Page 5 of Falling for You Again

With the gown’s train tossed over my arm, I yanked up the front hem to keep from tripping and ran through the jet bridge. Someone else was gaining on me from behind. The bridge shook under our weight, the sound echoing through the metal tunnel.

I leaped onto the plane and abruptly stopped before I ran into a flight attendant, catching the guy behind me off guard. He rammed right into me, pitching me forward. I shrieked, grasping for the flight attendant’s arms as I stumbled.

“Sorry!” The guy behind me grabbed my shoulder and hauled me upright into a cloud of cologne. He smelled too nice for his own good.

“Are you all right?” The flight attendant picked up the beaded clutch that had popped out of my grasp.

“I’m fine.Fine,” I snapped at the guy over my shoulder who was pawing at my dress. My veil was stuck to his sweaty face. I peeled it off him and snagged my clutch from the patient attendant before flopping into my seat in the second row. I just wanted to melt into the cushions and try not to think of how angry Paul must be with me right now. But I sat on the veil, and the combs tugged hard on my hair, pulling at my scalp.

“Ow.” I yanked out the combs, along with the pins in my updo, and shook out the dramatically cut shoulder-length bob I’d dyed a dark-strawberry ombre two days prior. Cheryl hadn’t been pleased. Paul had left it at “No comment.” But the glow in his eyes had dulled. This wasafter he’d asked me to give up my craft. Maybe he sensed I just hadn’t been that into our relationship anymore.

I gave my scalp a good scratch and balled up the mesh tulle, stuffing the veil into the seat pocket as the guy who’d boarded after me dragged his luggage down the aisle, scoping out overhead bin space. I was hot and scratchy, and I had to pee.

Inside the clutch purse, my phone incessantly vibrated. By now, the wedding would have been called off, and Paul was either terribly distraught or planning to commit murder should he find me. I took out the phone to text Uncle Bear where I was off to, only to wish I hadn’t seen the screen. Text notifications steadily appeared.The shit has hit the fan,read one from Uncle Bear. Another arrived from Emi:Proud of you!She’d pressed me earlier about how committed I was to going through with my marriage. Uncle Bear hadn’t been the only one to notice my heart hadn’t been in it.

I deserved the text from Paul, but it still stung:Mom said you weren’t marriage material. I should have listened to her.

“Congratulations! Champagne?”

I didn’t correct the bubbly flight attendant pushing two champagne flutes on me as I shoved my phone back inside the clutch. There wasn’t anything to celebrate. “Yes, please.” I took a glass.

“Would your husband like one?” He tipped his head toward the guy in the suit making his way toward the rear of the plane in search of overhead bin space, the same guy who’d barreled into me.

“He’s not my husband.” Not yet, anyway. But he was assigned to the seat next to mine.

His name is Aaron Borland, and at the time, he was the Savant House’s director of acquisitions. And we were on our way to Vegas.

Chapter 3

Glitter, Galas, and Girlfriends

I text Emi as soon as I leave Artisant Designs, begging her to meet. I don’t want to discuss this crisis through a string of texts. I need to talk out what happened and tell her what I’m planning to do, because I want her to come along. I tell myself it’s for moral support. Which is true. But I also don’t want to show up at the gala without a plus-one. I’m breaking my promise to Aaron just by going.

Emi texts back that she can’t meet until lunch, so I take the T to my apartment, feeling outraged and hurt. I can’t believe Uncle Bear went behind my back after promising me Artisant. I’ve been looking forward most of my life to owning the shop. So I focus on a new plan now while changing out of my coveralls and into loose jean shorts with lace-trimmed hems and a slouchy off-white, long-sleeve shirt, wrangling my hair into a floppy bun at my nape. Then I take the T downtown and impatiently wait for Emi to join me at Lettuce Entertain You, a soup-and-salad café near Stone & Bloom. I’m two macchiatos in when she arrives, and with the amount of caffeine I’ve consumed even before I got here, I’m buzzing.

Emi enters the café like a spring breeze and immediately spots me seated at a two-top along the far wall. I wave at her, my knee bouncing.

“What’s going on? Everything all right?” she asks, picking up on my agitated fervor. She hooks her purse on the chairback and settles into the seat across from me.

“Bear’s selling the shop,” I announce, outraged.

Emi’s face lights up. “That’s wonderful!”

“He’s not selling to me.” Emi slow-blinks, and I flap my hands for her to catch up. “He’s selling to the Savant House.”

“The furniture catalog?”

“Yes.” The Savant House is an upscale home-furnishings company headquartered in the heart of Boston. Their catalog is only one aspect of the business. They sell merchandise online, through their fourteen design galleries located along the Eastern Seaboard, and in their retail shops in Nashville and Chicago. The company was founded over forty years ago as a vintage hardware-and-fixtures thrift shop less than a mile from Artisant Designs. While they are still privately held, Savant received an influx of capital a few decades ago and quickly expanded, buying out woodshops to acquire their talent and copyrighted designs. If I can’t stop the sale of Artisant, Uncle Bear will get his way and I’ll be Savant’s next prize.

“Why would he do that?” Emi asks.

“I don’t know.” I clap my hands on the table, my knee still bouncing.

Emi peeks inside my coffee cup. “How many of these have you had?”

I grimace. “Including the espressos I drank before we went to coffee this morning?”

Shetsks. “Let’s get some food in you before you short-circuit. Then tell me everything.”

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