Chapter 15: Chapter Fifteen

“I’m sure it’s not as bad as you think.”

Tori waved Lettie’s attempt at comfort away. “You didn’t see her reaction. All he did was describe the idea to her, and she was in tears. I’m telling you; she’s going to pick him.” It was Tori’s own fault. She’d thought her grand idea would be enough to win them all over, but in the end, it hadn’t been enough. “Wyatt’s pitch had something mine didn’t.”

“Yeah, food trucks.” Lettie shook her head like the idea mystified her. Truth be told, Tori wasn’t sure she understood either. Probably even more reason why she was losing this wedding.

She checked the clock on her computer screen for the tenth time, then instinctively smoothed her hands over her hair and blouse.

“What time is Georgina supposed to be here?”

“Any minute.” It had barely been sixteen hours since they’d all met at the brewery, and she’d already gotten a call from Georgina asking if she could stop by Tori’s office around eleven. There was no question it was to deliver her and her daughter’s decision. And the fact that it had taken them so little time to deliberate made Tori even more sure of the outcome.

Lettie peeked at her from around her own monitor. “Are you going to be okay?”

“Of course.” Tori sat up straighter. “Honestly, I’m ready to get this part over with so that I can move on to bigger and better things.”

“Tori…” Lettie let the word hang, along with the implication that she didn’t buy a word of it.

“I’m serious.” If she weren’t, she wouldn’t have sent Deb out with the list of her mom’s vendors to help keep up their rapport with the other business owners in this town. There was no telling when she’d need a good deal from one of them for a future client. “So we didn’t get this wedding. There will still be others.” Many, many others, she hoped.

“What happens between you and Wyatt once he gets the job?”

“Nothing. Just because we’re no longer fighting for the Bedland wedding doesn’t mean we won’t be fighting for another soon. We’ll keep the same level of friendly professionalism we’ve managed to reach at this point.”

“And you’ll be okay watching him work with the Bedlands like that?”

“Of course. I’m not some petty amateur. I’ll be fine. Nothing has to change.” She followed it with a smile just to emphasize her point. After a rough night of tossing and turning, she’d decided to go the positivity route this morning. Not just for herself but for Lettie’s and Deb’s sakes too.

So they wouldn’t get the Bedland wedding or the amazing spread in Bridal Belle to help get her name out there. It wasn’t the end of the world. Wyatt had won fair and square. He’d just done better than she had this time. She would accept that, learn from it, and do better next time. It wasn’t anything personal. “It’s just business.”

The bell rang as the door opened. Tori checked her screen—eleven o’clock on the dot, as if she expected any less—and rose to greet Georgina with an only slightly trembling hand.

“Torrance, you look lovely today.”

She should. After coming in with dark circles under her eyes from the lack of sleep, she’d reluctantly agreed to let Lettie spend a good two hours on her face and hair. But even Lettie’s magic had nothing on Georgina. Her long black hair had been set in sleek, shiny curls, and she wore a lovely cobalt-blue dress that hugged her form flatteringly beneath a bright white blazer, along with a pair of black pumps. “You’re looking pretty fabulous yourself this morning.”

She beamed. “I have a lunch date with the organizers for our charity event coming up in a few months. And we must always look our best for charity.”

“Of course. Here, why don’t we sit.” She gestured to the white sofa and chairs in the corner. Unsurprisingly, Georgina took one of the high-backed chairs, leaving Tori the couch on the wall across from her.

“Can I get you anything to drink, Mrs. Bedland?” Lettie offered once they’d settled in their seats. “We have water, coffee, tea.”

“Coffee would be lovely, thank you.” She gave their office a quick once-over, then added, “One cream, no sugar.”

Lettie wasn’t even halfway to the coffeemaker in the back before Georgina’s attention zeroed in on Tori. “I assume you’ve already guessed why I’m here. So let’s cut to it, shall we?” she said, as blunt as ever.

A heavy stone nestled into Tori’s stomach. After a night of preparing herself for this very moment, she still wasn’t near as ready as she’d led Lettie to believe. She sucked in a long breath to steady herself.

“I’m very pleased to tell you that we’ve decided to go with your company for the wedding.”

Thunk. Something heavy thumped in the back of the room. Tori thought she heard Lettie muttering whispered curses, but she was too distracted by what she’d just heard to make out the words. Or at least what she thought she’d just heard. “I’m sorry, could you repeat that?”

“I said you’ve got the job. Danica and I discussed it, and we’ve chosen to go with your ideas. Not that it should be much of a surprise to you, really. What you showed us Saturday was absolutely remarkable. It was exactly the atmosphere and elegance we were hoping for for this event.”

Lettie popped up behind Georgina’s chair, coffee cup in hand, and started silently dancing and cheering. Tori could only stare back at her. Was this actually real?

Georgina turned, and Lettie froze, composing herself just in time. She handed the coffee cup over. “Here you go, Mrs. Bedland.”

“Thank you, dear.” She took a minuscule sip, then set the cup on the glass coffee table between them. She eyed Tori, whose silence persisted, with pursed lips. “That is, if you still want the job.”

“No!” she nearly yelled. Seeing Georgina’s wide, startled eyes, she reined herself in. “I mean, yes, of course I want it.”

“Wonderful. Send over the official contract for us to look at and sign.” Georgina rose, Tori following a beat behind her.

“Of course. I’ll get that to you as soon as possible.”

“Fantastic. Now I suppose I have the unfortunate task of breaking the bad news to Mr. Rhoades before my lunch meeting. I should be heading that way. Have a good afternoon, Torrance.”

“Yes, thank you. You too,” she managed to squeak out before the door had shut behind Georgina.

Tori collapsed back onto the sofa. “Oh my goodness, what just happened?” She felt like she needed to pinch herself.

“Um, I think you just landed the biggest seafood family in the Southeast.”

“That’s what it sounded like.” Now she just needed to wrap her head around it.

Lettie, on the other hand, was already well caught up. “This is huge! You actually did it! I knew you could. I told you you were worried about nothing.”

Tori let out a small huff. It still didn’t feel real to her. She’d seen the longing on Dani’s face, had been so sure she would pick Wyatt’s idea. And now Georgina was probably already halfway to his office to tell him all his hard work was for nothing.

Lettie fell onto the sofa cushion beside her. “Why do you look like you’re about to be sick?”

“What about Wyatt?” she asked, the first thing that came to mind.

“What about him?”

“What if he hates me after this, and it ruins all the progress we’ve made?” They’d finally hit a good rhythm after first realizing they were business rivals. She didn’t want to go back to how they were before they’d agreed to be friends that night in the back of his truck, closed off and just plain awkward.

“You just said it wouldn’t change anything.”

“Yeah, but that was when I thought I’d lost.” There was no telling what Wyatt would do once he heard the news.

Lettie rubbed Tori’s arm, but it failed to provide the comfort it was meant to. “I’m sure he’s just as determined to not let it affect your friendship.”

Tori hoped the same, but how well did she really know him anyway? “What if he hates me?”

“Would you have hated him?”

“No. But there probably would have been some repressed resentment and the occasional impulse to sneak into his house and shave his head while he’s sleeping.”

Lettie snorted. “Let’s hope he’s a better man than you then.” She wrapped an arm around her friend’s shoulder and squeezed her tight. “I’m sure it’ll all be fine.”

“I hope you’re right.”

“What do you say to a celebratory dinner tonight? You deserve it after all your hard work.”

Tori’s cell phone blasted from her desk. She sprang up in the off chance it was one of those rare calls she got from her mom while she was traveling. The screen was lit up with an American number she didn’t recognize. Possibly a new potential client?

“Hello?”

“I guess congratulations are in order,” a deep voice she knew probably too well answered.

“Wyatt?”

He chuckled. “You so busy planning this big, fancy wedding that you’ve already forgotten us lowly common folk?”

“No, I just…I wasn’t expecting to hear from you this soon.” Or ever again. “Does this mean you’ve talked with Georgina?” If he had, it was done in record time.

“I have. She’d barely walked out my door before I picked up the phone to call you.”

“Oh.” She wasn’t sure what else to say. She looked to Lettie for reinforcement, but her friend just shrugged, waving her hand to tell her to keep going. The silence dragged several seconds.

“Tori?”

“Yeah.”

“I meant what I said. Congratulations. You deserve this.”

She let out a long breath. “Thank you.” She lowered herself into her desk chair, too exhausted to keep standing after the stress of the last fifteen minutes. “You’re not upset?”

“Of course I’m disappointed I couldn’t get it for myself. But I can still be just as happy that you did. In the end, I wanted the best planner to win, and I think she did.”

“Really?” Her voice rose at the end. Could he hear the desperate hope in that one word as clearly as she could?

“Oh yeah, you’ll find I can be a very gracious loser.”

“Is that so?” she asked in the teasing tone she’d gotten used to using on him recently. “And how do you manage that?”

“I’ve had a lot of practice, trust me.” His low chuckle covered her skin in warm tingles. Oh boy.

“What about the magazine spread?” He’d said at breakfast that day that he’d needed it just as much as, if not more than, she did. If that were the case, this loss must have hurt his business somehow.

“I’ll figure out some other way to get the name out there. It’s not the end of the world.”

It was exactly what she’d told herself when she thought she’d lost. “As creative as you are, I’m sure you’ll come up with something great.”

“Thank you. That really means a lot to me, Tori.”

She bit her lip to keep from smiling into the phone. “So you’re not mad at all?”

“No.”

“No repressed resentment? No urges to shave my head in my sleep?”

His low laugh set her nerves into another frenzy. “Not at the moment, but I’ll let you know if that changes.”

“Good.” The words were reassuring, but the fact that they could still play off of each other like this was even more so. Their competition for the biggest wedding of the decade was over, and yet it felt like nothing had changed between them.

Tori glanced at Lettie’s desk before turning her chair in the opposite direction. She leaned back and lowered her voice. “I really thought you were going to win it. Dani was completely speechless.”

“She liked it, but I don’t think it was the wedding they were looking for. Not like yours. Honestly, you probably saved me from getting too far in over my head.”

“How do you mean?”

“I’ve never done anything even close to the level the Bedlands want, and in only three months? Then add to that trying to expand my business at the same time, and I would have ended up drowning by the end.”

She shook her head. “I doubt that. You’re good at what you do. You would have figured it out.”

“I’m not so sure.” She heard what sounded like a chair creak on his end. “I like to create things. Concepts, visuals, scenes. Not so much the planning and the scheduling and juggling twenty things at once.”

“I guess that’s why it’s good to be in charge. You can delegate whenever you need to.”

“Maybe. But sometimes I miss not being the boss. Back when it was just me and the camera and no responsibility for anyone else. I’d just show up, do my small part, and go. It was kind of perfect.”

“How’d you end up in wedding planning then?”

“Years ago, I was working on a photoshoot for my friends’ engagement announcements. I’d come up with a really elaborate Mad Hatter theme, and they loved it so much they begged to hire me as a sort of design consultant or whatever you want to call it. The extra money sounded good, so I agreed to help out. The wedding was a success, and word spread. I did a few more jobs like that before I finally decided to open my own business.”

“But you told me you hate all the business stuff. Why start one?”

“I guess you could say it was because of my dad. He invested in real estate and started his own business from the ground up. He owns property all over the country now.”

Tori vaguely recalled hearing Gammie say something about “that CEO son” of hers. “So he pushed you to start a business?” Was it one of those classic father-thinks-he-knew-best situations, wanting his son to grow up to be just like him?

He chuckled. “Not at all. Even though he wasn’t always around a lot, my dad supported anything I wanted to do. Growing up, Astrid and I usually stayed with Gammie whenever he and mom would fly off to these other cities. But I remember a few times they took us with them. Dad always looked so cool, stepping up in whatever situation as this great leader. I think I got it in my head that real success was being that person on top of it all, the one in charge. Dad understood that, so he helped me start up Narrative Weddings.

“It was really fun and exciting at first, and I had a lot of help from my dad. But then it all sort of fell on me, and I realized being the guy in charge wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. Now it’s all scheduling and budgets and all these different forms and regulations to keep track of. I don’t know,” he said quietly. “So far, life as a business owner hasn’t been as exciting or fulfilling as I thought it would be.”

He sounded so…detached, bored by his own words. It was nothing like the bright fire she’d seen in his eyes as he told her some wild story he’d just made up. It wasn’t that he didn’t care about weddings and what they represented. She’d seen firsthand how passionate he could be on that subject that night in the back of his truck. But unfortunately, that was only a fraction of a wedding planner’s job.

“So rewrite the story.”

There was a short pause on the other end. “How do you mean?”

She shrugged even though he couldn’t see it. “You create all these amazing stories about other people, but you don’t realize that you’re creating your story every day. Each decision you make is another paragraph in your own story. If you don’t like the one you’re in, rewrite it. Take charge of your life and turn it into the story you want it to be.”

Wyatt was silent. Maybe it hadn’t sounded as good out loud as it had to her in her head.

Just as she was about to backtrack, he spoke. “You’re going to think I’m crazy for saying this, but sometimes I feel like you understand me better than the people I’ve known my whole life.”

Tori’s heart raced in her chest, and she felt the fragile line between them distorting. She shook her head. “Not crazy.” How could she think that when it was exactly how she felt about him? From the moment they’d met, she’d known there was something different about Wyatt. Something deep down that drew them together without their noticing.

He let out a soft breath, and the sound set her nerves crackling like live wire. “I’m really glad you and I can be friends, Tori.”

The words were like a thick layer of liquid insulation, coating each nerve in her body until the crackling ceased. She forced a small smile, burying any signs of the emotional whiplash she’d just suffered. “Me too.” She cleared her throat and sat up in her chair. “I should really get back to work.”

“Sure, I understand. I’ve got some stuff I should be getting to as well. And hey, I know you’re going to be busy the next several weeks, but try not to be a stranger.”

She laughed softly. “I’ll do my best.” She hung up and set the phone down gingerly, ignoring Lettie’s stare as she pulled her playbook out and got to work. But even as she tried to focus, one word played on repeat in her thoughts.

Friends. It was a good word, a word that kept the line clear and precise and very much intact between them. It was exactly what she wanted, even if she’d started to forget for a small second there. For the best.

So why did that weight settling in her stomach feel more like disappointment than relief?