He’s right. Jax has been involved in the music industry for twenty years—since he was still a teenager. He might be judgmental and brusque, but he knows the industry inside and out. He’s made his fortune there, and taken his share of beatings there too.
“I know.” For once, he’s reading my mind. “This is the last thing either of us want to be doing this week. We can offload more to the lawyers—”
“No. If we do this deal, I want to know we’re doing it right.”
I’m not sacrificing a second of this week for some half-assed attempt.
I watch our friends and family talking and laughing. Nearly all of them have a career in the spotlight, but here, with each other, they can let their guard down.
An idea scratches at the back of my brain. “If the artists are the last hurdle to getting this deal done, we need to get their trust. Show them we have their backs.”
“Might work. But we’re leaving for an island in a day and a half. Unless…”
I cock my head.
“We invite a few. A show of good faith,” Jax says.
“Hell no.” The answer is immediate. “We’re not inviting them to our wedding, Jax.”
“They don’t have to come to the wedding. They’re not going to show at the ceremony. It’s a gesture. Invite them to the island, we spend half a day talking with them. That’s it.”
Annie comes over. “Enough business. I thought you had good news today.”
“We did, but there was a complication,” I say, searching her face. “You said a couple of rooms were left in our hotel booking. How many?”
She sends a text to the wedding planner, and a response comes immediately. “We have three.”
“We were thinking of inviting a couple of artists from Wicked.”
Annie’s mouth parts. With each second it takes her to respond, the worry in my gut expands.
“To our wedding?” Her voice is deathly quiet.
Heads turn from the front of the box as if they can sense the intensity shift, and even Jax flinches.
“To the island,” I amend. “And only if we have the space. We’d handpick people you’re comfortable with, but it would go a long way to show them we look after our own.”
My fiancée looks between us as if we’ve each grown a second head before she returns to Haley and our friends without a word.
Jax claps me on the back. “That went better than I expected.”