Page 93 of Love and Other Champagne Problems

Sumner sighed. “They asked me to not attend altogether.”

My fingers hung limply off his belt loops, my arms suddenly becoming heavy. “Did they say why?”

“Aaron asked for me not to attend. They said… they said that they no longer needed my services with you.”

His words broke apart the haze his kiss had settled over me, but I still didn’t let him go. He didn’t step back either. Of course Aaron asked my parents to not let Sumner attend the wedding; he probably asked them to fire Sumner, too. Anything to separate us. Aaron no doubt thought that was his best chance.

But them firing Sumner as my secretary also meant I was also running out of time before I had to make the big decision. “It doesn’t mean we have to stop spending time together,” I told him. “Just because you’re not my secretary anymore doesn’t mean anything.”

“There’s something else.” Nervousness tightened his gaze. “You know… You know how you said it’s okay that we don’t know everything about each other, that we can get to know each other as we go? Well, there’s something I want to tell you. Later tonight. It’s nothing bad, but something that will probably be a long conversation.”

My frown deepened. “Pass.”

Sumner chuckled a little, but it was a tense sound, one that did nothing to ease me. “I’ll get you an avocado toast for it.”

“That’s a brunch food. I can’t have it for dinner.”

“You’re saying no to avocado toast?”

No, I was saying no to whatever serious conversation Sumner wanted to have. It was a bad sign, probably, that we were not even one day into our relationship and I wanted to dodge the important conversations. I was backto sticking my head in the sand, it seemed. “Tonight,” I said, readjusting my legs in how they were wrapped around his waist. “But not now.”

“Not now,” he repeated, eyes falling back once more to my lips.

With my grip on his hair, I angled his head back once more and reclaimed his mouth with mine.

“Oh!”

We’d been so absorbed in each other that we hadn’t even heard the whirring click of the locked door unlocking and then opening. At the exclamation, Sumner broke away from me, and this time, I allowed him to untangle himself with ease. A middle-aged woman in the country club’s teal polo stood there with her jaw dropped open fully, scandalized—but not looking away.

I hopped off the counter with as much grace as I could muster, thanking my lucky stars that my jelly legs held me up. “Hope we didn’t startle you too much,” I said to the woman in an unaffected tone, willing my pulse to slow down. Channeling my ice queen self was a lot harder when my blood burned. “We were just making sure everything was… well-stocked.”

I looked at Sumner for him to saysomethingin support of my lie, but he was absolutely terrible at lying—he choked on his breath, his neck beet red in embarrassment.

“Happy cleaning,” I said with false cheer, grabbing Sumner’s wrist and tugging him past the woman and out of the closet. He stumbled out after me as I headed toward the lobby. “Wereallyneed to work on your poker face,Sumner.”

“Sumner Pennington!”

Sumner and I both turned sharply toward the new voice, finding a man in a green sweater with ankle-length pants striding over to us from the direction of the lobby. Thankfully, not Aaron, who we seemed to dodge. The man looked about Sumner’s age—maybe a few years older—with a speckling of well-groomed facial hair along his jaw. I stared openly at him, because I knew for a fact I’d never seen him before in my life. He wasn’t a member at the country club.

Sumner, though, recognized him; that much was clear by the way he drew in a breath. Not quite a gasp, but more of a bracing sound, one filled with surprise.

“It’s so good to see you,” the man said as he came closer, his grin broadening with each step. He loomed tall, but his smile was too boyish to be imposing. “It’s been way too long.”

“Too long,” Sumner echoed as the man pulled him in for a hug, clasping Sumner hard on the back. I studied the differences in their posture. The man, who looked effortlessly happy about seeing Sumner again, was a stark contrast to Sumner’s visible discomfort. Sumner’s blue eyes cut to me, a look of almost panic in them.

I decided to cut in. “And who might you be?” I asked in a dull voice, maintaining an icy cold shoulder to whoever this was who was making Sumner so nervous.

“Michael Huntsly,” he replied, pulling off Sumner and offering me a hand. The Rolex on his wrist snuck out from underneath the sleeve of his sweater, a peek-a-boo of expensiveness. “Pleased to meet you.”

“Huntsly,” I echoed,returning the firm grip. I couldn’t figure out why it sounded so familiar. The situation, the longer it continued, only left me more and more confused. I tried to sort through the pieces, but I couldn’t figure out how they fit together. “How do you know Sumner?”

Sumner opened his mouth to answer, but Michael replied, “We were friends back in California.”

“Really?” I kept my intrigue to a minimum, at least visibly. Sumner hadtalked about his friends once before, and I tried to recall what he’d said. One was engaged and one was busy all the time. I thought about asking which one he was, but when I looked at Sumner, he still seemed stiff as a board. He wasn’t looking at either of us, his gaze unfocused on Michael’s shoes. His face was pale.

I laid a hand on his arm, ready to give us an out of this conversation that was making him so uncomfortable. “Well, we were just on our way?—”

“Could you maybe give us a few minutes?” Sumner asked me suddenly, his eyes wide. He attempted a smile, but it was worlds away from his genuine grin that I saw through it immediately. “To catch up?”

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