The Wild Heir and His Icy Bride novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Housewarming

Griffin throws a party to wreck her house; Imogen hires a taco truck, hands out coasters and wins his friends, and then his father texts that a video of the party reached him.

"I'm throwing a party tonight," Griffin told his wife over the breakfast bagels. "Twenty-four people. Muddy ones."

Tobias sat on the next stool, chewing, nodding.

"Great call," Tobias said. "The housewarming. Do it loud."

Imogen set down her tea.

"What time?"

"Eight."

"Alcohol or no alcohol?"

"Lots," Griffin said, because it sounded like the answer she would hate.

"Then I need a headcount," she said, and wrote 24 in her notebook. "Thank you for the notice. Most people give none."

She left for her office at 7:10.

Griffin looked at Tobias.

"That's it? No fight?"

"She's saving it," Tobias said, grinning. "I'll film it for the group chat."

By nine that night, every one of Griffin's friends had arrived through the front door in boots.

They were his skate crew from before he left, big happy people in ripped hoodies who had once set a canoe on fire together.

They came up the drive. They kicked off into the yard. They stopped.

A long white food truck sat on the lawn with its awning lit.

Seventy-two tacos, a menu board said. Three each, plus a vegetarian line.

Beside the truck, in a gray sweater and no shoes, stood Imogen with a clipboard.

"Welcome," she said. "Boots go in the tray by the door. Socks are optional, floors are heated. Please take a coaster. There are thirty-six."

She handed one to the first friend in line.

It was a cork coaster with a photograph of a taco printed on it.

"I had them made at four," she said. "Thirty-six is a margin."

"Man," said the biggest friend, a six-foot-four guy, holding it up to the light. "Is this a taco on a taco?"

"Yes."

He stared at her with real love.

Griffin stood at the top of the steps with a speaker in his arms and watched it happen.

The boots plan was dead. His friends were lining up their boots in the tray in pairs.

So the plan became food on the white rug.

He carried a pizza box into the living room, flipped it open and tipped the whole large pepperoni onto the middle of the carpet.

A silence spread.

Imogen walked over, crouched, and slid a stainless-steel tray under the pizza without touching the rug.

"I wasn't sure how you'd serve it," she said. "This is a cooling rack. We keep a lot of them."

The biggest friend clapped.

"She keeps cooling racks!"

"For sheet pans," said Imogen.

"Sheet pans!" the biggest friend cried, and put his hand over his heart.

So the last plan was a cannonball into the koi pond.

Griffin ran out onto the terrace in his jeans, shoved off the stone and hit the water at full speed.

It was eighteen inches deep.

He surfaced coughing, with a fish on his shoulder and algae on his cap.

Twenty-four friends and one wife looked down at him.

Imogen set the clipboard on the rail. She reached for a towel from the stack beside the door, because of course there was a stack.

"Koi are expensive, but they heal quickly," she said. "Eight and a half. You may not beat nine tonight."

"What's nine?"

"I'll let you know."

She held the towel out to him.

The biggest friend leaned over the rail. "Dude. She's got a koi towel."

"Dude," said another one. "She asked each of us what you were like before you left. She wrote it down."

Griffin looked inside. Imogen stood in the kitchen doorway with the clipboard, listening to a friend with her head tilted.

"She's recruiting," said Tobias, appearing at his elbow with a plate of tacos. "Don't let her."

He held his phone up and filmed Griffin's wet face for the group chat.

At eleven the party ended, because Imogen had said eleven.

Nobody had left a mark. Three of Griffin's oldest friends hugged her at the door and asked what they could do to be invited again.

"Return the coaster," she said gently. "That's the only requirement."

They each put it in their pocket instead.

Griffin sat on the terrace wall, wet, in the dark, holding a koi.

"I'm putting him back," he said to nobody.

His phone buzzed once.

His father, with a link and one line.

"A video of your party has reached me. Sunday dinner, noon. Bring your wife."

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