It's Always Complicated (Her Billionaires Book 4) (3 page)

Mike burst into laughter and gave her dad a fist bump.

“Maybe the threesome thing runs in the family?” Sandy asked, leading to a look of incredulity from Miles.

“You have something you and dad want to share with us, Mom? Is Mr. Michaelson from the dairy farm your secret third?”

Her dad started hyperventilating, his laughter coming out like a hyena’s gasp.

Sandy turned the shade of the lobsters she cooked by the hundreds. “That is not what I meant!” She smacked Miles’s arm. Lydia’s brother could tower over Sandy by a foot, but he was still her naughty little boy.

“And besides,” she added, “if I were picking a man to join me and your father, it certainly wouldn’t be Stan Michaelson.”

Miles turned green.

“Do we really need to have this conversation?” Miles groused.

Jeremy watched his nemesis with glee, then turned his attention to Pete. “You could always have another woman join you,” he said casually.

Now
Lydia
felt green, because what daughter wants to think about her parents in a threesome, and—

“Enough! Enough talking about your sex life!” she announced, giving Sandy and Pete a distressed look. “Let’s talk about the wedding.” If nothing else, the discussion about her parents’ potential threesome sex life dimmed her own arousal.

“What about
your
wedding?” Sandy asked again, giving Mike and Jeremy a look.

Four palms went in the air, all male, all facing her mother. “Don’t blame us!” Mike said in a low, emotion-filled voice. “We keep trying.”

“If I can’t marry you both, why bother marrying at all?” Lydia replied, her voice tinged with a familiar exasperation. Sandy seemed to be on a schedule. Poke Lydia and her guys at least once a month about the wedding issue. Today must be the day.

“I think Laura, Dylan and Mike would disagree,” Sandy argued.

“The two
guys
actually married,” Lydia clarified.

Jeremy and Mike suddenly looked at anyone but each other.

“That was to protect the custody of their kids,” Mike finally retorted. “If I had no choice, I’d marry Jeremy under the same circumstances, too.” Fortunately, they weren’t in the same situation. Mike’s mother loved Lydia and had accepted their unconventional threesome with an amazing level of love, while Jeremy’s parents had died years ago.

All things considered, Lydia and her guys had it good in the extended-family-acceptance department. She was deeply appreciative for that.

Not everyone had such a luxury.

“Can we really drop this? Mom, I don’t want to get married. You have a bazillion kids. Focus on Miles. Give all your attention to
his
wedding.” Lydia couldn’t even choke out the words before she curled in on herself with hysterical laughter.

Miles. Wedding. No way. Not happening. Not ever.

“Even Shrek found a female ogre to love him and live with him in his swamp,” Jeremy called out as Miles stormed away from the scene.

“I’ve got a parasail you can test out for me!” he shouted back, flipping Jeremy the bird.

Sandy pretended to be shocked by Miles’ rudeness, but no one really was. Of all of Lydia’s siblings, he was the one who would remain at Escape Shores Campground forever.

Like it or not.

Lydia smelled Mike before she felt his arm wrap around her waist, his essence all ocean air and man sweat, a great, intoxicating combo. She leaned against him, his hard body familiar now. Two years of being with Jeremy and Mike had given her the space to settle in. Though they traveled constantly, the campground was home base, and last year their house had been finished. Her mom had calmed down considerably once the small Cape Cod-style home had been complete, the cedar shingles still so vibrant in comparison to the aged ones on her parents’ and brothers’ homes.

They would age.

So would everyone.

A wedding. Unlike other little girls, Lydia hadn’t fixated on the whole bridal fantasy. She’d always assumed she’d marry one day, but life had different ideas about who she’d be with. Three years ago, if her best friend had told her she’d be with a secret billionaire and a not-so-secret ex-CEO/
playboy
, she’d have assumed poor Krysta had been slipped some acid.

And speaking of Krysta, here she came, arms overloaded with a box fil
l
ed with something that jingled.

Mike plucked the heavy box with no true exertion and peered in it. He looked up, arctic-blue eyes amused. “Candles?”

“Centerpieces. That’s the first of seven boxes of them.”

Lydia gasped. “How many tables?”

“Twenty-five,” Krysta replied in a strangled voice. Each table held eight, so—

“My God!” Lydia gasped. “Two hundred people?” It began to sink in. No wonder her mom was freaking out. Sure, she’d heard Sandy planning for this for a long time, but seeing the sheer amount of equipment coming into the campground pounded home the enormity of this event.

“Closer to two-fifty. A ton of families, plus ski people for one of the grooms, a pile of firefighters and paramedics for one of the other, and your grandmother invited half the Jeddy’s regulars to show up for fun.”

“I thought this was going to be an
intimate
affair!” Lydia exclaimed.

Her brother Caleb approached the group, carrying a box that matched Krysta’s. “Make yourselves useful and carry a box!”

“Mmmm, firefighters,” Krysta said pointedly, waggling her eyebrows. “Hot, single firefighters. There’s an intimate affair I could join...”

Caleb frowned and bristled at the same time. If he sprayed himself down with a cologne called Jealousy, he couldn’t have been more obvious.

For the past few years, Krysta’s adoring crush on Caleb had been an accessory to Lydia’s friendship with her, like a sidecar attached to a motorcycle, yet one no passenger ever used. Lately, though, Lydia had felt the electricity between her little bro and her best friend.

It made her feel, well...

Green.

And not with jealousy.

When did life become so complicated?

Maybe when you fell in love with two guys
, a voice inside her whispered.

She laughed quietly to herself, making Mike pull back and look at her with amusement.

“Something funny?”

“I’ll tell you later.”

“Thinking about hot firefighters?” Krysta asked with a wink as she strolled back to where the rest of the wedding supplies were being unloaded from various trucks. The big event was in two days, and Pete and Sandy had called every friend they knew to come work for the long weekend. Krysta told Lydia she would have done it for free, but everyone was being paid.

Which was even better.

Lydia, Mike and Jeremy all planned to donate their wages to one of Jeremy’s microloan funds in Southeast Asia, a fact her parents knew. Stubborn as mules, they still insisted on paying them for their time.

Having their daughter in a relationship with two very, very rich men made no difference to her parents. They treated everyone the same.

And that extended to persistent questions about weddings and grandchildren.

Without thinking, Lydia touched her belly at the thought of grandchildren.
Someday
, she thought.
Someday.
 

But not yet.

“We need seven cribs!” Miles shouted from the area where the trucks congregated, parked in drunken lines at various angles, ramps extending out of open backs like grey metal tongues. “We only have six.”

Pete groaned, then pulled off his wide-brimmed hat, scratching his head. He gave Lydia’s mother an amused look. “We have any leftover from Caleb?”

“A crib from the early 1990s?” she scoffed. “No. We need to get some of those portable things. What do they call them?”

“Pack a potties?” Jeremy mused. “Port a crib? Pack ’n Port? Baby in a Box?”

Mike snorted. “Pack ’n Play.”

Lydia shot him an appraising look. “How would you know the name of a piece of baby equipment?”

He shrugged. “Hotels? I don’t know.”

Sandy’s eyes narrowed as she took them in.

And Lydia’s hand stayed in place, palm warm against the soft skin on her body, right where a baby might grow.

Someday
.

Josie

Managing her mother was like holding a feral baby possum in your hands while juggling cooked spaghetti.

Josie and Alex had gotten Aunt Cathy, Uncle Calvin, her mother, and Uncle Mike to the hotel where they were staying for the night, before the whole crew would go on up to the campground where the wedding was being held.

But they’d been dropped off at the hotel on the ocean’s edge, Aunt Cathy gasping at the sight of the grey-green water. Landlocked for life, her Ohio relatives were finally seeing the Atlantic, and the thrill of knowing how excited they were took some of the sting out of her mother’s arrest.

Yes,
arrest
. Marlene would face charges, though at this point she was released to go with Aunt Cathy
and
her uncles, with a requirement that they go back to the airport to talk with some governing authority. In the haze of the evening, Josie hadn’t been too clear on what was going on.

Josie’s phone rang. Before she could say a word, she heard, “I take it Aunt Marlene and the crew arrived all safe and sound in Portland.” Her niece/cousin, Darla, spoke as if they were picking up an earlier conversation mid-stream. Darla had a tendency to do this.

She wasn’t exactly a formal person.

“How’d you know?”

“Your mom’s naked tits are all over Twitter.”

Really
not formal.

“Don’t look at the hashtag #doublemilehigh.”

“Damn it.” Josie wasn’t even on Twitter and didn’t generally care about social media beyond protecting Laura, Mike, Dylan and the kids from the assholes who attacked their dating service, Good Things Come in Threes, but knowing that those pictures were out there still made her cringe.

“You got to hand it to Aunt Marlene: she knows how to make an entrance.”

“My mother was naked wearing a luggage tag on her nipple.”

“Better than on her clit.”

“DARLA!”

“What? I’m just sayin’....”

“You don’t need to
say
it.”

“Someone’s got to. How in the hell do you get that image out of your head once you know it actually happened? Can you imagine a luggage tag clamped to your—”

Click.

Hanging up on Darla was the only way to preserve her mental health. And to stop the flood of images of luggage tags attached to—

Bzzzz.

Against her better judgement, Josie looked at the text.

It was a picture of an actual luggage tag attached to a—

CLICK.

“Who was that?” asked Meribeth, walking into the florist’s cooler where Josie now stood, red as a beet from seeing that which could not be unseen. She was going to kill Darla the next time she saw her.

Beat her to death with a luggage tag.

“Um, no one important,” Josie said, plastering on a fake smile. She was here with her future mother-in-law to pick out some final flower choices for the bouquet and for Alex’s boutonniere. While this was a double wedding, with Alex and Josie marrying in one ceremony, and Laura, Mike and Dylan having their own separate wedding (minus the legalities), all five of them had
already
decided
to throw
convention out the window.

Why not just do what each group wanted and let the wedding be a chaotic, unmatched, crazy party?

Which pretty much described Josie’s life right now anyhow.

Instead of worrying about her mother’s possible criminal charges, she was going to be shallow and think about her wedding dress.

Josie would wear a white, strapless gown with simple lines and very little lace. She enjoyed the classic 1920s look, with pearls for accents and sweet amounts of flat silk hugging her body. Years of living with Alex had added some pounds to her slim frame, giving her hips and boobs. Alex loved her no matter what, but he expressed considerable appreciation for having a little more to grab these days than when they’d first met.

She’d found herself pleased with her curvier form, though she was still tiny compared to most of her friends and family. She fit under Alex’s arm like someone had carved her to his specifications, a companion piece that clicked in beside his rib.

And she liked it that way.

“What about this deep shade of burgundy?” Meribeth asked, bringing over white roses with blood-red tips. “What an interesting combination!”

She knew that the wedding was a huge deal for Meribeth, who had been an eighteen-year-old single mother to Alex, and who had married later in life in a simple ceremony with Alex’s stepfather, John. This crazy double wedding might not have been what Meribeth would have chosen for her only child, but she’d joined in the planning with gusto.

And, to Josie’s relief, remarkable restraint. She couldn’t imagine having a mother-in-law who was a Momzilla when it came to their wedding.

She’d just run off to Vegas and elope if that happened.

And never, ever come back.

Ring!

Speaking of mothers she wished she could run away from, Josie thought as she stared glumly at her phone screen. Aunt Cathy was calling her, and that could mean only one thing.

“What’s she done now?” Josie said into the phone after sliding the phone icon, her long, weary sigh ending with a groan. Might as well get it over with.

“Darla didn’t tell you?” Aunt Cathy jumped right into the conversation as if this were normal. As if talking about Marlene’s crazy exploits were just like discussing which dessert to bring to a potluck.

“Oh, she told me. Complete with pictures and everything.”

“There are pictures?” Aunt Cathy howled. Josie heard a man’s low tones in the background, clearly trying to calm her aunt down. Must be Calvin.

“What’s going on?” Meribeth asked. She was calm, her brows pushed together with a slight frown of worry, face so serene Josie’s whole body flushed with a kind of displaced shame. At some point, she’d have to tell Meribeth what was going on with her own mother, but couldn’t they have a few more minutes of pretending that the wedding was just a normal family affair, and that picking out which flowers to put in her future husband’s boutonniere was the highlight of the day?