then. That was a super-weird response. Teresa worked hard not to show her shock, to react in any way other than polite acquiescence. Why the secrecy? Wasn’t the bride supposed to be part of these discussions? What was going on here?
Her thoughts scrambling, Teresa linked her hands around her knees and tried to corral her thoughts. Right, moving on. “Do you have a preference on where you would like to marry? When? How many guests? What’s your budget?”
Brooks held her eyes when he dropped what Teresa hoped would be the last bombshell of the evening. “You have an unlimited budget and I’m offering to pay double your normal fee.”
“What’s the catch?” she asked, not sure that she wanted to know.
Brooks smiled. “I need you to organize the wedding of the year so that it can take place on the thirtieth.”
“Of what month?” She needed at least six months to prepare; six months was tight but doable.
Brooks held her eye and didn’t flinch. “I’m getting married on the last Saturday of this month, Teresa.”
Two weeks?
Frick.
Teresa held out her glass and nodded to the whiskey bottle. “Can I have another? And, respectfully, are you insane? There is no way I can plan a wedding in two weeks.”
Brooks pulled out his phone and dialed. “She said she can’t do it,” he said to the person on the other line. He then handed her the phone. “He wants to talk to you.”
There was a method to his madness...and a madness to his methods. Shakespeare’s quote, Brooks Abbingdon thought, had never been more apt. His particular method of madness was to marry.
In two weeks’ time.
Teresa hung up the phone and looked at him with wide, defeated eyes. “I’d be...” she hesitated “...happy to do your wedding. Two weeks is no problem.”
Another success for The Fixer and that meant that another hefty bill would be landing in his Brooks’s inbox soon. Fact: sometimes you had to pay for things to go your way.
Seeing that Teresa was at the end of her rope—it was the early hours of the morning and she’d had a hell of a day—Brooks told her to rest and Teresa immediately dropped her head back and closed her eyes. She’d been shocked by his time frame; hearing that he had yet to choose a bride might cause her brain to explode.
Because, really, who planned a wedding without securing a bride?
Apparently, he did.
Brooks stretched out his legs and jammed his hands into the pockets of his suit pants, mostly to hide the small tremor in his fingers. Married? Him? He’d always believed, still did, that wedding rings were the world’s smallest, strongest pair of handcuffs. But here he was, about to get hitched because his grandfather refused to listen to reason.
Stubborn old bastard.
Lester Abbingdon desperately wanted to invest in a friend’s yet-to-be-developed chain of luxury boutique hotels. Brooks wasn’t convinced that the investment would provide a decent, or any, return. But Lester rather fancied the idea of being the world’s next hotel mogul and, since he couldn’t take money from the swimming-in-cash Abbingdon Trust, he was determined to raise the money he needed by selling his personal stake in Abbingdon Airlines. Brooks had no intention of dealing with a new partner, of having to justify his decisions or, far worse, ask for permission to do what he wanted, when he wanted, with his company.
No, the only option was to buy his grandfather’s shares from him and in order to raise the cash needed—without having to get banks or other investors involved—that meant, yippee-doo-dah, getting married.
Brooks stared out the window into the inky blackness and remembered his first visit to the stuffy offices of the Abbingdon Trust’s lawyers. He’d been twenty-one and in their wood-paneled offices, they told him that, as the only Abbingdon heir, he was entitled to a sizeable monthly income from the trust but he was also set to inherit a crap-ton of cash on his twenty-fifth birthday. If he was married.
The offer would only be renewed every five years and at twenty-five, using Lester’s money to buy his first two cargo planes, he’d opted not to marry—he’d been having too much fun playing the field and had no intention, and no need, to sacrifice his freedom. Ditto at thirty but at thirty-five, Abbingdon Airlines was worth the inconvenience. He wanted control and for control he needed cash; to get the cash he needed to marry...
He’d established and grown Abbingdon Airlines; it was his hard work that had made the company one of the most trusted and respected companies in the country. His clients knew that they could rely on him to get them, or their goods, where they needed to go in the shortest time possible. But Lester wanted to go and play Monopoly with real-life assets and had placed him between a rock and a hard place. Shouldn’t ninety-year-old men be smoking cigars and playing bridge?
And of course, every time they spoke about this deal, Lester never failed to remind him that he was ecstatic that he was being forced to marry and that maybe, God willing, he’d get a much-desired great-grandchild, preferably a grandson, out of the deal. Lester then launched into his oft-repeated lecture on his lack of commitment to providing an heir to continue the Abbingdon line, that if he didn’t hop to it—his words—six hundred years of DNA-soaked history would cease to exist. The art and furniture collected over twenty-four generations would scatter to private collectors all over the world. Abbingdon Castle and its surrounding land would be sold to the highest bidder. The Abbingdons weren’t royalty but they were damn close.
And it all rested on Brooks’s shoulders...
Or in his loins.
He’d have a kid, one day. Not now. Right now all he wanted to do was save his company.
Brooks took a sip of his whiskey, staring past young Joshua St. Claire—sleeping now, thank God—to the inky night beyond the window of his Global 7000 jet. The kid was so out of it, he barely registered that he was on a private jet and hadn’t noticed the rich leather seats, the fine wood veneers and the stylish carpets and stonework. This jet had just hit the market but he owned one and, being aviation crazy, it annoyed him that neither of his two guests appreciated their luxurious mode of transport.
And his annoyance had nothing to do with the aircraft’s hefty price tag, which was upward of half a billion dollars. This plane was superbly designed, exquisitely manufactured and brilliantly engineered. It was, in its way, a masterpiece. And his guests, like his grandfather, didn’t share his passion for anything with an engine and two wings.
His business was damn good. And his life, up until two weeks ago, had been friggin’ amazing.
Yet, here he was, planning his wedding. And because the Abbingdon Trust paid for all Abbingdon weddings, he was going to take full advantage and turn his wedding into a massive networking event, inviting all his present clients and anybody he thought could be a potential client. If he was going to put his head in a hangman’s noose, then he was going to swing in style.
All he now needed was a bride.
Brooks
