Wiley looked up with a surprising expression of determination.
A shiver of premonition that he wasn’t getting out of this at all crawled up Holt’s back.
“Yes, Wiley. Oh, Wiley! What do you have to say? Can you help us out?” Kit flopped onto the couch at the back of the bus. “Not to be dramatic,” he said dramatically, “but the truth is—and it’s only right you know it—I thought this wedding episode would be for me and my honeydew, who I’d believed was about to propose but turned out to be a rat. I never would have involved this backwater or little old you otherwise!”
Holt didn’t wince at Kit’s breezy insult. He’d wince nonstop if he let things like that bother him anymore. Kit was overall kind and well-meaning and thoughtless. But Wiley’s frown made him instinctively pivot the heel of his hand against the tabletop toward Wiley’s tensely curled fist.
He meant to pat once or tap their knuckles together but wound up covering Wiley’s hand with his. The contact jarred him with a short, sharp bolt of heat. Wiley coughed and straightened, not looking back to see Holt’s stilted smile or Holt withdrawing and rubbing his hand against his perfectly creased brown work pants.
Must be the dry, recirculated air inside the bus. And nerves.
Wiley’s nerves, because there was no reason for Holt to be nervous.
Kit carried on, oblivious to the slight or anything else. “But you could rescue me. The show.” He splayed his hand over his heart. “I’m seeing it so clearly now and it’s just too good. I thought that I could be some bashful bride returned to his hometown for orange blossoms and roses, but no, this is way better. Me fabulously sharing with everyone this romance I nurtured in hush-hush secret because you’re both publicity shy—so presh—but masterminding this to ensure my best friends still have the wedding of their dreams? Far superior and so much my strengths. You had good instincts for once, Holty.” He sat upright. “We can do this. Can’t we? Tell me we can.”
“Can get married? I think that’s a big ask, considering.” Holt shook his head. Kit for sure thought he’d come up with this whole thing, but in all the wrong ways. “We should have canceled or delayed the announcement to get things sorted out after your ‘amazing getaway so Blaine could pop the question’ turned out to be a ‘guilt break-up pity trip.’ And you definitely should not have dragged Wiley into this.”
“I drag? I?” Kit let his seaweed bar wrapper fall on the table. “I’m not who asked him to marry me in front of everyone, without any prior warning or plan.”
Instead of arguing, Holt scooted the wrapper to him and opened it fully along its sealed edges, tied it into a tight knot, and set it alongside his to throw away later.
“You called him onstage. That’s all I’ll say.” Holt gave Kit a warning look that somehow still worked after all these years. Older-brother powers ran deep. “But filming the show—live, I am now learning, thanks for that—with the idea we’re getting married is going too far. Way too far.”
A long silence followed where no one agreed with him.
He’d stepped in so Wiley wasn’t completely railroaded by Kit, known the moment Kit had asked him to point Wiley out in the crowd what was brewing and that it’d go horribly awry if he allowed it, but that’s where it was supposed to end.
The crawling sensation of what was now dread made it to his nape, and he ran his hands through his hair.
“You could always film the episode and claim cold feet at the end. Run away to do the elope-nonelope thing,” Carla piped up. “I mean, it seems to me that Kit has a show to salvage, this town could use the boost, and I have a cake to bake. Given Wiley agrees and doesn’t mind a few weeks—months—of speculation and gossip and sympathy once back in Odalia husbandless. Of course.”
“Of course,” Holt said dryly. “Your bakery gets featured, Kit gets to be fairy godmother, but what does that get Wiley?” He squeezed his thigh to stop from reaching out to Wiley again but he met, and held, Wiley’s gaze. “You do not have to agree.”
Wiley didn’t hesitate. “I will if you will.”
Kit gasped exultantly and Carla bounced on her seat. Holt’s heart sank.
“I don’t want the show to be ruined, and Carla is an incredible baker and…. We can go on that nonelope thing. That’s a good idea. I don’t know why it can’t work any less than all the other scripted ‘reality’ stuff you guys do. I am desperate to get out of Odalia.” Wiley’s jaw set as he studied Holt for several minutes, then asked seriously, “What can you gain? I mean, if we’re all agreeing to terms here.”
The answer came to Holt so easily, but he was still surprised by it.
He’d never wanted to be in front of the camera. Coming on to work behind the scenes had been a fluke on its own, but one episode in the second season, everything was going so wrong he’d wound up heavily featured as he’d problem-solved and built custom enchanted forest backdrops and was the only one who could talk Kit down from the ledge.
That episode proved to be an instant hit. Holt and Kit were perfect foils for each other, him deliberate and steady and Kit an excitable jumble of energy, but not so extreme it made the other look bad. There was also apparently something about him in a low-slung tool belt and the leather suspenders he preferred that struck quite the chord with viewers. Holt had been in front of the camera ever since.
He’d wanted off almost as long but hadn’t found any good outs.
“Holt,” Kit whined. “We can do this! You can do this. For the greater good.”
“Yours, perhaps,” Holt said flatly.
Kit lifted one shoulder unapologetically.
“Maybe you don’t want to do this with me.” Wiley emphasized the last word, and his hands had curled into fists again. “Not like I don’t understand that.”
It made Holt almost angry Wiley would skew it that way.
“You have to want something,” Carla cut in. “We all do, and that doesn’t make you a bad person. Neither does filming a show where we all know the score. Even if the audience doesn’t.” She thought it over a moment. “At least I don’t think it does.”
“It so absolutely does not,” Kit said emphatically. “We’ll make a great team and make a great show. I believe in us. Holt. Please.”
Score one back for little-brother powers, because although Holt mostly ignored Kit’s wheedling tone, it still managed to jab sharply just under his heart.
Holt licked his lips and glanced at Wiley, who watched him lick his lips. He cleared his throat and squared his shoulders and fought off an errant blush. He wasn’t used to making terms or demands—he usually negotiated or met them.
He braced for impact and said, “We make it my final episode.”
“Fine.”
“Fine?” Kit’s mild response stunned Holt. “That’s it?”
“God.” Kit rolled his eyes. “Like I want you moping around on set like a miserable prisoner and having to cajole you on camera after sharing this?”
“But if I leave the show, the show might end.” It would for certain end, and they both knew it, but Holt wasn’t going to say that aloud.
“So it ends,” Kit dismissed. “There’s other things, other opportunities. Fabulous doesn’t simply disappear—unless it’s choreographed and in a cloud of glitter, natch.”
Holt didn’t know what to make of Kit’s reaction, but he accepted it. For now.
“Okay, right. Holt gets to announce that this wedding-nonwedding made him realize it’s time to retire and off he goes, gracefully into that gray sunset. Carla is our featured baker—which was a given anyway, I mean, look at our preproduction notes. Swearsies. Wiley gets a trip to anywhere for at least a month aaaand we’ll toss in a makeover.” Kit winked and shimmied his shoulders like that was so great and Wiley should be thrilled.
From the corner of his eye, Holt saw Wiley droop again.
“Wardrobe for the honeymoon maybe, because otherwise he doesn’t need much.”
Kit’s eyebrow arched sharply.
“What? It’s
true,” Holt said, matter-of-fact. It was. Wiley was going to make an appealing groom for the camera. Thick, dark hair, not as red as he remembered but undertones remained, with a loose curl that swept up from Wiley’s forehead and curled under his ears, a dusky complexion and that scatter of cute moles, a lush mouth he didn’t seem to be aware of, and shy but intelligent velvet-brown eyes.
Not that he was making and keeping an inventory. No, it was merely the kind of thing Holt noticed after so many years in the biz.
“What do you get?” Holt asked, effectively changing the subject.
“A likely ratings bonanza, a favor for my big bro who came on board the show and helped it thrive season after season even though he apparently hates it, a launch into something else.” Kit’s eyes sparkled with mercenary charm. He definitely already had some ideas about what the something else would be.
“Wait, have you wanted me gone?”
“No!” Kit huffed and reached across the tight space to ruffle Holt’s hair. “It’s just that we’re agreed, silly. So.” He tugged Holt’s hair and then thrust his hand between the group. “All in?”
Carla put her hand on top of Kit’s, and after a moment Wiley stacked his on top.
Holt considered it. He didn’t love the idea of bargaining based on deception, but the part of him urgent to agree, banging in the back of his mind like a wind-up monkey with cymbals, was near impossible to ignore.
Everyone here knew the score. He wouldn’t be tricking anyone who could get hurt.
He put his hand over Wiley’s, careful to barely make contact. “All in.”
“THAT’S it? A trip?” Carla huffed and slapped a box of day-old pastries onto the counter between them.
“Gosh, sorry. I was kind of put on the spot without any chance to prepare a list of demands there. What should I have asked for, a million dollars?”
“Yes! Maybe? I don’t know.” She sighed and sagged onto the tall wooden stool she’d dragged from the kitchen to sit facing Wiley on the customer side of the bakery bar. “What a mess.”
“Imagine how much messier it could get.” Wiley considered it and then shook his head. “On second thought….”
“Yeah. It’s a good thing I closed early so we could go hear the big announcement.” She bit into a chocolate croissant and then stared into the center thoughtfully. “Or not, considering.”
Wiley picked at a bear claw and didn’t know how to answer. Part of him was elated at what he’d done. It was a tiny part. The rest was having a very quiet, but very total, freak-out.
Carla had tried to hustle him here the moment they’d escaped the bus—and escape was the right word, because press and fans had staked the thing out, desperate to get another glimpse of him.
In the end Holt had maneuvered them into a nearby SUV complete with a driver and dark-tinted windows. He’d had Wiley tucked under an arm and pushed Carla ahead of them, and they squished together on the middle bench, Wiley almost in Holt’s lap.
He trembled at the memory.
Wiley didn’t enjoy being under that much scrutiny, but that wouldn’t change anytime soon.
“Hey.” Carla nudged Wiley’s neglected mug of coffee an inch closer to him. “Are you going to be okay?”
“Did I make a huge mistake?”
Carla shrugged. “Too late now.”
That brought Wiley up short. He straightened and quit imagining worst-case scenarios, one after the other. She was right.
“Look on the bright side—you’re going to get a whole lot of quality time with Kit.”
Wiley nodded and sipped his coffee. But when he thought about the whirlwind of the last few hours, all he could picture was Holt.
“So true. I can always count on you with that silver lining,” he said, not even sounding convincing to himself.
Carla eyed him and then leaned way over to grab the coffeepot and the notepad and pen she always kept by the bakery case. She topped off their mugs and tapped the paper with a finger. “Okay, then. Let’s make a plan.”
“Some marketing thing for the bakery?”
Her lips flattened together. “No, a make-it-through-this-still-mostly-sane-so-you-can-go-on-your-trip plan.”
“That’s probably a good idea.” Wiley had no clue where to start.
“It’s a great idea. Genius, even.” Carla made a list of numbers with bold dashes after them, brought her pen back up to one, and looked at him expectantly. “Your turn.”
A snicker bubbled up in Wiley and spilled over until he was laughing too hard to answer.
“Oh, come on. It wasn’t that funny. It wasn’t funny at all.”
“I had to do something. My nerves are shot.” Wiley’s laughter faded, and the release left him wrung out. He took the pen from her and began doodling around the edges of the paper. Drawing always helped him focus and relax.
“Maybe we don’t need a numbered and ordered plan. But we should lay some groundwork. Code words, secret gestures, you know, like in crime movies, so if something is really heavy or tough for you, you adjust your tie and I come running in.”
“When do I ever wear ties?”
“That’s not what I mean, and you know it.” Carla poked at her phone to check the time. “We’ve been in here three hours. I don’t think anyone followed us here, so you can probably go home.” She boxed the remaining pastries and slid them to Wiley. “We don’t have to plan anything. Go get some rest and we can figure it out starting tomorrow. I mean, we’re not half bad at winging things. Look at this place!”
Carla’s cheer was forced but Wiley appreciated it, even if he was starting to go numb from overload.
“You did okay with the bakery, I’ll give you that.”
“We did,” Carla corrected. “I got the crazy notion to open it, but you’ve helped me every step to getting in the black. I can help you with this.”
Wiley didn’t tell her getting the bakery off the ground with nothing but a rent break from the downtown development grant and Carla’s knack for addictive cupcakes had been a lifesaver to him, providing distraction and a challenge after his grandmother’s death, something to do that wasn’t sorting through decades of accumulated stuff.
“I’d say you owe me, given what you said on the bus to keep Kit’s own crazy notion rolling.” He smiled as he asked, but things didn’t seem as clear as they had when he’d agreed to this. Wiley lifted the box of treats in thanks and headed for the door. He peered out past the shade Carla had pulled down after their arrival but didn’t see anything, so he unlocked the door and put a cautious foot outside.
“After today there’ll probably be a run on danishes and donuts, and gossip. Come help me—get here an hour early,” Carla called.
He waved acknowledgment and shook his head but didn’t mind. He liked being useful and reliable, and liked that others relied on him.
Given today’s outcome, he might like that too much.
But much as he might want to, he couldn’t blame Carla or her ridiculous year-of-saying-yes babble. He rarely said no when someone asked for a favor or needed what he thought he could provide. It was how he ended up back in Odalia, after all.
Wiley kept an eye open as he hurried down Main Street and turned the corner onto Wren Avenue. He darted through a gap in a tall hedge and into the backyards he always cut through on his walk to and from the bakery. The fifth backyard led to Sparrow Avenue, and two blocks up Sparrow sat Grandma’s house.
It wasn’t fancy. The biggest houses in Odalia sat on huge lots along the winding road leading to and from the heart of downtown. Every block behind that road, the houses and lots got smaller and smaller. When Grandma and her husband married—a grandfather Wiley had never met—their tidy starter home had been on the edge of town.
But he liked the sturdy cracker box, cedar-sided house. It was familiar. He’d grown up here. Now it belonged to him, for all he was trying to decide what to do with it.
Wiley hunched behind a huge oak tree and eyed the house. No news trucks were parked o
utside or reporters camped on the lawn, but he broke into a run and didn’t relax until he had the front door shut behind him.
“Whaaaa!” he yelled when something huge and dark loomed toward him from the kitchen.
The overhead light came on and flooded the dim hall. Holt lifted his hands in apology.
Wiley clapped a hand over his heart and let out a rough breath. His gaze darted around the room as if Kit and the camera crew would be lurking to catch his reaction, but managed to gather his wits enough to say, “Did you handyman a break-in?”
Holt smiled ruefully and turned his wrist to reveal a key held in his hand. It looked ridiculously tiny flashing against his palm. “You keep the spare in the same place GB did.” He took a slow step and put it on the narrow table set against the back wall of the living room and stood in the connecting doorway between the kitchen and the rest of the house. “Sorry, I just got here or I’d have turned on a light or something. I didn’t intend to scare you, or even beat you here. But since I did and I found the spare and I didn’t want to be creeping around or wind up in a photospread creeping around, here I am. Already inside.”
Wiley hadn’t heard GB in years. It’s what his friends growing up and the kids in the neighborhood called his grandma—Bess, who was too old-fashioned to let them call her that, but had no use for standing on formality either.
“Understood.” Wiley nodded and found he didn’t mind Holt had simply come right in. He liked it, even. “Want some lemonade?”
Holt smiled. “That’d be great.” He rolled into the kitchen and sat at one of Wiley’s favorite spots in the house, a bench built into the corner of windows overlooking the backyard still thick with Grandma’s flowers and interlacing ivy.
With two glasses in hand, Wiley turned to set them on the island and tilted his head at Holt. “You built that, didn’t you.” He shook his head and rooted in the fridge for the lemonade. “This has been a day of remembering things I haven’t thought of in decades.”
Say Yes to a Mess (Dreamspun Desires Book 103) Page 3
