Chapter 11
DREW
“It looks good,” Kensey said. “You’ve done that loop four times. The bar is still in the same place it was the last time you looked.”
“I want to make sure it looks good,” I said.
“It does. Why don’t we have a little drink to settle your nerves?”
She was right, of course. She put her hand on my forearm. “It looks incredible,” she said. “You know I wouldn’t bullshit you.”
“We did this.”
She shook her head once. “You did this. I made a spreadsheet and helped pick the crab cakes. This is yours.”
I looked around the room. Yeah, okay. Maybe I did do this.
“Go enjoy yourself,” I told her. “You don’t have to work tonight. You’re a guest.”
“I can do both,” she said with a small smile and disappeared toward the patio.
I watched her go and decided to send Annika the biggest fruit basket ever. That dress was fucking amazing. Gone was the lanky girl from school. She was all woman. I had no business looking at her the way I was. She was my friend.
The room was buzzing with the servers making their rounds. People sipped champagne or ordered drinks from the open bar. And the bar was doing serious business.
The crostini were going fast, which I’d predicted.
I made a mental note to tell Kensey she’d been right about ordering extra.
The food was a hit. I spotted Kensey a few times.
I wasn’t the only man in the room that had noticed her.
She was hard to ignore. It pissed me off in a way.
I was jealous of people looking at my friend.
I worked the room. Shook hands. Thanked people for coming.
Talked to a few of the buyers who’d flown in from New York and Chicago.
Two editors from fashion publications that Cleo’s team had invited.
A woman who ran a boutique in San Francisco and wanted to expand the relationship.
I said all the right things. I schmoozed.
About thirty minutes in, the DJ turned the music down a touch. Not all the way, just enough to signal something was happening. A spotlight hit the entrance.
The room shifted. Heads turned. Just like we planned.
They came in together, which was the only way they ever did anything. My cousins were used to making an entrance. It was one of the things they were famous for. They showed up to events dressed to kill.
Adrian Blackwell walked in first, which made sense because he was the oldest and basically the boss.
He ran Blackwell Couture as the CEO. He didn’t get ruffled.
He was the guy that kept shit running after his father died.
The whole family had been worried about him with how hard he was working. But then he met his wife, Elizabeth.
She was beside him, her hand in the crook of his arm.
She was sharp and kind at the same time.
I knew enough of their story to know it hadn’t been simple.
Adrian had a talent for making things complicated when they didn’t need to be and Elizabeth apparently had the patience of a saint and the backbone of a prizefighter. The combination had worked out.
Behind them came Sebastian. He was the creative force in the New York operation, the one who could put together a promo campaign or a fashion shoot.
The Blackwell Summer events had been his idea to promote the store.
As a former model himself, he knew how to show off the clothes and all the things that made Blackwell a trendsetter.
He’d taken a bit of a step back from being the face of the company after meeting his wife, Bernadette.
She was on his arm, laughing at something.
She was normally the uptight one compared to Sebastian’s wild side.
For them, opposites had definitely attracted.
It had apparently been a revelation for everyone involved, including him.
Their story was one of those ones that sounded unlikely, but when you watched them in a room together, you knew. You saw it.
Briggs came next with Mandy beside him. Mandy was Cleo’s best friend and one of the people most responsible for the Blackwell Wedding line. She, Cleo, and Callum had built the wedding company together.
Briggs was the quietest of the New York cousins, but his looming physical presence did most of the speaking for him.
He was the legal mind, protecting the family business from any and all legal threats.
So it was a shock when the straightlaced Briggs got hammered in Vegas and married Mandy.
Somehow, they had made it work and she had softened some of his harder edges.
And then came Dash, who was always last and always made it look intentional.
He was the youngest of the four New York Blackwells and the most likely to be somewhere he wasn’t supposed to be.
The wild child. His wife, Krista, was beside him.
She was an absolute badass, looking like she could kick my ass and everyone else at the party.
All eight of them stood in the entrance for a moment. Of course, they were all dressed in couture, and of course, they looked like walking billboards.
I waited until they had made enough of an entrance before I approached.
“Drew.” Adrian shook my hand, patting my upper arm. “This is excellent. Seriously.”
“Thank you for coming,” I said. “Everyone gets excited when you all show up.”
“We weren’t missing this.” Adrian stepped back and looked around the room. I watched him do the assessment. “You’ve got the right crowd.”
I nodded. “We’ll see how the models land.”
“They’ll land,” he said. “You’ve been doing such a good job with the store. Really making the family look good.”
Sebastian appeared at my shoulder. “Genuinely impressive,” he said. “The lighting is good. Soft. Good job.”
Briggs shook my hand and said, “The numbers are going to be good tonight.”
Dash appeared last. “Cousin,” he said. “You did well.”
“High praise,” I said.
“I mean it. This is legitimately impressive.” He looked around. “I had my doubts.”
“Well, I’m glad I exceeded your expectations,” I told him, chuckling.
Callum and Victoria came in about ten minutes later, without a spotlight but with the kind of entrance that didn’t require one. He found me near the bar, looked around the room, and looked at me.
“Not too shabby, little brother,” he said.
“I had good help.”
“You always had the instincts,” he said. “You just needed something worth pointing them at.” He took a sip of his drink. “This is worth it. I knew you were the right man for the job.”
Victoria appeared beside him with her hand on his arm and her eyes bright. “Drew, this is incredible. It’s so beautiful.” She stopped and pressed her hand to her chest. “The whole thing. I’m so happy for you.”
Victoria’s sincerity was refreshing. She came from our world, but she walked away from the wealth to do something that mattered. Now she was back in the world of the rich and powerful, but she was grounded. And she was helping Callum see how good it felt to help people.
“Thank you,” I said. “I couldn’t have done it without Kensey.”
“Ah, the infamous Kensey,” Victoria said. “I want to meet her.”
“She’s around somewhere.” I glanced across the crowd and found her without trying to, near the patio doors, talking to one of the buyers from Chicago. She was laughing at something the woman had said. She didn’t know shit about fashion, but she was doing a damn good job working the crowd.
“Oh, that’s her,” Victoria said.
I looked back at her. “What?”
“Oh, buddy.” She laughed. “If you could see the way you look at her.”
“What?” I said with confusion.
“Yep,” Callum agreed. “That’s not how you used to look at her.”
I rolled my eyes. “Guys, stop.”
“Did you talk to her about how you felt?” Callum asked. “I know it’s been a couple years since she’s been back in California. This might be your best chance before she leaves again.”
“There’s nothing to talk about,” I said with an annoyed growl. “She’s my friend. We’re enjoying the night. We’re both making up for lost proms.”
“What does that mean?” Victoria asked.
“She got stood up by her prom date and I spent my night with my prom date puking in the back of the limo, so tonight is us making up for shitty dates.”
Callum laughed. “I forgot about that.”
Victoria ignored the puking part. “Ah, that’s so sweet. I love it.”
Kensey made her way over from the patio doors a few minutes later. I watched her navigate the crowd with an ease that surprised me. She didn’t think she belonged but she was owning the room like this was her beach club.
She spotted Callum and her whole face changed.
“Callum Blackwell,” she said.
He stepped forward and pulled her into a hug.
“Kensey Blake.” He held her at arm’s length and looked at her. “It’s been too long.”
“Way too long.” She shook her head. “Look at you. Still insufferably handsome.”
“I try.” He smiled and stepped aside. “This is Victoria, the love of my life.”
Victoria didn’t do the polished, measured greeting you might expect. She just stepped forward and pulled Kensey into a hug like they were already friends. Kensey looked briefly startled and then laughed and hugged her back.
“I’ve been wanting to meet you,” Victoria said, pulling back. “Drew talks about you constantly.”
“He does not,” I said quickly.
“He absolutely does,” Victoria said, without even looking at me. She looped her arm through Kensey’s. “Come get a drink with me. I want to hear stories.”
Kensey gave me a look that said she wasn’t entirely sure what she was walking into, and then Victoria was steering her toward the bar.
They were already talking and laughing like they’d been friends for years.
I watched them go. Victoria said something and Kensey threw her head back and laughed, one hand going to Victoria’s arm.
“Well,” Callum said, from beside me. “She grew up.”
“Yeah,” I said.
“I forgot how much I liked her.”
I nodded. “She’s great.”
“Yep. What’s going on there?”
“Nothing.” I took a sip of my drink. “She’s helping me through the event. She’s here for the summer. We’re having a good time.”
“Weird, because that’s almost exactly what you said a couple of weeks ago and then I see it with my own two eyes and I know you’re full of shit.”
“Nothing is going on,” I said. “She’s my best friend. I’m not going to blow that up.”
“Who said anything about blowing anything up?”
“It’s what would happen.” I turned the glass in my hand. “You know how I am. And that’s fine when it’s someone I’ve been dating for a few months. It’s not fine when it’s Kensey.”
“You’re pretty clearly not indifferent to her,” Callum said.
“I didn’t say I was indifferent.”
“Then what are you saying?”
“I’m saying I value what we have more than I value the idea of having something more.” I exhaled. “She’s the most important person in my life who isn’t family. Maybe including family. I’m not going to gamble that on a feeling.”
Callum looked out toward the patio. “You should talk to her.”
“There’s nothing to say.”
“There’s obviously plenty to say. You’ve just decided not to say it.”
I didn’t argue with that.
“I see a guy who watches a woman move through a room the way you’ve been watching her all night and tells himself it doesn’t mean anything.
” He turned to look at me. “And I see a woman who came three thousand miles and took a job she didn’t need because she wanted to be near you, who also seems to be telling herself it doesn’t mean anything.
” He let that sit for a second. “One of you is going to have to be brave at some point.”
“Or we both keep our mouths shut and stay friends forever and nobody gets hurt.”
“That’s one option.”
“It’s the smart one.”
“It’s the safe one,” he said. “But here’s the other thing I want you to think about. She goes back to New Jersey at the end of the summer.”
“Exactly,” I said, feeling the ache of her absence before she’d even gone. “Even if I wanted something between us, which I don’t, she’s still leaving and that’s that.”