The Wedding Planner's Big Day

“It is a great name for an event planning company.”

“I think I’m getting a headache.”

“But despite my company name, I have long since given up on fairy tales.”

He opened his eyes and looked at her. “Uh-huh,” he said, loading those two syllables with doubt.

“I have!”

“Lady, even before I heard the name of your company, I could tell that you have ‘I’m waiting for my prince to come’ written all over you.”

“I do not.”

“You’ve had a heartbreak.”

“I haven’t,” she said. She was a terrible liar.

“Maybe it wasn’t quite a heartbreak. A romantic disappointment.”

“Now who is playing the mind reader?”

“Aha! I was right, then.”

She glared at him.

“You’ll get over it. And then you’ll be in the prince market all over again.”

“I won’t.”

“I’m not him, by the way.”

“Not who?”

“Your prince.”

“Of all the audacious, egotistical, ridiculous—”

“Just saying. I’m not anybody’s prince.”

“You know what? It is more than evident you could not be mistaken for Prince Charming even if you had a crown on your head and tights and golden slippers!”

Now that he’d established some boundaries, he felt he could tease her just a little. “Please tell me you don’t like men who wear tights.”

“What kind of man I like is none of your business!”

“Correct. It’s just that we will be working in close proximity. My shirt has been known to come off. It has been known to make women swoon.” He smiled.

He was enjoying this way more than he had a right to, but it was having the desired effect, putting up a nice big wall between them, and he hadn’t even had to barge in the construction material to do it.

“I’m not just getting a headache,” she said. “I’ve had one since you marched through my door.”

“Oh, great,” he said. “There’s nothing I like as much as a little competition. Let’s see who can give who a bigger headache.”

“The only way I could give you a bigger headache than the one you are giving me is if I smashed this lamp over your head.”

Her hand actually came to rest on a rather heavy-looking brass lamp on the corner of her desk. It was evident to him that she would have loved to do just that if she wasn’t such a prim-and-proper type.

“I’m bringing out the worst in you,” he said with satisfaction. She looked at her hand, resting on the lamp, and looked so appalled with herself that Drew did the thing he least wanted to do. He laughed.

* * *

Becky snatched her hand back from the brass lamp, annoyed with herself, miffed that she was providing amusement for the very cocky Mr. Drew Jordan. She was not the type who smashed people over the head with lamps. Previously, she had not even been the type who would have ever thought about such a thing. She had dealt with some of the world’s—or at least Michigan’s—worst Bridezillas, and never once had she laid hand to lamp. It was one of the things she prided herself in. She kept her cool.

But Drew Jordan had that look of a man who could turn a girl inside out before she even knew what had hit her. He could make a woman who trusted her cool suddenly aware that fingers of heat were licking away inside her, begging for release. And it was disturbing that he knew it!

He was laughing at her. It was super annoying that instead of being properly indignant, steeling herself against attractions that he was as aware of as she was, she could not help but notice how cute he was when he laughed—that sternness stripped from his face, an almost boyish mischievousness lurking underneath.

She frowned at her computer screen, pretending she was getting down to business and that she had called up the weather to double-check his facts. Instead, she learned her head of construction was also the head of a multimillion-dollar Los Angeles development company.

The bride’s future brother-in-law was not an out-of-work tradesman that Becky could threaten to fire. He ran a huge development company in California. No wonder he seemed to be impatient at being pressed into the service of his very famous soon-to-be sister-in-law.

No wonder he’d been professional enough to Google the weather. Becky wondered why she hadn’t thought of doing that. It was nearly the first thing she did for every event.

It was probably because she was being snowed under by Allie’s never-ending requests. Just now she was trying to find a way to honor Allie’s casually thrown-out email, received that morning, which requested freshly planted lavender tulips—picture attached—to line the outdoor aisle she would walk down toward her husband-to-be.

Google, that knowledge reservoir of all things, told Becky she could not have lavender tulips—or any kind of tulip for that matter—in the tropics in June.

What Google confirmed for her now was not the upcoming weather forecast or the impossibility of lavender tulips, but that Drew Jordan was used to million-dollar budgets.

Becky, on the other hand, had started shaking when she had opened the promised deposit check from Allie. Up until then, it had seemed to her that maybe she was being made the butt of a joke. But that check—made out to Happily-Ever-After—had been for more money than she had ever seen in her life.

With trembling fingers she had dialed the private cell number Allie had provided.

“Is this the budget?”

“No, silly, just the deposit.”

“What exactly is your budget?” Becky had asked. Her voice had been shaking as badly as her fingers.

“Limitless,” Allie had said casually. “And I fully intend to exceed it. You don’t think I’m going to be outdone by Roland Strump’s daughter, do you?”

“Allie, maybe you should hire whoever did the Strump wedding, I—”

“Nonsense. Have fun with it, for Pete’s sake. Haven’t you ever had fun? I hope you and Drew don’t manage to bring down the mood of the whole wedding. Sourpusses.”

Sourpuss? She was studious to be sure, but sour? Becky had put down the phone contemplating that. Had she ever had fun? Even at Happily-Ever-After, planning fun events for other people was very serious business, indeed.

Well, now she knew who Drew was. And Allie had been right when it came to him. He could definitely be a sourpuss! It was more worrying that he planned to take off his shirt. She had to get back to business.