What. In the fresh hell. Was that?
Chapter Two
HONEY, IS THAT YOUR third cup of coffee?” Brooke Baldwin asked. Heather’s friend and colleague gave her a curious look.
Heather let out a snort. “Try fifth,” she said sourly, topping off her cup from the elegant silver carafe the Wedding Belles always put out for the various vendors on wedding days. Caffeine didn’t necessarily make the never-ending chaos of a Saturday wedding easy, but it certainly helped.
“Okay, well at least eat something to soak up all the caffeine,” her friend said, plucking a muffin out of the pastry basket and handing it and a napkin to Heather.
“I’m not hungry,” Heather said, lifting her coffee cup to her lips and turning to watch with a critical eye as some of the florist’s assistants scattered the gold glittery fall leaves on the table with less care than Heather would have liked.
The muffin reappeared in front of Heather’s face. “Come on. It’s delicious. Banana walnut.”
“Ugh, then I definitely don’t want it,” Heather said, the mention of banana reminding her of the reason she was on her fifth cup of coffee. The adolescent-brained nutcase in 4A.
“What do you have against bananas?” Brooke asked, taking a huge bite of the rejected muffin.
Heather liked that about Brooke—the way she ate whatever she wanted to eat, no apologies. Chocolate, cupcakes, banana muffins . . . all fair game. Sometimes Heather wondered if it was all the sweetness going into Brooke’s body that resulted in the constant output of sweetness. She doubted it though. Heather was no stranger to chocolate herself, and she had a serious weakness for ice cream, but there was no sweet goodness flowing through her veins.
Brooke Baldwin though—she was good people. Brooke was the newest member of the Belles. She’d moved from California to New York this past January to escape a doozy of an ex-fiancé, and Alexis, the owner of the Belles, had snapped her up to join the team.
If Heather was all-the-way honest with herself, and she usually was, she’d been a tiny bit resentful when her boss told her that they were hiring a new wedding planner rather than promoting one they already had. *cough, Heather, cough.*
Brooke had come on board simply as wedding planner. Not assistant wedding planner, as Heather had. It had stung, a tad, knowing that Heather had put in two years of her life with the Belles and had been outranked by a newcomer.
But after about five seconds of looking at Brooke’s portfolio, she knew that the woman had deserved absolutely every bit of the full title. Not only had she started her own company in Los Angeles, but Brooke was good. Really good.
It helped that Heather and Brooke had hit it off almost immediately, and it was hard to hate someone as nice and decent as Brooke. Case in point, Brooke had managed to land the hottest, richest bachelor in the city within just a few months of arriving. Seth Tyler had hired the Belles to plan his sister’s wedding, and Brooke had been given the plum job as her first assignment. Only, that wedding didn’t happen once it turned out the sister’s fiancé wasn’t quite who she thought he was. It hadn’t mattered. By then, the billionaire hotel god had fallen hard and fast for Brooke’s sunny California girl charm.
They now lived downtown in a gorgeously renovated old building, complete with a built-in bar, a hot tub big enough to fit a family of four, and no wannabe musician neighbor.
Heather would be seriously hating Brooke right about now if the gorgeous blonde wasn’t such a good friend.
“How about I go buy you a breakfast sandwich with some protein?” Brooke said around another bite of muffin. “You’re looking hangry.”
Damn. She was kind of hangry.
“Nah, I’ll go get it,” Heather said distractedly as she noted that some of the gold chair bows looked a little crooked and reached out to fix one.
“No way,” Brooke said, washing down her muffin with a sip from her bottle of water. “This is your gig. I’ll get the dang sandwich.”
Heather glanced at her in surprise. “This is your and Alexis’s gig, too. We agreed all three of us would tag team this one, since it was last-minute and you were overbooked.”