Page 17 of The Wedding Wrecker

I made an effort not to touch it self-consciously.Oops.

Derek leaned forward, eyes searching my face. “You know, you always blow me off when I bring it up. But I still think you haven’t gotten over that girl you told me about. Your Irish flower.”

“Stop calling her that. I was drunk, and I was in my feelings. She’s not even Irish, so it hardly makes sense.”

Derek smirked. “Anyway… this Irish flower of yours rocks your world. Suddenly, my friend who is usually going home with a different woman every night has lost interest in dating. He’s ‘taking a break’. Well, James, I’m calling bullshit.” He spread his palms with a shrug. “I think you still have feelings for your little flower, and you’re saving yourself for her. Frankly, it’s adorable.”

“This is why I keep you in the office and don’t let you investigate weddings. You’re assuming a hell of a lot. And you’re completely wrong.”

“Am I?” Derek asked. His smug smile said it all.

I leaned back in my chair, arms folded. “Was there something you actually needed, or were you just here to annoy me?”

“Your nine-o-clock. Or did you forget because I mentioned your Irish flower, and all your thoughts went to your long lost love?”

“You can go,” I said firmly, but not without the faintest hint of a smile. “Send her in.”

Derek stood with a sarcastic salute. “For the record,” he said, leaning across my desk and lowering his voice. “You may be fooling yourself. But nobody else is falling for it.”

With a knock of his knuckles on my desk, Derek was gone.

The woman who entered looked exactly how I’d expected, complete with designer clothes and a monogrammed handkerchief she was currently twisting between manicured fingers.

"Mrs. Holloway?" I gestured to the chair Derek had vacated. "Please, sit. Tell me why you're here."

She perched on the edge of the seat. "It's about my daughter. She's engaged to... I think he's going to hurt her."

I kept my face neutral as she explained her concerns. The fiancé was too smooth, too perfect. Money disappeared from joint accounts. There were late-night calls he wouldn't explain.

"Have you told your daughter your concerns?"

Mrs. Holloway dabbed at her eyes. "She says I'm being paranoid. That I need to trust her judgment."

"And you understand how this works, right? They gave you the paperwork?"

“Well, yes,” she said, twisting that handkerchief again. “But I was thinking maybe we could save her the drama. If you… find something, I mean. Couldn’t we just show her quietly? Let her make her own decision?”

“No,” I said firmly. “That’s not what we do here.” I found my thoughts picking at old wounds—thinking of all the people who knew the truth and the obvious signs I’d ignored.

“I don’t understand why you can’t just?—”

“Let me help you understand, then,” I said, sounding more harsh than I intended. “Because I’ve tried it both ways. Let’s say we find out this guy is cheating or scamming her. We bring the evidence to your daughter. She’s going to do one of two things. One: she gives him another chance because he lathers on the perfect apology and promises to make it up to her. Meanwhile, he’ll go on lying and staying a snake. Two: she actually breaks it off, which almost nobody does.”

“Well,” she said, lips working quietly as she gathered her thoughts. “She wouldn’t stay with a cheater. And you said it yourself… she might break things off.”

“To put it frankly, I care deeply about preventing failed marriages, Mrs. Holloway. I don’t like investing my time to investigate couples if I don’t have assurances I can do things my way. I’m not interested in leaving it up to the bride or groom to do the right thing, because most of them don’t. So if you hire me, you’ll have to sign that you understand exactly how I operate. Ifthere’s cause, I’ll wreck the wedding. It’s as simple as that. Of course, there’s a chance I’ll find nothing. In that case, you only have to pay to cover my investigation expenses, and no one ever has to know you hired me to look into their relationship.”

After Mrs. Holloway left, Derek reappeared with coffee. "So? Taking the case?"

"Yeah." I accepted the cup. "And the guy's definitely hiding something."

"You always say that."

"I'm usually right."

"Usually." He dropped a stack of papers on my desk. "But not always. Remember the Richardson wedding last month? Guy was clean as a whistle."

I scowled. That had been... disappointing.

---