Damn. Even her voice was sexy. A little breathy, like she’d been rushing around, and husky.
“You do,” I agreed. “And I need it back.Now.”
She made an exasperated noise. “That makes two of us. I have a full schedule today and every minute of it is mapped out on that phone.”
A series of notifications went off, as if to underscore her point. I pulled the phone away to glance at them and saw a weather report for the upcoming weekend, a text about a cake, and something about horoscopes.
Ridiculous.
“Well, I’m already twenty five minutes away and going to a meeting that I can’t miss, so you’ll need to come to me.”
That got a shocked laugh in response. “Oh, I will, will I? So I should just blow off the meeting I have scheduled at the resort with a client so I can be your phone jockey?”
“Come after your meeting,” I insisted.
“No,youcome tome,” she fired back.
I didn’t have time to bicker with her, even though I was sort of enjoying baiting her. “Fine, let’s agree to meet at a midpoint when we’re both free.”
We bickered as we mapped out logistics until we finally managed to agree on a time and location for the swap.
I disconnected the call and was treated to the ridiculous turtle picture again. It looked like a wise old lady, like the thing hadseen shitand lived to tell the tale. Was it cute? I squinted as I studied the lockscreen. Yeah, as much as I didn’t want to admit it, a turtle in a hat definitively qualified as adorable.
Not that I’d tell her that.
I tossed the phone on the seat next to me. It was useless to me. I didn’t even know how to unlock it to access the internet. I refocused on the landscape flying by out my window but was interrupted by the sound of a foghorn.
Over. And over. And over again.
Thatwas her text alert sound? I clawed at the thing to try to lower the damn volume as the texts kept coming in, but I also wanted to see who the hell was blowing up her phone and why.
Florist said she can’t get fresh hydrangeas at this time of year without an extra charge.
The makeup trial I did was awful, who else do you recommend?
How many rooms are left in our room block? Do we need to ask for more?
I need to swap out the salmon app bc my fiancée says it tastes like cat food.
One of the bridesmaid dresses is the wrong color and it’s SO obvious. I’m about to die, call me now pls.
They were all from the same person, labeled as Brittany BZ. The combination of crises signaled to me that that the annoyingly gorgeous stranger was involved in the wedding industry. I’d been on the periphery of quite a few wedding-related blow-ups since I first started working at Ashford Resorts as a summer job back when I was in high school. And recently, I’d seen some from up close and personal, thanks to the emergency situation that had me filling in as the Carmel resort’s wedding planner.
Ground zero for this exact kind of bullshit, which was why hiring someone to fill the role was sitting right at the top of my list. I needed to find a replacementyesterday.
The texts kept coming and I pushed every damn button on the phone, which only made the foghorn tone louder.
“You okay back there?
My driver, Kingston, eyed me in the rearview mirror.
“My phone accidentally got swapped with this piece of garbage and I can’t figure out how to …” I trailed off as I kept slamming buttons, wincing when that made the noise louder still.
“Here, let me,” he reached back for the phone. “I know you hate tech stuff.”
I wanted to throw the phone out the window, but I settled for handing it to him. Within two seconds it went blessedly silent.
“Here ya go,” Kingston said as he passed it back. “You know, I’d behappy to give you a couple of lessons. I’m darn good with phones, I could show you shortcuts and stuff.”
