Chapter Two
One Week of Hell
Dean
She looks like a walking disruption.
I’m barely three seconds into meeting her, and I already know—she’s going to be a problem.
Not just because she showed up late and immediately stepped in something, or because she’s now tracking it toward my porch with an unsettling amount of optimism.
It’s the smile.
It’s too bright. Too practiced. A smile that says I’m here to take over, now get out of my way.
I shut the front door behind me and let out a slow, measured breath. The kind I only ever use during depositions or family holidays.
The quiet inside is a relief.
I walk through the living room—cool wood floors, built-in shelves, the soft creak of a house older than I am—and place my laptop and case files on the dining room table. Everything’s tidy. Controlled. I know where every pen in this house lives.
I like it that way.
I loosen the top button of my shirt since I feel like I’m slowly being strangled.
My phone buzzes.
I don’t answer.
I walk to the window and watch her. She’s standing by the rental car, phone to her ear, gesturing with one hand and juggling a leather tote, and a garment bag in the other.
She’s… energetic. Distractingly so.
I turn away before she catches me watching.
I grab my laptop and open my email—only to immediately regret it.
Subject line: URGENT - Partner Case Motion Response
My phone rings again before I can even finish reading.
I sigh, pinch the bridge of my nose, and answer.
“Whitaker.”
“Where the hell have you been?” Gideon’s voice barrels through the line, sharp and impatient. “I’ve called twice.”
“I stepped away for a minute,” I say. “I’m at home.”
“You’re off-site?”
“I’m working remotely.”
“Well, un-remote yourself. Feldstein just moved up the deadline. He wants a revised motion tonight.”
Of course he does.
Because this week—the one week I’m hosting a wedding on my property—is the exact week my future is being decided. If I land this case and close this client, I’m in. Name on the wall. Grant, Feldstein & Whitaker.
If I don’t… well. That isn’t really an option.
I rake a hand through my hair and stare at the files on the table. My jaw tightens.
“I’ll send it by nine.”
“Make it eight,” Gideon snaps.
I look out the window again.
She’s laughing now. Still on the phone, still unpacking, like none of this touches her. Like my week isn’t unraveling by the minute.
Her smile is blinding.
My eye twitches.
“Why aren’t you in the office, anyway?” Gideon asks.
“I told you—I’m hosting the wedding here this week. For Mason. My brother.”
A pause.
“Right. The influencer circus.”
I say nothing.
Because I’m already regretting it.
Agreeing to let my younger brother throw a wedding on my property was… not my best decision. But Mason asked. And he never asks for anything. After years of being the carefree screw-up, he’s finally settling down—and marrying someone who makes him want to be better. I respect that.
Mason always was the golden one.
Not in the achievement sense—that was me. I was the straight-A student, the debate team captain, the one who graduated law school at twenty-four and never looked back. But Mason? He was the one people gravitated to. The one who smiled easy, laughed loud, made everything look effortless.
We grew up in a house where silence was prized and emotions were… edited. I learned early how to shrink myself into something palatable. Mason never did. He was chaos with a guitar and a crooked grin, and somehow, he always got away with it.
So when he asked me for a favor—for the first time in years—I said yes.
Letting him and Ivy host their wedding here, I was told, would be simple. Was told that she’d be here for one week, ten days tops. I’d keep my distance. Let the planner do her job.
I didn’t know the planner would be a woman with a megawatt smile and legs that go on for miles.
“Eight. And don’t screw it up,” Gideon barks. “This client is your ticket.”
I hang up without saying goodbye.
Because he’s right.
This client—the founder of a media empire currently going through a scorched-earth divorce—is high profile, high maintenance, and watching every move I make. If I win this, I’ll be the youngest name partner in the firm’s history. If I lose… I won’t.
But I don’t lose. I’ve spent years making sure of it.
And I do not have time for wedding guests, or table linens, or the bossy wedding planner currently invading my space.
I have a deadline, my little brother’s wedding looming, and a stranger in the guest house.
This week is going to be hell.
***
The scratching starts just after six.
Two short huffs, one long.
Then a pause—just long enough to make me think she’s given up—before the snuffling starts again, lower to the ground, like she’s trying to inhale her way under the door.
I exhale through my nose and open it.
Muffin waddles inside with all the self-importance of someone who pays rent.
She does not.
She’s wearing the thunder vest again, which probably means someone in the neighborhood used a leaf blower today. Her toenails click against the hardwood as she trots toward me. She’s small, but overweight. Like a beige throw pillow that occasionally farts.
“You weren’t invited,” I say.
She sneezes once and flops dramatically onto the rug, letting out a long, performative groan, panting like she’s run a marathon. She hasn’t.
I close the door behind her.
“I thought you were staying with Nadine this week.”
Muffin belongs to Nadine, the woman who lives two doors down and treats HOA violations like war crimes. Somehow, despite our mutual disdain for the human race, Nadine and I have reached a silent truce over her dog.
Which is to say—we share custody of Muffin now.
Against my will.
She spends more time on my porch than she does at her actual home, and I’ve stopped pretending to care. Mostly because she has separation anxiety, anxiety-anxiety, and a complicated relationship with the weather. Also, Nadine swears her calming CBD biscuits “work better in Dean’s energy field.”
I don’t have an energy field.
I have caffeine, high blood pressure, and a growing suspicion that Muffin likes me better than she likes her actual owner. Not that I’ve pointed any of this out to Nadine.
Muffin grunts.
I retrieve the biscuits from the kitchen cabinet where I keep them next to the protein powder. I break one in half and hold it out like a peace offering.
“You know she’s going to ruin everything, right?” I say, lowering myself into the armchair across from her. “Bright clothes. Big ideas. Probably labels things just for fun.”
Muffin only blinks. She’s chronically… unbothered. It’s possibly one of the things I like most about her.
“I give it two days before she tries to put string lights on the carriage house. Or—God forbid—a chalkboard welcome sign.”
She lets out a snore that sounds suspiciously like agreement.
I toss the other half of the biscuit into her food bowl and return to the files on the table.
“Who smiles that much after stepping in God-knows-what?”
Muffin doesn’t respond, but one eyelid twitches.
“You’re not helping,” I mutter.
Muffin huffs again, rolls onto her side, and begins to softly wheeze.
It’s deeply unprofessional. And oddly comforting.