To Have And To Hold: The Wedding Belles Book 1 (9 page)

Maya and Neil were still wrapped up in their kiss and hadn’t yet noticed Seth, but Brooke was noticing him.

All week she’d been clinging to the fantasy that the strange and instant awareness between them had been a fluke—that the next time they saw each other, they’d respond to the other like normal human beings.

But from the way her stomach flipped when their eyes met, she knew the hope was a futile one. Whatever this thing was—insta-lust, insta-hate, whatever—it was very much present.

Still, just because it was there didn’t mean she had to acknowledge it.

Brooke
tucked her planner under her arm and walked toward him, a polite smile firmly in place. “Mr. Tyler. Glad you could join us.”

“Ms. Baldwin. Nice to see you again.” He said this without a smile, his eyes raking over her. Somehow he managed to look both annoyed and aroused. Which was perfect, since that’s very much how she was feeling at the moment. Maybe they would cancel each other out.

Their forced pleasantries caught the attention of Maya and Neil, and Maya skipped over to give her brother a warm hug. Brooke noticed the way his harsh features softened when he hugged his sister, only to re-harden into their usual scowl when Neil extended a hand.

Seth didn’t snub the other man, but from the slight hesitation before he took his future brother-in-law’s hand, Brooke got the sense that he wanted to.

“Seth, what do you think?” Maya asked, tugging him further into the bright open space.

“About?”

“About this.” Maya spread her arms to the side and spun. “For the wedding.”

Seth’s cool blue eyes flicked over the room, taking only about five seconds to assess before turning his attention back to his sister. “If you want to get married at the top of a skyscraper, we can do it on top of one of the Tyler Hotels for free.”

Maya’s smile vanished completely, and Brooke’s palm itched with the urge to slap him upside the head. Neil didn’t respond at all other than to move closer to Maya and rub a hand soothingly over her back.

Seth
seemed to realize his mistake. “It’s not that I don’t want to spend money on your wedding; I just think—”

Maya glanced away, and Seth’s shoulders slumped slightly, clearly at a loss for how to get himself out of the mini-hole he’d dug.

Brooke stepped forward, a soothing smile in place. “Well, I for one think we can do better. This place is fine, it’s lovely, but none of you are over the moon about it, which tells me it’s not exactly right.”

She looked at Maya for confirmation as she said this, knowing that if Maya were to put her foot down and say the venue had to be this one, both men would concede.

But as Brooke expected, Maya’s delicate features flashed in relief at having someone else make the decision for her.

“Agreed.” She nodded her head enthusiastically. “I want some place that I fall in love with the first minute. Not one where I have to squint my eyes and tilt my head to the side in order to see the magic, you know what I mean?”

“Not really,” Seth muttered under his breath.

Maya and Neil clearly missed his sarcasm as they pulled in for another of those dreamy, mildly nauseating kisses, but Brooke leveled Seth with a gaze that, she hoped, could not be clearer:
Knock it off. Be nice
. Seth quirked an eyebrow and offered up an innocent smile, which made her all the more infuriated. God, this guy was a pain.

“So what’s next?” Maya asked, pulling herself away from Neil.

Brooke
opened her notebook. “I’ve got four more options today. If you didn’t love this one, I think I’ll cross one off the list. Another skyscraper on a high floor, but a bit more intimate, and if you thought this one was too small, the next one definitely is not going to work—”

“Who said it was too small?” Seth interrupted.

There was a moment of awkward silence. Maya nervously glanced between her brother and fiancé, and once again, Brooke was the one to speak up. “Neil mentioned that perhaps the guest list might be more than what this venue can handle.”

Brooke was braced for a snide comment, but Seth didn’t say anything at all, and that was somehow much worse. There was no question about it—in order for any of them to enjoy this planning process, she’d have to get rid of the brother. Still, they were stuck with him for today, so maybe if she could just keep Seth and Neil separated as much as possible, nobody would lose an eye or a limb.

“I think we’ll head uptown,” she said. “The Miller Museum can be rented out, and it’s beautiful. It could be just the thing.”

“How do you know? Didn’t you just move here?” Seth asked snidely.

“Seth!” Maya gave her brother an exasperated glance, but Brooke just ignored him altogether and turned to Maya, her wide smile feeling painted on. She would not let this grade-A jerk get to her, no matter what. “What do you think, Maya?” she asked brightly. “Shall we check that one out next?”

“Absolutely,”
Maya said. “I’ve never been, but I’ve heard great things.”

“Fine,” Seth said, already moving toward the door. “Maya, you have your car?”

“Yes, of course. We all—”

“Excellent. You and Neil take that. I’ll take Ms. Baldwin in mine. There are some budget details I’d like to discuss with her.”

Brooke refused to let her footsteps falter as they stepped into the elevator. “You have a car?”

He glanced at her. “Yes. Why?”

Oh, nothing. Just that it’s very Mr. Big and I might swoon.

One of her favorite parts of the
Sex and the City
fantasy was when Carrie’s mysterious Mr. Big would arrive in that sexy town car with his personal driver. One of the ultimate status symbols in New York.

Or any city, for that matter.

Too bad the car’s owner was a super-douche who she had no desire to spend time with.

“I really should ride with Maya and Neil,” she protested as they exited the fancy lobby out into the brisk New York afternoon. “There are a few things to discuss and—”

“There definitely are,” he said smoothly before wrapping strong fingers around her bicep and pulling her gently to him. “And we can all discuss them together, once we get to the museum.”

Brooke shot a desperate look toward Maya, but the younger woman gave her a happy, oblivious wave
as she preceded Neil into her waiting town car. “Text me the address!”

“This way, Ms. Baldwin,” Seth said.

Brooke jerked her arm free and glared, making it clear that she didn’t appreciate being manhandled any more than she liked being manipulated.

He lifted his eyebrows in challenge, and in answer, she lifted her chin and walked toward the sleek black car he indicated, smiling in thanks as the waiting chauffeur opened the door for them.

Then Seth slid in, his warm hip subtly brushing against hers as he got situated beside her.

The door closed.

They were alone.

S
ETH
REALIZED HIS ERROR
in judgment the second his hand had locked around Brooke’s arm to usher her toward his town car. An error that became even more prominent when he’d climbed into the car beside her, and his leg had pressed against hers.

Now his hand and his leg burned just from simple contact with the woman, through their clothes. God knew what would happen if he ever got his hands on her for real.

He’d probably combust.

As for the effect those grazing touches had had on her . . .

Seth glanced out of the corner of his eye at Brooke’s profile. Noted the way her cheeks were a touch pinker than before, her breath a bit shallow.

Brooke cleared her throat and glanced down at the minimal space between them. “You’re on my coat.”

Seth glanced down, and sure enough he was sitting on her coat, which in turn was holding her captive against his side. “Right,” he said gruffly. “Sorry.”

Even
as he said it, they both stayed perfectly still. Seth had to order his body to cooperate, shifting slightly so she could pull away, and the second she did, he felt the urge to yank her back again. To pull her to him, to kiss that full bottom lip, maybe pull her up and over him so she was straddling him, and just—

The privacy screen separating them from Dex, his longtime driver, came down slightly. “Pardon the interruption, Mr. Tyler. I didn’t get the address of where we were heading.”

“Oh!” Brooke said, fumbling with her book. “Let me get that for you.”

“The Miller Museum,” Seth interrupted.

Dex nodded. “Very good, sir. Traffic’s especially bad today. A concert at Times Square, some rally in the park, plus construction on Third. Might take us a while.”

“Wonderful,” Brooke muttered as she typed something on her phone.

Dex slid the privacy screen back into place, and Seth almost wished he’d asked the chauffeur to leave it as is so he wouldn’t be tempted by the blonde beside him.

His grand plan of getting close to her with the hope of talking her into doing some digging on Neil and Maya may not have been one of his best. He could barely think around the woman, much less speak coherently.

Hardly like him.

Seth tapped his fingers slowly on the leather seat beside him, forcing himself to look out the window instead of at her.

Out
of the corner of his eye, he saw her slide her phone into her bag, and was surprised when she shifted her body around to face him. She didn’t even try to hide the fact that she was studying him. He half expected her to start jotting notes about him in her little book.

Uptight
.

Control freak.

Unlikable.

He clenched his jaw, staring out at the slowly passing city before he gave in and looked over at her. “You’re staring.”

She shrugged, unapologetic. “You’ve been to the Miller Museum before?”

He lifted a shoulder. “Once or twice.”

“Your sister said she’d never been.”

He gave her a look. “Do you do everything with your siblings?”

“I don’t have any siblings.”

“Ah.”

She rolled her eyes at that. “Ah, what?”

“Ah, the only-child thing. Explains the pampered-princess bit you have going on.”

“Just like you being a big brother explains the overbearing thing you’ve got going on?”

He shrugged, unperturbed by the accusation. “I’m not going to apologize for wanting what’s best for Maya.”

“Uh-huh. So the only reason you’re tagging along with wedding-planning tasks that you clearly despise is because she asked you to?”

Seth narrowed his eyes at the sweetness in her
tone. “It’s like I told you before: Maya doesn’t have a mom or sister or father to do this with her.”

“But she has Neil.”

Seth couldn’t stop his grimace, and now it was Brooke’s turn to narrow her eyes. “That’s why you’re really getting all up in this business, isn’t it? You don’t trust Neil.”

Seth drummed his fingers more rapidly against the seat in irritation, suddenly far more annoyed with the traffic than he had been a few moments earlier.

This was his chance to convince Brooke to help him, to explain that he just had a feeling Neil was bad news and wanted her help in confirming that before his sister committed herself to a totally untrustworthy jerk—or worse.

He chose his words carefully. “What do you think of him?”

Brooke scrunched her nose. “Of Neil?”

He nodded.

“He seems to make Maya very happy.”

The words rolled right off her tongue, sweet and cheerful, and Seth recognized it immediately for what it was.

A line.

“Tell me something,” he said, turning more fully toward her. “Do you care even a little bit about whether the people you’re marrying off are right for each other? Or is it all about the check at the end of the day?”

It was an insulting question, and as expected, her placid smile disappeared altogether, before reappearing, this time with an edge. “Oh, come now, Mr. Tyler.
It’s never only about the check. It’s also about the write-up in all the biggest bridal magazines.”

She batted her eyelashes as she said it, and though her tone was thick with disdain and sarcasm, Seth couldn’t help but wonder if there wasn’t a bit of truth there. He’d seen the Wedding Belles’ office. Knew enough of their reputation to know that Brooke and the women she worked with weren’t in this as a hobby. It was their career.

They might like what they did, but there was ambition there, too. A pride in what they did, and did well, from the looks of it.

Normally he’d have admired it.

But since Brooke’s ambition would very likely see his sister marrying the wrong man, he wasn’t about to applaud her for having lofty career goals.

“There’s something you should know before we go any further,” he said, his eyes locked on hers.

“I can hardly wait to hear it. You sure you don’t want to wait until we’re out of the car? Maybe you can crowd me against a kitchen counter again and invade my personal space?”

Seth’s fist clenched at the memory her jab evoked—remembered just how good it had felt to lean into her, how satisfying it had been to watch her bright blue eyes go dark and stormy with want. And she did want him. She may be fighting it just as readily as he was, but there was heat between them.