“Before you do,” Donna said, batting her eyelashes at Ford, despite the fact the man who’d put a gigantic ring on it was sitting right next to her. “Can I ask you one question?”
Ford’s gaze ping-ponged between Donna and Scott and then he slid on his uber-neutral cop face. To anyone not paying attention, he would have looked completely together and in control. However, from her spot by the window, Gina got a good look at him in profile, and there was no missing that as he held his hands behind his back in an at-attention stance, he was tapping out a fast beat on his thumb. That little tell of nervousness shouldn’t have cooled her annoyance at his butt-in-ski ways, but who was she kidding? The fact that he rushed in—requested or not—to try to help was kind of endearing.
Donna held up the envelopes. “Which color makes you think of eternal bliss?”
Ford blinked. He blinked again. His finger tapping on his thumb went into overdrive. Gina wasn’t rooting for him, not after he’d barged in on her business, but she had to admit if only to herself that she was pulling for him. He could do this. He could make the whole thing right with one word. Pink or yellow, it didn’t matter.
He cleared his throat.
Gina held her breath.
The thumb symphony stopped, and he said, “They’re both really nice.”
Donna’s hopeful expression crumbled back into indecisiveness. Gina, however, wasn’t confused at all. She was going to have to be one more in a long line of Lucas who found out how they looked in an orange jumpsuit.
“Can I speak to you out in the hallway now?” she asked, but the timbre of her voice perfectly detailed that this was not a request.
She didn’t wait for an answer, just shot a quick smile in her clients’ general direction and strode out into the hallway. She waited by the door until Ford walked through, but as soon as he did, she closed it behind him and got within whispering distance but stayed out of touching distance because, even as annoyed as she was, the urge to do that was just under the surface.
“What in the hell do you think you’re doing?” she asked.
One eyebrow went up in the universal sign of male superiority. “Helping?”
“Is that what you call it?” Her entire body felt hot and tight at the same time. “Funny, I’d call it interfering with my business and making my job even harder.”
Ford snorted, a dismissive sound that told her exactly what he thought of her business. “Come on, I’ve been listening to her waffle for half an hour. I figured she just needed a push.”
Of course he did. Wedding planning was just simple women’s work, after all. Not something that needed experience and education.
“And you came by this idea from your vast experience as a wedding planner?”
Something in her voice must have alerted him to the very vital mistake he’d made. “No, but—”
“Oh,” she interrupted. “It was from your degree in hospitality and unpaid internships with some of the most demanding wedding planners in Harbor City?”
Seriously, those days had been fourteen-hour hells of grunt work and abuse.
“No, but—”
She verbally plowed forward, shoving his mealy explanation to the curb. “The only other thing I can think of is that because you have a dick you think that means you know all the answers to anything, whether you have experience in that area or have been working with a set of clients for months and know how to slowly maneuver them one way or another because if you don’t do it a certain way, they get stuck in a loop of indecision?”
Ford kept his mouth shut. Good to know he had a sense of self-preservation.
“Look, this may seem like just a silly job to you from the outside, but it’s serious. People pin a lot of hopes and dreams on their wedding day. Being a wedding planner is about organization, psychology, negotiation, and crisis management. Do not think for a second that coming in uninvited and thinking you could do my job without even an idea about what it entails was the right thing to do.”
She inhaled a deep breath, ready to launch into another wave of words. It wasn’t just Ford who didn’t take her seriously. Her brothers didn’t, either. What they didn’t realize was that she was a small business owner who always found a way to make what sometimes seemed like the impossible happen. Her job was a challenge every day, and even though it drove her a little batty sometimes, she loved it.
“You’re right,” he said, the words coming out fast but true.
She nearly choked on her righteous indignation. “Excuse me?”
“I shouldn’t have assumed. You’re right.”
Her brain was on a loop of what the hell, what the hell, what the hell as she tried to figure out what play he was making with this quick retreat. Whatever game he was running, and he had been doing so since he sweet-talked her into letting him park his cute ass on her couch, this acknowledgment of her competency was part of it.
She glared at him through narrowed eyes. “What’s your move here?”
“No move.” He shook his head. “I just wanted to help.”
“Next time, ask first. This is my business, and it might not seem like much to you, but I’m going to build this company into something great and lasting—but first I have to go maneuver Donna and Scott into the yellow so their invites don’t look like birth announcements.”
She stalked over to the door, and her hand was on the doorknob before his voice stopped her.
“I have no doubt you’ll make it happen.”
The unexpectedness of his words was what made her pulse kick up. It wasn’t because of the look in his eye when he said it, as if he really believed it. What he thought didn’t matter to her. Still, her heart was thrumming when she walked back into her office and suggested the yellow to Donna and Scott.
…
“Come on, swing it like you mean it.” Ford stood back and watched as Gina lifted the sledgehammer and let it come crashing down against the wall in the hallway. Her plan was to take out the wall and open it up to the library, which was filled with bookshelves and huge windows that looked out into the backyard and brought in the most sun during the day. They would take care of the demolition, and a guy who specialized in old home restorations would come in and complete the new arch where the wall had been.
It was a good plan, and it meant that he got to watch Gina go after the drywall like a woman on a mission.
Something about the way she set her full lips into a straight line and let out a deep breath before she swung away made him forget a little why he’d been camping out on her uncomfortable couch for the past two days in the first place.
That spring that poked him right in the lower back was what was keeping him up late at night. It sure wasn’t wondering what Gina was doing upstairs when he followed the soft patter of her footsteps across the ceiling, or trying to imagine what she was wearing as she slipped between her sheets, or contemplating if her dreams kept circling back to that night in the hotel. There was no way his desperate need for a vat of coffee every morning was because of that. It was the spring jutting up to jab him in the kidney.
He took a drink of the sanity-maintaining brew and watched as Gina brought the sledgehammer down on the non-load-bearing wall, leaving a gaping hole.
“Should I even ask who you’re picturing on that wall?” he asked.
Gina sat the sledgehammer down on the dusty hardwood floor and grinned at him. “Probably not.”
“So, what happened to the fourth handyman you hired to help?”
She’d been telling him about three handyman nightmares since they started working on the wall. The woman had the worst luck.
“Sylvia?” Gina said, her voice thick with disgust. “She split with the deposit money for parts unknown.”
He picked up the sledgehammer and positioned himself in front of the wall. “Did you file a police complaint?”