“Oh, I have gifts!” Amelia announced. “Hold on.” She scuttled back to her office and returned with three goodie bags. Each held a Union Jack tin of buttery shortbread cookies, a canister of English breakfast tea and a sleeve of French macarons she’d bought at the Ladurée bakery inside Harrods department store.

Everyone was cooing over their gifts when Amelia’s phone started to ring. She looked down to see her sister’s number. That was odd. She and her sister weren’t particularly close. Whitney took more after their mother, and they didn’t see eye to eye on very much. They rarely talked on the phone unless it was a special occasion like a birthday or a holiday, and even then, it was a stilted conversation. The women around the table were closer to sisters than her biological one.

Amelia hit the button to dismiss the call. She would call Whitney back when the staff meeting was done. She’d already avoided too much of her work duties around here lately.

“I thought you guys might like them,” she said, feeling her phone buzz with a voice mail message. Before she could say anything else, a text from her sister popped up.

Call me right now!

Amelia sighed. “Do you guys mind if I step out for a minute and call my sister back? She seems to be freaking out. I’m sure my parents have just done something to set her off.”

“Sure, go ahead,” Natalie said. “I’ll just start going over the weekend wedding with them. We can talk about how the catering went when you get back.”

Amelia slipped out of the room and went to her office. A discussion with her sister meant sitting—and eventually taking some pain medication for the headache it would inevitably set off. She pulled a bottle of Tylenol out of her drawer and swallowed a couple with her bottle of water. Her lower back was already bothering her today, so she might as well take some pain relievers and kill two birds.

The phone rang only twice before her sister picked up. “You’re married?” Whitney nearly squealed in her ear. “And I find out on Facebook. And pregnant, too! Are you kidding me? I know we aren’t super close, but you could at least have done me and our parents the courtesy of telling us this directly before it hit the internet.”

Amelia was so stunned by her sister’s sharp accusations, she didn’t know how to respond at first. It actually took her a moment to even process what she was going on about. Facebook? How the hell had any of that information gotten on Facebook? Of course she would’ve told her family, when she was ready to. Someone had just beaten her to the punch. She swallowed hard and tried to collect the wild emotions that had just been jump-started in her veins. “What are you talking about, Whitney?”

“A woman named Emily posted, and I quote, ‘So excited to hear that my little brother Tyler has settled down and started a family with his best friend, Amelia. We’ve been waiting years for those two to get together. And a baby! So exciting!’”

There were no words. Her sister’s fury was nothing compared to the hot blades of anger running through her own veins. He’d told his family. And his sister had put it on Facebook, tagging her so her own family and friends could see it.

They’d had an agreement. No one was supposed to know until they decided what they were going to do. Things had been going so well. The trip to London was amazing. She had finally let go of the last of her reservations and let herself fall in love with her best friend. There was absolutely no reason to go behind her back and tell his family.

Why would he do such a thing? Was he afraid that when the thirty days were up, she was going to walk away? Tyler was the kind of man who won at all costs. Was this his backup plan? A way of strong-arming her into doing what he wanted in the end? Did he think she would be coerced into staying with him if all their friends and family knew they were married and having a baby?

“Amelia!” her sister shouted through the phone when she didn’t get a response. “What the hell is going on? Is it even true?”

There was no point in lying about it. That would just cause more confusion and lead to more phone calls. “Yes, it’s true. I’m sorry I didn’t call, but I didn’t expect the news to get out before I could talk to everyone about it. Listen, I can’t talk right now, Whitney.”

Amelia hung up the phone and turned off the ringer. She was certain her sister would immediately call back and demand answers, but she wasn’t ready to give anyone anything—aside from giving Tyler a piece of her mind.

Grabbing her purse from the bottom drawer of her desk, she got up and headed for the door. The short drive back to the house only served to make her angrier, especially when she rounded the fountain out front of their ridiculously big home.

Standing in the driveway, looking up at the massive house, she realized this place was a metaphor for their entire relationship. Everything had been his way since the moment he arrived in Nashville. They didn’t divorce because he didn’t want to. They were dating because he insisted on it. They drove around in his car, moved into the house he chose, took the trips he needed to take, even when she had to work.

He knew just how to dangle the carrot to get her to go along with the way he wanted things to be. But this time he’d gone too far. She stomped up the stairs and through the living room to the keeping room, where Tyler had his desk and computer. He was happily typing away on his laptop, his mind probably focused on rubies and diamonds, giving no thought at all to what he’d done.

“You know,” she started to speak, her voice trembling with anger she could barely contain, “I thought we had an agreement.”

Tyler looked up, his pale eyes wide with sudden concern. “What? What’s wrong, Ames?”

She held up her hand to silence him. “We went into this with just a few ground rules, but they were important ones. One rule was that we would give it thirty days, and if necessary, we’d part friends. Another was that we’d live together in this house the whole time. But the most important of all was our agreement that no one would know we were married and pregnant until we were ready to tell them. No one, Tyler! How could you do this?”

Tyler’s expression hardened for a moment, his eyes unfocused as he seemed to be trying to piece things together. “What do you mean, how could I—”

“Facebook!” she shouted. “Of all the places.”

“Facebook?” His eyebrows drew together in a confused frown. “I don’t even have a Facebook account.”

“Well, you know who does? My sister. And my mother. And apparently, your bigmouthed sister Emily, who just announced to God and country that we eloped and we’re having a baby.”

The color instantly drained from Tyler’s face as he processed her words. “Emily posted that on Facebook?”

“Yep,” she said. A quick check of her account had confirmed that, plus a few more details that made it all the worse. She hadn’t logged in since she’d gotten back from London, but there the post was, big as day, with lots of likes and congratulatory messages for the happy couple. It was when she saw the responses from her own friends, people who didn’t even know Tyler, that she realized she’d been tagged in the post. “And Emily tagged me so it showed up in the news feed of everyone I’m friends with, too. The cat is out of the bag in a big way, so thanks a lot.”

* * *

“Oh, no.” Tyler groaned and covered his face with his hands. Now he was the nauseated one. He knew it. He knew he shouldn’t have said a word to Jeremy. Now it had come back around to bite him. “Amelia, I had no idea that was going to happen.”

She crossed her arms over her chest and narrowed her gaze at him in disbelief. “You told your gossipy sister the biggest possible secret and actually expected her to keep it? Are you insane? You should know better than that.”