A few people choked on their drinks. Edie just grinned.
Gretchen pointed at her fiancé with her fork. Hunter cleared his throat. “I’m Hunter, and I decided to put a ring on it.”
“Good job, baby,” Gretchen said. She gestured at her sister. “Let’s go this way.”
Audrey got to her feet slowly—not an easy trick considering the size of her belly. She pushed a few wisps of carrot-colored hair away from her freckled face and sighed. “I’m the long-suffering sister of the bride,” she said, and put the back of her hand to her forehead, eliciting a few chuckles from the group. “And Gretchen has asked me to be her matron of honor, which is both sweet and a little terrifying.” She grinned at her sister. “I couldn’t be happier for these two, though, and I feel like this wedding is going to be wonderful and a match made in heaven.”
Someone made gagging noises, and the room erupted in laughter, including Audrey. Okay, so they had a group of clowns tonight. That could make things fun.
Next went a man named Cooper, who introduced himself as Gretchen’s old boss and a college friend who Edie vaguely recognized. He talked about working with Gretchen, and her dedication to her work and to Hunter, and how lucky Hunter was, going on and on to the point that it got a little uncomfortable. Eventually he sat, and the next person stood up. Kat Geary was Gretchen’s literary agent, and her speech was short and funny. From there, things picked up. There was Chelsea, who was cute and bubbly and rambled on and on as if she were terrified of silence. There was Asher, a good-looking man who made a total bro-speech and was one of the guys who Edie had seen in the kitchen. He seemed nice enough in his spiel, which just convinced Edie that no one could ever really know what a man was thinking. Then, a tiny little woman with a big dark ponytail stood up and said her name was Greer, and she was a wedding planner as well as Gretchen’s friend. Next to Greer was Levi, who was one of Hunter’s biggest and oldest clients, and a good friend.
Levi also stared at Bianca the entire time he talked.
Bianca, of course, sat at the foot of the table and smiled prettily as everyone spoke, but when Levi gave his speech, she gazed up at him as if he were the only man in the world. Edie could pretty much see the hooks sinking into him. Poor man wouldn’t know what hit him.
On the other side of the table, there was a geeky young woman named Taylor who seemed a little shy. Sebastian, who was rather abrupt and succinct and unfriendly, who seemed an odd choice for a bridal party. There was sweet dark-haired woman named Brontë who quoted Aristotle and mentioned that Gretchen had been in her wedding, and next to her was her husband, Logan, who was also one of the groomsmen. Then there was the man next to Edie, Magnus, who mentioned he made video games for a living and was sincerely happy for his friend Hunter. Edie did her best to keep in her feelings, even though she knew Magnus was a big fat liar. Now wasn’t the time. She wasn’t like Gretchen, to bluster and shock people with her words. Gretchen had a big mouth but she also had a big heart.
Edie? Now, Edie had a cold, bitter heart and she liked to remember grudges.
So when it was her time to stand up and make a toast, she awkwardly rose to her feet and lifted her glass. “I’m Edie King, and I’m an old friend of Gretchen’s. As for what I do?” She let her gaze deliberately swing around the room and landed on three people in particular. Asher. Levi. And then, Magnus. The three men drinking beer. “My profession is a feline behaviorist. I guess you could say that I’m what you call a cat lady.”
Somewhere down the table, someone spit out his beer.
Chapter Two
Magnus would give the cat lady credit—she had fucking stones the size of boulders. Sure, he still didn’t like her, but the way she’d archly delivered her set-down during the toastings? It was beautifully done, even if it was passive-aggressively aimed at him. Magnus enjoyed that sort of thing, and he enjoyed the way Levi got all flustered and Asher kept staring at his beer. They knew they’d been acting like dicks earlier in the kitchen with their sexist commentary, but Magnus tended to blow that sort of shit off. Levi was a dreamer who chased after anything with a skirt, and Asher, well, Asher had recently had his heart broken by his childhood sweetheart. So if he was desperately trying to score some bridesmaid pussy, Magnus couldn’t blame him.
He was pretty sure the cat lady was having none of him, though. Which kind of made him laugh inside. Not that he was interested in the cat lady himself. She was cute enough, in that scholarly, boho-nerd sort of way. He was a man, and a man’s brain had a “fuck switch” every time he saw a woman. The fuck switch either went On or Off depending on how the woman looked, and his fuck switch was definitely on for the cat lady, because she had a nice pair of tits under that ugly dress-thing she was wearing, and a perfect heart-shaped little face that was marred by her perpetual scowl. Magnus’s dick’d do her, because his dick liked interesting things, and she was interesting. Magnus’s brain, not so much.
As the evening wore on, the iciness from his dinner partner continued, and it destroyed even Magnus’s budding appreciation for her. Because when he was stuck between a married couple and a woman who ignored him?
It made for a long fucking night. He was glad when the party finally ended and he was able to collect Levi and get the fuck out of dodge. He’d spent half the night sucking down beers and mentally trying out a few new concepts for The World , because his thoughts always turned to it.
Both he and Levi made a living creating IPs—Intellectual Property—for video games. They’d become famous five years ago when an online computer game of theirs became so big that it was soon showing up in every toy store as merchandise and phrases like “Loot is for suckers” became part of the Internet consciousness. A big gaming company had noticed and had bought the rights to the game for two billion dollars, unheard of at the time. Then, Magnus and Levi had created a second IP and sold the rights to the concept for several hundred million.