by Olivia Miles
“You asked if I ever considered adding another member to this household?” Kate raised an eyebrow. “Well, I think Henry has answered your question very concisely. He clearly considers himself the man of this house.”
Alec glanced down at Henry as he came back outside to see what all the noise was about and bent down to scoop him up. The little thing couldn’t have weighed more than seven or eight pounds, and he immediately curled into a little ball, nuzzling his face into the depths of his own fur. Alec patted him tenderly, wishing all at once that he could have had a dog like this. He’d always wanted one, but there was never time, was there? A dog required care and effort and love. Someone to be there at the end of the day. Much like a wife. Much like anything worth having.
Just as William had said.
Alec let his eyes roam over Kate’s face. He wanted to kiss her right then, or hold her hand. Or sit here all night long and then come back again tomorrow.
But that wasn’t his life, was it? That was just the life he wished he had. The life he never knew he wanted. Until now.
* * *
Kate set her wineglass on the patio table and looked out onto the yard, where fireflies were just beginning to flicker. She supposed she should get up, fetch some matches for the citronella candles or offer up something to eat. Or she could go inside and start searching for that elusive lace.
She glanced at Alec. Maybe it was because she didn’t want to face reality, or maybe it was because she was having a surprisingly nice time, or maybe it was because she had never had a man over to her new home and wasn’t sure when she would again, but she wasn’t quite ready for him to leave just yet.
She licked her lips, pulling in a breath for courage. “Are you hungry? I could order a pizza.”
Alec glanced down at his watch, his eyes widening. “It’s late. I didn’t mean to keep you so long.”
Kate shrugged away her disappointment. “It’s okay.”
“Really? Don’t you have more work to do tonight?”
Kate drew a long sigh. “Yes. No. Well, too much in fact. My boss needs me to do the impossible. Track down three yards of some antique lace. I don’t even know the name of the pattern. All I have to go off is some handkerchief.”
“A handkerchief?” Alec looked as puzzled as Kate felt, and something in his expression made her feel less alone. It was a crazy request.
“Yep. Here.” She stood and walked through the screen door to the kitchen, where her handbag was still on the counter. She reached inside and plucked the square of material from the bottom, feeling her heart sink as she studied the lace. It looked positively ancient.
Alec had followed her inside and now stood before her, frowning down at her hand. He reached out a finger, gently stroking the edge of the material as he studied it, and in doing so, caressed the palm of her hand.
Stiffening, Kate tossed the lace on the counter, barely missing the sink. Lucky for that—Meredith had an eagle eye, and the slightest stain would undermine any success with fulfilling her request.
“She wants three yards of this,” Kate explained, feeling her frustration mount as she picked up the precious hankie again. She didn’t want to spend her night like this, in a vain attempt to locate the impossible. It was a setup, a game, no doubt. Something Meredith had cooked up to be sure she finally had a reason to fire her.
When she glanced up, Alec was watching her. Kate shifted uneasily on her bare feet, just waiting for him to say something about how silly or ridiculous this was. That it was only lace. That it was just for a party. That she was just some silly party planner.
“Then we’d better get to work,” he said instead.
“We?” she said shyly, tipping her head. She couldn’t fight the grin that played at her lips.
Handing her the handkerchief, Alec nudged his head toward the living room doorway. “You get your laptop; I’ll get the rest of that wine. And I’ll order that pizza while I’m at it. Something tells me this might take a while.”
Unable to contain her smile, Kate walked into the living room and nestled down onto the floor with her laptop on the coffee table and Henry at her side, listening as Alec placed the order for their dinner.
He settled across the coffee table from her when he ended the call.
“Thanks for helping me,” she said quietly with a smile that she hoped expressed the genuine gratitude she felt.
“Your boss seems like a real pill,” Alec mused.
Kate grinned as she waited for her computer to boot up. “She is.”
Alec handed her a glass of cold white wine and raised his glass to hers. “To a fresh start then?”
Kate wasn’t sure if he was toasting her pipe dream of ever leaving or being on better terms with her boss of if he was alluding to something that seemed to be brewing between them.
Whatever the intention, she liked it. A fresh start. Wasn’t that all she had been searching for all these months?
Kate clinked her glass with his and took a long, slow sip, eyeing him over the rim of her glass.
This was what life was all about, wasn’t it? Starting over. Moving forward. Fresh starts. But as alluring as the idea of it sounded, a greater part of her was terrified. She’d taken great care in locking her heart up and protecting it from the harshness of the world.
But Alec was slowly bringing her walls down, whether she liked it or not.
Chapter Fourteen
The next morning, Kate strode briskly through the office and straight to Meredith’s office. It had been a long, almost sleepless night—it was past one in the morning when she and Alec had finally tracked down the elusive antique lace—but strangely, she didn’t feel tired, only invigorated.
Her confidence had dwindled over the past few months, and not just thanks to Jake. Her professional belief had slipped, too, but piece by piece, she was getting it back, becoming more like her post-jilted self with each day.
And a little part of it was thanks to Alec.
Still, the thought of stepping into her boss’s pristine office always made her stomach ache a little. Pulling in one last breath for courage, Kate straightened her spine and tapped twice on Meredith’s half-open door before poking her head around the edge of it.
Her boss glanced up. “Well, this is a surprise,” she said with an icy laugh. She patted her tight chignon and leaned back against her chair, her gaze steady.
Kate just smiled as she walked over to Meredith’s desk and held out the handkerchief. Her boss’s eyebrow arched in question. “It’s Alençon lace. French. From the turn of the twentieth century.”
Meredith’s face pinched as she snatched up the material. “I could have told you that.”
“I know you had asked for three yards of it, but unfortunately I wasn’t able to track down a piece of that exact pattern in that exact size.”
Meredith smirked. Of course.
“I found four yards,” Kate took great pleasure in stating. “It was being used as a tablecloth. Pristine condition. I went ahead and paid for overnight shipping, so it will be here tomorrow. I also found a tailor who can cut it down to size without disrupting the pattern. Unless four yards would be better?” It took everything in her to maintain a neutral expression.
Meredith’s eyes flashed, but she said nothing. Instead, she turned back to her computer screen: a signal that this conversation—and perhaps the possibility of Kate being fired—was closed for the day.
“Don’t let your focus stray from the true task at hand. You should be concentrating on the Jones-Montgomery wedding first and foremost.”
“Of course.” Kate nodded.
“And how’s that going?” Meredith suddenly asked, swiveling in her chair.
She should have known it wouldn’t be this easy. Maybe Alec was right. Maybe she should just quit.
But to work as an event planner in a hotel…It wasn’t the kind of personal experience she valued. She loved taking two people through the entire journey, spending months with them along the way, not j
ust making sure everything came together on the big day. “Everything is on schedule,” she said tightly.
Meredith looked unconvinced. “What about the musicians? They know the time to arrive for setup?”
Kate resisted an eye roll. The wedding was now four days away. No wedding planner would allow such an oversight at this stage. Swallowing a sarcastic remark, Kate nodded and Meredith scribbled a note to herself. “What time are they setting up the tent?”
“Ten o’clock.”
Meredith tipped her head. Her forehead crinkled. “Why so early?”
Kate stifled a sigh and said, “I wanted to be sure to have enough time to oversee it, since I have to help Elizabeth get ready in the afternoon.”
Meredith lips drew into a thin line but she said nothing. She had already vocalized to Kate that she felt her maid of honor status was a conflict of interest, and one that forced her to participate in the wedding rather than solely oversee it. As if she wasn’t under enough scrutiny as it was, now Meredith had an extra reason for thinking that something was bound to go wrong. Kate knew that Elizabeth would forgive her, but Meredith would not. Big names were coming into town for this wedding—the groom was a well-known man, and many influential guests had summer homes in Misty Point, as Meredith kept reminding her. As if Kate didn’t already know…
“Run me through the schedule leading up to the ceremony.” Meredith stared at her patiently.
So much for the conversation being over, Kate thought grimly. She swallowed the bitter taste in her mouth. Pride didn’t go down easily.
“After hair and makeup, the bride and female half of the wedding party will gather at Elizabeth’s parents’ home at three. The cars will arrive at four thirty to bring us to the beach for the ceremony.”
“And where are the dresses now?”
“They’re at the shop. I’ll be picking them up and personally delivering them Friday before the rehearsal.”
Before Meredith could continue with her interrogation, Kate volunteered, “The groomsmen will gather at William and Elizabeth’s house at three thirty and be transported via limousine to the beach, scheduled to arrive fifteen minutes ahead of the bride’s car.”
“What’s the situation with the best man?”
Kate’s pulse quickened at the mention of Alec. The image of his easy grin and warm brown eyes hadn’t faded since he’d called a cab and bid goodbye last night, much as she wished it would.
“What about him?” she asked, her tone sounding intentionally vague. She cleared her throat, wondering if she looked as guilty as she felt.
“He’s up to speed with the process? Where to stand? Speech? You know how some of them can be…” Meredith gave her a pointed look, and Kate almost slipped into a smile, forgetting for a moment that they weren’t on the same team here, not really, and inside stories and conspiratorial grins had no place in this office.
Alec’s questions haunted her, drawing up all the things she asked herself every day. Could she really continue like this, and for how long? She loved wedding planning, but was it worth this cost?
She couldn’t think about this now, not when her best friend’s wedding was days away.
“Kate? It’s imperative that the best man cooperate. We don’t need another Ross Davidson on our hands.”
A prickle of panic made Kate stand a little straighter. No one at Bride by Design could ever forget Ross Davidson, the red-haired troublemaker from the Keough wedding last summer. Thanks to one too many drinks before the ceremony had even started, he had cat-called when the bride and groom had their first kiss, and then tripped the maid of honor on the way down the aisle. No attempts at sobering him up before the reception had been successful, and he was determined to give a speech he hadn’t prepared in advance, sprinkled with less-than-flattering comments about the bride’s weight and tasteless sexual innuendos about their forthcoming honeymoon.
Kate shuddered. “I can assure you that Alec Montgomery doesn’t have a drinking problem,” she said with confidence. If the bachelor party proved anything, it was that Alec was not the partying sort.
She smiled softly. He was sort of a homebody, in a way. Surprisingly.
“And his speech is acceptable? You’ve seen it?”
She blinked at her boss, wondering how she should answer this one. She had been so concerned with getting his suit fitted and making sure he was satisfied with the rehearsal dinner that she had overlooked this rather important detail. Normally a wedding planner wouldn’t have to think about something as personal as this, but given Elizabeth’s concerns, she had reason to make sure everything would be fine.
She chewed her lip as she considered the status of this elusive detail. Would Alec have taken it upon himself to write something up? She highly doubted it, based on what she’d seen of him this week. If there was a general trend throughout this process, it was that Alec was very passive when it came to his best man responsibilities.
She said the only thing she could. “It’s all under control.”
Meredith accepted the answer with a quick nod of her head. “Good. Now how did the call with the caterers go last night?”
Kate stared blankly at her boss for only the briefest of seconds before her blood stilled.
Oh my God, the caterers. She had made a mental note yesterday to call the caterers last night, and she had forgotten. Between the suit fitting and that damn lace, she had once again failed to fulfill one of the most basic tasks on her list.
She couldn’t lie her way out of this one—Meredith would be sure to know, if she didn’t already. Kate eyed her boss warily, gauging if this was a trick question, and decided to answer as honestly as she could. “I wasn’t able to connect with them last night. I’ll call them now.”
Meredith gazed at her icily. “You do that.”
Kate inhaled sharply and exited Meredith’s office on shaky knees. She would call the caterers. Of course she would. But first, she would call the best man.
* * *
Alec finished looking through the notes he had gathered from his meeting Sunday and settled back into the stiff armchair, glancing around his hotel suite. The day had been less productive than he had hoped, and the looming deadline of his next sit-down with Mason Lambert was weighing heavily.
It wasn’t like him to not be able to focus. From a young age, he’d used it to push through life. When his mother had died, he’d focused on his grades, something she’d taken seriously and the one thing that felt as if it was within his control. He made a goal to never get anything lower than a ninety percent that year, not even in art, or science, which he’d always struggled with, and with that goal in mind, he’d become fixated, distracted. When the emotions started creeping in, he thought of that report card and what he wanted it to say, and all at once the image in his mind was replaced with something attainable. Later, in business, he could sit in his office, hell, even sleep there, without thinking of the outside world, without wondering what events he was missing or what parties he could go to, what women he could be dating. It was a skill, he thought. But it was also, perhaps, a curse.
He wished it could be different—that he could be more like William, calm and casual—but he couldn’t. Alec worked hard to be sitting at the top of the Montgomery Group. Too hard sometimes. Especially now, when it didn’t seem to be paying off.
He rubbed a hand over his jaw, realizing he’d forgotten to shave today. He’d been too busy working, and not only because so much was on the line. Something had shifted in him last night at Kate’s house. And the night before at her parents’ home. Something he needed to shut out.
And so he’d spent the day focused on the meeting with Mason. It beat worrying about the state of his family’s company or wondering if William would ever rejoin him. And it beat thinking about Kate, and her little dog, and how much happier he’d been in her living room than he’d ever been in that over-air-conditioned corner office.
But now his concentration had expired. Admitting defeat, he closed his
laptop and walked across the room, wishing he could be doing something else right now. Something involving sitting in Kate’s kitchen with a nice cold drink and funny little Henry on his lap. He stared out the window to the vast stretch of ocean. The tide was rolling in, and large waves broke against the rocky shoreline, creating a bubbling white foam in their wake.
His chest tightened when he thought of the way Kate had looked when she’d waved him off last night, standing in the glow of the porch light, Henry tucked happily in her arms, his tail wagging with contentment. The way she’d smiled and wiggled her long, feminine fingers in a wave. The way he had fought with everything in him not to lean over and kiss her but instead jammed his hands into his pockets and hurried across the stone path, wishing he could stay.
But he hadn’t. Instead he had come upstairs to this room, and he had barely been able to think about anything else since.
His phone rang and he crossed the room to answer it, hoping it was Kate.
“Hi…” It was Kate. And the way his spirits rose at the sound of her voice confirmed the obvious. He liked her. And he really shouldn’t be spending this week thinking about a girl from Misty Point when all hell was breaking loose back in Boston. “How are you? I hope the hotel remains comfortable?”
Alec frowned at her formality. He’d thought their evening had been enough to undo any damage Elizabeth’s disparaging opinion may have caused, but maybe he had misread things.
He sat back on the bed and put his feet up, hoping to get to the bottom of this once and for all. “And to what do I owe the honor of this call?”
Kate seemed to hesitate. “I hate to bring it up, but I’m sitting here going through the wedding checklist and I was wondering if you had your speech written?”
“The speech.” Alec couldn’t fight the disappointment in his chest. So this was the reason for her call. Business. For once he was on the other side of it.
