“And he’s respecting them?”
Heather lifted a shoulder. In truth, she hadn’t heard Josh’s music at all in the four days and nights since their near fight on Monday. Either he was playing when she wasn’t around, or he wasn’t playing at all.
She hoped it wasn’t the latter. Any fool could see that he loved music. Needed it. Maybe she’d been imagining things when she’d thought the music wasn’t enough for him, but she didn’t think so. She suspected he was hiding behind his music, using it as an excuse to avoid something.
She just didn’t know what that something was.
Should she have backed off her prying? Maybe. But damn it, she’d spilled her guts to him. She’d never told anyone where she’d gotten her interest in wedding planning, and she’d told him.
Heather had put herself out there in a way she hadn’t in a very, very long time and had gotten nothing back. And she was feeling a little . . . pissed.
“How’s the Robinson wedding going?” Leah asked. “Should I be offended you haven’t asked me to work it?”
Heather sighed. “Trust me, I checked your and Jason’s schedules first. You’re all booked up, seeing as she wants this to go down in a couple months.”
“Is she still clinging to the Plaza dream?” Brooke asked.
“Yup. No luck there, but I did make some headway with getting her to commit to a cake company that has an opening.”
“Let me guess, she wants something huge and gaudy?”
“Pretty much. I asked her about flavors, and she told me it doesn’t matter because nobody in her circle eats cake anyway.”
“Her circle sounds like one of the layers of hell, then,” Brooke replied.
Heather snorted. This was why she loved Brooke. The other woman looked like an adorable beach bunny in her short shimmery black dress and perfect makeup, but she knew how to appreciate a good dessert.
“I can’t believe Josh dated her,” Brooke said, taking another sip of her champagne. “They seem so different.”
“Apparently, he was different back then,” Heather said. “He used to be some big-firm hedge fund manager. I’m not even sure I know what that means.”
“It means money,” Brooke said.
Heather wanted to ask more questions—wanted to understand more about what Josh did and who he was back then, but Brooke wasn’t the person to ask.
Brooke’s ex-fiancé had been an integral part of the Wall Street scene up until he’d moved to Los Angeles and met Brooke.
And then the guy had been accused of just about every single white-collar crime in the book. His arrest had happened just seconds before he and Brooke had exchanged vows.
Heather supposed it was a good thing the cops had come after him before the vows rather than after, but for Brooke’s sake, she couldn’t help but wish they’d gotten their shit together just a little bit earlier.
The scandal had destroyed Brooke’s West Coast wedding-planning career.
But it hadn’t destroyed Brooke. Her friend was too strong for that. And now she’d found a man who treated her like a queen. Heather couldn’t have been happier for her friend, but if she was being honest, a teeny tiny part of her was also green with envy, too. When would Heather find someone to love her so intensely and unconditionally like that? Would she ever?
“What changed?” Brooke asked.
Heather’s attention snapped back to the conversation at hand. “Hmm?”
“You said he was different back then, and I believe it if he was a hedge fund manager who dated a society princess. But that’s not who he is now. Right? He couldn’t have seemed further from that when we all met him at brunch.”
“No, definitely not,” Heather said. The Josh she knew didn’t seem like the type to be caught dead in a suit, and she couldn’t imagine him tolerating a nine-to-five schedule.
“So what caused the change?” Leah asked gently.
“I wish I knew,” Heather said, more to herself than her friends.
“Seems like you care an awful lot about a guy who’s just a neighbor.”
“He’s also a friend,” Heather admitted.
Brooke smirked. “Uh-huh. It’s starting to sound like you’re borrowing Alexis’s script when she’s talking about Logan.”