“If you say so, sir. But might I suggest that your sudden interest in Ms. Marcel has less to do with her wedding planning abilities and more to do with how she looks in that pencil skirt?”
“I’m wounded by your insinuation,” I replied, not wounded in the slightest. “This is purely professional.”
“Of course it is, sir. Just like that yacht you bought last year was ‘purely for business meetings.’”
“It was! We closed the Singapore deal on that yacht.”
“After you renamed it ‘The Billion-Heir.’”
I waved dismissively. “Details. Focus on the task at hand: Operation Wedding Planner.”
“We’re not calling it that,” she said flatly.
“Operation Bride Hunt?”
“Worse.”
“Operation ‘I Do’ Or Die?”
“I’m hanging up now, sir.”
I spent the next hour having Erika pull every article, social media post, and business review about Knot Your Average Wedding and its principal planner. The more I learned, the more convinced I became that Anica Marcel was exactly who Ineeded. Someone with impeccable taste, a spotless professional reputation, and a spine of steel.
The fact that she was gorgeous and looked at me like I was a problem to be solved rather than a prize to be won? That was just a bonus. A distracting, intriguing bonus that had absolutely nothing to do with my professional interest in her services.
I’d always enjoyed a challenge. And Anica Marcel had just become my favorite kind of challenge. One I fully intended to win.
After all, I hadn’t built a tech empire by taking no for an answer.
And I certainly hadn’t made billions by giving up after the first rejection.
Or by ignoring excellent pencil skirts.
CHAPTER 3
Possible Spontaneous Underwear Combustion
ANICA
Iarrived at the office at my usual time, 7:30 AM sharp, because the wedding industry waits for no one, especially not bleary-eyed planners who spent half the night having absolutely-not-sexual dreams about billionaires with jawlines that could cut glass and eyes so blue they should require a warning label from the FDA.
God, maybe Mari was right. I needed to get laid. The vibrator wasn’t cutting it anymore.
Not that I’d been thinking about Callan Burkhardt. I’d been thinking about his proposal. His business proposal. The ridiculous, ethically questionable arrangement that I had absolutely, definitively rejected right before spending three hours stalking his Instagram at 2 AM. For research purposes. Professional research about a potential client who happened to look unreasonably good in swim trunks on his private island. The same private island where he’d apparently rescued an endangered sea turtle, according to the caption. Because of course even his performative social media good deeds were annoyingly attractive. So was his six-pack.
I balanced my coffee, laptop bag, and a stack of vendor catalogs as I fumbled with the office door, feeling like I wasmoving through quicksand after my night of definitely-not-obsessing over Manhattan’s Most Eligible Jerkface.
Usually, I was the first one in, followed by Devonna at 8:15 and Mari whenever her hangover permitted, typically somewhere between 9:00 and the apocalypse. Mari once showed up so late she missed an entire consultation, then claimed she was “operating on Australian time” despite having never been to Australia.
So I wasn’t prepared to find the lights already on, coffee brewing, and Devonna, my reliable, serious, perpetually anxious assistant, giggling. Not just regular giggling. The kind of high-pitched, breathless giggle usually reserved for puppies in bow ties or Ryan Gosling doing literally anything.
That giggle was directed at Callan Burkhardt, who lounged against my reception desk like he was posing for the cover of Billionaire Monthly: Trespassing Edition. He wore a charcoal suit that probably cost more than my car, with a pale blue tie that matched his eyes to the point where I suspected he’d had it custom-dyed from a swatch of his own iris.
“Good morning, Ms. Marcel,” he said, flashing that magazine-cover smile that probably made most women drop their panties. I felt my own underwear consider the possibility before I mentally slapped it back into place. “Your assistant has excellent taste in almond croissants.”
Devonna, who normally maintained the demeanor of a particularly anxious tax accountant during audit season, was practically glowing. She clutched a pastry in one hand and what appeared to be a monogrammed coffee cup in the other. Her usually impeccable bun had somehow come slightly undone, and she’d unbuttoned the top button of her blouse. For Devonna, this was the equivalent of showing up in a bikini.
“Mr. Burkhardt brought breakfast,” she explained unnecessarily, gesturing to an elaborate spread of pastries, fruit,and what looked suspiciously like a sterling silver coffee service. “Wasn’t that thoughtful? And he asked all about my system organizing the emergency vendor contacts. He said it was”—she actually fluttered her eyelashes—“revolutionary.”
