Page 65 of Paradise & Vodka
She finished her drink. "I might have hit on him the night of the meet and greet."
I wanted to be pissed. I wanted to stand up and yell at her that, once again, she was trying to take my boyfriend, but Nick wasn't my boyfriend. I also wanted to be mad at Nick for not telling me, but I understood he wanted to protect me. He had tried to do that since day one. I closed my eyes and sighed. "Seriously?"
"I’m sorry. I was drunk, and you snagged a hot one."
"So, what you’re saying is I can’t let you drink"—I motioned with my head at her empty glass on the tray—"around my boyfriends."
"Boyfriends? Are you and Nick breaking up or something?"
"I …"
That was exactly what was going to happen, and I hated it. A part of me had thought I wouldn’t have to tell my family that Nick and I broke up because I never expected to mend my relationship with them. I had expected to attend the wedding, have fun in Fiji, and then go home. I never planned to fall for Nick, and I felt like our breakup was going to be real.
"I don’t think so," I lied.
"I hope not. I like him, and not just because I hit on him, which I’m sorry about."
Joss gasped out of the blue, and everyone looked at her. She was looking at her laptop.
"What’s wrong?" Paul asked.
"I just came across a report." She looked over at Everleigh and me. "They found four bodies at the airport that got hit by the tsunami."
I whipped my head toward my sister and asked her, "Do you think it could be Douglas?"
Everleigh lifted a shoulder. "I don’t know."
"Did he go to the airport?" Nick inquired.
Everleigh closed her eyes briefly. "Yes, Doug and his parents left me behind and went to the airport."
"What if it’s them?" Paul asked.
"Honestly, I wouldn’t care," Everleigh responded.
"What about the entire reason why you agreed to marry him?" Nick questioned.
"You mean the agreement?" she asked.
He nodded. "Yeah. What happens if he’s dead?"
Everleigh looked back at our father, who had woken up from the commotion. "I … I don’t know," she said.
"What’s the agreement?" Joss inquired.
"Doug needed to get married before his twenty-sixth birthday, so he could get his entire inheritance from his grandpa, so we signed some agreement his dad had prepared."
"A prenup?" I asked.
She shook her head. "No, it wasn’t a prenup. New York has some sort of spousal protection law, so they just wanted me to sign an agreement about what I would get from the marriage."
"Does it say anything about what happens if Douglas dies?" I questioned.
"I don’t remember."
"What about the important parts? Like how long you have to stay married, how the money factors in for Dad, stuff like that?" I asked.
"I get an allowance for as long as we stay married, and there’s a part about paying the medical bills for Dad."
