by Julia London
“I guess it goes without saying that this would be a fabulous boost to my portfolio,” Marnie waxed dreamily, and faded back into her seat.
“So how is your portfolio?” Eli asked idly as the driver slowed for a red light.
“What do you mean?”
What did she mean, what did he mean? How should he know what he meant? “I guess I mean how many weddings have you done?”
“Oh. How many?”
What else would be in a portfolio?
“Well, none, technically,” she said firmly. “I mean, this potentially could be my first solo wedding, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been involved. Oh no—I’ve done puh-lenty of apprenticeships,” she said, sweeping her arm out to show just how puh-lenty, “so I feel perfectly capable of handling this wedding. I interned with Simon Dupree. I bet you’ve heard of him. He is the most famous event coordinator in all of—”
“Relax,” Eli said easily. “You can give the rundown of your experience when we reach our final destination.”
“But what do you think? Do you think that sounds okay?”
“Does what sound okay?”
“My pitch.”
“Yeah, I guess,” he said with a shrug. What he knew about wedding planning was absolutely zilch. Jack was their resident expert, because his sister had used one to plan her wedding. They order the flowers and help with the dress and shit like that, he’d told them. Frankly, the less Eli talked about weddings, the better, and he was only doing this one under official protest.
“What is our final destination, anyway?” Marnie asked, trying to see out the window again.
“Where the audition will be.”
“Audition.” She laughed at that.
Eli glanced at her again. “What’s funny?”
“That just sounds funny. Like I’m going to have to try out or something,” she said, and laughed again.
She had no idea. Eli suppressed a smile.
“So what’s the deal with the Thrillseekers?” she asked. “Anything you can tell me about them? What they’re like?”
“Well…they don’t like to talk a lot,” he said, and looked at her meaningfully.
“Really?” Marnie asked with a charming smile, missing his point completely. “That’s too bad. I like to talk to people. Don’t you? I like meeting new people and hearing about them and what they do. I guess that’s why I’m such a good wedding planner. I really listen to the bride and groom and try and make their vision of their perfect day come true,” she said, and blithely launched into all the ways she did that.
With a small sigh, Eli folded his arms and stared forward.
CHAPTER TWO
Marnie was fully aware of the bad habit she had of talking to fill the space around her, especially when she was nervous. But she really didn’t know how to stop, especially not when she was this nervous. She was beginning to think that maybe she’d jumped a little too hastily into what was really a whack job.
That wasn’t so far-fetched, seeing as how she’d found out about the job to begin with by eavesdropping on a hushed conversation at a wedding trade show. While Marnie was not in the habit of eavesdropping on other people’s conversations (well…unless it was something really juicy), she’d been a little desperate. She needed this job in a bad way—if she had to live with Mom and Dad another month, she’d hurl herself into the ocean and let herself be washed out to sea. And besides, a certified wedding planner without an actual solo wedding under her belt couldn’t afford to be too choosy.
Oh, who was she kidding?
The very thought of doing Vincent Vittorio and Olivia Dagwood’s wedding sent chills up her spine. They were the two biggest stars in the universe and Marnie couldn’t wait to meet them—she could imagine her and Olivia becoming best friends as they planned everything, and then, when Marnie had pulled off the wedding of the century without a hitch, Olivia would hook her up with some of her A-list stud friends and refer tons of fabulous clients to her so that Marnie could become the wedding planner to the stars.
Hey, a girl could dream, couldn’t she? And that dream alone prompted her to put on the red hat and purchase the fruit, per the bizarre instructions of Thrillseekers Anonymous.
Then the Lincoln had appeared.
When she’d seen Eli leaning against the Lincoln in a black Astros hat, with dark glasses resting on a straight nose and a sexy shadow of a beard dusting a strong chin and some killer lips, not to mention the long, lean look of him in general, Marnie had been pleasantly surprised. Bonus! The job had a really good-looking guy involved.
Unfortunately, good-looking did not mean particularly friendly. He reminded her of a cowboy in one of the old westerns, the strong silent type. A Clint Eastwood with steely eyes—well, she presumed there were steely eyes behind those shades.
And what was all that about an audition?
The Lincoln turned, and Marnie caught a glimpse of towering iron fences through the front window that could only be surrounding huge monolithic houses, and she felt a tingle of excitement. Wedding planner to the stars, here she was!
Actually, telling Clint Eastwood that she’d wanted to pursue a career in wedding planning was a big fat lie. When the dot-com she’d been working for went belly up, she’d tried to get another job in the tech industry, along with everyone else and all their mothers—it felt like hundreds were competing for the same few openings.
Weeks went by without a nibble, and her unemployment status at last led to her greatest humiliation yet—having to move home with Mom and Dad. But she hadn’t had a choice—she couldn’t pay her rent and she couldn’t pay her credit card bills, which were, she was embarrassed to note, pretty damn high. Honestly, she’d not realized how large she’d been living on her humongous dot-com salary before the company tanked.
So after about three weeks with Mom and Dad, when Marnie was contemplating living under a bridge on the Santa Monica Freeway, she’d seen the ad for the wedding planner certification class.
Wedding planner. The term had sort of circled around and tickled her thoughts for a while. It actually sounded fun. Who didn’t like a wedding?
So she’d taken the class. At the very least, it got her out of the house and away from the TV, and Mom and Dad, and Mom’s book club. And though she’d never really envisioned herself a wedding planner, once she got into it, she was sucked in by all the beautiful white dresses and lovely cakes and flowers and fancy china—not to mention all the fabulous high-heeled shoes.
And she suppressed a shudder of delight just thinking about the sparkly wedding shoes Olivia Dagwood would wear on her third walk down the aisle. Or was it her fourth? She’d have to check E! Online.
The Lincoln turned again, and she had the sensation they were traveling up and around. Then the car slowed and made a sharp left. Eli lowered his window. They were at a security box. He punched in a code, then raised the window as the driver eased the car forward, through the gate, coasting down a hill and stopping in a small parking lot.
Eli lowered the back windows; the driver stopped the Lincoln and got out. “Wait here,” he said to Marnie as the driver opened his door. “I’ll be back for you in a minute or two.”
“Where are we?” Marnie asked.
He got out, stuck his head back inside, and said with a sexy, lopsided grin, “We’re here,” and shut the door.
“Thanks for the info, Chuckles,” Marnie muttered as he walked in front of the Lincoln in a pair of faded Levi’s—which looked damn good on his butt—and disappeared into what looked like a garden path or something.
Marnie sighed, looked down at her hat, her melon, and the straw bag full of giant oranges, then leaned her head back, closed her eyes, and mentally reviewed her best selling points.
While Marnie was mentally preparing herself, Eli walked around the six-car garage of the Vittorio Bel Air estate, past the service entrance to the house, and down the garden path to a little pavilion where the guys were waiting for him.
“You get one t
his time?” Jack asked with a chuckle. He’d thought it was hysterical that the last candidate had refused to get in the Lincoln with Eli.
“Yeah, I got her all right,” Eli said, and perched against the railing of the pavilion. “I was right—this one’s a talker. I already know half her life story.”
“Good,” Cooper said as he pushed away from the post he was holding up. “Maybe that will save us some time. So come on, let’s get this over with. I’ve got a meeting with DreamWorks later. What do we have on girl number four? And please tell me it’s not one of those giant photo books of weddings like the other two brought.”
Michael pulled out a phone, punched a couple of buttons, and squinted at the screen. “Marnie Banks, thirty-four years old. Recently laid off from a six-figure job at a dot-com that developed security portals for other dot-coms.”
The guys looked questioningly at one another; when it appeared no one knew what the hell that meant, Michael shrugged and continued. “Up to her eyeballs in debt, living with Mom and Dad, and driving a BMW.”
“Figures,” Jack muttered with a roll of his eyes.
“Interesting—no actual wedding gigs, according to her résumé,” Michael added, looking at the guys. “But she checks out. No arrests, no mysterious trips to the Middle East. No marital strife on record, no gigs in strip joints. Looks like good, squeaky-clean fun—except that she has no concept of money.”
“No wedding gigs?” Jack asked, frowning. “That can’t be good. How’s she going to pull off a wedding like this if she’s never done one?”
“No solo wedding gigs,” Eli said. “She worked with some big-shot event coordinator.”
“We’ll check it out,” Michael assured them. He was their security guy, because he had more contacts than God. “But let’s not forget she’s the only one we have left. And we agreed—we want an unknown, to keep the press off our trail. If this one doesn’t work out, we’ve got nothing.”
“Whose fault is that?” Cooper interjected. “You scared that last one half to death with your scorpion deal.”
“What, we’re not supposed to mention bugs?” Michael protested. “Dude, have you ever seen a woman with a bug? There can be one bug in the same county as a woman, and the minute she knows it, she is screaming her head off—”
“Okay, but couldn’t you have just said there might be some bugs instead of, ‘What would you do if you woke up with a scorpion in your sleeping bag?’ Come on, dude, that was just gross. Even I was thinking of bailing when you said that.”
“Guys,” Eli said, holding up his hands. “I think we have proven in spades that we have a deplorable lack of interviewing skills and the finesse of a bunch of snails when it comes to talking to wedding planners. So let’s be smart about how we’re going to do this.”
“Do the physical stuff first,” Jack said. “We’ve wasted too much time talking about weddings only to find out they won’t do the physical stuff. Tell me what you think of this,” he said, and proceeded to lay out the physical course as he saw it, which was met with immediate argument from Michael, who felt particularly bad for the girl who’d worn a dress.
But Jack countered with the widely held view—at least in this group—that the successful wedding planner had to be able to climb a rope.
At the very least, she had to do that.
They were firmly entrenched in their respective and loud opinions on that subject.
The Lincoln quickly turned into an oven; Marnie could feel perspiration on her forehead. “Ridiculous,” she muttered, and flung open the door and stepped out. “I’m not waiting in some oven,” she announced to the driver, who was having a smoke under the trees, and bent over, scooped up her hat, her melon, and her bag, then kicked the door shut with her foot. “What am I, a dog?”
He shrugged. She marched to the front of the vehicle, put on her hat, anchored the melon under her arm, flung her bag over her shoulder, and proceeded to march in the direction she’d seen Eli go.
She walked down the garden path to the large garage, and paused for a moment to count the doors. Six in all. Wow. Only someone huge in the movie industry would have a six-car garage.
A smile curved the corner of her lips, and Marnie marched on.
She rounded the garage, saw the walkway up to the main house, and proceeded—but she didn’t make it as far as the keypad on the gate when a man the size of a mountain appeared from nowhere and stepped in front of her. He folded his arms across his chest and frowned down at her. “May I help you?”
“I hope so,” she said smartly. “I was about to boil to death in the Lincoln. I’m looking for Eli.”
“Who?”
“Eli,” she said again. “The guy who drove me here.”
“Right. And I suppose he’s staying here, huh? A close, personal friend of Vince’s?”
“Who?” she asked, but the moment the question was out of her mouth, she knew exactly who Vince was and gasped with delight. “Vincent Vittorio lives here?” she squealed. “Am I going to meet him?”
The guy laughed and grabbed her elbow none too gently. “No,” he said, and pushed her back. “Take a hike,” he said, escorting her roughly down the path.
“Hey!” Marnie protested. “I’m here with Eli!”
“I don’t know any Eli—”
“The Thrillseeker guy!”
The man stopped pushing her. “Oh. You’re here for the auditions.”
“What is the deal with the auditions?” she cried, and wrenched her elbow free of his grasp.
“Got me,” he said, and pointed in the opposite direction to a path that led into the garden. “That’s their deal, not ours. They’re down there. Up here is off limits. You understand me? Off limits,” he said again, making a slashing motion across his neck.
“All right, already,” Marnie said, pouting.
The guy turned around and started to walk away.
“But wait!” she called after him. “Is Vincent here?”
“Off limits!” he barked and stalked off.
Whatever. Maybe Eli would introduce her before he took her back to the Farmer’s Market. If she could find Eli, that was.
She wandered down another path and did indeed find him, as well as some other men, as she rounded a bend in the path through a large garden. They were standing inside a beautiful white pavilion with hanging ferns and cushioned seats and boxes of flowers along the rail. By the sound of it, they were arguing. Well, wasn’t that just great—she was roasting on a spit and they were having some sort of argument.
“Hellooooo!” she shouted as she made her way to the pavilion with her melon and oranges. “Hel-loooooo!”
All four of them stopped and jerked toward the sound of her voice. As she strode toward the pavilion, Eli stepped out of the group and moved quickly out from the cover of the structure and down the steps, as if he were somehow surprised to see her here. Another guy, almost as good-looking as Eli, stepped out with him and peered at her as if she were some sort of space alien who had just landed in the garden.
The other two men—okay, make that four gorgeous guys—walked to the edge of the pavilion to stare at her. Marnie halted directly before them and paused for a moment to lose the melon, which was beginning to feel like it weighed two tons.
She straightened up, eyed them curiously, and smiled as brightly as she could, given the circumstance. “Hi! I’m Marnie Banks.”
No one said anything.
Oh come on! “Surely you remember me, Mr. Eli,” she said with a forced bit of laughter. “You brought me here, remember?”
“Oh, I remember,” he said and smiled a little. “Ah…this is Cooper,” he said, gesturing to the man next to him, who extended his hand to her in greeting.
Marnie grabbed it and shook it vigorously. “It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Mr. Cooper.”
“Ah, it’s Cooper Jessup,” he said, withdrawing his hand from her grasp with a bit of a wince. “And these are our partners,” he said, motioning to the others ar
ound him. “Eli McCain, you know,” he said, indicating Eli. “And Jack Price and Michael Raney.”
The two guys each moved forward to shake Marnie’s hand. She smiled at the lot of them, straightened the only sensible blouse she had that was nice enough for an interview but might also be considered a “banging-around” blouse, and clasped her hands together. The four men stood there, towering over her, as if they expected her to say something.
What she wanted to ask was if any of them were single—she hadn’t been in the company of so many good-looking, buff men in…well, never. But okay, she was here for a job, not to ogle the team. “Well!” she said, smiling. “Thanks so much for interviewing me. I am really excited about this opportunity.”
“Right,” Eli said, glancing at the others. “So Marnie, there are a couple things we’d like to ask you.”
“Great. Fire away. I have some résumés here in case you forgot to bring the ones I sent you,” she said, digging in the bag of oranges and pulling out a manila folder. “I didn’t bring my entire portfolio, but of course I can make that available to you,” she added, handing them each a double-sided, colorful résumé. “Nevertheless, I think there’s enough information here to demonstrate that my background is perfectly suited for this wedding,” she added confidently. “So please, ask me anything you want.”
“Great,” Eli said, without looking at her résumé. He seemed reluctant to ask whatever it was.
Marnie smiled brightly. “I’m ready if you are.”
He glanced at something over her shoulder and said, “Okay, well…first of all…can you can climb that rope over there?”
Marnie laughed politely at his lame joke.
No one else laughed. Eli nodded solemnly to a point over her shoulder. Still smiling, Marnie turned to look. It was a rope, all right, hanging from a sycamore tree.
“Climb a rope?” she asked, and jerked around, expecting to catch them snickering over some weird joke. Only they weren’t snickering at all, and Eli nodded again, as if it were perfectly reasonable to ask a wedding planner to climb a rope.
