“I’m sure you’re having a lot of fun catching up on the latest news in your little circle, but I’ve spent the entire day taking care of the company trademarks while you two lounged around giggling together. Or should I assume you don’t mind a hundred Indonesian knockoffs hitting the shelves and gouging your profits?”
It was a good thing he was pretty.
I could hear Lacey’s sharp intake of breath as she drew herself up to defend us, but I beat her to the punch:
“Oh, I’m sorry I spent a ‘gossip session’ securing an appearance of my line for the social event of the year, where everybody who is anybody will want to know what the bride is wearing. Thanks for doing that trademark favor for me like you insisted on doing, and not being super passive-aggressive about it—oh, wait, remind me of what passive-aggression is again? Is it the exact thing you were just doing? Oh it was, wasn’t it? Oops, I’m so sorry.”
Asher gritted his teeth. “Fine. Maybe I was a little harsh. But there’s a lot to do, and not much time left to do it in.”
“There’s plenty of time—”
“We’re opening in three weeks.”
I think my heart actually stopped. I stared at him with my mouth wide open enough to catch every single insect in the Bay area. “What?”
“That’s right.”
My heart sped up then, double time, and the edges of my vision went white as my stomach dropped. “No. Way. That’s not the timeline we agreed on. Opening was supposed to be months from now. Why the hell did you move it up?”
I thought I saw a flash of guilt pass over Asher’s face for just a second, but then his mask of composure fell back over his features, and he looked away. “Time is money,” he said vaguely, not meeting my eyes. “It’s a moot point anyway; I’ve already sent out the invitations and scheduled a press conference.”
I was rapidly becoming more panicked than a chicken who’d taken a wrong turn into a wolf den. I turned to Lacey, spreading my hands in abject apology. “God, I’m so sorry, Lacey, I swear I wouldn’t cancel on you but—but three weeks oh my God—”
Lacey patted my shoulder reassuringly, but the gesture failed in its intended purpose as my heart raced even faster. “Shush. I understand. You go rock that business world.” She enfolded me in another bone-crushing hug and whispered in my ear: “Try not to murder him, I don’t want to have to lie on the witness stand.”
“Girl, if I do it right, they’ll never even find the body,” I whispered back.
Asher crossed his arms as Lacey left, too busy looking satisfied with himself to notice Lacey blatantly checking out his ass, before raising an eyebrow and me and mouthing, ‘Hide the body in your bed.’
I gave her dagger eyes and she skedaddled with a mischievous grin still on her face.
“All right,” Asher said. “You ready to work?”
I bit down my instinctual snarky retort and just nodded, firmly. “Always.”
Asher had thrown me a curveball, but I wasn’t going to let his foul mood keep me from scoring the business touchdown of my dreams.
…have I mentioned that I’m not really into baseball?
THREE
It was only a week later, but it felt like it had been a century. One of the really busy ones with a couple civil wars and an industrial revolution or two.
I’d been working non-stop, switching from one task to another with barely a pause to scarf down a slice of pizza or catch a thirty second nap in the ladies’ room.
The first step had been locating and hiring the contractors who were even now busily working on the storefront, the hammering of nails and the whine of power drills making a background soundtrack to every discussion in the store, while paint fumes fought with the perfumes and air fresheners we were smell-testing.
Next, we’d needed to find skilled seamstresses to train and produce stock. I would have been over the moon to find even one on such short notice, but we ended up landing three: Gina, an older immigrant grandmother who had spent twenty years turning out blouses at a factory south of the border; Becky, a homemaker and quilting champion looking for something to do now that her kids had left the nest; and a mid-twentysomething cosplay girl called Lilly with purple dreadlocks and a pentagram pendant who knew more about hemming than most people know about their entire lives. In a word: my dream team. Wait, that’s three words. Still.
Meanwhile Asher and I had been releasing quotes to the press and the fashion bloggers left and right, and the internet chatter looked to be building up to a perfect storm of anticipation, with only few easily ignored trolls trying to rain on the parade.