“He’s known her about eight weeks, as far as I can tell!” He was confiding his doubts to a complete stranger, which was not like him. It was even more unlike him to be hoping this wet-behind-the-ears country girl from Moose Run, Michigan, might be able to shed some light on his brother’s mysterious, flawed decision-making process. This was why he liked being around people as not sweet as himself. There was no probing of the secrets of life.

“That doesn’t seem to reflect on how the marriage is going to work out, either.”

“Well, what does then?”

“When I figure it out, I’m going to bottle it and sell it,” she said. There was that earnestness again. “But I’ve planned the weddings of lots of young people who are still together. Young people have big dreams and lots of energy. You need that to buy your first house and have your first baby, and juggle three jobs and—”

“Baby?” Drew said, horrified. “Is she pregnant?” That would explain his brother’s rush to the altar of love.

“I don’t think so,” Becky said.

“But you don’t know for certain.”

“It’s none of my business. Or yours. But even if she is, lots of those kinds of marriages make it, too. I’ve planned weddings for people who have known each other for weeks, and weddings for people who have known each other for years. I planned one wedding for a couple who had lived together for sixteen years. They were getting a divorce six months later. But I’ve seen lots of marriages that work.”

“And how long has your business been running?”

“Two years,” she said.

For some reason, Drew was careful not to be quite as sarcastic as he wanted to be. “So, you’ve seen lots that work for two years. Two years is hardly a testament to a solid relationship.”

“You can tell,” she said stubbornly. “Some people are going to be in love forever.”

Her tone sounded faintly wistful. Something uncomfortable shivered along his spine. He had a feeling he was looking at one of those forever kinds of girls. The kind who were not safe to be around at all.

Though it would take more than a sweet girl from Moose Run to penetrate the armor around his hard heart. He felt impatient with himself for the direction of his thoughts. Wasn’t it proof that she was already penetrating something since they were having this discussion that had nothing to do with her unrealistic building plans?

Drew shook off the feeling and fixed Becky with a particularly hard look.

“Sheesh, maybe you are a member of the Cinderella club, after all.”

“Despite the fact I run a company called Happily-Ever-After—”

He closed his eyes. “That’s as bad as Moose Run.”

“It is a great name for an event planning company.”

“I think I’m getting a headache.”

“But despite my company name, I have long since given up on fairy tales.”

He opened his eyes and looked at her. “Uh-huh,” he said, loading those two syllables with doubt.

“I have!”

“Lady, even before I heard the name of your company, I could tell that you have ‘I’m waiting for my prince to come’ written all over you.”

“I do not.”

“You’ve had a heartbreak.”

“I haven’t,” she said. She was a terrible liar.

“Maybe it wasn’t quite a heartbreak. A romantic disappointment.”

“Now who is playing the mind reader?”

“Aha! I was right, then.”

She glared at him.

“You’ll get over it. And then you’ll be in the prince market all over again.”

“I won’t.”

“I’m not him, by the way.”

“Not who?”

“Your prince.”

“Of all the audacious, egotistical, ridiculous—”

“Just saying. I’m not anybody’s prince.”

“You know what? It is more than evident you could not be mistaken for Prince Charming even if you had a crown on your head and tights and golden slippers!”

Now that he’d established some boundaries, he felt he could tease her just a little. “Please tell me you don’t like men who wear tights.”

“What kind of man I like is none of your business!”

“Correct. It’s just that we will be working in close proximity. My shirt has been known to come off. It has been known to make women swoon.” He smiled.

He was enjoying this way more than he had a right to, but it was having the desired effect, putting up a nice big wall between them, and he hadn’t even had to barge in the construction material to do it.

“I’m not just getting a headache,” she said. “I’ve had one since you marched through my door.”

“Oh, great,” he said. “There’s nothing I like as much as a little competition. Let’s see who can give who a bigger headache.”

“The only way I could give you a bigger headache than the one you are giving me is if I smashed this lamp over your head.”

Her hand actually came to rest on a rather heavy-looking brass lamp on the corner of her desk. It was evident to him that she would have loved to do just that if she wasn’t such a prim-and-proper type.

“I’m bringing out the worst in you,” he said with satisfaction. She looked at her hand, resting on the lamp, and looked so appalled with herself that Drew did the thing he least wanted to do. He laughed.

* * *

Becky snatched her hand back from the brass lamp, annoyed with herself, miffed that she was providing amusement for the very cocky Mr. Drew Jordan. She was not the type who smashed people over the head with lamps. Previously, she had not even been the type who would have ever thought about such a thing. She had dealt with some of the world’s—or at least Michigan’s—worst Bridezillas, and never once had she laid hand to lamp. It was one of the things she prided herself in. She kept her cool.

But Drew Jordan had that look of a man who could turn a girl inside out before she even knew what had hit her. He could make a woman who trusted her cool suddenly aware that fingers of heat were licking away inside her, begging for release. And it was disturbing that he knew it!

He was laughing at her. It was super annoying that instead of being properly indignant, steeling herself against attractions that he was as aware of as she was, she could not help but notice how cute he was when he laughed—that sternness stripped from his face, an almost boyish mischievousness lurking underneath.

She frowned at her computer screen, pretending she was getting down to business and that she had called up the weather to double-check his facts. Instead, she learned her head of construction was also the head of a multimillion-dollar Los Angeles development company.

The bride’s future brother-in-law was not an out-of-work tradesman that Becky could threaten to fire. He ran a huge development company in California. No wonder he seemed to be impatient at being pressed into the service of his very famous soon-to-be sister-in-law.

No wonder he’d been professional enough to Google the weather. Becky wondered why she hadn’t thought of doing that. It was nearly the first thing she did for every event.

It was probably because she was being snowed under by Allie’s never-ending requests. Just now she was trying to find a way to honor Allie’s casually thrown-out email, received that morning, which requested freshly planted lavender tulips—picture attached—to line the outdoor aisle she would walk down toward her husband-to-be.

Google, that knowledge reservoir of all things, told Becky she could not have lavender tulips—or any kind of tulip for that matter—in the tropics in June.

What Google confirmed for her now was not the upcoming weather forecast or the impossibility of lavender tulips, but that Drew Jordan was used to million-dollar budgets.

Becky, on the other hand, had started shaking when she had opened the promised deposit check from Allie. Up until then, it had seemed to her that maybe she was being made the butt of a joke. But that check—made out to Happily-Ever-After—had been for more money than she had ever seen in her life.