Page 1 of April

April

New Orleans Book 4

Asher Hahn is one of the top wedding planners in New Orleans, and her best friend, Linden Washington, is the other. They’ve both planned extravagant weddings and watched couple after couple share their love in front of their friends and families, all without ever really falling in love themselves.

When, after a decade of friendship, Linden comes out to Asher, Asher’s job, as she sees it, is to be there for Linden as she explores the part of herself that she’s hidden for so long. The only problem is that now that Linden is more fully herself, Asher begins to question her own identity, and part of that questioning means realizing that she might be in love with her best friend.

For Linden, coming out has been a great experience so far. She has her best friend by her side and has enjoyed finally being able to be herself, but when Asher tells her that she thinks she’s bisexual, Linden starts to feel like she might not want to date just anyone. She could be ready for something real… with her best friend.

Asher knows she only wants Linden but thinks Linden can’t possibly feel the same way. Linden wants Asher but doesn’t think she can tell her because it could ruin their friendship.Good thing they have some meddling friends who help them figure things out and finally admit their feelings for one another.

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CHAPTER 1

To be a good wedding planner, Asher had to be detail-oriented, analytical, strong-willed, and sometimes, effective at picking an anxious bride up off the floor after she’d had too much champagne to calm her nerves. Today, she needed to be all of those things.

“But does he really love me?”

“Of course, he does. He’s standing there, waiting for you right now,” she told the bride, whose eye makeup was beginning to smudge from her likely alcohol-laced tears.

“He slept with my cousin, you know?” the bride shared with a sniffle as Asher helped to lift her onto the love seat in the bridal suite.

“No, I didn’t know,” she replied, checking on the dress to see if it had gotten wrinkled or stained when the bride dropped to the floor and started crying minutes ago. “Before you were together, you mean?”

“Three months ago,” the woman replied, reaching for the half-empty bottle of champagne. “There’s a reason Carey isn’t in my wedding party.” She went to take a drink straight from the bottle, but Asher took it from her.

“Okay. I think you’ve had enough. Why don’t I go get your mom and your bridesmaids so that they can help? I’ll let the minister know we might be a few minutes, too.”

“We’ve been together for four years. This is what you do, right? After four years together, you get married. He fucked one of his TAs in college, right after we got together. We’d just gone exclusive, too.” The bride met Asher’s eyes with her red and swollen ones. “Do you think there are more I don’t know about?”

“Uh… I don’t know,” Asher said.

She had been doing this job since she graduated from business school, and she had a one-hundred-percent success rate at getting her brides down the aisle. She’d been twenty-five when she started, and now, at thirty-seven, that meant she had twelve years of experience with semi-drunk brides, late grooms, wedding cake disasters, sick DJs, bands that played the wrong songs, and angry fathers when they got the bill because, despite having the info in advance about how much things would cost, seeing it all laid out for them was often too much. Then, there were the friends who didn’t like the seating arrangement, the venues that weren’t ready when they arrived, the vendors who didn’t show up on time or at all, and more.This, however, was the drunkest bride she’d ever seen before the ceremony.

Usually, Asher was able to ensure that no one in the wedding party got this intoxicated, but today had been a day. It was a plantation wedding outside of Baton Rouge, which she personally wasn’t a fan of because of the past that those locations represented. She wished she didn’t have to work the events taking place there, but this couple was a huge client for the company, and her boss had said that whatever the bride wanted, the bride got, which meant that Asher had to get the woman to the altar no matter what. While this particular location handled weddings all the time, there had been a mild plumbing issue that morning, unfortunately, so she had spent much of her time on the phone with possible backup venues in case they couldn’t get the half-flooded dance floor cleaned up in time. That had left the bridesmaids and the mother of the bride to take care of thiswoman, who was still crying, and they’d clearly done a horrible job because when Asher had finished her last-minute checks, she entered the bridal suite to find the bridesmaids helping the bride finish the third bottle of champagne. Asher had gotten them out the door and lined up, only to find the bride in a ball on the floor.

“I fucked someone, too,” the bride admitted. “Two years ago.”

“Oh?” Asher said, faking interest as she reached for her phone and tried to covertly text the assistant planner working with her today to let her know that they would need at least thirty minutes to get this woman cleaned up.

“Yeah. And he’d hate it.”

“I’m sure he would.”

“It’s a girl. I had sex with a girl.”

Asher’s eyes lifted from her phone at that.

“Oh?”

“Yeah,” the bride said, slurring a little. “Her name was Reggie, I think.” She leaned back against the sofa, messing up her hair. “I met her in a bar. She looked kind of like a boy. I danced with her. I let her touch me all over.”

“Okay,” Asher replied, putting her phone away into her inside blazer pocket. “Let’s get you cleaned up.”

“I didn’t touch her, though. She touched me. She went down on me way better than he ever had. Why can’t boys get it?” The bride pointed between her legs. “It’s right there. Just suck on it until I tell you to stop, right?”

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