Proposal for the Wedding Planner

by Sophie Pembroke

  And probably, in the future, for Riley. Dan’s gaze darted around the crowd. He should find his brother—try to have that conversation they needed to have. Hopefully while Melissa was distracted with something—anything—else.

  Except... Laurel looked harried. Not that she’d admit it, but there was a tiny line between her eyebrows that he only remembered seeing before when she was talking to Melissa.

  Dan was learning that Melissa wasn’t so hard to read, or to understand. Making sure Riley understood what he was getting into might be another matter, but it was one that could wait until the stag do tonight, he decided. Dan stopped looking for Riley and stepped forward to see what he could do to make Laurel’s day better. After all, wasn’t that what fake boyfriends were for?

  ‘I’m sure that can be arranged,’ she was saying to a discontented wedding guest, ignoring the phone buzzing in her hand.

  She kept a permanent smile on her face, nodding politely as the guest launched into another diatribe—something about the brand of bottled water in the mini-bar, from what Dan could overhear.

  Definitely not something that mattered.

  ‘You’ll excuse me.’ He flashed his most charming smile at the complaining guest, then yanked Laurel towards him by her elbow. ‘But I’m afraid I have to borrow my girlfriend for a moment. Wedding emergency.’

  The guest looked displeased, but didn’t argue, so Dan took advantage and dragged Laurel out of view, behind an apple cider stall.

  ‘Was he seriously complaining about water?’ he asked as Laurel’s phone started to ring again.

  ‘Yes.’ She lifted the phone, but paused before pressing answer. ‘Wait—what’s the emergency?’

  Dan shrugged. ‘I need a tour guide for this Frost Fair of yours.’

  Raising one eyebrow, Laurel pressed ‘answer’, but the phone stopped ringing seconds before her finger connected with the screen. ‘Sorry. I’d better—’

  Dan reached out and took the phone from her. ‘What about my emergency?’

  ‘That’s not an emergency. That was Eloise calling. She might have an actual wedding emergency that really needs my help.’

  ‘Like?’

  ‘Like...I don’t know. They were having final dress fittings this morning. Maybe something went wrong. Maybe the maid of honour’s dress can’t be refitted for Eloise and she’s going to make me do it. Maybe Melissa now hates her dress. Maybe—’

  Her face was turning red, and Dan wasn’t sure they could blame the cold for it. Plus, that line between her eyebrows had returned and brought a friend.

  He handed her back the phone. ‘Fine. Call. But only because I’m scared you might hyperventilate with all those “maybes” otherwise.’

  Laurel redialled quickly, and Dan waited as the phone rang. And rang. And rang.

  ‘Obviously not that much of an emergency, then,’ he said as it clicked through to voicemail. ‘Looks like you have time to show me around this place after all.’

  Laurel glared at him, and he laughed. ‘Oh, come on! Won’t it be more fun than listening to people complain about water?’

  ‘I suppose...’

  ‘I’ll buy you an apple cider,’ he offered.

  ‘All the drinks are free,’ Laurel pointed out.

  Dan shrugged. ‘Then you can have two.’

  She rolled her eyes, but put her phone away in her pocket, her forehead clear and uncreased again. He had her now—he knew it. ‘Come on, then. Let’s go.’

  CHAPTER SIX

  IT FELT STRANGE, wandering around the Frost Fair with Dan, pointing out the different stalls, introducing him to the various local craftspeople she’d researched and persuaded to come along for the day and showcase their work. Strange because it didn’t feel like work, but also because she wasn’t used to having someone so interested in what she was doing. Even Melissa had routinely zoned out when it had come to talking about the parts of the Wedding Extravaganza that didn’t exclusively star the bride.

  It should have felt odder still when, somewhere between the hog roast and the dreamcatcher stall, Dan reached out and took her hand, holding it warm and tight within his own. Benjamin had never really been one for public displays of affection, unless he was trying to prove a point—usually to keep her in line.

  Really, she should have got a clue that he didn’t think she was good enough for him long before she’d caught him with Coral.

  When she glanced up at Dan he shrugged. ‘People might be watching,’ he said, his eyes already on the next food stand.

  But he didn’t let go of her fingers.

  The weird thing was, people really weren’t watching. Nobody cared about them. She’d expected this week to be five days of people staring and pointing, knowing that she was Melissa’s half-sister and the reason the bride hadn’t had a father for her whole childhood. But as it turned out no one much cared about the wedding planner—the sister who wasn’t even a bridesmaid. Not even when she was supposedly dating the groom’s brother.

  Nobody cared. Nobody expected anything from her. Not even that she try and live up to Melissa. It was amazingly freeing.

  For about thirty seconds, until Dan said, ‘So, I hear people have been talking about us. After last night.’

  ‘What?’ Laurel looked up, startled, from the dreamcatcher in her hand. ‘When? I haven’t heard anything.’

  Dan shrugged. ‘I caught a few whispers on the wind today, that’s all. Let’s just say Melissa’s outburst at the drinks thing last night didn’t go unnoticed.’

  Oh, well that made more sense. It wasn’t her and Dan they were interested in. It was only the reaction they’d provoked in Melissa.

  It was all always about Melissa in the end. And Laurel found she preferred it that way.

  ‘Do you mind?’ Dan asked.

  ‘That they’re talking about us?’ Laurel shook her head. ‘They’re not really. They’re talking about Melissa, and we just happen to be nearby. That’s all.’

  ‘What about Eloise? Do you mind that Melissa made her maid of honour instead of you?’

  For a man who looked the stoic and silent type, he certainly asked a lot of questions. And, while she expected him to ask them about Melissa, she couldn’t quite get used to him asking about her. About her feelings, her thoughts—not just how she related to her sister.

  Maybe it was because he was in the same situation as her in lots of ways. How had he put it? They were the ones in the shadows. And Melissa and Riley cast very long ones.

  ‘What about you?’ she returned, twisting the question back on him. ‘Are you bitter that Riley chose Noah as best man rather than you?’

  Dan laughed, shaking his head. Under the bright and icy winter sky his eyes looked bluer than ever. She almost wished she’d been able to see him like this when they’d talked the night before—except then maybe neither one of them would have said so much.

  ‘I’ve never been the best man—or even the better man—before,’ he said, but despite his denial there was just a hint of bitterness behind his words. ‘Why would I want to start now?’

  She wanted to ask him what he meant, but before she could find the words a cheer went up from where a crowd was forming, just around the bend in the river.

  ‘Come on,’ Dan said, tugging her along behind him. ‘I want to see what’s going on over there.’

  ‘It’ll be the troupe of actors I hired,’ she explained as they wove their way through the crowd. ‘They’re performing some Shakespeare scenes and such.’

  ‘No one cheers like that for Shakespeare.’

  Laurel was about to argue the point when they finally reached the front of the crowd. She blinked up at the small wooden stage she’d seen being assembled that morning. On it stood a beautiful redhead in a gorgeous green and gold gown, and a man she was more used to seeing
on the movie screen than wearing a doublet and hose a mere metre or two away.

  ‘Is that—?’

  ‘Eloise and Noah,’ Dan confirmed. ‘Guess we know what she was calling about before.’

  ‘And why she didn’t answer.’

  As they watched, Noah and Eloise launched into a segment from Much Ado About Nothing, bickering as only Benedick and Beatrice could.

  ‘They’re good,’ Dan observed, clapping as the section came to an end. ‘Some of these Hollywood actors can’t act to save their lives. Would have figured Noah for one of them, but actually...he’s not half bad.’

  He said it easily, as if it didn’t hurt him at all to compliment the guy his brother had chosen to be his best man over him. But his earlier words still rang in Laurel’s brain, and as Noah and Eloise started in on their next scene she couldn’t help but ask the question she’d been thinking about ever since.

  ‘What did you mean? When you said you weren’t ever the best man before?’ Because to her mind he’d been pretty perfect since the moment his car had picked her up in London the day before.

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’ Dan didn’t look down at her as he spoke, keeping his eyes focussed on the stage.

  Laurel scowled with frustration. ‘It matters to me. Is it because of your parents?’

  ‘No.’ Dan sighed, and scrubbed a hand over his hair. ‘You’re not going to give this up, are you?’

  He sounded resigned. Good.

  ‘Unlikely.’ She gave him an encouraging smile.

  ‘Fine. I wasn’t talking about my parents. I could have been, I suppose. But, no. I was thinking about my wife, actually.’

  The cold winter air chilled her blood as his words sank in. ‘Your wife? You’re married?’

  Of all the possibilities that had floated through her mind since they’d started their fake relationship that really hadn’t been one of them. How could he pretend to be dating her if he already had a wife back in California? No wonder his parents had been so disapproving.

  ‘Ex-wife,’ Dan clarified, and the world shifted back to something approaching normality. ‘Sorry. It’s been...two years now, since she left.’

  Well, that made more sense, at least. Apart from the bit where she’d apparently left him. Who would leave Dan? From what Laurel knew of him, on one day’s acquaintance, tying a man like Dan down to marriage must have been a feat and a half in the first place. What sort of idiot would go through all that and then just leave?

  It didn’t make sense.

  ‘She left? Why?’

  Dan’s smirk was lopsided, almost sad. ‘She found someone better. Why else? I was just a stuntman, remember. Even if I did own my own company, even if I was on my way to being a success. She was an actress—and an ambitious one, too. I couldn’t match up to a Hollywood star, now, could I? I was just the stand-in, same as always, until something better came along.’

  The sad part was that it made sense, in a twisted sort of way. As much as Laurel hoped that Riley and Melissa truly were in love, she knew that part of the attraction for her sister was Riley’s A-List status. Even Benjamin... If she was honest with herself, Laurel had to admit that a small part of the attraction she’d felt for him came from knowing that he’d be seen as a good match for her. Why should Dan’s ex-wife be any different? But for someone like Dan, who’d already spent his life since the age of eight knowing he’d been replaced in his parents’ affections by his brother, knowing that he could never match up...

  ‘Ouch, that must have hurt. I’m so sorry.’

  He shrugged. ‘Don’t know why I was surprised, really. It wasn’t like Cassie was the first woman to want me just until she got a shot at the real thing—a proper star. She was just the only one I was stupid enough to marry.’

  The way he said it—without emotion, calm and even—made her heart ache. She knew how it felt to be cast aside for a better option—first by her father, then by Benjamin. But Dan... He seemed to have made a profession out of it. Of being the one they called on set only to do the dangerous work, never to get the credit. To be replaced by the actor with top billing. And it wasn’t only his work. Apparently his relationships had followed the exact same pattern.

  And that was just crazy.

  ‘Why?’ she asked. ‘Why just...accept that? Why always be the stand-in?’

  ‘What else is there?’

  He hadn’t known anything else, she realised. Not since he was eight and his brother came along and usurped him. It had been bad enough for her at sixteen, but at least she’d still had her mum...in a way. Dan hadn’t had anyone left at all.

  Were they both just doomed to repeat the same old patterns? Not if she could help it.

  ‘You know, Melissa might be the big star in our family, but I like to think I can at least be the heroine of my own story,’ Laurel said. ‘You don’t even seem to believe you can be that.’

  ‘The heroine of your own story?’

  Dan raised his eyebrows, and Laurel felt the heat rising to her cheeks.

  ‘What kind of heroine scampers around after her half-sister, giving up everything to make her day perfect?’

  ‘Cinderella,’ Laurel snapped back, without thinking, and Dan tipped his head back as he laughed, long and loud.

  ‘Waiting for your prince. Of course. I’m sure he’ll be along soon enough.’ Dan flashed her a sharp smile. ‘And until then maybe I’ll do.’

  ‘Maybe you will.’

  They were standing too close, Laurel realised suddenly. As the conversation had turned more private, more intimate, they’d each leaned in. Talking quietly under the laughter and cheers of the crowd, they’d needed to be close to hear one other. Dan had moved his hand from hers and rested it at her waist instead. His arm was around her back, holding her close to him as they spoke.

  Laurel stared up into his bright blue eyes and swallowed hard at what she saw there.

  ‘Kiss her again!’

  The cry went up through the crowd and broke the spell between them. Laurel jerked her gaze away, turning her attention back to the stage, where Noah was kissing Eloise very enthusiastically.

  ‘That looks like fun,’ Dan commented, and Laurel’s face turned warm. Too warm.

  Because it did look like fun. But she didn’t want to be kissing Noah Cross, film star extraordinaire, no matter how good-looking he was.

  She wanted to be kissing Dan.

  Wrong place, wrong time, and categorically not her prince.

  ‘It really does,’ she breathed, and grabbed Dan’s hand as he started to pull away.

  She knew what he was thinking now. And she couldn’t let him think it a moment longer. Turning her body towards his, until she was practically pressed up against him, she decided to take a chance.

  If she was the heroine of her own story, then it was high time she got kissed. Even if it was only pretend. She might have given up on relationships until she found the right one, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t keep in practice in the meantime. And what better way than with a fake boyfriend? In a relationship that couldn’t go anywhere because it had never existed to start with?

  ‘You know, if we really want this charade of ours to be believable it’s not just our backstories we need to get right.’

  ‘No?’ Dan asked, eyebrows raised. ‘What else were you thinking?’

  ‘It needs to look real, too,’ Laurel said, her mouth dry. ‘It needs to look every bit as real as Noah and Eloise do up there.’

  ‘You’re right.’ Dan tilted his head, ducking it slightly until his lips were only a couple of centimetres from hers. ‘So...what? Are you asking me to kiss you?’

  ‘Well, if you want to be convincing...’

  ‘I’d hate to fall down on the fake boyfriend job,’ Dan murmured.

  And then his lips were against h
ers, strong and sure, and Laurel’s whole body woke up at last.

  The only problem was it didn’t feel fake at all.

  * * *

  The crowd cheered, and just for a moment Dan thought they might actually be cheering for him. For him and Laurel and a kiss that would have broken records, if such things existed.

  If their relationship was fake—and it was, he mustn’t forget that—they were both rather good actors. They should be the ones up there on the silver screen, convincing the audience they were in love. Heaven knew, if he hadn’t known better, that kiss might even have convinced him.

  But he always knew better. He knew exactly who he was, and how much he could expect. And it was never everything.

  Except for one moment...with Laurel in his arms...he’d wanted to believe there was a chance. A possibility of something more.

  And then, of course, she’d pulled away.

  Her cheeks were pink, her eyes bright, and the smile on her lips couldn’t all be pretend. But he’d kissed enough women to know it wasn’t sufficient for him to be a great kisser. They wanted something more—something he didn’t have. A kiss was only a kiss.

  ‘I need to get back to the hall,’ Laurel said.

  On stage, Noah and Eloise took their bows and the crowd began to disperse.

  ‘I need to get things ready for the hen night.’

  ‘Sure,’ Dan said, letting her go easily. At least he hoped it looked easy. It didn’t feel it. ‘Don’t let me keep you from your work.’

  She hesitated before leaving, though. ‘I’ll see you later?’

  ‘We’re sharing a room, remember.’

  Not just a room. A bed.

  If last night had been difficult...trying to sleep beside her, knowing he couldn’t touch her...how much more impossible would it be tonight, now he knew how it felt to have her in his arms, to kiss her like that?

  He was doomed.

  ‘Better make sure you don’t drink so much at the stag night that you don’t make it back there, then.’

  ‘The stag night. Right.’