Chapter 5
Five
Now
Wyatt
It physically pains me to leave CJ unsupervised, but I have a bunch of birds to wrangle.
From the ballroom, I head straight to the Oakwood loading dock, where Helene’s Hollywood Herons are waiting.
Helene herself turns out to be a leathery-skinned woman with frizzy, yellowing hair as wild as a baby chick’s.
“Hello!” She greets me with a warm handshake, then gestures behind her at the caged poultry. “We’re delighted to finally meet you.”
“It’s, uh, mutual.” I lock eyes with the feathery dinosaur closest to me and fight back a shiver at its flat, evil stare. At least Helene didn’t lie; her menagerie of trained, rentable birds does, in fact, include more than just herons. “Is this the whole… flock?”
“Yes!” She shoots quick finger guns at each species as she names them. “Partridge, doves, hens, Moluccan cockatoos, and geese. I even brought a few swans, in case you changed your mind.”
Extra birds? Helene’s either brave or bonkers, and judging by the agitated way the geese are honking at the hens, I’m going with bonkers.
“Thanks,” I say. “But we’ve got the swan segment covered. The rest are exactly what I wanted, though.”
She coos into the cage holding the turtle doves. “Hopefully so! I do want to remind you that the cockatoos are a littl—”
As if on cue, one of the peachy-pink birds start shrieking, and the other three join in. “They’re a little loud!” Helene shouts above the racket.
Loud? They sound like a gang of senior citizens complaining about kids in baggy pants while a fighter jet lands in the background.
“They’re going to be perfect as the calling birds!” I hand her a piece of paper, still hollering to be heard over the cacophony. “Here’s the schedule. We’re rolling out each day of Christmas in stages starting in”—I glance at my phone—“thirty minutes, give or take.”
“Okay! My assistants are—” The cockatoos finally simmer down, so Helene clears her throat and drops to a normal volume.
“My assistants are inside setting up the fenced areas with food and water for the geese and hens, and the partridge, doves, and cockatoos will stay in their cages. And we’ll stay with them all night for the safety of—”
“The guests. Good.”
She looks at me like I’m cracked. “Of the birds, obviously.”
“Obviously.” I tap the paper in her hands. “Oakwood’s event coordinator is on site tonight, but my friends Birdy and Sebastian are the ones who’ll work with you and the band on musical cues for each release as we build toward the grand finale.”
More accurately, we’ll be building toward a chaotic conclusion that I hope breaks Howard once and for all, but Helene doesn’t need to know that.
“Okey-doke.” Helene tucks the paper into her breast pocket. “I don’t know about this Sebastian, but I’m happy to work with Birdy.”
I laugh despite my nerves about the eight thousand things that could go wrong tonight. “She’ll want to talk to you about ostriches, I’m sure.”
After extracting a promise that Helene will call me if she hits any snags, I pivot to my next step: having a little chat with my so-called friends.
I stalk across the employee parking lot, yank open the door of the stakeout vehicle, and am greeted with two suspiciously innocent smiles.
“Seriously?” I duck my head as I step into the back. “You rented a windowless van?”
“Uh, yeah,” my brother replies. “Do you want your boss peeping through windows and catching us?”
My only answer is a flat glare as I drop onto the bench seat that runs along one wall.
“What’s got you looking shell-shocked?” Hollis asks.
“I think you know.” I look from him to his girlfriend. “I think you both are very aware of why I look like I just got hit by a cement truck.”
A cement truck with a great ass and murder in her eyes, but a cement truck nonetheless.
Sure enough, Hollis and Liv exchange busted! looks before dropping onto the bench opposite mine and bursting into laughter.
“So you and CJ finally crossed paths.“ Liv presses her folded hands to her lips. “I cannot tell you how much we’ve been looking forward to this.”
I’m too pissed to string together coherent words. “How long…? When…? Did it not occur to anyone that—”
“I’m gonna stop you right there,” Hollis says. “We’ve known for months that you were both planning to sabotage the same man at the same party. And it occurred to us a number of times to let you each know what the other one had planned, but no, we did not intervene.”
“In fact,” Liv says with a sweet smile, “we went out of our way to make sure your plans wouldn’t interfere with one another.
Why do you think I told you that the catering angle was too complicated, then warned CJ away from music and entertainment?
” She waves her hands like a magician. “Voilà! We’ve been helpful. ”
I absorb their betrayal and ask the only question I can. “Why?”
They share another glance in that secret language couples have.
And don’t get me wrong; I’m thrilled that Holly found a woman he’s crazy about and grew into the steady, responsible guy I always knew he could be.
But a tiny little part of me resents this unified front they share when deep down, I know that never once, not for a second, did I have this kind of effortless understanding with the woman I almost married.
“Well,” Liv says, “there are a number of reasons.”
“For one thing, it amused us,” Hollis says.
“Yes, there’s that.“ She kisses his cheek, then wipes away the lipstick smear it leaves behind. “But mostly it’s because neither of you would spill what went down between you two, and we wanted to punish you.”
“Who? Me and CJ?” Even saying her name alongside mine makes me feel prickly all over.
“Yeah, dude. I had no idea you had beef with anybody in town, let alone Liv’s ride or die. And both of you refuse to share a single detail about what you did to her.”
My guilt over keeping Hollis out of the loop on my personal life is short-lived. “What I did to her? What about what she did to me?”
“And what was that?” Liv asks, her eyes dancing with laughter.
I ignore her and dig my fingers in my hair, tugging at the roots in frustration. “And Gabe and Darby—they know about all of this too?”
“Oh yeah,” Hollis says. “Our resident landscaper had to procure a pear tree for you and a bunch of durian fruit for CJ.”
“You’re also a landscaper, in case you forgot.” I’m so used to reminding him that he’s now the co-owner of a small business with our childhood best friend that the correction comes out automatically. “And what the hell’s a durian fruit?”
“Wouldn’t you like to know?” Gabe leaps into the back of the van like an action hero before he turns and holds a hand out to help his wife step inside as well.
“Oh no. Did Wyatt finally find out?” Darby asks.
I look from face to face of the people who allegedly love me the most and growl, “You’re all evil, you know that?”
“Shoulda told us what beef you have with CJ.” Gabe plops down next to me and pulls his wife onto his lap.
“Et tu, Darby?” I ask the sweet-faced librarian.
“I argued that we should tell you both,” she says, “but apparently that would be ‘totally uncool’ and ‘ruin our chance’ to watch you two ‘fight to the death or fuck it ou…’” She freezes in the middle of throwing around air quotes, and now all four of them are exchanging glances.
It’s just eyes darting all over the place at my expense.
“Or what?” I ask testily.
Hollis is the one who breaks the silence with that megawatt smile that made him scads of cash over the years as a stripper at the high-end club outside of town. “I mean, come on. You can’t hate a woman that much and not secretly want to get her naked.”
All I hear is the pounding of blood in my ears before I turn my glare on the group crammed into the van with me. “I promise you,” I grind once I’m sure my head isn’t going to explode, “that is not the case. At all. For either of us.”
I’m met with a chorus of sarcastic “Sure”s and thumbs-up signs.
“Oh, fuck each of you smug, coupled-up, want-to-turn-everybody-into-clones-of-yourselves assholes.” I fold my arms and slump back onto the bench with a scowl.
This makes them laugh even harder, and I’m forced to raise my voice above their general merriment.
“All I need to know right now is that somebody confirmed the swans, the maids, the lords, the ladies, the drums, the pipers, and the jugglers.”
“Swans and ladies,” Darby says.
“Maids and drums,” Liv says.
“Pipers and jugglers,” Gabe says.
“You.” I point at Hollis, “Tell me your former coworkers are ready with the tiniest G-strings and shortest booty shorts.”
He tucks his chin in horror. “Who taught you those words?”
“I’m going to assume that’s a yes?”
Holly nods, and that’s one more section off my checklist.
“Problem,” Gabe says.
Shit. “What?”
“Which of us was supposed to bring Wyatt’s naked baby pictures to give to CJ as future blackmail material?”
“Ahhhh, I knew I forgot something.” Hollis slaps his forehead, then slaps me on the back. “Listen, we’ve got this. Go show your face, mingle, secure your alibi. We’ll come get you if anything goes wrong. Now everybody take a walkie-talkie.”
He hands each of us a handheld unit, then sends Gabe and Darby off with walkies for Seb and Birdy when they arrive now that their surveillance of the VIP hotel is over.
“Please tell me they’re not working with CJ too,” I grumble. “They live all the way up in Chicago.”
I stand to leave, but Liv puts her hand on my wrist.
“Hey.” She leans forward and straightens my bow tie, then smooths her hands down my lapels. “I know we’ve been joking, and I know you think she’s some indestructible ballbuster, but CJ is one of the best people I know, and she has a soft, squishy center.”
The snort is out before I can stop it, and Liv pulls me toward her by the lapels. “I’m not messing around, Wyatt. Do not do anything to hurt her more than you already have.”
“How do you—”
“Because I know.” She gives me a gentle shake. “Because the only thing she’s told me is that she was at fault for some of it, but you were at fault for an awful lot of it too. So if you can’t sort it out with her, then at least don’t make it worse.”
She releases me with a tiny shove, brushes her hands over the imaginary wrinkles she left behind, and kicks me out of the van.
A glance at my phone sends me hurrying back inside, where the party should be getting underway in earnest. Hopefully, I can corner CJ and force her to see reason for once. Forget about me damaging her; I’ll do what it takes to make sure she doesn’t do any major damage to my revenge.