Private Party by Jami Alden

that.”
    Julie had never bothered to point out that Holley Cay was in no way affiliated with D&D, that Chris had built the resort from the ground up and found his own investors. As far as she knew, he hadn’t taken a penny from his considerable trust fund.
    But Julie knew better than to argue. Grant Driscoll, Brian Dennison, and David Dennison all suffered greatly from “Not Invented Here” syndrome. If they didn’t think of it first, it wasn’t worth bothering with.
    Nervous anticipation hummed through her. Coming down here had seemed like such a great idea when Wendy had suggested it two days ago.
    “You need to get out of here,” Wendy had said, surveying the piles of wedding gifts littering Julie’s apartment a week after her disaster of a wedding.
    “I wish,” Julie groaned, threading her fingers through her hair. “But I have to return all the gifts, write apology notes to all the guests.” She surveyed her normally immaculate living room.
    “Apology cards? What are you supposed to say, sorry the groom was nailing someone else in the broom closet? Shouldn’t Brian be doing this?”
    “I don’t know. Mother insisted,” Julie said. “She’s been such a mess lately, I couldn’t argue with her.”
    “What happened to the new Julie? The Julie who doesn’t let herself get pushed around?” Wendy asked as she settled herself into the high-backed wooden chair across from Julie.
    “I think she’s on my honeymoon.”
    “No, that would be Brian and Vanessa.”
    “Don’t remind me.” Julie let her head drop to the table.
    Her phone let out a piercing ring. “Don’t,” Julie said when Wendy moved as though to answer. “It’s probably one of those sleazebags.” As if discovering her husband doing another woman at her wedding reception wasn’t bad enough, somehow the national tabloids had latched onto Julie’s story. In what must have been an incredibly slow celebrity news week, Julie had been featured in a piece called “Heiresses Gone Wild.” A thoughtful wedding guest had furnished the tabloid with several candid photos, including one of Julie, veil askew, dress torn and stained with red wine, her face snarling with rage as she smashed PrivateParty
    cake into Brian’s face. For the past several days she’d been plagued with phone calls, her every move dogged by photographers as the tabloid press tried to paint her—boring, dutiful Julie Driscoll—as the next Paris Hilton.
    Thank God no one—except Wendy, of course—knew what had happened with Chris. She probably would have been disowned.
    Which, admittedly, had its appeal right about now, with her mother calling her fifty times a day in hysterics, and her father nearly as many times, his manner much colder and biting as he castigated her for the PR disaster she had caused.
    And Brian, who had caused the whole mess in the first place, wasn’t suffering one bit as he drank umbrella drinks in Fiji while his new girlfriend rubbed him down with coconut oil. By the time he got back, the entire fiasco would have blown over.
    Come to think of it, getting out of town until the world forgot about her wedding scandal did sound like a good strategy.
    “Before I forget, I brought this, too.” Wendy reached into her briefcase and pulled out a thick manila envelope. “It’s the annulment papers. I ran it by one of the senior partners, and she says it looks fine. All you have to do is sign.”
    Julie did so, with such enthusiasm that her ballpoint pen left an imprint in the rustic wood finish of her kitchen table.
    “And you made US Weekly ,” Wendy said, tossing the magazine on top of the pile of legal papers.
    The magazine was open to a picture of Julie, free of makeup and dressed in running clothes as she went for her morning latte. It had been taken less than a block from her apartment. “You’re right, I have to get out of here,” Julie groaned.
    “As usual, I’m one step ahead of you.” Wendy pulled another envelope out of her