To Have And To Hold: The Wedding Belles Book 1 (7 page)

“Pardon me, I’ll be just a moment,” Brooke murmured before carrying the bottle into the kitchen Jessie had pointed out earlier.

She needn’t have bothered excusing herself. The men were too busy wading through a thick fog of tension and discomfort to notice her departure.

Or so she thought.

Brooke had just wrapped a towel around the cork and started to tug with renewed vigor when the bottle was pulled out of her hands.

She looked up to find herself staring into the unsmiling face of Seth Tyler. Without breaking eye contact, he reached out, tugging the towel out of her hand before tossing it aside.

He stepped even closer, gently pulling the bottle from her grip, and with a quick twist of his large hands, the cork obediently popped off, the sharp sound it made doing nothing to defuse the tension in the room.

He wordlessly held out the bottle, and Brooke took it. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

The words were polite, but the glare was hostile, and Brooke rolled her eyes.

“What are you doing here, Mr. Tyler?”

“I saw you struggling with the cork. Thought I might be of assistance.”

“No,
I don’t mean what are you doing here in this kitchen,” she clarified, lifting her eyes to his. “I mean here, at the Wedding Belles. It’s obvious you and your sister aren’t close.”

His blue eyes flickered, showing vulnerability for the first time since he’d walked in the door. “What makes you say that?”

“Oh, I don’t know, maybe the fact that you haven’t even met her fiancé until now?”

“They’ve been dating for all of three months,” he said quietly. “Maya and I have lunch twice a week, and she never mentioned they were getting serious.”

“Maybe she thought she couldn’t talk to you about it,” Brooke challenged, lifting her chin. “You’re not exactly welcoming the man into the family.”

“Ms. Baldwin. You know nothing about it.”

“And I’m guessing you don’t, either, seeing as you’re doing more glowering than actual listening. So I’ll ask again, what are you doing here, Mr. Tyler?”

He moved a half step closer. “I’ll be the one ensuring that you get paid, Ms. Baldwin. So if you’d like our business, I’m going to suggest you check the attitude.”

“So what’s the plan? You’re going to just shadow my every move?” she snapped.

The question was sarcastic, but to her surprise, his cold expression turned speculative. There were several moments of silence before he responded.

“Let’s just say Maya means everything to me, and I’m the only family she has. I plan on being around for the details,” he said quietly.

“How much of the details?” Brooke asked warily.

“All
of them.”

She swallowed, refusing to let herself get flustered.

“I think you should know how this works, Mr. Tyler. Getting involved with the details—all of them—involves more than you getting to spend time with the bride and groom. It also means you’re going to be spending an awful lot of time with me.”

Seth moved closer, crowding her against the counter in the tiny kitchen until there was nothing but body heat separating them.

Seth lowered his voice to a growl. “How much time with you?”

Brooke licked her lips, hating that it betrayed her nervousness. And her want. “Once a week at least,” she said quietly. “More as the wedding gets closer.”

“Hmm. Once a week,” he repeated. His light blue gaze flicked up to hers. “I think, Ms. Baldwin, that things could get very interesting.”

There was that strange charge in the air between them again. But this time, Brooke wasn’t going to play—she’d seen enough to know this guy had some serious control issues, and was a jerk to boot.

Not to mention her very first client was in the other room, and Seth seemed to be holding the purse strings.

Brooke wasn’t a stickler for rules, but getting involved with a client was a major no-no in every way.
Especially
now, when her reputation was already in tatters. No way was she going to risk her new job with the Belles for some coddled, pretentious asshole—even if he did have killer eyes and the body of a demigod.

Brooke
took a deliberate step to the right and edged out from beneath his laser-sharp gaze, effectively severing the moment. “We’ll see about that, Mr. Tyler,” she said sweetly, then marched out the kitchen door, letting it swing shut behind her.

I
T WASN’T THAT
S
ETH
was a loner.

Sure, he’d been an introverted kid—the type to prefer a handful of close friends to dozens of acquaintances, if given the choice. But he’d also played on enough sports teams, been sent to enough summer camps, and been generally well enough liked through his years at prep school and college that he’d had an active social life.

Or rather, he used to.

These days he could barely find the time to go to the gym, much less accept one of the dinner party invitations that trickled in—which was why he had had the company gym fully updated and outfitted with the best equipment. He never had to leave the confines of the building to get in his fitness fix.

But there was one person that Seth could always count on to be around—even when Seth didn’t necessarily want him to be.

“Dude.
Your
turn to spot.”

Seth
didn’t even pause as he added more weight to the bar. “I have some energy I need to work out.”

“Right, because I’m just a delicate canary with no life stress whatsoever,” Grant muttered. Still, he didn’t protest when Seth lowered himself to the bench and rested his hands on the familiar silver bar, taking a deep breath before Grant helped him lever the weight over his chest.

Seth wouldn’t go so far as to say he liked working out. It was a sweaty, time-intensive affair. But somewhere along the line he’d gotten hooked on the habit. Five days a week, at least, and twice a week he and Grant went together.

His friend always joked it was the manliest possible way for two adult men to maintain a friendship.

“You’re doing more than last week,” Grant observed as Seth moved through his reps. “You want to talk about it?”

Seth didn’t reply. This sort of interaction was pretty typical: Grant talking at him. Seth ignoring, Grant pestering anyway.

From anyone else, it would have driven Seth up the wall, but since friendships didn’t come more loyal than Grant Miller, the least Seth could do was let the guy talk at him.

Still, more than two decades’ worth of unshakable friendship didn’t stop Seth from rolling his eyes as his friend started humming what seemed to be an awkward attempt to rap to some Top 40 nonsense in which every other word seemed to be
ass
.

And Grant was right about the weight. He had
added extra, and it
was
because he had something to work through.

Namely a certain blond wedding planner who seemed determined to haunt his every waking thought despite the fact that he didn’t even know the woman.

He finished his reps, panting as he sat up and holding out his hand for a towel. Grant was now adding dance moves to his song, so Seth leaned down and fetched his own towel.

“Hey, did you see that email from the Sydney branch?” Seth asked. “About the check-in touch screens being shit.”

Grant stopped “dancing” and motioned to Seth to move before he folded his lean, six five frame onto the bench, making it look uncomfortably small.

“The screens aren’t shit. The people are.”

Seth stared down at him. “That’s what I get? This is what I pay you for?”

Grant wiped down the bar before tapping his temple. “This. You pay me for my big-ass brain.”

Seth rolled his eyes. But Grant’s claims about his big brain were, in fact, annoyingly true—Grant had started at the company as a college intern, just like Seth, and had been promoted to CIO a couple of years earlier by Hank, who in a very controversial and widely criticized decision had passed over older and more-seasoned candidates to give Grant the position. Lucky for Grant, Hank had never given a damn what people thought or said about him. “You sound like a douche.”

“Impossible,” Grant said solemnly. “You’ve always
cornered the market on douche bag. I can’t bear to take it away from you.”

“Such loyalty,” Seth said.

“Right? Okay, but seriously, dude, you are extra pissy lately. All your bad vibes are harshing my mellow. What’s up?”

“Harshing your mellow? Really?”

His best friend pointed a long finger at him. “Don’t change the subject. Speak.”

Seth crossed his arms, half wanting to tell his friend to shut the hell up, half wanting to unload some of the tension that had been hovering around him ever since Maya had dropped her getting-married bomb.

A tension that had only increased once Seth had realized that he had a serious boner for the Barbie-esque wedding planner who was not at all his type, and yet who he hadn’t been able to stop fantasizing about in the week since he’d seen her.

Brooke Baldwin.

Even the name was bubbly.

Grant gave a knowing laugh. “Oh damn. I should have figured it was a woman that’s got you tied up in knots.”

For once, Seth wished his best friend didn’t know him quite so well. It was bad enough that he and Grant had been able to read each other from the moment they’d been assigned as science partners back in the fifth grade.

Most of the time he was grateful for having his best friend working just a couple of floors below him in a corner office nearly as impressive as Seth’s. But
right now, when Seth wanted nothing more than to brood in silence over his sister’s marriage to a gold-digging playboy, and maybe, just maybe, fantasize about a hot blonde with a fantastic rack . . .

“Oh, come on,” Grant persisted as he took a slug from his water bottle. “You can’t get that look on your face and then not spill.”

“I can,” Seth replied mildly. “Seeing as we’re no longer thirteen, eagerly counting the days until we get to touch an actual breast.”

“Speak for yourself. I touched my first tit at twelve.”

“You did not.”

“I did. Crystal Perkins, remember?”

Seth snorted. “You keep trying to sell that one, but I refuse to believe it. She was a year older and hot.”

Grant lifted a finger to gesture over his tall, fit physique. “Chicks dig this.”

“Yeah,
now
. But back then you had braces, acne, and walked like a newborn foal.”

Still, Grant had a point. Women did seem to go crazy for him. Somewhere around twenty he’d grown into his tall frame, going from awkwardly lanky to athletic and ripped thanks to a rigid workout schedule. Add in a crooked smile, messy reddish-brown hair, and light brown eyes that his more besotted female fans deemed gold, and Seth’s best friend was pretty much a bona fide ladies’ man.

It was annoying as hell.

“Whatever, man,” Grant said good-naturedly. “You going to tell me what your deal is, or what?”

Seth rubbed the towel over his face and relented. “Maya’s getting married.”

Out
of the corner of his eye, he watched as Grant’s mouth dropped open. “You’re shitting me.”

“I wish,” Seth muttered.

Grant leaned forward slightly, arms resting on his knees as he stared at the floor, looking shocked.

You and me both, bro.

Seth understood Grant’s reaction. Maya was almost as much of a sister to Grant as she was to Seth. Grant had more or less grown up at the Tyler residence. His own parents had lived in a lavish penthouse in Midtown, but it was a lonely, miserable existence. Grant’s mom had been a semi-successful fashion model who’d traveled more often than not, his dad an equally self-involved Wall Street magnate who hadn’t wanted kids in the first place.

And while the Tyler house had hardly been all bear hugs and homemade cookies, Hank Tyler had at least paid attention to Grant. Whenever Grant had stayed for dinner, which was often, he’d been included in the dinner table inquisition of “How was your day?” and “Did you get your test results?” and “Is your homework done?”

For a kid that would have been otherwise raised by a string of indifferent nannies, it had made a big impact on Grant. Which is why it made so much sense that Grant’s career had taken off under Hank’s protective wing—the Tyler Hotel Group was widely known as being a family-run business, and Grant Miller was, in fact, family.

Seth had never been more aware of that fact than right now, staring at his friend’s horrified face.

“Who
the hell is she marrying?” Grant asked.

“His name’s Neil Garrett. They’ve been dating for three months.”

“Three months? And you’re letting her fucking marry this guy?”

“Hold on, champ,” Seth said, holding up a hand irritably. “First of all, seeing as this isn’t the eighteenth century, I don’t ‘let’ Maya do anything. I’m every bit as pissed off about all of this as you are, if not more so, so quit trying to convince me to hate it. Right there with you.”

Grant dragged his hands over his face, and then sat up straight. “Okay, so what’s our plan? How we going to get rid of the guy?”

“Easy, Capone.”

“Come on. I know you’ve thought about it.”

Seth lifted a shoulder. “I may have entertained some ideas. But since getting arrested for murder’s not really on my bucket list, I’m starting simpler. Figure out who the hell the guy is, if he’s good enough—”