Chapter 4 #3
“Who cares? Just get married anyway and fuck what people say.”
“It’s complicated. For one, they care. A made man has to keep his empire under control.
Revolts end up in bloodbaths.” Like Mika knows so much about the mob.
She better be spouting this from smut books and movies she’s watched and not from real-life experience.
“I guess for all her faults, Geneiva loves her family. She doesn’t want to be cut off in any way, financially or otherwise. ”
“Hold on. You have to give me a minute to let that percolate.” I turn that minute into a few, sliding off the counter to pour the coffee.
After adding cream to mine and getting the sugar for Mika, we both sip and sigh, sip and sigh, until I have my thoughts in order enough to put them out there.
“This is such a weird situation because if we were going to wreck the wedding or postpone it, there are really only a few things we can do. Character assassinating her isn’t going to work.
Her dad already knows she’s a bad girl, and your dad wouldn’t care.
Besides, that’s just rank mean, and I could never do that.
Sure, I could fudge the venue, delay the dress, and stuff laxatives into the cake—all brilliant ideas that will get me fired.
I could send out invitations with the wrong date and time or send out notices that the wedding has been pushed back.
More grounds for getting fired. Or we could play the long game. ”
“We don’t have time,” Mika says.
“It would be the long game in the short run. What’s the one thing that could really fuck up this deal?”
“The business deal, not the marriage.”
“That’s right, but if one goes down in flames, the other dies a hard death too.”
“Uh…”
“You said this guy values honor more than anything, meaning his name is everything to him. If he thought your dad was a douchebag asshole who ran a chain of bug-infested hotels, do you think he’d really be so keen to do business?”
“He’s already approved my dad, though,” Mika says carefully, unsure of the slippery slope we seem to be descending.
“New evidence could come to light. I’m so sorry, but the only way I can see to not have this happen is to hurt your dad in the present but also help him see that business isn’t going to fill the void in his heart. Only you can do that. Family. And love, of course.”
“So we’re going to sabotage him, and you’re going to seduce him.”
Seducing her dad would be hard, but not as hard as the feel of him pressing up against me. The length and size of Mika’s dad’s package most definitely should not be at the forefront of my brain while I’m talking to her.
Or ever.
Last night was a brain blip. It was a night of bad decisions, but that’s it. End of.
It has to be the end of.
“No to the seduction,” I say, annoyed at how my voice gets breathy and wispy. “You’re going to have to work on him. Repair your relationship. If he sees that things can change between you both, and it would be good for both of you to heal, then maybe he’d believe in love and goodness again.”
“And besides that?”
I start in on the evil brainstorming. I swear I’m normally not this good at villainous thinking.
“Hire a fake PI to make fake dirt on your dad and send it to his future father-in-law. Silly stuff only, but with just enough shadow of a doubt to be real. Plan his stag, have something horribly embarrassing go wrong, and leak the footage so it goes viral. Phone every bug and vermin exterminator in the city with fake reports of mice, rats, roaches, bed bugs—the whole freaking works—and have them show up at a few of your dad’s hotels. ”
“I want to save his life, not ruin it.”
“You’re right. That’s too mean.” The whole thing is a terrible idea. “If they have an open marriage and it’s all fake, then why can’t he just find love in his own time?”
“Because I know my dad. He’s too honorable to ever do that.”
“He wasn’t too honorable to be interested in me last night.” I feel like the world’s biggest toe wort to put that out there, but it needs to be said. I’ve been open and honest about all this.
“He’s not married yet, and you’re a one-off. You’re like the one woman who has caught his attention, I swear. My mom knows about this. He’s never dated again. If he’s slept around, he’s kept it so low-key that it either doesn’t happen often or at all.”
“Your mom doesn’t know everything. He’ll probably be just fine. He’s a grown man. He has to know what he’s doing.”
Mika falls to the floor in a dramatic heap. The only thing she doesn’t do is drape a hand over her forehead and loudly declare, I’ve been slain, like they do in medieval plays. “Please! I’m getting down on my knees here. I’ll kiss your bare feet!”
“Gah, you will not!” I shuffle backward fast. “Get up! Mika. Please. Get. Up.”
“You have to help me.” She latches onto my bare ankles, then claws her way up my calves. “We can go with Project Embarrass Him To A Slight Extent and see if that works. On your end, you can try to make the wedding as difficult as possible. Seeing as it’s so short term, it shouldn’t be too hard.”
“They could just go to Europe,” I protest again. “Where she’s from…if I make it too difficult.”
“Apparently, they’re having two weddings. One here and one there.”
“Jesus good god Christ.” I’m not normally so creative or loose tongue with my blasphemy either.
Thankfully, Mika pulls herself up. But not so thankfully, she’s got that burning I will not be dissuaded for all the world and an ice cream sundae look on her face.
And ice cream sundaes are her favoritest of all favorites.
They’re a close second behind ice cream cakes, which are my favoritest of all favorites.
“You’d only be responsible for wrecking one wedding. But I still think seduction has to be the underlying goal. Not fake seduction, but real seduction. You’re clearly into him. You never lit up like that for Kevin.”
“I’m lit up with nothing but mortification! It was bad judgment spurred on by me undergoing the worst day of my life.”
I’m certainly not going to let my ovaries get wild and start dictating orders to my brain.
I’m not going to let my body get hot or my lady bits throb.
I definitely don’t remember how the feel of her dad’s hand gliding over mine was nearly enough to make me spontaneously orgasm.
I need to wash from my mind how badly I had wanted his hands to play me like I was the piano until I shattered.
“My dad is so traditional.”
I have to disagree there. Her dad is not a traditional dad.
Traditional dads are only mildly hot, and that’s only sometimes.
They’re funny and nice and probably great people, but not many of them scream zaddy.
Not many rock a man bun or are solidly muscled, taller than I am, and have fuck me mysterious eyes.
“He used to believe in true love, signs from the universe…all of that,” Mika goes on, oblivious to my internal meltdown. “We have to make him see that the magic is real. Bringing you two back together as some massive universal love distribution sign is a thing.”
“I think that’s just for cats.”
Please, let the universal distribution system just be for cats.
“And bad luck. If the universe can hate people, then it can love them too.”
How are we circling around back to this plan that is not a plan because I won’t let it be a plan? “I just broke up with Kevin last night.”
It was a silent breakup. Just a if looks could kill, you’d be straight up put on the rack, cut up, and dragged between horses because you’re a monster look.
But then, of course, I’d relent because that’s horrible and gory.
I’d go with a bus. But the poor bus driver.
Maybe just lightning. You can’t blame anyone for lightning.
But no. Okay, I just wish something vaguely bad would happen to him.
“You’ve been broken up in your heart for ages,” Mika insists, and she’s not wrong. “You told me that you haven’t had sex in forever. Thank god, or I’d likely be hauling you off to the STD clinic right now to get checked or treated.”
Oh my god.
If that ever happened, I would die a thousand deaths. If I went to any clinic in this city, my mom would probably find out, and then she’d be up in my business, and it would be an endless barrage of I told you that asshole was bad news looks for months. Months.
A fresh torrent of rage rips through me, swamping my body in a sticky, overheated sweat. I grasp my coffee and use it to distract me and to help me chill the fuck out.
I hadn’t considered how long Kevin had been cheating, but Mika was right. It probably wasn’t just last night.
On second thought, a bus is too kind.
“You’re the best woman I know. You’re exactly the kind of person my dad should fall in love with.” Mika gives me wobbly lips along with her sad puppy eyes.
“You do realize that most best friends would be slamming the brakes on this so hard, not greenlighting father fornication.” I sip my coffee.
There’s no way it’s strong enough for this.
“He’s so much older than me. Even if we found some weird kind of attraction that resulted in happiness, it could only ever be temporary. ”
“You don’t know that.”
Don’t I? Right now, I’m not going to give Mika a list of reasons why my getting with her dad would never work. “I know this is going to be an unmitigated disaster.”
“Not if we pull it off in spectacular fashion. And I don’t know about the unmitigated part.” She wiggles her slashy eyebrows. “It might just be a regular disaster, but at least we would have tried, and that counts for something.”
“It counts for making everything worse and your dad mad at us for life.”
“He’s not going to get hurt. Everything will work out, even if he gets mildly annoyed at the start.
He won’t know we’re best friends. He’ll never fall for you if he knows.
We’ll have to break him into the idea later when you’re both so enthralled with each other that you’ll both have to find a way to make it all come out right. ”
Ugh, to say I’m worried is weak sauce. This is going to start out tepid and heat up into the hottest of hot messes.
“Does your silence mean you’re not saying no?”
I sigh exasperatedly. “How can I?”
“That’s right.” Mika’s grin is absolutely entering into shit-eating territory. She knows I’d do anything for her the same way she’d risk life and limb for me. We’re best friends. I can’t just leave her alone in this. “You can’t.”