All the Wright Moves Read online

  We’d had two huge weddings, including Morgan Wright—the CEO of Wright Construction, a Fortune 500 company—and her husband, Patrick’s, event. That had been the highlight of the season. After that, wedding requests had skyrocketed. We had something at the vineyard nearly every Saturday. Hollin and I had even talked about bringing on another event planner since we were getting so much interest. At this point, I could handle it, but it was exciting to see that the vineyard had grown this much.

  We’d made it to the cellars doors when they burst open, and my oldest brother, Hollin, strode toward us. “Nora, I just saw Tamara.”

  I kept my stride easy and light. “I know. I already spoke with her.”

  “I banned her from the premises. I don’t know what the hell she was thinking.”

  “She and August got engaged.”

  Hollin gaped at me. “What the actual fuck?” He clenched his hands into fists. “I’ll kill him.”

  “Not worth it,” I assured him. “You got your punch in.”

  “You dated for three years, and he proposed to her in less than a year?”

  I glared at my brother. “Yeah, I also was able to do the math.”

  “Not helping,” Weston muttered.

  That was when Hollin noticed him standing there. His jaw dropped. “West! Hey, I didn’t know you were back in town.”

  “Yeah, I came in with Campbell today.”

  “That asshole didn’t even tell me,” Hollin growled.

  “Me neither,” I told him.

  “Well, we finished our part on the album,” Weston said. “There’s some production stuff that still has to happen on the back end, but it’s a wrap for us unless we need to go back for any rerecords.”

  “Fuck yes!” Hollin cried.

  “Congratulations!” I said.

  Weston grinned down at me. I knew how proud he was of all of this. Campbell was the lead singer of the band Cosmere that had skyrocketed into fandom a few years back. All that time spent bartending in LA had paid off, and now, he performed to sold-out stadiums all over the world. When his keyboardist had quit before their third album, he’d enlisted West’s help. Weston wasn’t an official part of the band, but he’d filled in on the whole album. He and Campbell had grown close, working together, and had been all but inseparable ever since.

  “Yeah,” he said, stuffing his hands into his pockets. “It’s pretty cool.”

  “So, how long are you here?” Hollin asked the question I most wanted the answer to.

  “Not sure. It’s Campbell’s birthday this weekend, and he wanted to spend it with Blaire. So, we took the first flight out of LA. We don’t have anything to do for a while though. I don’t think anyone is rushing to head back.”

  “Good. Y’all need the downtime,” Hollin said.

  “We should throw a surprise party,” I rushed out.

  Hollin snapped his fingers at me. “He’ll hate that. Let’s do it.”

  Weston snorted. “He will hate that. For someone in the spotlight, he sure hates it.”

  “Which will make it the best,” I said with a laugh. “Something only siblings can get away with. I’ll get together with Blaire to make sure he doesn’t find out.”

  “Still bitter that you didn’t get to plan their wedding, huh?” Hollin asked.

  I scowled at him. “It wasn’t cool.”

  “You were involved,” Weston said.

  “I know. I know. But eloping in Vegas is different than letting me create a huge, insane wedding and giving them exactly what they wanted. And before you say anything, I know that eloping was exactly what they wanted. But I can still be sad.”

  “Poor thing,” Hollin said with a shake of his head. “I’ll help with the surprise party. We can have it here.”

  “I’ll help cover for you,” Weston agreed.

  “Done!” I did a little twirl in my high heels. “I love surprise parties.”

  “I don’t know how you do that in those death traps,” Hollin said.

  I rolled my eyes at him. “Lots of practice.” I hugged my brother. “We’re going to head home early after dealing with Tamara.”

  “Sure thing. If you see Campbell, tell him he’s an asshole,” he said, shaking West’s hand.

  “Will do.”

  We headed out to the parking lot, where my CR-V sat next to Hollin’s truck. I scanned the lot. “What did you drive?”

  “Took an Uber from the airport. I left my car at the house.”

  “Right, right. Taking up that extra spot in the garage.”

  “What were you going to do with that extra spot?” He laughed and snagged the keys from my hand.

  “Hey! I’m driving.” I jumped for the keys, but he held them up over my head, so I couldn’t get to them.

  “No way, bite-sized,” he joked.

  I scoffed, my ears going hot at the nickname. He’d used it when we first moved in together. I was about five feet flat and couldn’t reach anything on the top shelves. He’d had to move everything I wanted to a lower shelf so that I could get to it. That was half the reason for the high heels all the time. Plus, they were me at this point.

  “I’m fun-sized. Not bite-sized. Like a Snickers—soft on the outside, crunchy on the inside.”

  He snorted. “All right, Snickers. Let’s go.”

  I rolled my eyes. Damn it! That wasn’t a better nickname.

  “Why must you drive?”

  “I haven’t had a car in six months, and LA traffic is shit. It’s the little things.”

  I sighed. “Fine. I don’t normally let anyone drive my SUV. You’re lucky.”

  He dropped into the driver’s side and then coughed. “Fuck.” He shifted the seat all the way back to accommodate his long legs. He adjusted the mirrors and flicked the fuzzy pink dice in the rearview mirror. “Do you need luck because your feet can’t touch the pedals?”

  I rolled my eyes dramatically. “Course not. The luck is for everyone else on the road to survive my demon speeds.”

  Weston cracked up and shifted us into gear. “Yeah, I really missed you.”

  I flushed again as he peeled out of the parking lot. We listened to the local pop station on the way home, jamming out to Taylor Swift’s latest. West spoke of the merits of her piano playing, and I sang the lyrics at the top of my lungs to drown out the shop talk.

  He parked my SUV next to his Subaru, and I hightailed it to the garage door.

  “Okay, before you judge, remember that I didn’t know you were coming home. I can change any of it.”

  He stood in front of me, brushing his hand against my side as he reached for the doorknob. “You’re scaring me. What the hell did you do?”

  I held my arms out to try to stop him from going inside. “Not yet. Let me explain.”

  But there was no way I could stop him from getting into his own house. He dropped his body down, throwing me over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes. His strong arm wrapped across the backs of my thighs. My bare thighs because I’d opted for a white skirt for work today. Oh God.

  I screamed in shock as he lifted me and carried me over the threshold.

  “West!”

  “Stop wiggling, or I’ll drop you.”

  “Put me down!”

  He laughed as he stopped in the middle of the living room, freezing at the redecoration that I’d done to the space. “Snickers, what did you do?”

  But he didn’t sound upset as he gently set me back down onto my platforms. I brushed down my skirt, trying to cover the heat on my face and the heat…everywhere else, too.

  “Well…” I whispered.

  When Weston had left six months ago, the house had looked like a bachelor pad with an old couch, a coffee table dented from too many nights of quarters, a deformed beanbag, and an Xbox hooked up to a giant television. Since then, I’d reupholstered the entire couch with some light-gray fabric. It had taken three weekends to get the measurements right. I’d refinished the coffee table with wax and made the beanbag into a poof.

>   I’d begged a favor from an old Best Buy acquaintance to mount the television and hide all the cords in the wall. I’d purchased secondhand curtains for the bay window and refitted them to the space. Then, I’d filled the space with plants. Dozens of plants of every shape and size. Some hung from hooks in the ceiling. Others were in pots on little stands. Some were big enough to sit on the floor.

  And…I’d painted the walls.

  Every wall in the house that I had access to. I could only stare at beige for so long without going insane. And yes, the place was pink. Not as pink as my bedroom, but I had clearly designed the place for me and not for a dude.

  “It’s incredible. Is that my couch?” He looked gobsmacked.

  “Yeah, I kind of fixed everything.”

  “And the plants. Holy shit, you have a green thumb.”

  “Sort of,” I said, suddenly shy.

  “Why did you think I’d hate this? It’s awesome.”

  “Oh, well, uh, thanks. I just…you know, this was temporary, and I kind of took over. I don’t have a place yet, but I can find something if you give me a weekend.”

  Weston blinked at me. “What are you talking about?”

  “Well, I know you said that I could have the place while you were gone in LA and that it was, you know, a temp situation until I got back on my feet.”

  “Fuck, Nora, that’s not what I meant! I thought you’d want to leave. I left you an out in case you wanted to get your own place. I’m going to be back and forth from LA. So, I won’t be here all the time anyway.” He shrugged, a small smile hitting his features. “You can stay.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “I want you to stay.” He grinned at me. “Stay.”

  “Okay,” I said softly.

  “That’s a yes?”

  I tipped my head down and bit my lip, trying to cover my excitement. “Yes. Yes, I’ll stay.”

  3

  Weston

  Telling her to stay was skating a dangerous line.

  I knew that, even as I told her to stay. She was my best friend’s little sister. She was my roommate. And she was also gorgeous.

  Crossing that line was ill-advised.

  To put it lightly, Campbell would probably murder me.

  He and Hollin had warned me off Nora when we first agreed to move in together. They’d made themselves perfectly clear, and I’d given them my word that it wasn’t like that with us. Which I was determined to stick by, even as she smiled up at me with her gorgeous heart-shaped face, Abbey blue eyes, and plump lips.

  Best friend’s little sister. I stamped the words on my brain as I stepped back.

  “Good,” I told her. “Did you touch my room?”

  She laughed and shook her head. “No. I kept the door shut. I didn’t touch the studio either.”

  “The drums are probably collecting dust.”

  “Well, I dusted last week. Didn’t think it’d be good for the instruments.”

  I grinned. “Thanks, Nor.” I took another step back from that smile. Friends, roommates, best friend’s little sister. “I should go see Whitt and Harley.”

  “You haven’t even seen your siblings?” She slipped out of her heels and was suddenly several inches shorter. She rocked back and forth on the balls of her feet. “Not that I’m going to see Campbell until he and Blaire are…finished.”

  “Wife,” I offered as if that explained everything.

  She waved me off and headed into the immaculately decorated living room. “Yeah. Yeah. Say hi to Whitt for me.”

  “You guys been hanging out?”

  She shrugged. “Not really. You know how Whitt is.”

  I smirked. “Yeah. He’s a bit uptight.”

  “I was unaware that twins could be complete and total opposites until I met you and Whitton.”

  “That’s Whitt. Mr. Responsibility.”

  “I’m sure he kept y’all out of trouble.”

  “Don’t be deceived. Whitt can get in just as much trouble. He just never gets caught.”

  She laughed. “I’ll believe that when I see it.”

  “We’ll get him drunk. That’s when the best Whitt comes out,” I assured her. “All right. I’ll see you later.”

  She waved as I hurried back out of the house. Unlike Nora, who I’d wanted to surprise, I’d told Whitton and Harley that I was coming back into town. Whitt would not have been pleased with an ambush, and Harley was busy as a freshman at Texas Tech University. Her schedule was a nightmare. Between classes, her scholarship requirements, and her active party life, I’d be lucky to see her at all.

  I slung on a jacket out, which I’d left behind since I didn’t need it for perfect LA weather, and grabbed the keys to the Subaru. I’d gotten the Forester back in Seattle for a deal. She had nearly a hundred thousand miles on her and was still going strong. With all the money coming in from the Cosmere album, I might be able to replace her, but I hated the idea of it. We’d had a lot of good trips.

  The drive to Wright Construction wasn’t long, and then I was parking in the lot off campus. Whitton had gotten a job at the company that had our namesake by making a phone call. I still didn’t know how I felt about it all, and Whitt felt weirder, but he wouldn’t squander an opportunity when it looked him in the face.

  Because two years ago, our entire lives had been flipped upside down. The three of us had grown up in Seattle with our mom, Tanya, and our dad, Owen. He’d given us his name, but they weren’t married. As we’d gotten older, we had known that him living in Vancouver and showing up randomly to be with us was strange. A lot different than the other kids in our school. But we let it go.

  Then, I decided to dig. What I found made me sick—we were dad’s secret family.

  He had two other sons, Jordan and Julian Wright, who had lived in Vancouver for most of their lives and recently moved to Lubbock, Texas, where the head of the corporation was. I emailed my half-brothers, and when I didn’t get a response, I decided on a whim to drive over from a show I’d been playing in East Texas. Whitt had advised against it, but we got the truth that way.

  After a year of back-and-forth about what to do, I decided to give this new life in Texas a shot. It ended up being the best thing I’d ever done. I’d met Campbell while working at a local studio and recorded a major album for the biggest band in the world.

  One decision, and I had suddenly gotten everything I’d ever wanted.

  I entered Wright Construction and took the elevator up to Whitt’s office, knocking on his door. His head whipped up, and then he waved me in.

  “About time,” he said.

  I shook my head at him. “Seriously? Not even a welcome back?”

  Whitton shot me a twin look. “Welcome back.”

  “Now, you’re just being a dick.”

  He arched an eyebrow. “Let me finish this email, and then we can go meet Harley.”

  I flopped back into the seat across from his desk, grabbing a pencil and flipping it between my fingers. Whitt gave me an insufferable look. But I saw the edges of his lips tug up.

  We might be opposites. Whitt, the realist, to my dreamer. The suit to my rocker. The serious to my go with the flow. But he’d missed my wild energy as much as I’d missed his evenness. That was how it had always been.

  “What do you think of the job?”

  Whitt shrugged. “It’s a job. I’m going to get a promotion next month.”

  “Yeah? You know already?”

  “I’m doing three people’s jobs. They’d be stupid not to move me up. Jordan said so anyway.”

  “How’s it going, working for our brother?”

  “Half-brother,” Whitton snapped.

  I held my hands up. “Fuck, Whitt, half-brother, if you must.”

  “I like him.”

  I snorted. “You don’t sound like you do.”

  “He’s a fair boss. Though I don’t work directly under him.”

  “Nepotism and all.”

  “Look at you, remembering vocabulary,
” Whitton joked.

  I flipped him off. “Anyway, Nora says hi.”

  Whitt’s eyes flicked to mine. “Oh, yeah? You already saw her?”

  “Surprised her at work.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Don’t use that voice with me,” I groaned.

  “Don’t do things that make me use that voice.”

  “I have done nothing.”

  Whitt went back to his email. “You like her?”

  “Nah, come on, bro. She’s my roommate.”

  “Right,” he said, clicking a button.

  “That’s the voice again.”

  “Well, because I know you.” Whitton hit another button and then nodded. “Email sent. Now, you can continue to annoy me on the way to see Harley.”

  “Finally.” I jumped up and waited for Whitton to pull on his black suit coat before heading out of his office.

  “So, Nora?” Whitton asked, heading toward his shiny silver Lexus instead of my baby Subi.

  I regretfully followed him.

  “She’s cool, but she’s also Campbell’s little sister. He’d kill me if I looked at her wrong.”

  “That may be, but she seems to be a very genuine person. She’s reached out a few times to help me acclimate to Lubbock.”

  Once we were in the car, he took off toward campus.

  “She is. She decorated the entire house while I was gone. Which I shouldn’t have even been surprised that you decided to get your own place, by the way.”

  “No, you shouldn’t have. I like things a little more modern. A little more…”

  I waved him off. “Yeah, yeah, we have different tastes.”

  “In women as well, which is how I know that Nora Abbey is right up your alley.”

  “No way,” I lied. Because he was so fucking right, and it was dangerous to think about. “Have you met anyone?”

  “I have not,” he said. “A few dates, but nothing promising.”

  “No one crazy enough for you?”

  Whitton, despite being the suit, had a thing for…well, I could only describe it as batshit insane girls. Like the more psychotic they were, the more he was into them. I wasn’t sure if it was his actual type, but it was the only kind of girl I’d ever seen him pursue. And there wasn’t a screening process for the level of crazy he was into.