“Yeah, we can tell the guests it’s an engagement party. Is there anyone else you want to tell the truth to?”
Drake had to think about it for a moment. He didn’t want too many people to know what was going on, or the secret would get out. Instead, he thought almost everyone should be kept in the dark, including Robert and Sam’s family. Even though they had suggested the early wedding, Drake thought it would be great to surprise them with the wedding when they weren’t expecting it.
“Nope. Just you, me and the wedding planner,” Drake answered with a huge smile.
“Wow, this takes a lot of balls. She’s either going to love you forever or leave you,” Scarlett said with a shrug of the shoulders.
Drake obviously hoped Sam would love him forever, and that was why they were getting married. Sam had all but agreed to the early wedding when they were in bed the night before. Drake felt confident if he pulled off the wedding details, that Sam was going to love the idea.
“We do have one major problem, though,” Drake suddenly thought out loud. “The dress. We can’t just have one there for her. What if she doesn’t like it? What if it doesn’t fit?”
Scarlett thought for a moment and then decided that she would have to handle the dress part of the plan herself. There was no way she was going to leave that in the hands of Drake or of the wedding planner. Scarlett knew clothes, and she knew her friend, Samantha, very well. She thought she would be able to find the perfect dress for her, but the problem was going to be getting a dress tailored to fit her.
“I’ll handle the dress situation; you and the wedding planner deal with the rest of things.”
Drake instantly felt relieved when Scarlett offered to be in charge of the dress. It had been his biggest worry, and with Scarlett in charge of it, he didn’t feel like he would have to worry about it at all.
“What else am I forgetting?” Drake asked as he flipped through some notes he had written down in his phone.
“I think we have enough for now; let’s get started, and we will keep in touch throughout the week,” Scarlett said. “I’ve got to get back to work.”
Drake knew Scarlett had been busy since she opened her L.A. office. Every time he and Sam had stopped by to see her at work, the office was packed with people. Scarlett had successfully remodeled the building, hired staff, and acquired a full load of clients in only a few short months. She was certainly an amazing woman; Drake couldn’t deny that.
“Alright, I’ll let you get back to building your empire. Thank you so much for helping me.”
“Oh, I’m doing it for Sam, not you,” Scarlett said with a wink.
The mischievous look on Scarlett’s face brought Drake back to the night he made his final decision after the women had spent the whole week at his home. Sam was angry with him and had gone right up to Scarlett and kissed her. He could still feel the gut-wrenching pain of jealousy when the two women looked like they were enjoying each other’s company more than Drake’s.
That whole week had been a series of events that Drake knew he would never forget. Not only had it given him the clarity to choose Samantha, it convinced Sam that she wanted to give a relationship with Drake a try. No matter what else happened, the week was worth it purely because of the outcome that he had obtained.
Out of all the women who had been at the house, Scarlett was the only one that Sam and Drake kept in close contact with. But they had talked with a couple of the other women since they left as well. Lauren and Scarlett were friends, and Scarlett had started to work with Lauren as a client. Lauren was one of her first L.A. clients.
Emily moved to Los Angeles and was working from a small apartment on the beach; she and Allison were very close friends and hung out often. Drake had even seen a tabloid story that said the two women were a couple, but he didn’t believe it at all.
Sometimes Drake forgot that he had slept with the women and just looked at them as friends. He had talked with Sam about the women and wanted to know if it made her uncomfortable to continue to be friends with them, but she insisted that it didn’t bother her. Sam was an amazing woman, and Drake was lucky to have her.
“Thank you so much for your help, Scarlett. I don’t care who you’re doing it for. I really appreciate you.”
Drake gave Scarlett a hug and sent her on her way so he could go through his notes and continue the planning process. He had pulled a list of things to do off a wedding planning site and was checking them off on his phone as he got started on each necessary item.
He really had no idea if he was going to be able to pull off a surprise wedding, but there was a part of him that knew he wouldn’t fail. Drake had spent his life mastering the art of completing impossible tasks; he certainly wasn’t going to let a wedding deadline be the one thing that he didn’t master.
After getting himself organized, he called the wedding planner that Scarlett had suggested. Luckily, she had already called him, and he was prepared to talk with Drake about the short deadline.
“I’m going to have to charge you extra for the rush deadline. It means I’ll have to stop all work on my other clients’ events,” Colin Firm said to Drake.
Drake had a seriously difficult time keeping a straight face every time he thought of the man’s name. He couldn’t help wondering if it was his real name or if he was using his porn name in the hopes of getting more clients from the novelty of it all.
“My soon to be wife is going to want to meet you. Can you come to the Starbucks on Twelfth Street around two this afternoon to meet her?”
“Yes, I can make that happen. I’ll have a ton of questions for her.”
“Remember, she thinks the wedding isn’t happening for two months. We will tell her the event in two weeks is our engagement party,” Drake said, starting to get a little nervous.
“No worries; I can plan an engagement party and a wedding,” Colin said.
Drake rolled his eyes as he took a deep breath and prepared to explain everything again to the wedding planner. He really didn’t have time for this.
“No, just a wedding,” Drake said curtly.
“Yes, but she is going to want to plan an engagement party and a wedding. I’ll need to work with her on both, even though they will be the same thing.”
Drake understood what Colin was getting at but wasn’t sure Colin really understood that there wasn’t going to be an actual engagement party. But Drake was exhausted and couldn’t stand the idea of trying to go through the whole thing again. He decided he would send Colin an email later in the evening after he and Sam had officially hired the wedding planner.
“Okay, I’ll see you at two this afternoon. Please be on time; it’s one of Samantha’s pet peeves, and I won’t be able to convince her to hire you if you’re late.”
“I’ll be there,” Colin said and then hung up the phone.
Drake didn’t feel super confident in Colin, but if Scarlett recommended him, he had to be good at his job. Plus, Drake didn’t think many other planners would be willing to give up their other clients for two whole weeks while they worked on his wedding; so he didn’t have many choices besides Colin.
The wedding was going to be there before he knew it, and Drake couldn’t imagine he would get much sleep between then and the big day. His mind was already swirling with information on what he needed to get done and what order everything had to take.
For a man who had never planned a wedding, Drake sure was getting nervous about everything he had to do. He was involved more than any man he knew and wasn’t all that sure it was a good thing. He desperately hoped he didn’t mess something up in the process of the planning. His worst nightmare was that he would forget some essential item that Sam couldn’t get married without.
He took a few deep breaths as he prepared for the next couple of weeks ahead. Drake was in for a marathon of wedding planning that was going to be utterly exhausting. But in the end, it would mean a wife for him and the happily ever after fairy tale ending to his love affair with Sama
ntha.
Chapter 6
The meeting with Colin went off without a hitch, and for a good ten days or so, Samantha and Drake had done nothing except plan for their wedding. Sam wasn’t in nearly as much of a hurry to make decisions about things as Drake, but that was obviously because she thought the wedding was still weeks away.
Drake, on the other hand, knew that the wedding was right around the corner, and he couldn’t stop worrying about every little detail. One night, he stayed up all night long looking up different kinds of white flowers and which ones would be best for their wedding. Sam had only decided on white flowers and hadn’t decided on the type, so Drake and Colin had to make the decision themselves.
Colin had turned out to be everything that Scarlett had indicated he would be. He was on time, courteous, and knew what he was doing. Drake knew that he would do the best he possibly could given the existing circumstances. The problem was, Drake needed to constantly provide more information and make so many choices that he had started to second guess everything that came out of his mouth.
He even started to second guess the idea of actually having the wedding as a surprise. Drake knew that Sam was confident she wanted to get married and knew that she was alright with doing it quickly, but he wasn’t sure she was going to be alright with not having a say in all the details of the wedding.
Samantha liked to be in charge, and Drake knew it. Even though she had been his assistant for many years, she still was in charge of almost every aspect of Drake’s work schedule. Any time he would add an event or forget to tell her about something, he could tell that it really bothered Sam.
So how was she going to handle Drake planning their entire wedding without her? He didn’t know, he could only hope that she appreciated all the work that had gone into it and loved him enough to still walk down the aisle with him.
Drake’s phone started to ring, and he fumbled with getting it out of his pocket while he was in his office. He didn’t want Sam to hear him talking on the phone and making arrangements but couldn’t risk missing calls, so he had his ringer turned on for the last few days.
“Are we invited?” Drake heard a chipper female voice ask.
“Who are we?” Drake teased, although he knew that it was Emily on the phone.
“It’s Emily and Allison.”
“Oh, no, you’re not invited, but Allison is,” Drake said as he tried to hold back a laugh.
The phone went silent, and Drake instantly felt bad. He was just joking with Emily; of course, she and Allison could come to the wedding. Drake was also inviting all the other women, although he only expected Scarlett and Lauren to agree to come.
“I’m kidding, Emily. Of course you can come.”
“Oh, Jesus, stop scaring me like that,” Emily said. “I’m really excited for you guys; I know Allison is too. We are so excited to come to your engagement party.”
Suddenly Drake realized that he was talking about the wedding, and Emily was talking about coming to an engagement party. He had almost said something about the wedding and ruined the whole surprise. It would have been horrible if after getting worried someone else would spill the beans; Drake ended up doing it himself.
“Okay, I’ve got to run. I’ll see you at the party this weekend,” Drake said as he got off the phone.
Drake was thrown off by his near slip and had to regroup his thoughts. But he still had so much planning to finish off. The biggest issue was still the dress. Scarlett was being hush-hush about the whole thing, and it was making Drake really nervous. He just wanted to know that the dress had been purchased and needed to know how they would be sure it fit Samantha. He needed to talk to Scarlett.
“How’s the dress hunt?” Drake said to Scarlett as soon as she answered her phone.
“It’s going fine; don’t worry about it,” Scarlett said.
She sounded carefree and unworried, and Drake couldn’t stand it at all. He had to know the details or he was going to go mad with worry. Samantha had to have the perfect dress; Drake wasn’t going to settle for anything else than perfection for her.
“You need to tell me more; I’m going mad worrying about this.”
“Okay, well you know all those dresses that Sam gives to Allison’s pageant charity?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I had Allison bring me a couple of them, and I gave them to the tailor who is working on Sam’s dress. She was able to get all of her exact measurements, so we shouldn’t have to worry about the fit of the dress at all.”
Drake breathed a sigh of relief that at least the dress was going to fit. But he still didn’t know if Samantha was going to like the style of the dress at all. But there wasn’t really a good way of ensuring she was going to like the dress style without actually showing her the dress.
“That’s fantastic,” Drake said. “But what about the design of the dress. What are you doing for that? Is it going to be an A-line? Sam doesn’t like those kinds of dresses.”
Scarlett started to laugh into the phone as Drake talked about the cut of dress that he didn’t want Sam to have. It wasn’t every day that you got to talk to a man about wedding dresses, and he seemed to know what he was talking about. Whether Drake actually understood what he was talking about or not, Scarlett was impressed by his dedication and understanding of how important Sam’s dress would be to her.
“I’ve tried to convince her to go try on dresses, but she’s not interested. We did spend an afternoon looking through a designer dress magazine, and I made note of the ones she liked and contacted the designers. There were only three who had a sample dress in Sam’s size, so I just chose one of those.”
Drake breathed another sigh of relief. Scarlett’s plan sounded better than any he could have thought up. He would be forever grateful to Scarlett for all the efforts she had put in to make the wedding perfect.
“Okay, thank you so much. I know you’re busy. I’ll talk to you later,” Drake said.
Drake and Scarlett had been talking almost every day over the last week as they made wedding plans. Drake didn’t want to keep Scarlett on the phone for too long because he knew how busy she was, but he did feel much better after getting some answers to the questions he had about Sam’s dress.
Drake couldn’t concentrate on work at all as he flipped through the list on his phone. He was pretty impressed with himself and all that had been accomplished over the last few days. Drake wasn’t a party planner, but he certainly could appreciate everything that went into that job.
There was one item on his list that Drake hadn’t even started yet, and he didn’t know what to do about it. The food at the party was one of the biggest details, yet he had agonized over what to have catered so long that now he only had a few days. It was unlikely he would find a decent company to cater the wedding and even less likely that he would find the staff needed to serve everyone. Drake had to think outside of the box, but the problem was he couldn’t stop thinking about how he might ruin everything with his decision.
Ruining the wedding seemed to be a common theme in Drake’s thoughts over the previous days, and he just couldn’t get the idea out of his head. He thought about Samantha getting angry with him, her parents, his parents, the guests and even the pastor he hired to perform the wedding. No one was off-limits in Drake’s imagination, and he just knew someone was going to be upset at the wedding.
Then it came to Drake; he had a great idea for the wedding food and knew just how to make it extra special for Sam. A few years before, they had a young woman working in reception who left LeBlanc Enterprises to go to culinary school. Sam and she had been great friends, and Drake hoped that he would be able to reach her in time to plan for the wedding.
Rebecca Martinez was the woman’s name, but Drake didn’t have any of her contact information. The one person who did have the contact information was Sam, but Drake certainly couldn’t go and ask her for the woman’s phone number. He would have to figure out another way of getting the number and quickly.
<
br /> He dialed Colin to enlist him for a little help with securing Rebecca for the event.
“Colin, I know a young caterer that I would like to invite to cater the wedding, but Sam is the only one who has her contact information. Do you think you could talk to her and get the necessary info so we could use this woman?”
“Sure, what is her name?”
“Rebecca Martinez, but I don’t have her phone number. That’s what you’ll need to get from Sam.”
“You know, I’m going to charge you triple just for all the trouble you’re giving me,” Colin said lightheartedly, but Drake thought he was probably serious.
“You do what you have to do; I’ll pay you whatever you want if this wedding goes off without a hitch.”
Colin whistled loudly as he contemplated how much he could charge Drake and have Drake still pay it. What Colin didn’t know was that Drake would have paid almost anything to ensure his woman was happy.
“I’ll get in contact with Rebecca and convince her to cater the event,” Colin said optimistically.
“Thank you, Colin. I really appreciate you.”
“I know, I know; I keep hearing that. But show me the money,” he joked again.
Drake had started to like Colin, and even enjoyed his sense of humor. It wasn’t every day that Drake made friends with a porn star, and Colin was actually a really nice guy who knew a lot about event planning. Scarlett had been right about Colin, and Drake appreciated that very much. He hadn’t had the foggiest idea about who he would have hired.
“I’ll talk to you tomorrow Colin,” Drake said.
“Yes, yes, we can talk tomorrow. Only a couple more days until the big day. I can’t wait to see Sam’s surprised face.”
Drake was eager to see Sam’s face when she realized what was going on as well. He wasn’t sure she was going to be happy about it all but knew she would be gracious, no matter what happened.
The Billionaire Bachelor - Box Set: The Billionaire's Hunt - A Complete Ten Book Alpha Billionaire Romance Box Set Page 61
