To Have And To Hold: The Wedding Belles Book 1 (17 page)

He nodded before pulling his phone out of his pocket and dialing a number as he picked up his glass and returned to the bar to fix himself another drink.

Brooke sipped the remainder of her own drink as she studied him from the back. He was broader than she’d realized. His facial features were narrow to the point of being sharp, so she’d always sort of assumed that the rest of him was, too, but seeing him now from this angle, she saw that he had the broad shoulders of someone who knew the inside of the gym, tapering down to a narrow waist and long legs.

His brown hair curled down over the edge of his shirt collar, and she smiled as she realized that Seth Tyler needed a haircut. A strange little quirk for a man who was so exacting in every other way. Brooke somehow found it endearing that he hadn’t made time for it.

It made him more . . . human, somehow.

Oh,
honey,
she chided herself.
You have it bad if you’re getting all panty-dropping hot about his overlong hair.

She checked her email as she half listened to him order a bunch of things she didn’t recognize. His Italian accent seemed on point, at least to her untrained ear, and she wondered how many languages he spoke. For some reason she was guessing it was at least three. If the man was this controlling over his sister’s wedding, there was no way he wouldn’t want to know what was going on with his international team.

Her phone buzzed with a text from Heather. How’d the dress shopping go?

Brooke responded, As you warned me. Completely scary.

Love it, Heather responded. So you get a free pass on dinner with Big Brother then since Maya didn’t commit?

Brooke bit her lip, wondering how to respond. She’d told Heather about her unusual arrangement with the Tyler wedding, and her friend had seemed unfazed. And it wasn’t all that uncommon in wedding planning for the planner to run interference with meddling family members in order to keep the bride and groom happy.

And yet, somehow what she was doing with Seth felt completely different from the times she’d soothed a high-maintenance mother of the groom or sweet-talked a penny-pinching father of the bride into The Dress for his little angel.

Your silence has spoken, Heather texted before Brooke could come up with a response. And I approve. Looked him up. He’s HOT.

Brooke rolled her eyes and put her phone aside as Seth hung up his call and walked back toward her.

“All right, I lied. They said forty-five minutes,” he said.

“No problem.” She patted her planner. “I really do need to get an actual budget from you. It’s all very hypothetical at this stage, but this stuff tends to happen fast.”

“Don’t remind me,” he grumbled, setting his glass on the table and shrugging out of his suit jacket and loosening his tie.

Brooke
tried to keep her eyes trained on his face and failed. His upper body, nicely accentuated by his crisp dress shirt, was, well, spectacular. “We don’t have to do this tonight. Talk about the wedding, I mean. We can reschedule for next week.”

His eyes met hers. “I’ll get there. Give me a minute.”

“Sure,” she said warily. “What do you want to talk about in the meantime?”

Seth’s gaze drifted hotly over her at the word
talk
, and she felt an answering surge of lust at the things they could do
other
than talk.

Brooke hadn’t had a casual hookup since college. She was more of a third-date kind of girl, preferring to make sure she actually liked a man before getting naked with him.

She wasn’t at all sure she liked Seth Tyler.

She also wasn’t at all sure she wanted to get naked with him.

Liar
.

Okay, so she definitely wanted to get naked with him. But there were some people you just didn’t sleep with, and a client was absolutely on the list.

Seth seemed to read her mind, and the heat dimmed from his gaze as he lowered to the chair beside her. “You asked what I wanted to talk about.”

She nodded, grateful to be back on conversational rather than horizontal terms with the man.

He was studying her gaze. “What I’m about to ask might be construed as prying, so you can absolutely tell me to go to the devil.”

“Who
I’m pretty sure is a friend of yours,” she joked gently.

Seth didn’t rise to the taunt.

“I’d like to talk about you,” he said quietly. “I’d like you to tell me about Clay.”

B
ROOKE
STARED AT HIM
for several seconds. She was surprised, although she didn’t know why. A two-second Google search of her name brought up no fewer than a dozen articles about Clay’s spectacular arrest.

For a brief moment, Brooke gave into the surge of resentment. She let herself acknowledge that it was unfair that she’d worked damn hard to build her wedding-planning career only to have it all erased by one man’s misdeeds.

As far as the general public was concerned, she was no longer Brooke Baldwin, Wedding Planner Extraordinaire. She was that poor clueless girl whose criminal mastermind fiancé got arrested at the altar.

Most of the time, Brooke accepted this. What was the point in dwelling, after all?

But sometimes . . . sometimes the unfairness of it all clawed at her throat.

Right now was one of those moments. She didn’t want Seth Tyler to look at her as Clay’s ex. She wanted to be . . .

What
did she want to be in the eyes of Seth?

A competent wedding planner, certainly. The man was gearing up to fork over no small amount of money for his sister’s wedding. But she wanted to be seen as a woman, too. And not the kind that had dated a man for two years without knowing who he really was.

But . . .

She
was
that woman. Much as she’d like to rewrite history, she couldn’t. She couldn’t change what happened any easier than she could change the fact that the news was out there. Hell, she even had her own meme, for God’s sake.

The best she could do was convince the world that she was over it. That Clay might have surprised her, but he hadn’t hurt her.

Brooke met his eyes and smiled slightly. “You looked me up.”

“I didn’t, actually. I’ll admit I sensed there was something amiss. But it didn’t seem my place to snoop.”

“Interesting. I had you pegged for a control freak who hated surprises.”

He gave a short laugh. “Spot-on. And true. But it was different with you.”

She blinked. “Why?”

“Hell if I know,” he said, holding her gaze.

Except he
did
know. They both did.

“So if you didn’t go snooping, how’d you know about Clay?”

“Grant. He thought I should know before I said something idiotic.”

She snorted. “Is that even possible?”

“Play nice, Ms. Baldwin. I’m feeding you.”

“And
playing nice means spilling my guts?”

“Only if you want to.”

Brooke studied him, realizing that he meant it. He wasn’t going to badger her, wasn’t going to pry. There was simply an invitation to talk. To share.

“How much do you know?” she asked, taking a sip of her drink.

“The CNN version, I guess. I’ve never met the guy, but we moved in some of the same circles back when he was in New York. His name is familiar enough that I recognized it when I read the story.”

“You and everyone else,” Brooke muttered.

He sighed and rubbed a hand over the back of his neck. “I hated him before, but knowing now that it was you he screwed over royally . . . let’s just say that I wish we still lived in a time where it was acceptable to take a man like that out back and put him and the people around him out of their misery.”

Brooke’s lips parted in surprise. “That’s very . . .”

“Uncivilized.”

“I was going to say sort of
gratifying
,” she admitted. “I mean I don’t
actually
want Clay dead, obviously, but I’ll confess that the fact that he’s been turned into some sort of celebrity can be a bit grating.”

“Because he hurt you.”

“No,” she said quickly. “He didn’t, really. I mean I suppose he did, but I’m over it. No use dwelling on what can’t be changed, right?”

His eyes narrowed slightly as though he didn’t believe her, but she stared back at him, silently daring him to challenge her so that she could flip it around and ask him if
he
was still dwelling on the
woman, Nadia, who had turned down his marriage proposal.

She was willing to bet money that they were the same in their determination to move forward.

“I don’t know that there’s much to say other than what you already know.” She twisted her glass slowly as she stared at the melting ice. “I thought I was marrying the love of my life, obviously. And he . . . well, he wasn’t the man I thought he was. Literally and figuratively.”

“Have you spoken with him since his arrest?”

“No.”

“Perhaps you should.”

“He’s in
prison
,” she snapped. “His first phone call was to his lawyer, and I’m sure you can understand why I wasn’t falling all over myself to visit him.”

Seth held up his hands in surrender. “I struck a nerve. Apologies. I just think it could be healthy to get some closure.”

Brooke rolled her eyes. “Gosh, thanks, I haven’t heard that one before from people who actually know me. And on that note, are you all chatty with your ex? On good terms? Got closure, have you?”

His eyes narrowed as he studied her. “You’re not at all as sweet as you look, are you?”

“Usually I am. You bring out the worst in me.”

He smiled at that. “Perhaps we should steer clear of personal topics, then. It makes you surly.”

“I’m not surly,” she ground out. “I’ll talk about the Clay thing. What do you want to know?”

“Promise not to lose your shit?”

“Nope, I do
not
promise that,” she said sweetly. “So tread carefully.”

Seth
leaned forward and held her gaze. “A man you were in love with—a man you were planning to marry—was lying to you. For years. Using you in the worst possible way, pretending to be something he wasn’t. And deny it all you want, but he hurt you.”

Brooke swallowed and said nothing.

“That’s your business, and I won’t pry,” he said quietly. “As you pointed out, we’re practically strangers. But what I want to know is why you refuse to consider the possibility that Neil Garrett might be just like Clay. Not a con man, per se, but if Clay wasn’t exactly everything that he said he was, what makes you think Garrett is? What makes you believe that Clay’s the only shithead out there and that you’re the only woman who’s been betrayed in the worst kind of way by a man?”

To her utter horror, Brooke felt tears pricking at the back of her eyelids, and she blinked quickly to force them back before lifting her chin and looking at him defiantly.

“Because I want to believe it. My job is putting people on the path toward happily ever after, Mr. Tyler. In order to do my job well, I have to believe it. I
have
to.”

He stared at her a moment longer before giving a short shake of his head.

“Come on,” she cajoled lightly. “Surely you don’t think that, just because your ex wasn’t the one, happy endings don’t exist.”

Seth tossed back the rest of his drink and stood. “Actually . . . that’s exactly what I think. I also think I’m the only one in this room that has my head on straight.”

S
ETH’S
HARSH DECLARATION HUNG
between them for several seconds.

Brooke itched to argue—to tell him that he was wrong. That happy endings do exist. That just because they hadn’t happened for them yet didn’t mean that they wouldn’t someday.