Chapter 5
brIGGS
“Fuck,” I groaned.
I knew it was going to happen. I knew I was going to have one hell of a hangover. I had downed a glass of water and had taken two ibuprofen before I passed out, but it wasn’t enough.
I wasn’t twenty-one anymore. I did not bounce back as quickly as I used to. And I knew that. I knew it and I did it anyway.
I dragged my ass out of bed with a great deal of effort. Despite the water before bed, I had serious cotton mouth. My usual hot shower was not an option. I needed cold. I needed to get my brain to wake up.
I dressed in a black suit with a gray shirt. Then did my hair. A few drops of Visine and it was as good as it was going to get.
When I walked into the kitchen, I grimaced when I saw the mess. It looked like a horde of raccoons had raided my kitchen. I remembered ordering pizza and then decided I wanted Chinese. The containers were scattered across the counters. My housekeeper had her work cut out for her today.
I left my penthouse and made my way to the parking garage with my sunglasses on. Even the dim light hurt my head.
At the office, I stepped out of the elevator, my head pounding like a kettle drum. I was already composing a mental list of what I needed to make it through the day. Darker sunglasses were definitely at the top of the list. Why the hell did I have to have an office with windows?
Coffee. I needed a gallon of coffee. More Advil.
“Jasmine,” I called out. My assistant usually greeted me at the elevator. I knew she was around somewhere. “Jasmine.”
Ow. Too loud.
I made my way to my office. She would show up soon enough.
I opened my office door and froze. I’d like to think I was still drunk and hallucinating, but my headache was a stark reminder of how sober I was.
All three of my brothers were sitting in my office.
Adrian was in the chair across from my desk. Sebastian was on the small sofa along the wall, forearms on his knees. Dash was in my desk chair spinning it slowly back and forth like a bored child.
“Get out of my chair,” I said.
Dash stood up, but slowly, as if it was his choice. I sat down. The leather was familiar. Lucky for him, he didn’t fuck with my lumbar position or height. I hated when people fucked with my chair.
I opened my desk drawer, found the bottle of aspirin I kept there, and took two without water.
“You look fresh as a daisy,” Sebastian said with a smile.
“Thank you,” I growled.
Jasmine appeared, took one look at me and grimaced. “Coffee?”
“Yes. And water. And orange juice.”
“For you guys?” she asked my brothers.
They all declined. She rushed away, leaving me with my brothers’ scrutiny.
“Say whatever you’re here to say,” I said.
“Cleo and Callum came to see the baby this morning,” Adrian said.
“I assumed.”
“They told me what happened,” he said.
“I assumed that too.”
Kudos to my cousins for getting up at the crack of dawn to tattle on me.
Adrian went quiet. Sebastian and Dash were smart enough to keep their mouths shut. It was always like this between us. Adrian and I were the serious ones. We handled the boring business stuff. Dash and Sebastian were the playboys who took nothing serious.
But apparently they were serious now. That was not a good sign.
“You lost Mandy Carter,” Adrian said.
“I asked her a question.”
“You lost Mandy Carter.” He said it again with the patience of someone who wanted to make sure the full weight of each word landed right where it was supposed to—square on my shoulders. “Do you have any idea how long it took me to convince her to come to the table?”
I did not, in fact, have any idea. That was the crux of the problem and we all knew it. There was nothing in the paperwork that made her out to be the Goddess of Weddings. Goddess, sure, but I didn’t see what they saw.
“She has her own business,” Adrian continued.
“It’s thriving. She doesn’t need us. She was doing fine before we started talking to her and the cousins.
And she’ll do fine after. She was hesitant about the Blackwell side of things from the beginning.
She knows Cleo, she trusts Cleo, but taking on a corporate partner was a different conversation entirely.
It took months of back and forth before she agreed to come in.
” He paused. “She took time out of a schedule that is, apparently, booked further in advance than most people plan their lives. She flew across the country even though she is supposed to be on a job. Mandy walked into that conference room in good faith. And you made her explain herself before she’d had a sip of coffee. ”
Sebastian winced sympathetically, which I didn’t need.
“I expect that kind of thing from those two,” Adrian said, with a brief gesture toward Sebastian and Dash.
“Excuse me?” Sebastian sat up straighter.
Dash just nodded. “Fair.”
“But not from you, Briggs. You’re the one who prepares. You’re the one who knows the room before he walks into it. That’s not a small thing—it’s most of why you’re good at what you do. So what happened?”
The honest answer was that I’d been handed a meeting with very little notice. I had reviewed the documents and not the people in them. And I walked in with an assumption someone else was hoping to ride the Blackwells’ coattails.
My head pounded. Thankfully, Jasmine returned with all the fluids I requested. She hurried out before the tension in the room smothered her.
I sipped the coffee first. I needed caffeine for this. “All of that information would have been useful to have before the meeting,” I said. “A footnote. A casual mention of who she was. It’s like you set me up.”
“You knew there was a third partner,” Adrian said with patience I’d never seen him use before.
I looked at him. There were dark circles under his eyes and he looked just a little disheveled. Good to see fatherhood was treating him well.
“I knew there was a wedding planner attached to the deal. I didn’t know who she was, what her profile was, or that you had spent months convincing her to be there.” I kept my voice level. “A two-paragraph email, Adrian. That’s all it would have taken.”
“You’re right,” he said, which surprised me. “I should have briefed you properly. I dropped the ball. But no one told you to question her value.”
“Just for the record, that so-called question was not a question,” Dash said. “I was there. You gave her a live grenade and she pulled the pin and stared you down. Wildcat. My kind of girl.”
“It was one question,” I insisted while glaring at him.
“She put you in your place.” Dash grinned. “You should have seen it.”
“Really?” Sebastian asked, leaning forward and finally paying attention. “The first time I met my Little Bee, she put me in my place and you laughed. Remember that, Briggs?”
I put my fingers to the bridge of my nose.
I did remember. That’s how karma worked.
It came back and bit you in the ass. “Fine. I mishandled it. I’ll own that.
What I’d like to do now is focus on how we fix it rather than continuing to discuss how badly it went, because I’m already aware of how badly it went. That doesn’t make it better.”
Adrian leaned forward. “Let me tell you who she is.”
“Trust me, she told me who she is.”
What followed was a five-minute education I should have given myself the day before.
Mandy Carter, twenty-five, had stumbled into wedding planning through a viral moment that had turned into a business.
She’d built it up and now had a clientele list that resembled our Christmas Card list. She was known for a personal style that had started influencing the industry beyond just the events she ran.
She was the most talked-about person in her field right now, according to Adrian.
“She’s the queen of what we’re trying to break into,” Adrian said. “And you insulted her in the first sixty seconds.”
“What’s the move?” I asked with resignation.
“You apologize,” Adrian said.
“Great. I’ll send a fruit basket.”
“You’ll go to her hotel,” he said. “Right now. She’s flying out this afternoon for a wedding in Las Vegas tomorrow.
If you don’t catch her before she leaves, we lose the window and probably the deal.
” He slid a piece of paper across my desk.
Hotel name, room number. “Go. And don’t take a fucking fruit basket. ”
“Chocolate?”
Sebastian laughed. “Sounds like you’re more in the territory of Lamborghinis.”
“I’ll apologize,” I said with a sigh. “After coffee.”
“Take a cab,” Dash said. “You shouldn’t drive looking like that.”
“I wasn’t going to drive.”
“Also maybe—” Sebastian gestured vaguely at my general presentation.
“I’m aware.”
“I could call that IV place,” Dash said.
“How much did you drink?” Sebastian asked. “You seriously look green around the gills.”
“Fuck off.”
“You used to be able to drink us all under the table,” Dash said, with what sounded like genuine nostalgia. “You’d go out after finals and come back three days later looking like a Viking returning from a successful raid. You’re a lightweight now.”
“I have a demanding job.”
“We all have demanding jobs,” Adrian said.
“Are we done? I need to hydrate before my walk of shame.”
Adrian got to his feet. “This is serious, Briggs. This deal expands our empire. It’s the first of its kind. We’re doing lifestyle and fashion. Not basic bitch stuff. This is going to be huge and it only works with her.”
“I heard you.” I took a deep breath before I lost my composure.
“Good. I’m going to go home, hold my son, and stare at my beautiful wife.”
I nodded. “Enjoy. Now can I please get five minutes to get my shit together?”
My brothers left me alone. I spent the next fifteen minutes downing the coffee. Then the water followed by the juice. I was still thirsty, but the cobwebs were clearing. I could almost think straight.
Jasmine brought me another round of drinks for the cab ride to the hotel that was thankfully only a few blocks away.
It was summer in midtown, which always made the smells just a little extra.
Extra gross. I sat in the back, closed my eyes, and drank the rest of my water.
I tried to construct an apology that would accomplish what I needed it to accomplish without costing myself any more dignity.
I was sorry. That was genuine. I had gone into a meeting underprepared and handled it badly. A business arrangement that should have been straightforward had fallen apart because of assumptions I shouldn’t have made. That was it. It really wasn’t a personal attack.
Now, I just had to make her see it that way. I had a feeling that was going to be a lot easier said than actually done.
The cab stopped in front of the hotel, one of the better ones in the city. I got out, went through the lobby, and braced myself on the elevator ride up. I made my way to her room, stood in front of the door for a few seconds, and rehearsed what I would say.
Then, I knocked.
When the door opened, all the words that had been carefully arranged into a brief speech were thrown into the air and scattered eighteen different ways.
She was in a fluffy hotel bathrobe tied at the waist. Her hair was damp and pushed back from her face, dark against her neck, and her cheeks were flushed pink from what I assumed was a recent shower.
She was looking at me with an expression of pure bewilderment, like she’d been expecting anyone in the world except the person she’d found.
And now I was the one speechless.