For Better or Worse (19 page)

Chapter Twenty-Two

S
HIT.
S
HIT.
”
H
EATHER RAPIDLY
pressed the delete button on her laptop, deleting the entire insipid paragraph she'd written on the benefits of serving eggs Benedict at a bridal brunch. She tried for a deep, cleansing breath as she refocused and began pecking at the keys again. A little after nine o'clock on Monday morning, and Heather was a bundle of nerves.

On the one hand, she had finally gotten what she wanted:

Danica Robinson was on her calendar for an in-person meeting.

On the other hand . . .

Danica Robinson was on her calendar for an in-person meeting.

As in, the first one since their initial consultation, because their strange run-in at the bar absolutely didn't count.

Which meant that Heather had exactly thirty minutes—it was all Danica would commit to—to run
through an entire wedding plan, from rehearsal dinner to bridal brunch.

And she still needed to deliver the not-so-minor bomb that the Plaza was still very much
not
on the books. She had several other very viable options cued up to try to defuse this bombshell, but she had a very strong sense that Danica wouldn't give a crap.

Heather had left her office door open, as they were all likely to do except when on the phone, and she was completely unsurprised when her boss appeared in her doorway. She'd certainly been making enough noise.

“You good?” Alexis asked, getting straight to the point.

“Yeah,” Heather said, her eyes remaining fixated on her iPad. “Or no. I don't know. This whole thing is just not what I dreamed of with my first celebrity wedding, you know? I wasn't expecting to be Danica's BFF or anything, but somehow I thought it would be more . . . fun. Hard work, sure. But fun.”

“If it makes you feel any better, you're not overreacting,” Alexis said, coming into Heather's small office and sitting in the small side chair beside Heather's desk. “I've been doing this a lot longer than you, and I've never seen anything quite like it.”

“Well, hopefully my little come-to-Jesus talk won't lose us a client,” Heather said with a sigh.

Alexis shrugged. “Maybe it wouldn't be so bad if it did.”

Heather looked up, her mouth dropping open. “I'm sorry. Have you seen Alexis Morgan anywhere?
There seems to be a very chill, whatever type of woman lurking inside Alexis's type A body.”

“Everybody has limits, and Danica is very close to breaching mine,” Alexis said. “I expect my planners to work hard, even put up with some pretty outrageous behavior, but something's not right here. Danica doesn't get to be hands-off
and
demand the Plaza. It's one or the other. Either all in or all out.”

“Great,” Heather said with a toothy smile. “Let me know how it goes when you tell her that in”—she glanced at her watch—“twenty minutes.”

Alexis gave a slight smile. “You've got this. Just keep your voice calm and tell her you want to continue working with her, but you need to better understand what she's looking for if she wants to get her money's worth.”

“She's a gazillionaire,” Heather said. “What if money doesn't work with her?”

“Then appeal to her ego. The whole ‘help me help you look good,' and all that. Maybe imply that the dress you've picked out that she hasn't bothered to see might make her look hippy.”

Heather laughed around a sip of her latte. “Yeah. That should go over great.”

Alexis stood. “You've got this. Let me know how it goes.”

Heather nodded distractedly, turning attention back to her iPad.

Her boss hovered at the doorway. “Heather.”

“Yeah?” She looked up.

“Sex looks good on you.”

Heather's mouth fell open. “Um—”

Alexis held up a hand. “No need to explain. You just look happy. Even with the Danica stress. You'll have to thank Josh for me.”

“Yeah, I'm pretty sure the last thing he needs is me thanking him for sexing me on someone else's behalf. You've met him, right? His ego barely fits into our apartment building as it is.”

“Well, judging from your downright dewy complexion, I'd say maybe that ego is earned?”

You have no idea.

She and Josh had spent most of the past week and a half, well . . .
doing it.
Mostly just the evenings, but the nights had gone on and on and on, and for the first time since she met the guy, she didn't mind quite so much that he was keeping her up at night.

“I thought so,” Alexis said smugly. “Good for you.”

It was on the tip of Heather's tongue to suggest that maybe Alexis find a little sexing for herself. Maybe with a certain sexy British accountant. But Alexis was already gone, leaving Heather to count the minutes until her showdown with Danica.

Heather was fully expecting her client to be late, but to her surprise, Danica showed up five minutes early, and even more pleasantly, without her mother.

“Hi, thanks for coming,” Heather said with a polite smile as she gestured for Danica to enter the consultation room. “Can I get you anything? Coffee? Water?”

Danica smiled. “Last time you offered me champagne.”

“Which you didn't like,” Heather pointed out, before she could think better of it.

The other woman gave a startled laugh.

“But yes, of course, if you'd like some champagne,” Heather quickly added.

“No, I'm fine,” Danica said.

They both sat down, in the same spots they'd sat last time Danica had come. As with before, Heather felt the other woman studying her, but this time, Heather studied Danica right back.

The woman was gorgeous as ever. Her hair was in a long, flowing blowout today, one that Heather bet serious money came from a salon. Her nails were a deep, trendy black without a hint of a chip anywhere. Her outfit, completely on point.

But Heather was feeling pretty darn good about her own appearance today. Her hair was doing the sexy wave thing instead of the frizzy ringlet routine, thanks to a bout of dry, crisp winter weather. She wore a simple white camisole with a black blazer that made her feel sort of badass. She'd even rediscovered a pair of gray slacks in the back of her closet that she was pretty sure made her butt look just a tad perkier than it actually was.

Josh, at least, had been a fan as he'd handed her a to-go mug on her way out the door and swatted her butt with a lingering caress.

And speaking of Josh, it was strange to think of him dating the creature before her. Danica seemed so cold and calculating, and Josh was anything but.

“So. You asked to see me?” Danica said with a passive smile.

“Right. Yes, I've got some things I'd like to run by you,” Heather said, setting her fingers on the iPad. “But first there's something I'd like to discuss.”

Danica's perfect eyebrows lifted. “Yes?”

Here goes nothing.

“I respect your hands-off approach to this wedding, but I'm becoming increasingly concerned that without a bit more guidance from you, this wedding might not be at all what you're expecting.”

Danica blinked, obviously surprised that she was being called out, but she didn't look immediately pissed, so that was something.

“I told you up front that I was giving you free rein. I'd think that would be a wedding planner's dream.”

“Yes,” Heather said slowly. “And no. To be honest, this isn't just any wedding. As I'm sure you can imagine, every wedding magazine on the planet is anxious to feature you. Even non-wedding magazines have been calling, hoping for an exclusive.”

“And that's a bad thing?”

“Honestly? It's my dream,” Heather said, deciding to go for broke. “It probably sounds dorky to you, but I've been dreaming of being a wedding planner for most of my life, and with that dream comes fame. I'm not ashamed of it.”

“Of course not,” Danica murmured.

“But the thing is, I always imagined that when I finally made it . . . when I finally got to plan that big, gorgeous wedding that everyone looked at, that every other bride pointed at and said, ‘That one, I want
that
one' . . . I imagined that my success would
be because I planned the
bride's
dream wedding. Not my own.”

“Based on what I've seen so far, you're representing me just fine,” Danica said with a wave of her hand.

“I want to do better than fine. I'd also like to ask you point-blank if there's something I need to know. A specific reason that you're disinterested in your own wedding.”

“I'm not disinterested.”

Heather merely leveled the other woman with a stare.

To her surprise, Danica's face crumbled for a second before she lifted both hands and plunged her fingers into her perfect hair. “Crap. Okay,
fine
. This has to stay between us.”

“Of course,” Heather said with calm she didn't feel. She was right. There
was
something weird going on here.

Danica looked up, her eyes miserable, and not at all the confident woman who usually stared back at Heather from the glossy magazine pages.

“Of course I have a dream wedding,” Danica said quietly. “Like most little girls, I thought about it constantly. The details would change, of course, considering my favorite color changed about every other week. But I thought about it. Every time I've gone to a friend's wedding, I've made mental notes. I want this, but not that. Oh, I love the cake, but not the flowers . . .”

She broke off and Heather stayed silent. Waiting.

“Once Troy proposed, I went a little . . . crazy. In
fact, I found the ring before he proposed and put the announcement in the paper before he'd popped the question.”

Heather's eyes widened slightly, and Danica gave a grim smile. “I know. Trust me, I know. I was just so excited, you know? And I apologized, and it was fine, and he proposed the way he wanted to with the champagne and all that. But I got a little . . . crazy. Totally crazy. It was all I could talk about, and I started bringing wedding magazines to the dinner table and demanding he pick his wedding party.”

Danica sighed and dropped her hands to the table, staring blindly at her manicure.

“The truth was, I went full-on bridezilla before I even came to you guys. I wasn't even sure I wanted a wedding planner, because I wanted to do it all myself.
My
way. And it drove a rift between me and Troy. He's older. All he's wanted is a quiet wedding, and fast, hence the January date. But
I
wanted . . .”

“The big white wedding,” Heather supplied.

“Yes. That. So . . . I quit cold turkey. Almost. I found you guys, and promised Troy that I wouldn't so much as talk about the wedding except for what was needed logistically. He's happy. I'm happy—”

“Are you?” Heather asked quietly.

Danica bit her lip. “I'm trying really hard not to care about the details, and for the most part I'm succeeding. There's just one part of the dream that I can't quite let go of. The one part of my wedding fantasy that's never faded.”

“The Plaza,” Heather said slowly.

Danica nodded.

Well . . . crap.

“It was our compromise,” Danica said with a sad little smile. “He got to have the wedding in three months if I got to have it at the Plaza.”

Heather sat back, overwhelmed at the unexpected information dump. Truth be told, she was feeling a little guilty about assuming the worst about Danica. Yes, the woman was a bit self-absorbed and oblivious, but Heather had been assuming the Plaza obsession was about competing for Page Six dominance.

Apparently, it was more than that, and Heather could understand. Every bride she'd ever talked to had that one thing. The piece of jewelry, the type of flowers, the cake flavor, the favorite song that was nonnegotiable.

Heather had even managed to coordinate a mid­night delivery of actual Philly cheesesteak sandwiches for a bride and groom who'd met at Geno's in Philadelphia.

But there were some things that money couldn't buy.

A free Saturday at the Plaza was one of them.

“It's all right,” Danica said glumly. “You can tell me. It's not going to happen, is it?”

Heather felt another flutter of surprise at Danica's perceptiveness. “I'm not going to lie to you; it's very, very unlikely,” she said quietly. “I've been calling a couple times a week. They're sick of me over there. But the best I've been able to get is that we're first on the waiting list. And if something does open up, you have to understand that we're not likely to have much notice, and we definitely won't have control over the date.”

Danica glanced again at her nails. “And you said that we need to send out the save-the-date cards soon.”