AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Piper raised her brows. "You're such an oxymoron. A sweaty carpenter who works magic with his power tools, and yet also, country club wealthy."
"My family's rich. I live on a cop's salary."
"Except when you don't. Like the watches. Like your gorgeous house."
He shrugged. "Both my watches were gifts. I would never buy them. The house was a dump that I bought for nothing. I rehabbed the whole thing myself over the last three years."
Her eyes widened. "You really did that yourself?"
"Every last bit."
"It's breathtaking."
Satisfaction flooded him, and he grinned. "Thanks."
"You seriously have a gift. You could sell your house for a huge profit."
"I don’t need money. I just want my house." He didn't want to keep going on this subject. It felt too prickly to him. "What's the plan tonight? The objective? Our target?"
Piper nodded and took his cue to change the subject. "Her name is April Hunsaker. She hired the firm I'm temping for to do her wedding, but I think she's trying to fire me, and the firm." Piper paused, and he could feel her hesitation.
He sat down at her kitchen counter. "Give me the facts. I'm a cop. That's how my brain operates. What happened with your reputation?"
She grimaced. "It's kind of a long story."
"Tell me what I need to know to do my job well tonight." As acop, he was well-accustomed to focusing on the relevant facts and not wasting brainpower on the details that were just clutter.
"Okay." Piper paced across the kitchen and picked up Kitty's glass to wash it. "Last summer, I was the assistant planner for a wedding for a high-profile couple. His brother was interested in me." She put the glass under the faucet and turned it on. "It's against protocol for a wedding planner to date a client, but he was kind of relentless and we wound up dating."
A flicker of jealousy jabbed Declan's gut. "What happened?"
"It went fast." Piper rushed her words. "We got engaged. My firm agreed to let me keep my job as long as I hired them for the wedding, so I did. Eight hundred guests. He paid for it because I don't have the money for that kind of event. Bride and groom at the altar, mid-ceremony." She grimaced. "And then I left."
He leaned forward, warnings prickling at the back of his neck. "Youleft?As in you walked away right in the middle of your wedding?"
"Yep. In front of everyone, at one of the biggest social events of the season. I actually ran, because I didn't want to give anyone, especially him, a chance to stop me. I ran out the side entrance, grabbed our limo, and took off."
Damn. She was a runaway bride? "That takes guts. I'm impressed." And what the hell had happened to make her walk away in the middle of her wedding? Piper was smart and capable. What could be so bad as to make her walk away? Did he need to hunt this guy down?
She flashed him a grin. "Thanks. It wasn't great PR for the firm or for me, as you can imagine."
He nodded. "What happened after that?"
"I was fired and unemployable. Finally, a few months ago, a woman I knew from there, who had opened her own company, had an extended family emergency in California. She hired me as a temp to cover for her. She's the only one who would touch me, and basically told me not to screw up."
He leaned in. "What happened?"
She sighed. "Over the last few months, five weddings I was in charge of have had issues. Three were couples who got married and are now filing for divorce. Another bride walked out on her wedding last weekend after finding the groom cheating. She said she was inspired by what I'd done at my wedding, and then yesterday…" she sighed. "Five minutes before the ceremony, the bride pulled me aside and said she didn't want to get married. She asked me to tell the groom and cover for her."
Hell. He could imagine the stakes for Piper to make that wedding happen. "You didn't try to talk her out of it?"
"No." She sighed. "What if I talked her out of it, and she regretted it? My mom—" She paused.
Her mom? What about her mom? Piper had more and more secrets, and he wanted to know all of them. "What about your mom?"
"Nothing. But I couldn't ever try to talk anyone into getting married. I said fine, but when I told the groom and his mother, they, well, they were angry. Things spiraled fast, and now I'm the Wedding Killer."
He almost had to laugh at the absurdity of calling Piper the killer of anything. "No shit?"
