To Have And To Hold: The Wedding Belles Book 1 (8 page)

“He’s not.”

Seth ignored the interruption. “Look, I’m doing the best I can. You know how Maya is. If I flat out tell her not to, she’ll probably go elope.”

Grant grunted in agreement to this assessment.

“I don’t suppose you know of any private investigators,” Seth asked, deliberately not meeting his friend’s eye.

Grant’s gaze sharpened. “You wouldn’t.”

I would
.

Seth spread his hands to the side and tried to explain. “I’m not getting anywhere on my own. I’m
good enough with Google when it comes to looking up the time of the Giants game, and I know how to update my own LinkedIn profile, but I’m not getting anywhere on finding dirt on this guy.”

“Dude, anything more than looking up the dude on Facebook is a no go. She’s your sister. She’ll kill you.”

“It’s because she’s my sister that I have to,” Seth snapped back. “I can’t let her marry a guy she’s known for all of three months. I hadn’t even met the guy until after he put the ring on her finger.”

Grant sat up straight. “Switch this around. Pretend that you’re the one getting married, and Maya hires a private investigator to research your girl. How do you feel?”

“Wouldn’t happen,” Seth said automatically. “For starters, you of all people know why I’m not getting married anytime soon. Probably not ever. And if I did, it wouldn’t be to a woman I just met. And if it was to a woman I just met—”

“Never mind.” Grant laughed, holding up his hands in a gesture of submission. “You’re impossible to talk to.”

“I can’t let her marry someone I don’t know anything about,” Seth continued quietly, silently begging his friend to understand. “If this guy turns out to be an ass, and I let her walk down the aisle, if he hurts her—”

Grant blew out a breath and rubbed a hand over his face. “I know, man. I get it. I care about Maya, too. But you know—you
know
that there are some things in life you don’t get to control, right?”

Seth
looked away, knowing exactly what his friend was referring to.

When Seth’s father had dropped dead of a heart attack eight months earlier, the shock of it had knocked the wind out of Seth.

Only, Seth had been the only one who was shocked.

Hank’s preexisting heart condition had been common knowledge to everyone except Seth. Because that’s the way his father had wanted it. He’d wanted Seth in the dark. He’d said as much in a brief letter delivered posthumously that had very nearly ripped Seth’s heart out.

You care too much, son. It would have consumed you, trying to fix me, and some things aren’t for you to fix.

His father was wrong.

Seth could have helped. He could have taken over the reins earlier. Could have flown his father to any fancy research facility in the world. He could have saved him, if only he’d known.

But this thing with Maya had been brought to his attention before permanent damage could be done. He could have enough time to stop it, to save her. He just needed the proof.

Grant cracked his knuckles, and Seth raised his eyebrows in surprise. He’d seen his friend crack his knuckles plenty back in high school—anytime Grant was agitated.

“There’s got to be another way,” Grant mused. “A way to talk some sense into Maya without completely invading her privacy.”

“Go
for it,” Seth muttered. “But she never listens to you any more than she does to me. Less, possibly.” Grant and Maya had all of the closeness of blood siblings, but all of the squabbling, too. Hell, half the time Seth felt like the one breaking up their arguments, rather than the other way around.

Crack, crack.
Again with the damn knuckles. “This is the time when we need a woman around.”

“Why, because Maya would listen to someone with ovaries?” Seth asked skeptically.

“More than she’d listen to us. Maybe we go through Tori. If anyone can talk sense into Maya, it’s her best friend.”

“You’ve met Tori, right?” Seth asked dryly. “You really think there’s a chance in hell she’d sabotage her chance of being maid of honor?”

“You’re right.”
Crack. Crack
. “Hell, this was probably her idea,” Grant said darkly.

Seth looked at Grant askance. His friend was getting even more pissed off about this than he’d anticipated. “You okay, dude?”

“Yeah. Just . . . I can’t believe she’s getting married, you know?”

Seth rolled his shoulders in a futile attempt to get rid of the tension that seemed to follow him everywhere these days. “Don’t remind me. I’m trying to get myself in there as much as possible. I’m helping with the fucking wedding planning.”

At that, Grant tilted his head back and let out a loud laugh. “God, I’d kill to see you picking out flowers. Can I tag along?”

“No,” Seth grumbled. “The damned wedding
planner already thinks it’s weird enough that I’m tagging along; it’d only be worse if you were there, too.”

Grant was still smirking. “My assistant got married last summer. She carried around this pink binder thing everywhere. Want me to ask where she got it? See if they have one in blue glitter?”

Seth shot him the finger. “I think that’s what we’re paying the damned wedding planner for. So none of us have to carry the binder.”

Grant’s gaze turned speculative, before his smirk grew even more shit-eating.

“What?” Seth ground out.

“Twice now it’s been the
damned
wedding planner. That’s a lot of heat for someone you’ve only met—once? Twice?”

“Once.”

“And yet she’s the
damned
wedding planner. Either you’re taking out your frustration with Maya’s engagement on this poor woman, or . . .”

Seth held up a hand. “No. No
or
.”

Grant laughed. “There is so an
or
.”

“Shut up, man.”

“Is she hot?”

“Is who hot?”

Grant snickered and stood up, apparently abandoning the bench press. “So let me get this straight. Maya’s marrying a douche bag out for her money, and you’re trying to run interference by getting involved in the wedding planning, except this wedding planner’s got your dick in a tangle.” He flicked his towel at Seth’s head. “I’m hitting the showers, man.” He started to walk away.

Seth
glared at his friend’s back. “You’re such a dick.”

Grant turned back and smirked. “Tell me I’m wrong. About any of it.”

Seth ground his teeth and tried not to think about Brooke Baldwin. About how full her mouth had been or the way he’d longed to wrap her long hair in his fist, to pull her head to him.

Or how her blue eyes held secrets.

His friend shook his head as he turned away. “Good luck with the damned wedding planner, man. From the look on your face right now, you’re gonna need it.”

But Seth wasn’t listening. His friend, without realizing, had put an idea in his head that was rapidly taking shape.

Maybe Brooke Baldwin could be more than a late-night fantasy.

Maybe she was
exactly
what he needed to get the inside track on Neil. And to stop his sister from potentially making the biggest mistake of her life.

I
F THERE WAS ONE
thing a wedding planner learned to master early on in her career, it was the gape-mouthed reaction to a really fabulous venue. Nothing was a larger vote of confidence to the client than a planner who swooned openly with the bride and groom over the lavishness of a beachfront villa, a perfectly manicured garden, or an honest-to-God castle.

But whereas Brooke had become mostly immune to all of the most elite reception sites in the Los Angeles area over the years, and so at least some of her boundless enthusiasm for every site was a bit feigned, New York was still very new to her.

And so it took every bit of self-control she had not to whip out her cell phone and take a picture of the Starlight Observatory that she was currently showing to Maya, because it was exactly the type of view that belonged on Instagram.

“So what do you think?” Brooke said as she forced herself to turn away from the floor-to-ceiling
windows and smile at her bride and groom. “Keep in mind that this is the first one, so there’s no obligation. This will just give us a starting point so you can start to get a sense of what sort of vibe you’re looking for.”

She watched as Maya turned in a slow circle, chewing her bottom lip as she took it all in. Maya was dressed in a pale pink sweaterdress and cream-colored knee-high suede boots that she somehow managed to make look Manhattan-chic instead of go-go-girl revival.

Brooke for her part was also feeling pretty damn fabulous. She’d dragged Heather out shopping the weekend before, demanding to be schooled in the art of looking good
and
staying warm. Turns out that was a bit of a unicorn in New York fashion. You could be warm or cute, not both, not
truly
.

Brooke had opted for cute. Naturally. But with Heather’s help, she’d at least taken a step in the right direction toward surviving the East Coast winters. The socks were key, she’d learned. She’d tripled her boot collection courtesy of Stuart Weitzman, and her socks were now all thick, ugly affairs that nobody would ever see but that did a reasonable job of warding off frostbite.

The most important upgrade was the coat. Turns out puffy down coats could be fashionable, and Brooke had happily given her credit card a workout to splurge on a white puffer coat with a gorgeous fur trim and a leopard-print belt.

Slowly but surely she was starting to feel like a real New Yorker.

“I like it,” Maya said, pursing her lips. “But I’m
worried that it’s not different enough. I’ve already had two friends get married here, and it feels a little done, you know?”

Brooke nodded in understanding, fully prepared for this. She’d discovered that for most brides, there was no worse fate for a wedding than to have been done before. This was especially true the higher you went in the society food chain, and Maya was at the tippy-top.

“Absolutely,” Brooke said, making a note in her planner. “Of course, if that’s your main concern, I’m confident that we can make any site completely your own—with the right theme, the right vibe, we can make people forget that they’ve been here before.”

Maya glanced at her curiously. “What are you thinking?”

Brooke opened her mouth to launch into her pitch when Neil crossed from where he’d been inspecting the far side of the room. “It’s too small.”

Maya wrinkled her nose at him. “What do you mean too small?”

“Well this fits what, two hundred people?” Neil asked, glancing at Brooke.

She nodded in confirmation. “Two hundred for a seated dinner.”

He was already shaking his head as he placed a hand on Maya’s back. “We need something bigger.”

Maya let out a little laugh, but Brooke thought she saw just the slightest strain around the other woman’s smile. “Really? How many people were you thinking?”

He glanced down at her, his handsome face the
picture of confusion. “I was just assuming you’d want a big wedding.”

“Two hundred
is
a big wedding.”

“Sure, it’s good-sized, but you’re a Tyler, sweetling. Half the city is going to want to see you get hitched. Plus, the press, and the—”

“Whoa,” Maya said, holding up a hand. “No press.”

Uh-oh. Brooke smiled politely and took a step back. “I’ll give you two a moment to discuss.”

“No, it’s okay,” Maya said. “I’d actually prefer we wait for Seth anyway. I’m sure he’ll have some thoughts on this.”

Brooke barely bit back a groan, but she kept her voice casual. “Oh, is he planning on joining us today?”

“Yeah, he should be,” Maya said, glancing at her watch. “Said he was running a bit late, but I’m sure he’ll be here any minute.”

Brooke would be hard-pressed to say who was more displeased with this news, her or Neil, who despite being a grown man seemed oddly on the edge of a tantrum.

She knew why
she
didn’t want Seth around, but why didn’t Neil? Although she couldn’t quite blame him, given the awful way Seth had treated him at the Belles headquarters.

Then she watched his handsome features relax, the tension seeming to disappear, and Neil gave Maya a gentle smile before kissing her temple. “Of course, let’s wait for Seth. And if you want a small wedding, then I want a small wedding. You just can’t blame a
guy for wanting the whole world to see his girl in that white dress, you know?”

It was the right thing to say
, Brooke thought admiringly as Maya melted against her fiancé, and then averted her eyes as the two of them locked lips in a dreamy, drawn-out kiss, partly to give them privacy and partly because, frankly, the sight of a couple in love made her stomach turn a little bit these days. Not the best thing for a professional wedding planner, but that’s just the way things were for her right now.

Unfortunately, Brooke averted her eyes in the wrong direction, and her gaze landed in the doorway of the Starlight Observatory, where an angry-looking Seth Tyler stood glowering at the scene before him.

At first Brooke thought he was irritated by his sister’s public display of affection, but the goose bumps along her spine told her that, nope, Seth’s anger seemed focused on
her
.