grumbling to yourself?” Web took two beers out of the fridge, popped the tops, set one down next to the cutting board, and took a drink from the other. “I mean, if this is stressing you out, we can just order Thai.”
“I was not grumbling to myself, and I’m not stressed,” he grumbled.
Web just raised one eyebrow and pointedly nodded toward the onion Will was apparently chopping—again.
Will set down the knife. “The recipe says ‘finely diced.’”
“Do you just want to talk about it?” Web asked, needling him the way only a brother could. “You know, unpack your feelings and admit you feel guilty that Hadley lost her job because of you and that I’m going out to Nebraska to be her plus-one for her sister’s wedding.”
There was nothing—nothing—about that sentence that didn’t make Will’s gut churn. Unpack his feelings? Admit guilt? Hadley? Nebraska? He grabbed the beer and downed half of it.
“It wasn’t my fault. I talked to her boss.” It hadn’t gone well, but he’d done what he could to isolate Hadley from the fallout of a pissed-off ex-fiancée with an eternal grudge. “I can’t help it if Mia, who is on the company’s board of directors, made all sorts of assumptions.” And, if the doorman-to-doorman gossip was to be believed, all but demanded that Hadley be fired. Thank God Web hadn’t outright asked him if the gossip was true. Surprisingly, he seemed to think Hadley would never even consider making out with Will.
He was tempted to tell Web the truth about why Hadley was so determined to spend time with him, why she always brought up how she could really help steer the Holt Foundation in a better direction. How she was so focused on the money that she brought a full-on spiral-bound prospective report. Then, whenever she and Web went anywhere besides that hole-in-the-wall place after rugby games, Web always picked up the tab. That she was always short for the cab ride home when Web insisted on covering the full fare. Plus, there was all the dream apartment shopping she did online, down to posting pictures on Insta of how she’d furnish her fantasy place. And the way she always seemed to be mentioning that she was between paychecks? Yeah, it sounded a little too much like the way Mia had set Will up to play the sucker with the sole purpose of marrying him for his money. That’s why he couldn’t stop thinking of Hadley. He had to protect his brother.
He needed to come up with a better way to break up Hadley’s gold-digging plans for Web.
Like admit to your brother that you kissed her?
Damn, he wished he knew why he couldn’t, but no matter how many times he’d tried today, he couldn’t get the words out, and that’s how he’d ended up with micro-diced onions. “Why do you care so much about her anyway? I’m your brother. You should feel bad that I got dragged into it.”
“You’ll be just fine,” his brother said. “And she’s my best friend who lost her job.”
The snort of uh-huh-sure came out before Will could stop it.
“Why is that so hard for you to believe?” Web asked. “What are you, some kind of asshole who doesn’t think men and women can be friends?”
No, but had his brother somehow miraculously never set eyes on Hadley’s ass? “Are you trying to say you aren’t attracted to her?”
Web shrugged. “She’s not my type.”
Considering the fact that Web’s type encompassed just about every woman, Will had a real fucking hard time believing that his twin wasn’t into Hadley. The woman obviously had to have her claws firmly planted in his brother’s balls if Web was willing to go to Nebraska, of all the godforsaken places, for Hadley’s sister’s wedding. And that was why he was dicing the shit out of onions to make Web’s favorite dinner as a way of softening him up and getting him to see the light. If a good meal couldn’t get Web to refocus his mind, then Will was going to have to do something drastic. He was the oldest, if only by five minutes, and the last living member of the Holt family besides his brother. Therefore, it was his responsibility to protect Web from what no one had been around to protect Will from: Hadley the gold digger.
Later that night, though, it was more than apparent that the most important thing to protect Web from at the moment was him dying of food poisoning. Will knocked