Chapter Forty-Three
Noah
This is supposed to be a fun, relaxing night with my brothers at our favorite steakhouse, while Bobbi and her friends hang out and have her last girls’ night out as a bachelorette. But instead, the mood is positively funereal. Maybe a little alarming. Not because I have a problem with my nuptials—I can’t wait to make Bobbi mine.
It’s Huxley, who arrived in a state of shock and fury. He looked so awful, I had to ask if somebody wrecked his new Lamborghini.
“Worse. Much worse. I’m stuck. I have to marry Grace Lain.” His eyes narrow.
“Well… At least she’s not a Webber…?” For once, Emmett seems unsure of himself.
Catalina is desperate to use a marriage to cement the ties between the Huxleys and the Webbers. So far, Hux has done a marvelous job of evading her attempts.
“She’s a fucking Webber in disguise! She misrepresented herself!”
Uh-oh. An undercover Webber. That sucks. I try not to clear my throat too loudly. Anything can set Huxley off when he’s in this kind of mood.
“You sure? I’ve never heard of Grace Lain,” Emmett says. He’s pretty close to Andreas Webber because he’s done work for the firm.
“She’s the daughter Nelson Webber had with his side piece.” Huxley looks mad enough to eat a tree stump.
“Do you have to marry her? There’s gotta be a loophole,” Grant says.
“She claims she’s pregnant with my baby.”
“Well… Is she really?” I ask. He’s too meticulous to screw up birth control.
But if Grace is pregnant… Well. Catalina won’t let the opportunity go. Not only will the baby—along with the marriage it will necessitate—bring the families together, but it might pull Huxley closer to the legal dynasty, like she’s always wanted.
“She thinks she’s won, but I’m going to ruin that conniving little bitch.” Both of Huxley’s hands are clenched into white-knuckled fists.
I munch on some bread, feeling a smidgeon of pity for Grace Lain. Huxley didn’t choose to be an ad executive because he was a nice, sweet guy who couldn’t swim with the sharks in the legal field. He can be the nastiest of us when he’s crossed. He’s too smart, too rich and too powerful to rein himself in when he feels he’s been wronged. He is scorched-earth personified.
“You might not want to judge so hastily. Just in case,” Sebastian says. He almost lost his wife over a decision made in anger, and he probably doesn’t want to see Huxley suffer the same fate.
“She crawled into my bed! Did Lucie crawl into yours?”
“No. But her sister crawled into my brother’s.”
Something Sebastian’s going to be grateful for for the rest of his life—otherwise he would’ve never had a chance to marry Lucie.
“She’s going to wish she’d never met me.”
“How about the kid?” Nicholas says.
Huxley looks like he can’t decide between kicking something or ripping his hair out. “I don’t know. It probably isn’t mine anyway.”
“You sure?” Emmett asks.
“Gonna have to check, but I am extremely careful with contraception.”
“Still could’ve failed.” Griffin gestures around the table—all of us are the result of our father’s failed vasectomy.
“I didn’t get a vasectomy from a second-rate doctor,” Huxley says.
“Neither did I, but…” Griffin shrugs. He got his wife pregnant purely by accident during a one-night stand in New Orleans.
Huxley closes his eyes briefly. “Yeah. Sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”
“It’s cool. I know you’re upset.” Griffin claps him on the shoulder.
Hux shakes his head. “We should have some fun here.” His voice is grim. But he said we should have fun, so he’ll do his best to have it.
Grant pours Huxley his favorite scotch. I feel vaguely guilty about not keeping an eye on what’s been going on between the Huxleys and the Webbers because I’ve been distracted with Bobbi. It’s unfair for Hux to have to be stuck with a Webber—a member of a legal family he does not want to get involved with—when the rest of us are happily married to the women we love.
Huxley meant what he said about having fun. The man can throw himself into a party like it’s a competitive sport. But the gleam in his eye says his mind is on revenge.