He blew out a long breath. “She’s going to eviscerate you. You’re supposed to be on a plane the day after Christmas. We will get someone else.”

I blinked at him. “Who?”

Jordan looked stumped. “I can try to supervise it.”

“Do you know how to implement protection on the last hop IP?” I asked.

He stared at me like I was speaking Martian. I might as well have been.

“Uh. No. You probably should go.”

I ran my hand through my hair. “I swear to God, if I had a decent IT guy, I would not be going. But we have five days until Christmas.”

He whistled. “You’re the one who’s going to have to explain it to the soon-to-be wife. I want no part of that.”

“Goddamn it.” I rubbed my eyeballs through closed lids.

Jordan gestured dramatically to the phone. “I’ll handle the board here. Call her and get your ass on a plane.”

I called Emilia and hedged a lot. To be honest, I had no idea when I’d be home. It could be tomorrow or it could be the wee hours of Christmas morning. Things like these were hard to tell. I’d know more once I got up north to deal with our data center.

“What is a DDoS, and why are they attacking Draco?” she asked over the phone.

“DDoS means distributed denial of service. Someone is using a bunch of zombie computers to flood the servers with data so they can’t function.” I paced a circle around my office, stopping at my desk every so often to jot a note down for my assistant.

“Why would someone do that?”

“No idea. Bored hacker kids or an organized effort from outside the country. It could be anyone. They might not even be purposely targeting us, but someone who uses the same data center or network. Hopefully, we’ll be able to tell more after we get it up and going again.”

She sighed. “Okay. When do you leave?”

“As soon as possible. Can you send me a bag of stuff?”

“I’ll bring it myself. I can meet you at the airport in twenty minutes.”

Maggie found me a charter flight that was ready go to within the hour. As I’d only be flying a short distance to Northern California, I’d be there quickly. As promised, Emilia met me at the airport with a packed bag. “Good thing I’m on winter break. Of course, you could have Cora do it for you. Does a billionaire even need a wife, anyway?”

I smiled. “I do.” I kissed her and bade her goodbye, hardly wanting to let her go. But I left her with a promise: “I’ll be back for Christmas.”

Except I wasn’t. At least not for more than a few hours. And she flew out the next day. Without me.

 

 

Chapter 18

Mia

I was practically certain that every bride’s dream of an exotic destination wedding did not include flying to said destination without her groom. But here it was, six short days before our wedding, and I’d seen Adam for a total of six hours—most of which were spent sleeping—before flying out without him.

After spending five days in Silicon Valley cleaning up the data center mess, he still had work to do at the office to close out “everything I had to skip by going up there.”

To say I was irked was an understatement. But what could I do?

If I hadn’t been joking about that workweek hours clause in the prenup, I could have invoked it, but I thought any reasonable person would acknowledge these extenuating circumstances. And reluctantly, wedding or not, I did.

But that didn’t mean I wasn’t going to give him hell for it anyway.

 

Him: I slipped my sweaty workout t-shirt from this morning into your luggage so you have something to cuddle tonight.

 

I tucked my phone away without reply, face flaming with embarrassment. I was so exacting my revenge for that. Besides, I’d already grabbed something of his to take with me—not that he’d ever know if I could help it. But damn, how that cockiness needed to be brought down a peg or two. Or maybe two thousand.

Men.

 

Me: Not necessary. I’m finding myself a new bridegroom upon arrival in St. Lucia.

 

I smiled smugly to myself when he didn’t reply immediately. Let him stew on that as we boarded our flight—only the second time ever I’d been on a private plane. The last time had been a surprise trip that Adam had sprung on me. This time, we’d planned it well in advance and were flying the entire wedding party straight to St. Lucia.

The plane was much larger this time, carrying our thirty-ish closest friends and business associates to the Caribbean. Mom and Peter were snuggled together on a couch, reading. April, Jenna, and Alex all sat around with champagne flutes while William, beside Jenna, carefully looked around the plane, as if staking out the exits. Then he grabbed an emergency procedures card from a seat pocket and began studying it. Lindsay was sitting beside Adam’s cousin, Britt, and her husband, their heads bent together in a tête-à-tête.

Yes, everything had been perfectly planned. Everything except for leaving without one of the main participants in the wedding, that was.

Even Jordan was on the flight with us, steadily getting hammered.

Drunk Jordan was fun, though. It took the edge off his usual abrasive cockiness. And I thought he felt sorry for me, which would have been insufferable any other time, but was a welcome distraction now.

“Hey, Mia,” he greeted as he plopped down on a couch next to me. I threw a glance around the plane to locate April in case I needed her to take her man in hand. People were sitting in clumps talking giddily about the experience, or, in the case of Heath, stretched out on the back row of seats, snoozing.

It was going to be a long flight.

And no Adam. That thought made my blood boil. What if he missed the wedding?

“Hey, Jordan,” I replied between my teeth, then downed the rest of my wine, and set the glass aside.

“I hope you aren’t too bummed about your sweetie being left behind.”

“Huh. Why would I be bummed? It’s not like it’s some ordinary vacation. Like we aren’t getting married or anything.”

He frowned. “I know. I know. I’m sorry.”

I shrugged, suddenly wishing I had more wine to drink. Jordan noticed me staring wistfully at my empty glass, called one of the two flight attendants over, and asked for a refill for me. I thanked him when she left to fill the order.