Chapter 20
Tucker
If we get to Shane and Ivy’s breakfast early, I can explain to my brothers about the will and the fake dating all before Summer and Jane arrive.
Except as we’re heading for the elevator, Autumn announces that Summer and Jane want to ride with us.
“That’s okay, right?” she asks. “I couldn’t figure out how to get out of it. You could send your brothers a text or something?”
“Sure,” I say.
Long story but for the will I am fake dating Autumn, and her sister doesn’t know. Please go along.
I send it off to the family chat with an overwhelming sense of doom.
My brothers are going to have a field day.
When we get to Shane’s house, and I pull him aside to say, “Did you get my text?” he says, “No, sorry, what? I dropped my phone in the toilet,” and I don’t know whether he’s serious or fucking with me.
Field. Day.
Before I can make sure that at least one of my brothers has intercepted the text, before I extract a promise that they will not say anything to fuck this up, the fray of my family envelops us.
You’d think since we’re all adults except for two-year-old Eloise and three-month-old Harrison, it wouldn’t feel much like mass chaos.
It might be the dogs that do it. Between them, Sonya, Quinn, Rhys, and Eden have four, and Preston and Natalie just rescued a pair of boxer-pit-bull mixes that are basically wriggly barrels of puppy muscle.
Someone is always removing a piece of footwear from a drooly mouth, or prying Eloise off a dog’s neck (“Gentle hugs, hon, gentle hugs”) or extricating a dog from a cabinet or pantry or box of breakfast cereal or garbage can.
Before I know it, we’re sitting around Shane and Ivy’s leaf-filled dining room table—they do a fair amount of entertaining because Shane is, after all, a big shot—and everyone is fussing over Summer and Jane, asking about the details of the wedding and the honeymoon (Hawaii) and their plans afterward (a little apartment together in Cleveland).
I’m starting to relax a little, even though I don’t know exactly who knows what, when Sonya, the most earnest and serious of my brothers’ WAGs, asks, “So, Tucker, how did you and Autumn meet?”
There’s not a trace of mockery on her face. And it’s Sonya, so she might very well not have gotten the text. Or she might think she’s helping us out by going along with it.
Impossible to tell.
Shit, how did we manage not to rehearse the answer to this one very key question?
I try to remember everything we’ve said about our first meeting: conference, Happiness Extravaganza, she’s a happiness influencer, I’m a joyful productivity coach, met in the hotel bar, love at first sight? Fuck, love at first sight.
And oh fuck, this is a hot mess. Because obviously my siblings know I’m not a joyful productivity coach and that I wouldn’t be caught dead at a happiness conference. But Summer can’t know that I’m not who she thinks I am.
Meanwhile, I have no idea whether my whole family is prepped to go along with whatever I say.
I’m going to have to count on the ability of my family to follow my cues.
They should be used to this kind of circus by now.
“We were at a conference together,” I manage. “Happiness Extravaganza.”
Sonya makes a small, startled noise, but that’s the only tell. Well, that and the fact that every Hott and Hott-adjacent eyebrow at the table goes up. And that my brother Shane’s face gets the most gleeful look I’ve ever seen.
“Oh, right,” he says. “Happiness Extravaganza! I’ve been meaning to ask you how that went.”
Fuck, I’m in so much trouble.
Autumn puts her hand over mine on the table.
Which doesn’t help my brain work any better.
Her fingers are slim and soft and surprisingly warm, and they slip between mine in a way that causes most of the blood in my body to seek southern climes.
“It was at the hotel bar,” she says, and I realize we’re doing the couples thing.
The thing where two people tell a story, alternating.
“She was sitting at the bar, having a drink—”
“An Aviation,” she says.
Jesus, I hope she knows what she’s doing, adding more details that we both have to remember the next time we tell this story. Like most lies, this one is getting ridiculously complicated. This is why I don’t lie.
“Is that the purple one?” Natalie, Preston’s wife, asks. She has mischief in her expression.
Someone read the text.
“Yeah. It’s the crème de violette.”
Okay, gotta hand it to Autumn—that was seamless. I guess she knows her cocktails.
I take over, not daring to look up because if I meet even one of my brothers’ eyes, it’s all over.
“She looked—peaceful. But also a little, I don’t know, lonely?
Sad. So I went up to her and said, ‘Hey. Happiness conference not all you were hoping for?’ And she turned and smiled at me, and it was all over. I was a goner.”
I gaze down at her fondly, hoping I’ve managed to achieve the love-at-first-sight gaze that we practiced in the mirror. Based on the look on Shane’s face, I’ve failed.
Based on the look on Summer’s, I might have succeeded.
It’s all in the eye of the beholder.
“Was it like that for you, too, Autumn?” Summer asks eagerly.
“I mean, I wasn’t sad, like he thought,” Autumn says. “I was just…thinking.”
Damn, even when the story is fake, she has to insist she’s happy. I don’t know what to make of that, especially given that earlier, she couldn’t choke out her own reel about being happy for her sister.
I think she’s gotten so used to playing a happy person for the world that she doesn’t remember how to have her other feelings.
Summer says, “No, I mean, was it love at first sight for you, too?”
“Oh, yeah. Totally.” Now it’s Autumn who looks like she swallowed something sour.
“His opening line was so cute, and it wasn’t like some typical pickup line.
And I felt like he was genuinely interested in the answer.
And then I asked where he was from and he said Rush Creek, and I said, Holy crap, wild coincidence—my sister is getting married there in a few weeks.
And he said, Wait, no way, my sister is a wedding planner, and I said, Which wedding place?
And he told me, and then after I managed to close my mouth again, he said, If that isn’t the universe telling us I need to buy you another of those purple drinks, I don’t know what is.
He sat down and bought us both drinks, and we chatted for a long time—”
And then I took her back to my room and—
Tucker Hott. Stop it.
“Anyway, the rest is history!” Autumn says brightly. “We’ve been dating almost a month—”
“And I can’t believe how long it took you to tell me!” Summer cries. “Your own sister!”
“Tucker was pretty closed-mouthed about it, too,” Shane says, eyes bright. He’s enjoying himself way too much. Which is ironic because he faked an engagement—almost a wedding—to Ivy. So whatever he thinks I’m up to is minor in comparison. “I didn’t find out until yesterday.”
“So, Tucker,” Natalie says, “how was the conference? You never told us. Guess you had other things on your mind.”
I used to love Natalie, but she just fell off my most-favored sister-in-law-to-be list.
“Uh, it was great.”
“Tucker’s keynote was fantastic,” Autumn interjects.
“He had this whole thing about how much productivity takes place between when you open your eyes in the morning and when you do the first actual item on your to-do list. All the fertile thought, all the really good prioritizing. Your morning coffee as dark, earthy, rich soil for—”
“Plowing,” Natalie suggests.
“Yes. Lots of farming metaphors. Fallow land and all that.”
I think Autumn’s trying not to laugh, too, and against my better judgment, I’m charmed by how well she’s slipped into the stream of my family’s chatter and teasing.
“Tucker!” Summer says. “I’ve been having a really hard time with staying on task lately at work. Any chance you could give me some tips?”
“Uh, of course,” I say. “Find me later, and I’ll be happy to.”
Every one of my siblings is eyeing me with barely shuttered amusement.
I’m going to hope that from Summer’s perspective, it looks like they’re all pleased that I’ve found true love and not like, at any moment, they’re going to burst out laughing at the utter and complete level of bullshit I’ve achieved.
“Hey, you all,” Natalie says. “Anyone want to play a fun board game? For couples? Super fun to play with the just-about-to-be-married crowd,” she says, tossing a fond look Summer’s way and then giving me a more pointed look across the table.
I’m pretty sure it’s You brought this on yourself, bro.
“It’s a family favorite! It’s called Oh Really? ”
It’s not a family favorite. I’ve never even heard of it before. But if I call her bluff, there’s a fifty-fifty chance she’ll call mine right back. And even though I don’t know why Autumn wants so badly to keep the truth from Summer, I don’t want to fuck things up for her.
Plus, it’s too late because Summer has already said, “Omigosh that sounds so fun, yes, yes, yes!”