Laine is out of her chair in a flash, flinging her arms around his neck and smacking a kiss on his cheek. “Dil, I love you!”
The look he shoots me over her shoulder all but screams, suck it, man. Why am I friends with this guy again?
“Okay, that’s enough,” I say, rounding my desk to break up the hug of the century. Laine’s looking at him like he hung the moon and he’s giving her an aww-shucks smile that is pure bullshit. “Dil, we owe you. Laine, go deliver your cake news. I’ll be up in a few.”
With one last cheek kiss for my buddy, she hustles out.
I glance over at Dil with a smirk. “This one’s gonna cost me, isn’t it?”
Dil’s grin says it all.
Chapter 2
Laine
Pausing outside the sixth-floor suite, I lean toward the door and cringe at the high-pitched lash of the bride’s temper from within. This is going to be rough. Pushing through the door, I have the sense of entering a world of snarky, back-biting, silver-wrapped Hershey’s kisses. The bridal party, shimmering in matching metallic gowns, bustles around, whispering insincerities and unfriendly speculations, while Melinda Langdon sniffs loudly against the something borrowed heirloom lace hanky on loan from her mother.
It’s damage-control time. Cutting through the swarm of formal wear, I crank up my smile to eleven.
“Mel, the most incredible news. Jason Henley, the owner of the hotel, has gotten his favorite bakery to bring in a fabulous new cake just for you. I honestly can’t believe it. He’s never done anything like this for a bride before!” The giddy squeal at the end is as key to the sell as the mandatory just-for-you business, so I put everything I have into it.
Melinda’s shellacked lower lip sticks out like a roost for a small bird. “My… my special day… it’s ruined,” she weeps, burying her face against my shoulder, leaving a cold, wet trail of what, God willing, is tears and tears alone behind. Her words choke off into unintelligible sobs, and suddenly she’s just a girl with a lifelong dream on the verge of falling apart.
My mind stops running in business mode, and I soften as Melinda quakes against me. Smoothing back the bride’s neat curls to avoid crushing them between us, I gently hush her. “Hey, it’s all going to be fine. We’ve got the cake taken care of. But even if we hadn’t, some silly cake isn’t what’s going to make this day special for you,” I offer. “It’s the beginning of your happily ever after. Two and a half hours from now, you and Ed are going to be man and wife. That’s what matters. The rest? Well, it’s just one big party to celebrate your love. Today can’t be ruined.”
Melinda sniffs, pulling back to meet me with narrowed eyes. “I am entitled to my feelings, Laine. I chose that cake for reasons that mattered to me.”
Right. She’d shared them at the bakery. It had one tier more than her sister’s cake, twice the number of flowers her maid of honor had on hers, and “made that bitch Debbie’s cake look like trash.”
So much for the happily-ever-after spiel. “Of course, you’re right. And I am sorry we weren’t able to get exactly the same one, but we will have a gorgeous cake delivered before the cocktail hour.”
I tick off my mental to-do list: dry-clean hanky for mother of bride, makeup artist ASAP, order cucumbers for puffy eyes, make sure the bar waters down Ed’s drinks, ream florist for the thorn in the wilted bouquet, ream Jason for… the hell of it. The last thought makes me smile. I’ll keep a reaming slot open for him—something’s bound to come up.
Behind me, the suite door opens to a chorus of oohs and ahhs. I spin around, and speak of the devil. There’s Jason smiling at the bridal attendants as though each were the vision they dream of being. What a charmer.
Finally, his gaze settles on Melinda, his eyes showing nothing but approval. The man has a game face, all right. Pushing through the crowd, he walks up to the splotchy bride and drops a chaste kiss on her cheek. “Beautiful.”
Then he’s popping the cork on a bottle of champagne and toasting the bride-to-be. Melinda eats it up, and I have to admit, his timing is perfect. With the girls distracted by the bubbly and Jason’s attention, I excuse myself to get ahold of the makeup artist. Ten minutes later, she’s on her way back, I’ve personally confirmed the cake, touched base with Connie for an update, and ordered some finger sandwiches for the room. I’m about to head back into the suite when Jason walks out, catching me with a light hold at my elbow I try not to notice too much.
“Your bride headed down to her parents’ suite a few minutes ago.” He extracts a white hanky with a flourish and sops up the bit of gunk Melinda left behind on my shoulder.
“Thank you. For the cake and the backup in calming the down the girls.”
“My pleasure,” he says, guiding me down the narrow hall. “How many attendants were actually in there? All that silver, I couldn’t keep track.”
“Eleven maids, four juniors and two flower girls.” Which makes the total three more than Melinda’s sister had.
Jason’s brow arched. “Wow, is this the biggest bridal party you’ve handled?”
Stealing a sidelong glance at Mr. Chitchat, I roll my eyes. “Yes, professionally, anyway.” Way to add the qualifier. It’s an open invitation I could slap myself for.
“That’s right, you’ve got a slew of married sisters. Six? What was the biggest bridal party to date?”
He’s just trying to fill the dead space, but this isn’t my favorite subject, which is why I don’t elaborate beyond, “Sixteen maids.”
Jason glances back, a genuine curiosity in his eyes that smudges lines and slips past boundaries I’ve spent six months working to re-establish. I keep walking, knowing better than to get drawn in by another look.
But he isn’t done. “You must have had a lot of experience with planning pretty early then. That what got you hooked to make a career of it?”
Jason punches the down button at the bank of elevators and when I don’t answer, he props a shoulder against the wall and crosses his arms. He looks like David Gandy, only darker, hotter. More intense. And I lose track of what we were saying.
“What?” I ask, that one lone word coming quiet and softer than I’d like. But when Jason looks at me like he is right now, it makes my chest tight and takes me back to that night in the bar six months ago. To the low lights and empty tables. The single candle and Nora Jones crooning about coming away with her. It takes me back to the drinks he made for us after Dil closed up. The lingering looks. The stretching silence and the slow closing space between us. It takes me back to his eyes on my mouth and the certainty I felt that after months of this thing growing between us, we were hovering on the brink of something bigger than our work or friendship. Something real and right and so close that, looking up into his eyes, I trembled with anticipation.
To the blistering heat in my cheeks when I realized I was wrong and Jason’s stumbling apology.
“Laine, I shouldn’t have—Shit! We work together. I can’t do this. I’m sorry.”
Suddenly I feel hot, claustrophobic, like the neutral walls and subtly patterned carpeting are closing in around me. Because I shouldn’t be thinking about that night again.
The corner of Jason’s mouth curves up. “About dinner—”
No way.
“Hey, I’m going to use the stairs,” I say, taking a quick step back but not before he snares my wrist in a loose hold that has my breath catching at the contact. It feels almost electric, like there’s a current sizzling between us.
Does he feel that?
“Laine, wait.”
I shake my head, but instead of taking another step away, I’m letting him pull me back into the charged space between us. I’m getting drawn into the way he’s looking at me and—
A scream cuts down the corridor, and then another.
For a split second, our eyes meet, and we’re on the move. Jason charges ahead while I try to keep up. This is my floor—everyone booked on it is a wedding guest. My heels dig in. Whatever it is, I’ll manage it.
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The hallway T’s off, and Jason darts to the right, shouting into his phone for someone at the front desk as he vanishes around the corner. The screaming ceases, giving way to a barrage of obscenities from an all-too-familiar voice.
My stomach lurches.
Melinda.
“You couldn’t keep it in your fucking pants until after the wedding?”
“Mellie, I’m sorry.”
“You ruined my day!”
Rounding the corner, I slam into Jason’s back. Then grip his arm and shoulder to brace myself, because I can’t be seeing what I’m seeing. There’s no way this is happening right here at the soda and ice-machine alcove.
Ed is spinning in circles, trying to tuck his shriveling dick into his fly while a screeching Melinda clings to his back, slapping at him. All the while a bridesmaid whose name I can’t place is wrestling to get her bubble-hemmed dress unbunched from where it’s hiked up above her boobs.
“Jason, she’s going to kill him,” I wheeze.
He nods and shoots me an uncertain look. “Stay back.”
And then he’s trying to pry Melinda off Ed, while jerking his hand and hips back each time the flagging dick gets close.
Jason meets my eyes, a shell-shocked look on his face as he mouths, “It almost touched me.”
I nod. “I saw.”
There is no saving this day.
Laine
It was a mass exodus of tuxedos and taffeta dresses as the entire wedding left the hotel. Everyone shouting into cell phones, booking early flights, and bellowing threats at their might-have-been in-laws. People who could have been family if fate hadn’t stepped in in the form of a 5’8” blond bridesmaid who liked it from behind.
My shoulders slump as I stand within the small prep room off the reception hall. Staring at the gorgeous four-tier cake with satin-finished petals over a scalloped texture frosting—delivered, in true insult-to-injury form, ten minutes after the wedding imploded—I’m lost in how to convey the catastrophe to Connie. She’s not going to care about Melinda or broken hearts or shattered dreams or even money. Brutal as it may seem, the bills get paid whether the vows are said or not.
What is going to have Connie eyeing me like a liability is the ding to her reputation. It doesn’t matter that there wasn’t a thing I could have done to prevent what happened or that, in this case at least, the bride was better off without that asshole. What matters is that this is my second failure-to-launch wedding this year and the perception of bad luck and marriages-that-might-have-been is enough to close the Blissful Brides doors for good.
I could be seriously screwed.
At least it hadn’t been my call on whether to tell the bride since Melinda discovered the guilty parties herself. I tried to talk to her, to make sure she was okay, but she ran out with a strangely possessive groomsman tucking her under his shoulder.
I’ll call her later to check on her.
The door shuts behind me. I don’t have the strength to turn, but I’ve got a pretty good idea who it is. Jason.
“Do you need me out of here to clear all this?” I ask.
“No, I told the staff to give us some privacy.” Always thinking ahead, that guy. Almost always. “They’ll wait. Shame, after all the work to get this cake in here, you and I are the only ones who get to see it.”
“That it is.”
“You okay?” His voice is as strong and soothing as the hands that settle over my shoulders. His thumbs press into the knotted muscles astride my spine and circle slowly. I shouldn’t let him do it, but I can’t make myself tell him to stop. And I’m not sure he would even if I did.
Feeling exhausted from the wind-up of the day and the efforts invested, I give in and lean back into his hands. “I’m fine. Frustrated. Connie’s going to tan my hide for this.”
Jason’s hands stop moving at my neck but don’t leave. “Laine, Connie is a crusty old bat with a rawhide heart, but even she can’t fault you for this. There was nothing you could have done. The groom was cheating on his wedding day. This would have been a marriage made in hell. It was doomed.”
“I know, but it’s my job to stop problems before they happen. Maybe if I’d paid more attention to the fact that Ed was going off the rails instead of trying to avoid him—”
“What? Maybe you would have been the one he put a move on? How would that have been any better?”
It would have been a million times worse, because then it would have been up to me to decide whether to abide by Connie’s protocol for misbehaving grooms and kiss my conscience goodbye or tell Melinda what the man she planned to marry had done and kiss my career goodbye. Just thinking about it has the muscles that were slowly beginning to ease tensing back up. But— “What if he was freaking out about getting married? What if he just needed someone to talk him down before he did something drastic to get out of his wedding?”
“Is that really what you think happened?”
We both know it isn’t. And yet the part of me that can’t let go of the responsibility for this day keeps thinking what if.
“If I’d been on my toes instead of screwing around with you—”
“Hey now, to my utter and eternal disappointment, there was no screwing.” Jason turns me around to face him, keeping his hands at my shoulders. He’s slung his suit jacket over the back of some stacked chairs, and his hair looks like he’s had his hands in it a couple dozen times in the last thirty minutes. Which of course means it looks even better than normal. “You were trying to make this cake materialize. And more importantly, you know that woman lucked out today. She could have married him and then found out. You can’t beat yourself up.”
Easy for him to be confident in the morality of the situation. He isn’t the one with a job on the line. Or a past haunting him.
“Connie is lucky as hell to have you on her team. And if she’s ever fool enough to let you go, then I’ll hire you here.” He clears his throat and takes a breath. “I’ve been trying to figure out how to get you away from her for years. Maybe it’s time.”
Ahh, and now the dinner thing makes sense. This isn’t the first time he’s broached the subject of me working for the Henley directly. But I’m not interested in working for Jason. My feelings for him are too complicated for that to ever be a good idea. “You’re nuts.”
“We’ve been working closely for two years, Laine. I’ve got a pretty good idea what I’d be getting into.”
His hand is still resting on my shoulder, warm and solid there. A comfort that confuses my senses.
I step out of his hold and instantly feel the loss. Yeah, no way could I work for this man of mixed messages.
Unaffected, Jason loosens his tie. “Have you talked to Connie yet?”
“Left her a message to call me, but today’s some kind of spa treatment.” Oh man, and now he’s rolling his shirtsleeves up forearms roped with the kinds of muscles you wouldn’t expect from a hotelier. My mouth goes dry at the arm porn in action, but somehow I manage to finish the thought. “It might be a few hours.”
One dark brow arches. “The secret to her glowing, youthful looks, revealed at last.”
Something between a snort and laugh bursts free before I can stop it. Connie has the look of a woman twice her age and her expression is every bit as abrasive and raw as her attitude. It’s actually kind of a miracle she can function in society at all.
That said, she’s still my boss.
Covering my face to push the laughter out of my cheeks, I shake my head. “Bad.”
He steps closer, leaning in. “Yeah, but come on, you like it. Just a little, right?”
More than I should, and definitely more than I’ll ever admit.
Peeking from between my fingers, I ask, “Are you trying to cheer me up?”
He shrugs. “Maybe I am.” Then, reaching past me to the cake, he scoops up a tiny bit of frosting on his finger.
I think he’s going to pop it in his mouth for a taste, but then his eyes meet mine and the air thin
s in my lungs. Because that look.
Damn it, I need to stop this. I should head back to the BB office and wait for Connie. But I can’t move. I can’t swallow or breathe as the corner of his mouth hitches, and instead of bringing the frosting to his mouth… he’s bringing it toward mine.
My heart is racing and my belly is like a YouTube trampoline video on triple speed.
Only then he bypasses my mouth altogether and dabs that sugar-sweet glob on my nose. “Cheer up.”
What.
The.
Hell.
Something inside me snaps. Reaching behind me, I grab considerably more than a glob, spin on my stiletto, and smush it into Jason’s stunned face. And like the devil inside me has taken over completely, rub it back and forth across his sexy stupid mouth. “You know what? That did cheer me up.”
My manic satisfaction doesn’t even last a heartbeat before Jason’s eyes change, filling with an unholy light as they narrow on me.
Swiping the buttercream and cake off his face, he takes a menacing step closer.
Uh-oh.
“Jason, no.” Hands coming up in a pacifying gesture, I take a quick step back—tripping right into the cake table.
Our eyes meet for a split second—mine horrified, his delighted—before it happens. The slow tilt and slide of the table going out from under me.
“Shit, Laine!” Jason lunges forward, catching me with a strong arm around my waist, but neither one of us is fast enough to get clear before one hundred pounds of cake takes out our legs. We’re going down, and we’re going down together.
The cake hits the floor. We land on top of it… or rather, Jason lands on top of it and I land on top of him with a mushy layer of twice-abandoned cake erupting around us.
“Jesus, are you okay?” His greasy, frosting and crumb-covered hands move over my arms, my ribs and hips. My back. “Are you hurt?”
Shaking my head, I try not to laugh as I stare down into Jason’s concerned, cake-covered face. So very different from the perfectly groomed man I’m accustomed to doing business with—but no less appealing. “I’m fine. You?”
All In Page 2
