Page 59

MARI

T wo weeks ago, I had the best sex of my life with a man who turned out to be my professional nemesis. The universe didn’t just fuck me. It fucked me, filmed it, and is now selling tickets to the show.

“Call me when you land,” I said, hugging my best friend Anica at the airport security line.

She’d pulled her dark hair into its usual perfect bun, not a strand out of place despite our mad dash through O’Hare.

“And if Callan tries to convince you that letting him fly the plane would be more fun, please remind him that billionaires who die in private aircraft accidents become cautionary TED Talks with titles like ‘How One Man’s Ego Created a New Crater.’”

Anica rolled her eyes. “I’ll keep him in coach class with the rest of the peasants, I promise.”

Callan, her obscenely rich and irritatingly handsome husband of one year, raised an eyebrow. “Ladies, I’m standing right here.”

I squealed, opening my mouth and grinning.

“Oh my god, hi Cal! I didn’t see you there.

” As if I could miss the tall, broad-shouldered Apollo wannabe.

“We were just talking about you,” I said, patting his cheek.

“Now go back to Manhattan and make more money while I expand your wife’s empire.

Try not to buy any small countries while I’m gone unless you’re going to give them to me for Christmas. ”

“If I find any countries looking for psychotic blond dictators, I’ll make sure to put in a bid,” he promised, slipping his arm around Anica’s waist in that casually possessive way that made my ovaries simultaneously sigh and tell my brain to shut the fuck up about my perpetually single status.

“You’re going to do amazing, Mar,” Anica said, squeezing my hands. “You’ve got this. I wouldn’t trust anyone else with our Chicago office.”

My stomach twisted like I’d swallowed a live squid that was now attempting to escape through my bellybutton.

Knot Your Average Wedding had been our baby since college.

Well, Anica’s baby that I’d enthusiastically co-parented by adding equal parts creativity and chaos.

It was weird to think that she trusted me enough to fly solo with the new expansion.

Just me, alone in Chicago, responsible for making or breaking our Midwest presence.

God, she was an idiot.

“Text me about the celebrity meeting tomorrow,” Anica called over her shoulder as they headed toward security. “I want every detail! No improvising without running it by me first!”

“Yeah, yeah, I’ll be a perfect little Anica-clone!” I shouted back, making a face that she couldn’t see but definitely knew I was making.

Aw, shit. I was going to miss her. Damn it.

I watched until they disappeared into the TSA line, Callan’s arm around Anica.

They were disgustingly perfect together, like someone had designed them in a laboratory where they grew ideal couples from celebrity DNA and fairy tales.

I was only slightly jealous. Okay, moderately jealous.

Fine. Watching them made my uterus do the entire floor routine from the national women’s gymnastics team, but I’d rather lick the bottom of a groom’s shoe after an outdoor farm wedding reception in the middle of a shitstorm than admit that out loud.

I tugged my blonde waves into a messy bun.

As I headed to my car, I was already mentally preparing for tomorrow’s meeting with celebrity chef Manny Kussikov and his film director fiancée Lia Martin.

Landing their wedding would be like shooting the Chicago expansion directly into wedding planners’ heaven, complete with gold-plated harps and champagne waterfalls.

Our Chicago office was a converted industrial loft in the West Loop that made me feel like I was starring in my own romcom montage every time I walked in. Exposed brick walls. Massive windows. The kind of hardwood floors that had definitely witnessed at least three murders back in prohibition days.

I spread my materials across the reclaimed wood conference table that Anica had shipped from some sustainable forest collective in Oregon.

Tomorrow’s meeting needed to be perfect.

Not Anica-perfect, which was impossible without surgically removing my personality, but Mari-perfect.

Creative, memorable, and the perfect amount of holy-shit-did-she-really-just-say-that.

My phone rang from an unknown number. I answered with my Professional Voice?, which was just my regular voice minus the swearing and sexual innuendos.

“Mari Landry, Knot Your Average Wedding, how can I help you?”

“Ms. Landry, this is Mr. Radfordt from First Chicago Bank.”

My stomach dropped. Banking calls were never good news. They were the equivalent of your gynecologist calling you personally instead of having a nurse do it.

“I’m calling about your business loan application for the Chicago expansion.”

I perched on the edge of the conference table, needing something solid under me. This loan was everything. The difference between Knot Your Average Wedding: Midwest Empire and Mari Landry: Crawling Back to New York with Her Tail Between Her Legs.

“Yes! I was just reviewing our projections, and?—”

“We have some concerns about the viability of the expansion without more substantial assets or existing Chicago clients.”

Condescension dripped through the phone. Translation: We don’t think you can hack it in the big city, little girl with the funny ideas and ridiculous blonde hair.

“I understand your concerns, Mr. Radfordt, but I actually have a meeting tomorrow with Chef Manny Kussikov and Lia Martin. You know, the Oscar-nominated director? They’re looking for someone to plan their wedding here in Chicago.

” I forced brightness into my voice. “Their wedding would immediately establish our reputation in the Midwest market.”

“Celebrities are notoriously fickle, Ms. Landry,” he replied in a tone that suggested he found my prospects about as promising as a cash bar at a Kardashian wedding.

“Send over the details if you secure the contract, and we can reassess. Until then, I’m afraid we’ll need to put your application on hold. ”

I hung up and resisted the urge to throw my phone into the Chicago River. Instead, I did what any mature professional would do. I grabbed the emergency tequila from my desk drawer and took a swig straight from the bottle. The good tequila, too.

The burn hit my throat, and I coughed. I missed Anica. She’s spent the last four years trying to break me of my emergency alcohol habit. She called it “problematic coping.” I called it “cheaper than therapy and faster than meditation.”

This celebrity wedding wasn’t just important anymore; it was the lifeline our Chicago dream needed. Without it, Anica’s faith in me would crumble, and I’d officially become the family disappointment my parents always predicted I’d be.

As I sorted through my presentation materials, a white napkin fluttered to the floor from between my portfolio pages. I bent to pick it up, and the sight of the scrawled room number, 805, sent a rush of heat straight to places that had no business heating up.

“Fuck,” I whispered, staring at those three digits like they were an incantation that could summon the devil himself. Or in this case, the devil’s hotter, better-in-bed cousin.

Two weeks ago. The hotel bar. The night before the expo disaster.

I’d been doing a final check for the next day, and more importantly, avoiding Anica and Callan after they made their icky bedroom eyes at each other, when I decided one drink wouldn’t hurt. Just something to take the edge off my pre-expo jitters.

One drink turned into three, and three drinks turned into making eye contact with the most fuckable man I’d ever seen, sitting alone at the end of the bar.

Tall, with dark brown hair that looked like he’d been running his hands through it all day. A jawline that could cut glass. Eyes so intensely green they should be illegal. And hands. Jesus Christ, his hands. The kind of hands that made you imagine them gripping your thighs, your hair, your?—

I’d never done the one-night stand thing before. I was more of a three-date-minimum kind of girl, partly because I had trust issues the size of Texas, and partly because my work schedule meant dates usually ended with me taking emergency calls about missing boutonnieres and drunk groomsmen.

But something about this man—the way he looked at me like I was the highlight of his day, the slight curve of his mouth when I made him laugh, the way he listened to me—had me writing my room number on a napkin before my better judgment could tackle my libido to the ground and put it in a chokehold.

What followed was a night that should be classified as a national security risk because I’d probably give up state secrets if someone promised me a repeat performance.

His mouth should have a PhD in Female Anatomy.

His hands knew exactly how much pressure to apply and where.

And the way he’d looked at me while he was inside me had broken something open in me that I hadn’t known was closed.

And then morning came, and with it, the harsh reality that we’d never exchanged names or numbers, just body fluids. He was gone when I woke up, leaving nothing but the lingering scent of his cologne and muscles I’d forgotten I had screaming in delicious protest.

I’d rushed to the expo, running on caffeine, endorphins, and the lingering high of multiple orgasms, ready to conquer the Chicago wedding world. I’d been arranging our display when I heard a familiar voice behind me.

“You must be from Knot Your Average Wedding. I’m Hudson Gable, of Perfect Day Planning.”

I’d turned, coffee in hand, to find myself face-to-face with my anonymous hotel bar sex god. Only now he wasn’t anonymous, and he wasn’t looking at me like I was the answer to every question. He was looking at me with what I assumed was the same look of utter shock.

I blacked out, but I’m pretty sure I swore.

Yeah, I probably swore.