Bargaining with the Bride(40)

"Noted. Though, I should point out that was your part of the deal. If you didn't want to follow through, I could always—"

She threw a pillow at his head and he ducked. "Okay, okay. No more surveys."





12





Rachael's phone clanged beside her head, muffled by her pillow.

She must have fallen asleep with the damn thing in her hand again, texting frantic instructions of Natalie to make sure everything was still in order by the time she returned from her vacation.

Normally, it wouldn't have bothered her, the constant attention to the company. But now, with Garret lying beside her every night for the past two weeks, every time it rang she had the distinct urge to chuck the thing at the wall and watch it splinter into a million pieces.

Not because she was drawn to it. That was a problem, sure. But it was more the way Garret looked at it when she got a new message from the office. In an instant, he would shift—go from playing with Tesla to sitting bolt upright, his brow furrowed like they were already mid-business meeting.

She pushed the thought aside and shifted beneath the sheets just as the last strains of her ringer sounded.

Tonight was the rehearsal dinner, and if she was going to face her mother for a full hour, she was going to need all the rest she could possibly get.

She closed her eyes and shoved the pillow over her face, blocking out the rays from the early morning sun, but then the ringer sounded again, so loud this time that she shot upright and sent the pillow flying across the room.

She reached for the damn thing and clicked the “answer” button before checking the caller ID.

Big mistake.

"Hello?" She said on a yawn.

"Rachael? Do you mean to tell me you're still in bed at this hour?" Her mother sounded like someone had just insinuated cream and eggshell were the same color. Positively scandalized.

"No," she bit back a second yawn and said, "but...I'm not near a clock. What time is it?"

"Eight thirty in the morning."

She rolled her eyes, "Right."

"That aside, we have a problem."

"We do?" She stepped from the bed, only half listening. But when she turned, her heart dropped into her stomach.

Garret was gone.

He was supposed to be here. Had agreed to take the day before the wedding off in order to help her with the rest of the plans.

All week, she'd been looking forward to today. Had hoped that they could spend all morning wrapped up in the blankets, not thinking about work or her family or anything. Just each other...

But she was getting ahead of herself. Maybe he was downstairs. Maybe—

"Rachael," Her mother's sharp tone cut into her thoughts.

"Huh?"

"What are we going to do about this?"

She searched for a way to pretend she'd been listening, but came up empty. "About what?" Even as she asked the question, she winced.

"Honestly, sometimes I don't know where you girls came from. About your dress. It's...a disaster. To put it lightly." She sniffed.

"Did something happen to it?" She gripped the phone a little harder. Partially from concern, and partially because she really should have known better than to think her mother would be harmless in her involvement with the dress.

"The lace—did you want it with so much lace? Is this how my money was spent?" She asked.

"What do you mean?"

"It looks like an enormous doily. Honestly, wouldn't a nice satin be more flattering? I think you ought to come down here and straighten them out."

She held her hand over the receiver, and then let out a long sigh. "It's supposed to look that way, mother. Thank you for your help, but I have to go."

She could sense her mother rearing up to argue, so she rushed to end the call.

After tossing her cell onto the bed behind her, she scurried downstairs, only to find Tesla napping lazily on the windowsill.

"Where's Garret?" she asked the dog, but he only looked at her with lazy eyes then turned his attention back to the front yard.

"Great,” she murmured, and then moved onto the front steps.

His car was gone.

Which, of course, meant he could only be in one place.



Even as she pulled into her normal parking space, she knew she had no reason to be at the office. Nobody was expecting her. Natalie had been handling everything as smoothly as ever. Hell, she couldn't even claim she'd forgotten something in her desk.

As far as the wedding details...she could make something up. A question about the cake or the flower arrangements or something. But what sort of fake bride consulted her fake groom about their fake wedding the day of the rehearsal dinner?

Still, that didn't stop her from wanting to see him and find out what he was up to. She could come up with something stupid along the way, surely. All that mattered was that she could see him. After she'd made her way up the elevator and through the lobby, she headed toward her office, partially from force of habit and partly because the place soothed her.