The Wedding Week Problem (Love in Laurel Creek #1)

CHAPTER 1

Nora

The maid of honor was not going to cry at the welcome dinner. She was going to smile, hold her wine like a woman whose life was not actively on fire, and survive one evening in a town that had known her since she'd peed her pants at a Fourth of July parade.

I checked my reflection in the restaurant window. Dress: good. Hair: holding. Expression: the one I'd been rehearsing since the car, which said relaxed and thrilled to be here and absolutely not please don't ask me about Tyler.

Inside, the Wisteria was already at full volume.

Eli's family had claimed the long tables near the back, and the Hart side was filling in fast — aunts rearranging chairs nobody asked them to rearrange, cousins waving across the room, my mother deep in conversation with someone's neighbor about hydrangeas or blood-pressure medication or some unholy combination of both.

Laurel Creek didn't distinguish between family events and public theater.

Everyone showed up. Everyone had opinions.

Everyone was already looking at the door when I walked through it.

"Nora!" My sister crossed the room with her arms out and her wedding-week glow turned up to a frequency that could be seen from space. Willa grabbed me, squeezed hard enough to crack a rib, then pulled back to inspect my face like she was reading a scan. "You okay? You look amazing. Are you okay?"

"I'm great." I smoothed the front of my dress. "I'm so great."

"Because Mom said you were quiet in the car, and I told her that's just how you get when you're —"

"Happy to be home?" I offered.

Willa's face did something complicated. Love, worry, the specific guilt of a bride who knows her wedding week has landed on her older sister like a falling piano and can't figure out how to pick it up without making the sound worse. "I'm glad you're here," she said, quieter.

"I wouldn't be anywhere else."

That part was true. The rest of my current situation — jobless in two weeks, freshly dumped via a conversation that started with I think we want different things and ended with me finding out Tyler had already moved someone into different things — that was staying in its box until Sunday.

Possibly forever. I was flexible on the timeline.

Willa got pulled away by a cousin, and I angled toward the bar like someone who was absolutely not calculating the fastest escape route. Aunt June intercepted me at the halfway point, because Aunt June has a sixth sense for people who are trying to get somewhere without being stopped.

"Sweetheart, you look thin. Are you eating? You have that city-thin look."

"I eat, Aunt June."

"Because the cottage fridge is stocked. I put those little yogurts in there you liked when you were twelve."

"That's —" I blinked. "Thank you."

I loved Aunt June. I genuinely did. But I needed a drink in my hand before one more person scanned me for cracks.

I made it to the bar. Ordered a white wine. Took one full breath that wasn't a performance.

That was as far as I got, because the front door opened and two things happened at once.

First: Beckett Lane walked in.

I knew him the way you know a neighbor whose property line you've shared since you were seventeen — enough to wave, enough to notice, not enough to have a plan for what he looked like now.

Tall. Dark hair shoved back off his forehead, still a little damp like he'd come straight from a shower.

Rolled sleeves. Forearms that made his day job extremely obvious and hard not to look at.

He moved through the room like he'd never once had to think about how he looked doing it — unhurried, easy, saying something to Eli that made the groom bark a laugh and grab his shoulder.

I noticed his hands. Then his jaw. Then the way his mouth pulled up on one side — just one — when Eli said something back.

So Beckett Lane was a lot more attractive than the version of him I had in my head. That was just information. Information I could absolutely file away and never think about again while standing six feet from him in a crowded restaurant.

Second: the door behind him was still swinging, and through it walked Tyler Webb with a brunette tucked under his arm like an accessory he'd picked up to complete an outfit.

My wine became the most important object in the room.

Tyler looked good. Of course he did. He'd probably been sleeping beautifully. People who detonate your entire life and then immediately start dating someone who looks like she teaches sunrise yoga tend to sleep just fine.

He saw me. I saw him see me. He did a little nod — casual, friendly, the nod of a man who had moved on so thoroughly that he could afford to be generous about it — and the back of my throat went hot.

I smiled back. The smile I used to use on clients whose brand strategy was unsalvageable but whose invoices still needed sending. Tight. Professional. Airtight.

Willa appeared at my elbow. "Oh God. I didn't think he'd actually — Mom invited him before we — I'm so sorry, I told her —"

"It's fine." I kept my voice level. "He's Eli's friend. It makes sense."

It wasn't fine. It wasn't even close to fine.

"Who is she?" I asked, because apparently I was committed to making this worse.

"I don't know. He RSVPed plus-one like two days ago. I should've warned you, but I thought maybe he wouldn't actually —"

"Willa." I touched her arm. "It's your week. This is not your problem."

She squeezed my wrist and disappeared back into the crowd, and I was alone at the bar with my wine and the slow, dawning certainty that every person in this room was about to watch me be the dumped sister at the happy sister's wedding.

It was already starting. I could feel the tilt — the specific social gravity of a small town recalibrating.

Mrs. Landry at the corner table, leaning toward her friend, glancing my way.

My cousin Theo catching my eye from across the room, his face too careful, too gentle, like I was something that needed to be handled.

My mother laughing a beat too loud with Tyler's date, performing isn't this nice, we're all adults so hard it was practically audible from the parking lot.

I took a sip of wine. Kept my shoulders back. Nobody was going to see me fall apart at this bar. I would chew through the wood first.

"He brought a date."

The voice came from beside me. Low, unhurried, not a question.

I turned. Beckett was leaning one elbow on the bar, a beer in his hand, watching the room the way he'd probably watch a job site — taking in everything, announcing nothing.

Up close, the situation was worse than my earlier assessment. He smelled like soap and something warm underneath it, cedar or sandalwood, and his eyes were this dark, steady green that I couldn't look at for longer than a second without losing my train of thought.

Which was a problem, because I needed my train of thought.

"He sure did," I said.

"You okay?"

"I'm fantastic."

His mouth moved. Not quite a smile. More like he'd heard everything I wasn't saying and decided to let me keep it.

"My mom's asked me twice tonight who I'm bringing to the reception," he said. "So."

Something about the delivery — completely flat, like he was reading a weather report about his own life — put a crack in the wall I was holding up. I almost laughed.

"At least your ex isn't here with someone who looks like she does Pilates for fun," I said.

"No." He took a sip of beer. "Mine's in Portland. Probably doing Pilates right now."

The laugh got out before I could catch it. Short and real and too loud for the conversation we were pretending to have. Beckett looked at me when I laughed — looked at my mouth, specifically, for a second that lasted a beat longer than it should have — and then his gaze came back up.

My skin flushed warm. Just like that. Just from being looked at.

I turned back toward the room. Tyler's date was laughing, her hand on his arm, easy and comfortable.

Aunt June was making her way toward me again with a plate of bruschetta and an expression of such open pity that I wanted to sink through the floor.

Theo had his camera up, capturing the room because of course he was already on duty.

And at the long table, one of Eli's aunts was whispering to my mother, both of them looking my way with that soft, unbearable tenderness people reserve for women whose lives are visibly falling apart.

The narrative was setting. I could feel it hardening in real time.

Poor Nora. Home alone. Putting on such a brave face while Tyler moves on.

And once it set, it would follow me through every event this week — every toast, every photo lineup, every family breakfast, every single moment of Willa's wedding where I was supposed to be the happy, functional older sister.

Beckett was still beside me. Solid and warm and close enough that I could feel heat radiating off his arm into the bare skin above my elbow.

I don't know exactly when the decision happened. It wasn't a decision. It was the absence of a better one — the fuse hitting zero and my body moving before my brain could file an objection.

I turned, put my hand flat on his chest, and kissed him.

His shirt was warm under my palm. His mouth was warm. He tasted like beer and something clean, and for one horrible, airless second he was absolutely still and I thought, Oh God, I have just made the worst decision of my life, and the competition for that title is genuinely steep —

Then his hand came up to my jaw.

Not grabbing. Not startled. Just there — steady and sure, his thumb settling against my cheekbone like he'd thought about where to put it. And he kissed me back.

Not politely. Not like a man doing somebody a favor at a party. He kissed me like he'd been thinking about it and I'd just given him a reason to stop thinking.