’t miss the pitying looks from Chris as he squired his very buxom date around the dance floor.
The only lucky thing about the day was that she’d been able to slip out before he could corner her and talk to her. She had enough to worry about without him making snide remarks about her still not being able to keep a man.
Her first stop after the dance lesson was Matt’s condo. His doorman let her up, because she was his wife, but he wasn’t home. She was close to calling hospitals or the law school, when she grudgingly accepted that she should try his parents’ house.
The whole drive over, she had a bad feeling that this would turn out poorly. If he wasn’t there, she might get another offer of a bribe. If he was there, it might confirm her worst suspicions about whether Matt was involved in the aforementioned bribery scheme. There was really no way to win this.
She rang the doorbell and didn’t have to wait for long. Surprisingly, Matt’s mother answered the door.
Jane looked at her quizzically, as though she wasn’t sure why Matt’s wife might be standing on her doorstep. “Can I help you, Bridget?”
Bridget didn’t have the patience to sugarcoat. “Is Matt here?”
“He is, but he can’t see you.”
Bridget hadn’t thought past what she would do if he was here and didn’t want to or couldn’t see her. “Can’t see me?”
“He’s indisposed,” she said, as though it was some final, definitive answer.
“Listen, I know that we got off on the wrong foot and you don’t want me with him, but you have to tell me if he’s okay.”
She immediately realized her mistake—telling Jane Kido that she had to do anything was the height of stupidity.
“I don’t want to have to call security.” So, in addition to threatening to ruin her life if she didn’t divorce her son, she was going to have her arrested for showing up here? Bridget understood that she was just trying to protect her son, but she was so close to losing her temper that she could taste copper in her mouth.
She wrapped her arms around her waist, partially to keep herself from pushing her way inside the house. “Can you at least have him call me?”
Jane didn’t say anything, but Bridget took her sniff as an affirmative.
THE NEXT DAY WAS the rehearsal dinner. Bridget had a list as long as her arm of errands to run for Hannah. Under normal circumstances, she would have been happy to do it. But after Matt’s disappearance and last night’s confrontation with his mother, she was completely on edge and liable to snap at the person who got the font wrong on the place cards.
“I know my sister-in-law did not order a sans serif font on these things,” she said, pointing to the very businesslike font on the card stock.
“Look at the order form.” The clerk pointed to a black smudge on a piece of parchment that could have said anything.
“I can’t even read that.” Realizing that her voice had that high quality that it usually got when she was about to lose her shit, she took a deep, calming breath. “How fast can you fix it?”
“It’s not wrong—”
Bridget did not have time for this shit. “You and I both know that this shit does not belong at a wedding. It’s so ugly that it doesn’t even actually belong on paper. Now, you’re going to fix it today, and then you’re going to have someone deliver it by hand to the venue in the morning.”
“Oh? What are you going to do when I don’t?”
Bridget was tempted to say that she’d string him up by the balls, but she decided that she could be more reasonable right now. Her bad mood wasn’t this guy’s fault. It wasn’t even a bad mood; it was existential dread. The kind of thing she’d never felt before getting involved with Matt. When she’d made decisions with her brain instead of her heart or her vagina. She almost sighed with longing for that much simpler, if less sexually gratifying, time in her life.
Instead of any of the medieval torture methods she currently wanted to try out on the husband who’d ghosted her, she said, “My sister-in-law, Hannah, is a wedding planner. Apparently, she recommends you to a lot of her clients. If she’s stuck with this bullshit”—she pointed to the offending box yet again—“I don’t think she’ll be using your services again.”
Apparently, all she had to say was “wedding planner” and he realized whom he was dealing with. Hannah had a reputation that garnered both fear and respect. The man’s face blanched. “This is for Miss Hannah?”
“Yep. Miss Hannah’s getting married to my brother.”
His eyes got big. “Your brother is a brave man.”
Yep, he was. Too bad that the man Bridget had married couldn’t even tell her to her face that he’d changed his mind about wanting to be with her.