by Easton, Meg
And right along with it, all the non-essential trips she usually took to network with other designers, with visits to boutiques thrown in to legitimize the trip—visits that could just as easily be done by her very capable marketing reps—no longer felt vital.
At times in her life, when thoughts of a long-term relationship flitted to mind, she had always squashed that thought by telling herself that her responsibility to the relationship would hamper her ability to go on business trips. Or any other kind of trip, really. That thought always suffocated her.
It hadn’t occurred to her that a fulfilling relationship might just make her desire to be away from the ones she loved simply disappear.
There were definitely trips that were important and vital to her business, and those still drew her in, and she knew they likely always would. And as the designer and CEO of By the Brooke, there were business trips that only she would be effective taking. Those trips excited her.
But trips vital to her business but not necessarily ones she needed to take personally did come up at inconvenient times occasionally, like when she was struggling to meet a deadline. If she wanted a family, she knew things would come up that she’d want to be present for. If she had a business partner, they could cover for each other on those kinds of trips as needed.
A single breath of a laugh escaped her. The Brooke from three weeks ago never would’ve considered having a business partner or a husband, and now she was realizing that the one might make the other more all the more sweet. Partnering with Ian might allow her to be able to have more time to spend with the people she loved the most. And that was what really mattered.
She walked back into the green room and Kale, Amica, and Ian all looked up at her, giving smiles of camaraderie at having all survived the presentation at the end of the shared three week race. Amica scooted over, giving her space on the couch between her and Ian.
Brooke held up a finger and said, “I’ve got to do one thing first. Ian?”
Ian must’ve been able to tell that there was more in her expression than relief at having finished, like it had been with Kale and Amica, because he stood up, a hopeful question on his face.
She held out her hand. “Before I sit, I’d like to shake the hand of my future business partner.”
Instead of shaking her hand, Ian grabbed both of her hands. “Are you kidding me right now?” When she shook her head no, he jumped up and down holding her hands, just like Delbrina and Noemi had when Van Zandt had named them a finalist, and she laughed, his contagious excitement filling her.
* * *
Back in the green room after their lunch, the four of them waited as first Amica and then Kale were called back in to meet with the panelists for final questions. When the assistant poked his head in a third time, he announced that they wanted to see Ian and Brooke together. They both gave each other questioning glances, then followed the assistant back to the presentation room and stood before the panel.
Mazarine thanked them for coming back in, and then said, “Ian mentioned that you two might be merging your businesses. We would like to know what you think the possibility of this might be, because it may affect our decision.”
Brooke’s eyes flashed to Ian’s.
He gave her a sheepish shrug. “I didn’t mean to spill the beans. In the question and answer portion, it just kind of came out. In my defense, I was fresh off the excitement of you saying you were considering it less than two minutes before I walked in here.”
The panelists chuckled.
“So is it true?” one of the executives asked.
“It is.” Brooke hadn’t even thought of the fact that it might affect their decision and hoped it wouldn’t mean that it would reflect negatively on their scores, or worse, that it would mean disqualification.
Mazarine nodded her head in acceptance, a smile on her face. “May I give some advice?”
“Please,” Brooke said. If anyone could use advice in facing two potential partnerships—one in business and one in love and life—it was her.
“Identify what each other’s strengths and weaknesses are,” Mazarine said, “and don’t ignore the more hidden strengths. Your combined strengths are the things that are going to make your business stronger together. And above all else, support one another. Never forget that their success is your success.”
Mazarine stood up and walked around the tables to shake both of their hands. She smiled. “I wish a long, happy partnership for you both.”
Brooke walked out of the room floating with the knowledge that this partnership with Ian was going to make possible an even more exciting and rewarding partnership with Cole. If it wasn’t too late to convince him that she was ready to put their relationship first.
Chapter Twenty-One
Cole stood in the lobby of Van Zandt Corporate Offices in downtown New York City, palms sweaty, pacing nervously. The plane ride had been stressful. He hadn’t had to fly often in his life, and this was the first time he had ever flown anywhere alone. Once he had landed, it had been a race to get everything ready before Brooke’s meetings were supposed to end.
The nervousness had actually been a constant companion for the past twenty-one hours as he had hastily gotten last minute plane tickets, coordinated with everyone at Back Porch Grill to take over his duties while he was gone, worked things out with the mom of one of Sam’s friends to take Sam to and from school and let her play at their house until Susan could pick her up, asked Susan if Sam could sleep over at her house, and worked through plans of how to let Brooke know that she was exactly perfect and that he loved everything about her.
He’d known the entire time they’d been friends that she never wanted to get married, but he would take having her in his life in any way she was willing.
And now he stood in this massively high-ceilinged lobby, facing the open stairs that Brooke would be walking down when she was finished. Three hundred red balloons were spread throughout the spacious lobby in groups of three or four, at all different heights.
He hoped that when Brooke came down the stairs and saw them all, she’d have the same look of wonder and happiness as the girl had in her childhood favorite book, and that she would know without a doubt that she was loved.
There was an extra layer of pressure added as more and more Van Zandt employees made their way down to the lobby every few minutes. Most acted like they needed to be in the lobby for some reason just then and were doing their best to act busy but angling themselves so they could watch the stairs, too.
Cole wiped his hands on his pants again. Finally, he heard voices from the upper stairs just before Brooke rounded the upper flight of stairs that were blocked from his view and turned in the landing to face the lobby and descend the second half of the stairs.
Brooke and Ian, the designer he’d met at the fashion show in L.A., along with another man and a woman, all froze as they saw the lobby.
After a minuscule pause, Brooke’s hands flew to her mouth and her eyes flashed across the people in the lobby until they fell on him.
As she stood at the top of the flight of stairs wearing a black suit, a bright blue shirt, heels, and looking unbelievably amazing, the hands over her mouth and the distance hid her expression. He wasn’t sure how she was going to respond and fear seized him.
Then she dropped her arms, one hand finding the railing, and walked down the stairs as the other three people remained at the top. Cole didn’t take his eyes off her as he moved forward in the path he’d left in the middle of the balloons, warmth and nerves and happiness and fear warring inside him during the last few steps to meet Brooke at the base of the stairs.
“You remembered about the red balloon.” Brooke grabbed both of his hands in hers. “I can’t believe you remembered.”
Cole rubbed his thumb along hers. “I don’t think there’s much I’ve forgotten about you in the past two years and ten months. I still remember what you were wearing the day you walked into the restaurant for the first time.”
/> As she searched his face, he could feel the eyes of a couple dozen people on them, all holding their breath, waiting to see what would happen next.
“Brooke, we’ve been friends for a long time, and I’ve been in love with you for almost as long. The longer I know you, the more amazing I realize that you are. I can’t offer you all the glitz and glamour of the fashion world, but I can offer you my whole heart.” He paused a moment, then added, “And good food.”
He wanted to also offer her a ring and a promise to be hers for the rest of their lives, but he knew that wasn’t an option. That was okay. The smile that lit up her face was enough.
“Cole,” Brooke said, and he could hear the hesitation in her voice.
“I just want us to continue dating,” Cole said. “If it never turns into anything more than that, it’s okay.”
“So, Cole Iverson, you’re saying that you’ve loved me for more than two years and you never told me?”
He chuckled and moved his hands to her back. “Say you’ll keep dating me, and you’ll know I love you ‘when I hold you in my arms all snug and tight, and tell you that I love you every night.’”
* * *
Sam ran up to Cole and Brooke where they stood watching the action, hand-in-hand. “I can’t believe the day of the party finally got here!” Then just as quickly as she’d run up to them, she ran back to where all twenty dukes and duchesses were dressed up in their finery and trying to keep a couple dozen balloons up in the air using their wands.
Cole laughed. “I think that’s about the ninety-seventh time today that she’s run up to me and said that. Thank you for convincing me that it was a better idea to involve her in everything instead of making the party a surprise.”
“I think she had a lot of fun planning it,” Brooke said. “And I was so impressed at how long this many kids sat around the tables making their wands. That was a pretty good idea, too.”
Cole nodded. “And they definitely needed an action-packed game when they were done.”
Everything had come together even better than Cole had imagined. Bo Charleston had offered to have a couple of his horses pulling a flat-bed trailer bring all the kids to the party. Eli Treanor had used some of his props from Team Up to make the trailer look like a royal carriage, and Brooke and Sam had put sparkly unicorn horns on the horses so they’d look like the unicorns that pulled the carriage in the book.
Brooke and Sam had decorated his normally empty extra room to make it fit for royalty, and when the dukes and duchesses arrived, they all entered the party through the tower slide that Nate had built.
The ten layer cake that Cole made—just like the one in the book—turned out pretty fantastic, if he did say so himself. The parents of all the kids and all the other adults who had come to help seemed to be loving the foods he’d crafted on the dessert table, because their chatting groups never moved far from it.
Brooke kissed his cheek. “I’m going to go check on the music for the sleeping spells dance.”
Cole nodded, and he watched her walk away until she disappeared into the back corner. After looking down at the schedule on his phone, he held up two fingers to let Sam know that it was almost time for the next thing they had planned. She gave him a nod in acknowledgment.
When the alarm on his phone went off, Sam ran around to the backside of the tower slide, got in the little cubby, and flipped the switch. The platform raised her up and turned her to face the room and the microphone she’d been using to emcee the event.
She stood in the princess dress Brooke had designed, watching the dukes and duchesses play for a small moment before she called out, “Annnnnnnd, stop!” Her heavy breathing from the tiring activity sounded through the microphone as she held it close to her mouth, waiting as all the balloons fell to the floor. “Okay, now everyone use your wands and push those balloons off to the side over there. A little bit further. Perfect! Okay now come back; I’ve got to tell you what we’ve got coming up.”
Once all the kids were gathered again in front of the tower, Sam said, “We’ve got a photo booth set up over there with some royal props so we can all get pictures of being fancy, then while everyone is finishing, we’re going to play a game called Sleeping Spell Dance. You guys are going to love this. When the music is playing fast, everyone needs to dance all crazy. But when it stops, it puts a sleeping spell on you and you have to fall to the floor asleep until it starts again. Got it? Good. Wait! Come back, Riley and Janet. I didn’t say it was time yet.”
Cole chuckled. He hoped that his daughter never lost that confidence.
“Because we have one other thing happening before the photo booth. Parents and helpers, you need to come over here for this, too. Come on, come on. Over here.”
Cole’s brow crinkled and he pulled up the party schedule on his phone. After the balloon activity was the photo booth. There wasn’t anything else in between. And the only other thing on the schedule besides that and the dance was eating the refreshments. He looked up at Sam, confused. She wasn’t looking his way, though—she was still directing the adults to where she wanted them to stand.
“Brooke,” Sam said through the microphone from her perch on top of the tower, “will you turn on the soft music, please? Nate, will you turn the sparkly lights on the tower and dim the other lights?”
Once both were done, Sam grinned one of her biggest grins. “This is the part of the party that I’m most excited for than anything else. I’m not even kidding, everybody, it’s even more exciting than the tower slide or the unicorns or the cake. I didn’t even think it was going to happen, and then when I found out that it would, I begged and begged and begged can it please be part of the party.”
Cole’s eyes found Susan in the crowd. Did Samantha plan an extra activity with her while he had been in New York? Susan met his glance but just smiled and looked back up at Sam.
Sam held up Princess Samantha’s Perfect Party. “Remember when I read this book in class during Book Share? Well, I didn’t actually read the ending then, so I’m going to read it now.”
She opened it up clumsily with the microphone in one hand and then made a show of clearing her throat. “Princess Samantha’s Perfect Party was such a big wish, though, that it was too big for just one magical helper, so Princess Samantha actually got two—a fairy godmother and a fairy godfather.”
Cole smiled when he realized she was making up a new ending to the story as she went along.
“And the dukes and duchesses and all the subjects and especially Princess Samantha were delighted when they found out that the fairy godfather and the fairy godmother had fallen in true love with each other!”
Cole might have blushed a little. He looked around the room for Brooke to see what she thought of Sam’s impromptu storytelling, but the tower lights only lit up the people gathered in front of it. The rest of the room was cast in shadow and he couldn’t see her at all.
“At first, the fairy godmother tried to keep it a secret that they were in love. But then she decided that she was sooooo in love with the fairy godfather that she wanted to spend forever with him, and she wanted everyone to know it.”
Sam motioned with her hand to the middle of the crowd and whispered into the microphone, “Now I need you guys to all split apart a little bit. Make a path.”
Once the crowd separated into two halves, Sam said, “But most of all, the fairy godmother wanted the fairy godfather to know it.”
Brooke made her way through the opening everyone had cleared and came up to where he stood near the base of the slide, looking uncharacteristically nervous.
“Brooke?” He wasn’t exactly sure what was going on and hoped she was going to fill him in.
She smiled at him, relaxing. “Cole,” she said. “You’ve been my best friend—” She glanced out at Whitney in the crowd, standing next to Eli, and with a breathy laugh, amended it, “my best manly friend for a long time. Long enough that I’ve been able to see, firsthand, your strength of character. And more than l
ong enough to know that I like who I am best when I’m around you. You’re the person who has most helped me to see that I had been completely wrong about partnerships. I wasn’t being insincere when I said that you are my very favorite thing about Nestled Hollow. I love you, Cole. I want to be more than friends with you. Always.”
Cole searched Brooke’s eyes, finding truth in the words she was saying.
“Cole Iverson, will you marry me?”
The crowd let out a collective gasp, and Cole was sure his was in there, too. “You want to get married? For real? You, Brooke McClellan, want to marry me?”
“I mean, I can’t offer you the most skilled help in the kitchen, but I can offer you my heart.” She paused, then added, “And surprise breaks in your schedule. So what do you say?”
Cole wrapped his arms around her and they both turned around in circles, happiness escaping as laughter as he did. Her face looked just as happy and flushed and glowed in the golden lights from the tower.
He reached out with his knuckles and ran them lightly from her temple, down her cheek, across her jaw, and stopping at her chin. He brushed his thumb back and forth on her lips. “I’d say that it takes an incredibly accomplished businesswoman to be able to make an offer this impossible to turn down. Yes, Brooke. From the moment you first walked through that door so long ago, I had hoped we would one day get to ‘yes.’”
She put her hands on his shoulders before she slid them up to his neck and he pulled her in close. After a brief glance at her lips, he closed the gap and pressed his lips to hers.
Their kiss on the bridge had held a sense of urgency, like the chance had been fleeting and would disappear at any moment. As Brooke’s lips moved against his this time, slightly parted, the kiss felt more sure. Confident. Like the beginning of something that wouldn’t ever end.
“Everybody,” Sam said through the microphone, “this is the part where you cheer! If you’re wearing a hat, throw it up into the air! Throw the balloons up into the air!”
