Friends To Lovers (Aisle Bound Book 3)

by Christi Barth

  Except she absolutely could not, would not, skip the NACE meeting. These meetings were vitally important to her business. The networking couldn’t be matched for any price. Much of the wedding industry worked by word of mouth. One night of chatting over acidic wine and cubed cheese on toothpicks could net her five or ten referrals. Clients didn’t want to do the work themselves. And Daphne didn’t blame them one bit. There were over two hundred reception sites to choose from in Chicagoland. After wading through all of those, who had the energy to call fifty different florists?

  NACE meetings were also a long-standing tradition between she and Gib. The two of them wisecracking from the back row was the only way to survive the tedium of the official program. Gib always brought a handpicked bag of classic candy like Curly Wurlys and Flakes for them to split. Or, in reality, for her to hog while Gib fought her for a scant third of the pieces.

  He’d be there, no doubt. If she didn’t show, he’d interpret it the wrong way. What was she supposed to do, send a note? Please excuse Daphne, she has work to do and swears it has nothing to do with what happened last night. Whether everything changed or nothing changed, they were still friends. That alone wouldn’t change. Gib ran last night. Daphne refused to let him think she’d run away, too.

  “It smells good in here.” Ivy joined her in the back of their shop. Her rose-colored, midcalf tight skirt with a ruffle at the bottom and fitted jacket pointed to a day packed with client meetings. Daphne hoped they all not only signed up for Ivy’s services, but desperately needed a florist, too. The Aisle Bound summer schedule was pretty much finalized, but there were still a few fall weekends clamoring to be penciled in as profit makers. “I brought you a snack. It’s National Chocolate-Covered Cherry Day, so here’s a chocolate cherry scone from Lyons Bakery.”

  Daphne wiped clammy palms on her lavender apron before snapping up the sugary goodness. Finally, someone to be the whipping boy for her frazzled nerves. “Did Lisbet forget to turn over the calendar page? Shouldn’t we remind her that Christmas is over?” Daphne shook the nearest branch. Its needles flared like a Victorian debutante’s fan. “I had more than my fill of dealing with all things pine-related last month. As did all of her expected guests, I’m sure. Why on earth didn’t you talk her out of this?”

  “Me? I only mediate between the bride and whoever she brings along to the appointment. From day one, you told me, and I quote, to ‘keep my big, loud mouth shut during any and all floral consultations.’” Ivy made air quotes with her fingers to drive home her complete lack of responsibility in the matter.

  “Still holds true, by the way. That particular clause in our partnership contract will never expire. But the next time you see me letting a bride do something this stupid, at least kick me under the table.” Shin splints would be far preferable to another Christmas in January snafu. Daphne scarfed down the scone in three bites. It didn’t soothe her much. It did make her crave a white-chocolate mocha. With whipped cream and chocolate jimmies.

  “It will be my pleasure.” Hitching up her skirt, Ivy shimmied onto the white iron stool with a lavender cushion at the counter. It looked like a salvage from a turn-of-the-century ice cream parlor. “I agree that the pseudo-Christmas decorations are a big mistake. Lisbet is one of our more—how do I put this—artistically challenged clients.”

  “Stop sugarcoating it. She’s got crappy taste.”

  Ivy wrinkled her nose. “I’d never say such a thing. You know the rule. Whatever makes the bride happy is the right choice for them.”

  Uh-huh. Sure. Just as believable as oh, say, all the dirty magazine centerfolds having natural breasts. Or that an aging movie star’s trophy wife hadn’t demanded a prenup. Daphne grabbed another pine branch. Shook the water off the ends. “You’ve got that super-saccharine tone in your voice. Like a pixie stick took over your vocal cords. Lisbet must be a hot mess. Come on, where else has she gone wrong?”

  “Daphne, we don’t talk badly about clients. Ever. Not even the ones who believe their dachshund will successfully pull a wagon carrying the six-month-old ring bearer down the aisle. And especially not the ones who invited all the groom’s ex-girlfriends as a surprise.”

  Daphne pitied her friend for the wedding day fraught with guaranteed trouble. On the other hand, Daphne couldn’t wait to hear all the gritty and entertaining details. Too bad it wasn’t a week when the reality show Planning for Love followed Ivy around with cameras rolling. “You are going to earn your keep this weekend. Sounds like it has the potential to turn messy. Need any help?”

  Ivy shook her head. “All in a day’s work. Ultimately, I’m sure that Lisbet and Brett will have a wonderful day. And by that, I mean I’ll make sure.”

  She didn’t doubt her partner’s abilities for a second. “Can you hang out back here and keep me company while I get started on these swags?”

  “Sure. Julianna’s doing a client walk-through of the Field Museum for the rest of the morning. We’re pretty quiet. Are we having an impromptu partner meeting?”

  “God, no.” Daphne shuddered. Numbers gave her mental hives. “You know I require a pitcher of margaritas when we start discussing profit margins and all things accounting.”

  “Then are we finishing the blow-by-blow description of last night’s smoochfest? Because I’m still not clear on whether or not I’m supposed to be mad at Gib.” Ivy waved her hand back and forth like a teeter totter. “Right now, I’m leaning heavily toward being both insulted on your behalf and ready to seek revenge. Maybe we could do something to his beloved car. Shaving cream the windows? Fill it with packing peanuts?”

  Daphne’s mood immediately lifted. Best friends were waaaaay better medicine than a stupid good night’s sleep. Not that she’d done more than catnap all night. “Good brainstorming, but I don’t want you to be mad at Gib. You’re sworn to secrecy. I want the status quo of our happy little group to remain unchanged. This kiss thing is just between him and me.”

  Milo poked his head around the door. The frosted blond tips spiked skyward. A vintage mustard tie wider than his hand fluttered from his neck. “Hardly.”

  Like a gossip grenade, the presence of their office manager splintered any hopes of this remaining a secret into infinitesimal fragments. “Were you eavesdropping?” Daphne demanded.

  “Just a little.” He edged into the room. High-waisted pants that would’ve looked right on Jimmy Stewart—in his heyday—skimmed across shiny brown wing tips. “Purely out of male solidarity.” Milo wagged a finger at Daphne. “You broke my roommate last night, you know. He came home completely shattered. A mere shadow of his former self.”

  Daphne bit her lip to keep from smiling. “Really?” Unexpected, but welcome news. An upset Gib meant that he hadn’t just taken their kiss in stride. It affected him. Exactly how, she didn’t know. But any reaction was better than none. “Tell me more.”

  Slowly, Milo swung his head back and forth like a pendulum. “Sorry. It would be a breach of the roommate code.”

  Ivy harrumphed. “What about the you-work-for-us code?”

  He struck a thinking pose, stroking a wholly imaginary beard. “Good point. As long as it’s on the record that I’m not recklessly spilling secrets.”

  Right. As if he didn’t share every single secret he learned with everyone from the shoe-shine guy to his parents back in Iowa. “Of course. You’re the soul of discretion,” Daphne muttered, not bothering to coat her sarcasm in even a thin layer of legitimacy.

  “What do you want to know? You kissed him—”

  “He kissed me,” she corrected hotly. Bad enough that she’d leaped off that particular cliff on New Year’s Eve. Daphne refused to take the blame for this latest episode. “Gib started it.”

  “Whatever.” Milo swished away her objection with nails that shone from a fresh buff. “He might’ve started it, but you finished him. Gib’s not moody. He’s either working hard or playing harder. Last night, though, he was wallowing. The man couldn’t eat. He could barely string two sen
tences together. He looked like the big, scary monster from inside his childhood closet had just leaped out from behind the tapestries and scared twenty years off of him.”

  With pursed lips, Ivy gave a tight nod. “Good. He shouldn’t be able to walk out on Daphne without feeling shaken.”

  “But Daphne looks fine,” Milo protested. He waved an arm up and down at her. “Why are you so worried about her when Gib is a wreck of a man?”

  Good to know she’d camouflaged the worst of her emotional crisis. Better to know that the forty-five dollars she so reluctantly spent on concealer was actually worth it. “The whole storming out with no explanation thing stung, I’ll admit.” Stung? It was the worst rejection of her life. Gib piloting a riding mower across her heart would’ve hurt less. “But I’m definitely not a wreck.” In fact, hearing that Gib hadn’t shrugged off their kiss as one among millions cheered her more than a triple-chocolate brownie.

  “Glad to hear it,” trumpeted an unfamiliar voice from the hallway.

  All three of them swung around to gawk at the woman framed in the door. She stood with her feet braced wide to counterbalance the matching briefcase, laptop case and purse that could double as an overnight bag. A no-nonsense brown bob was tucked behind both ears. Short and wide, she wore a blue suit that made her look like a postal box.

  “Ruth?” Ivy hustled forward first, arms spread for a hug. “It’s so good to see you.”

  Ruth dropped the bags in a pile. “Thought I’d come accept your wedding invite in person.”

  Hardly. Wiping her hands on her apron, Daphne bit back a suspicious grunt. Ruth Moder blasted through cities faster than Godzilla. If she fell asleep in the same time zone she’d woken up in eighteen hours earlier, she considered it a lazy day. RealTV kept her hopping. The network produced all its own programming, and promised no repeats before midnight or after dawn. That left a lot of hours of reality television to fill. Ruth was their closer, contracting people, companies, pets, whatever had a chance at keeping America’s eyelids in the vertical and locked position. Her appearance here at Aisle Bound could be nothing less than wholly job-related.

  Daphne followed them down the hall to the front seating area where they did most of the bridal consultations. Watched Milo clatter into a frenzy of preparing a tray of coffee cups, spoons, hastily plated cinnamon chocolate cookies and a bud vase sporting a single deep-purple tulip. Her overdeveloped sweet tooth instantly begrudged their visitor each of those cookies she had yet to even taste. Daphne had harbored private afternoon plans for them, involving a quiet, dark place and a noble drowning in a glass of chocolate milk.

  Ruth splayed her hands wide on the armrests of what Daphne called their throne chair. Like something out of Alice in Wonderland, the seat back rose to almost five feet. Covered in white brocade, it enveloped a bride, putting distance between her and the matching sofa where Ivy relegated however many well-meaning but overbearing relatives accompanied her.

  “Thank God you have coffee. I left Vermont at dawn. This adorable cheese and sheep commune, filled with lesbians. Mark my words, the ratings for that will be off the charts. Every red-blooded eighteen-to-thirty-five-year-old man will watch, convinced he’ll be the one who could turn them.” Ruth shook her head. Her hair flew in a nimbus, revealing streaks of gray. “Egotistical idiots.” But she smiled as she said it.

  Daphne figured she must be picturing the waist-high stacks of cash a show like that would generate. Probably heard a dinging in her ears akin to a slot machine paying out.

  “People will watch anything.” Ivy settled onto the long white sofa.

  “And thank God for it!”

  With the solemnity of the waiters at any of Chicago’s venerable steak houses, Milo poured for all of them. He must’ve remembered Ruth was left-handed. The delicate white mug was handed to her with handle facing left. While he might look like nothing more than a flighty trend-chaser, Milo’s attention to detail made him an invaluable member of the Aisle Bound team. He retrieved Ivy’s notepad from her office and placed it on the glass coffee table.

  Daphne understood why he fussed. Milo loved any excuse to play host on top of his office manager duties. And she definitely understood why Ivy would now and forevermore at least listen to any pitch from Ruth. The two contracts Ruth had hand-delivered to Ivy were the foundation of one heck of a nest egg. Ivy had used it to open A Fine Romance. Ruth had earned the place of honor by giving Ivy a chance to make her dreams come true.

  What Daphne didn’t understand was what on earth Ruth could want from Ivy. The contract to film Ivy and Ben’s wedding was already signed. They’d told her, in no uncertain terms, it would be the last thing Ivy filmed for RealTV. Daphne hovered by the front door. Not sitting allowed her to watch everyone’s body language and expressions. She liked Ruth well enough. Just didn’t trust that the woman had any motivation or ethical stance that wasn’t rooted in money.

  “I’d love the chance to catch up, but that will have to wait for your wedding day,” said Ruth, with an apologetic twist of her lips.

  Riiiight. Because a bride and groom had nothing better to do than shoot the breeze while they and their hundred closest friends were being filmed for live television. Daphne darted her hand in for a cookie. An objective observer still needed fuel. Then she faded back to hang by the display window. Mostly because she thought it rocked.

  To wipe the visual red-and-green slate of Christmas away, she’d gone with an elegant, winter-white theme. Daphne had covered two Styrofoam snowmen with leftover Christmas tree flocking for texture. One wore a shiny black top hat and a duo of white ranunculus. The stems were wrapped in glossy black ribbon. The snow-bride’s twig arm ended in a bouquet of white sweet peas and narcissus, interspersed with black privet berries. Black satin cinched it all together in a tight braid. Branches of white snowberries lay crisscrossed in between the bride and groom. No doubt she’d get ten calls before the week ended asking about the sophisticated bouquet.

  Draining her coffee in one big gulp, Ruth dropped her hands to her lap. Her gaze followed, a split second later. “I’m here to beg a favor.”

  No. Whatever it was, the answer had to be no. Ivy had sacrificed enough of her private life to this network of vampires, who profited by sucking everyday life out of their reality “stars.” Daphne wolfed down her cookie, ready to back up her friend when Ivy tossed the intractable Ruth out on her ear.

  “We’ve got a show finale coming up in just over two weeks. This one is big. Has a huge following. You wouldn’t believe the number of tweets it gets every week. But one of our participants had to back out.” Ruth leaned forward and dropped her voice to a whisper. “I can’t tell you why, but if you guessed botched plastic surgery, I’d give you a knowing nod.”

  Ivy tucked the toe of one beige platform pump behind the heel of the other. After watching Ivy drool over the Duchess of Cambridge’s most-buzzed-about shoes, Daphne had bought her a pair as an engagement present. Ben, however, didn’t get a present. She adored him, and truly believed he’d be a wonderful husband. But he’d snatched Daphne’s best friend—and best roommate—away from her. She considered Ivy to be gift enough for him.

  “I’m grateful that you gave me the means to kick-start A Fine Romance. Grateful beyond words that you brought Ben and me together.” A conciliatory smile belied the ice hardening Ivy’s green eyes, as delicately hard as hoarfrost on pine. “But I won’t be on another show for you.”

  “Yeah, I got that the first twenty times. You don’t have to hit me over the head with a rock.” Ruth lifted her head to stare straight at Daphne. “I want your partner.”

  Good thing she’d finished that cookie, or the breath she sucked in would’ve vacuumed the crumbs straight to her lungs. Daphne flattened her palms against the glass door. Amazing how such a ridiculous notion tripped her heart into triple time. All she had to do to quell the panic was spit out one simple, unequivocal word. “No.”

  As sinuous as the serpent who tempted Eve in the garden, Ruth ar
ched her body forward. A smile flirted at the corners of her unpainted mouth. “You haven’t heard my proposition yet.”

  Mouth dry, blood pounding in her ears, Daphne reminded herself of the obvious. Ruth had no angle here, no leverage to convince Daphne to do the impossible. The reason Ivy agreed to let RealTV’s cameras follow her for months on end was to bring a long-held dream to life. But Daphne didn’t have any unfulfilled dreams left. Owning the floral shop, partnering with Ivy in Aisle Bound was everything she’d ever hoped for.

  Almost. One pipe dream still flitted through her consciousness. Now, more than ever, she’d barter away her Catholic soul for the chance to sleep with Gib. But even Ruth Moder wasn’t wily enough to make that happen. Daphne pushed off the door. “You want me to be on television, right? The answer is no.”

  “Daphne doesn’t like being the center of attention,” Milo explained. He patted Daphne’s arm. It made her feel a bit like a skittish colt being settled. But he was right. Her four brothers were so big, so loud, that they’d taken up most of the space in her life for a good many years. Daphne found it easy to fade into the background at home. She had no idea how to compete with the status- and makeup-obsessed girls in high school, so the background comforted her there, too. Attention made her self-conscious. It fit about as well as a wet suit three sizes too small.

  “You think I don’t know that? Hours upon hours of good footage, left on the cutting room floor because this one’s,” Ruth hooked her thumb at Ivy, “love-drunk fiancé insisted on keeping you out of the shot.”

  Awww. Maybe she’d get Ben a present after all. Right after shooing Ruth and her crazy-ass offer out the door. “Ben knew I didn’t want to be on camera. I’m sorry if his respecting my wishes complicated your production schedule. But Planning for Love signed a contract with Ivy, not with me.”