It's Always Complicated (Her Billionaires Book 4) by Julia Kent Page A

hair. She turned toward the shout and saw why he was upset.
    Someone else was driving away in his little painted golf cart.
    “Jeremy got you,” Bournham called out, the handful of workers all laughing in an uproar. Inside joke, she assumed.
    “You there?” Dylan asked, his voice worried.
    “Yeah. Just interrupted.”
    “We’ll be there tomorrow. All of us. My mom and dad and brother.” Dylan’s other siblings couldn’t make it. Partly true, partly a socially-acceptable lie, Laura accepted the absence. Who was she to judge? She was an only child. Her best friend was an only child—who was marrying an only child. Knowing nothing about having a sibling, Laura felt she couldn’t really pipe up about how she felt.
    Dylan seemed resigned to his siblings’ absence. She wouldn’t push.
    Mike, though...
    No word from his mom and dad. Her attempt to reach out had been met with silence. In her letter, an old-fashioned paper letter she’d actually mailed through the post office, she’d enclosed a picture of Jillian playing with the twins, a gorgeous shot from earlier in the summer when they spent a day at a nearby lake.
    If that adorable picture didn’t tweak their hearts, then nothing would. Mike appeared to be right. His parents would not budge.
    And so their wedding would be celebrated by a gaggle of friends, coworkers, former colleagues and a ton of Dylan’s family.
    That would have to be enough.
    Lydia gestured toward a large cabin, and Laura described it to Dylan in real time. Two bedrooms, one on either side of a large, lodge-like living room. A tiny kitchenette. A bathroom that was barely larger than a walk-in closet, with no bathtub. She wondered how she would clean the kids, until Lydia opened the back door.
    An enormous hot tub, big enough to seat twelve, was there.
    She groaned into the phone.
    “What’s wrong?”
    “Twelve-person hot tub on the back porch.”
    “Can I come now?” he growled, making her laugh. Lydia and Mike made their goodbyes, leaving her alone. Mike gestured that he would send up her bags from her car.
    “I’m alone now,” she said softly into the phone. “And I know this wedding’s going to be wonderful, but I really am looking forward to it being over.”
    “Me, too. Not the honeymoon part,” he quickly added. “But the wedding part.”
    Her stomach lurched, like a small, slimy creature lived in it. “I kind of think we are making a mistake,” she whispered into the phone, afraid to say it but needing to confess this feeling. “It’s just a feeling,” she quickly stammered.” I don’t want to back out of this or anything. I just feel so...I don’t know.”
    “Oh, honey,” Dylan said, his low voice soothing. “You’re overwhelmed.”
    Her voice thickened. “Yeah.”
    “And you’ve been overwhelmed for a long time.”
    “Yeah.”
    “Mike and I got this here at home. Cyndi and Ellie are fabulous with the kids. Let the campground owners do their thing. Let go of details. Just remind yourself that we’re doing this because it’s a celebration. Not a chore.”
    The words helped her stomach to settle. “I know.”
    “I know you know, Laura. I’m reminding you, though. We all need to be reminded sometimes, even if we know something. It’s like throwing dirty socks next to the hamper.”
    “What?” She started to laugh and cry at the same time. Dylan had a way of taking a perfectly normal conversation and turning it into something weird.
    “I know I’m supposed to put them in the hamper. But I don’t. I have no idea why I don’t. I couldn’t form a coherent thought to explain it. I just...don’t. And then you have to remind me.”
    “You’re comparing your laziness with dirty socks to my emotional existential crisis around our wedding?”
    He paused. She could hear him thinking.
    “No?” his voice turned up in question. “No. Um, that would be stupid, right?”
    Her laughter made her fear lessen.
    “I think I get what you’re saying. I do know.