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A second bride had also fired her today. And social media had embraced the new, viral hashtag #weddingkillerpiper. And then last night's fiasco…
And now, a third bride, the biggest client her firm had ever acquired, had left Piper three voicemails today, demanding that Piper call her back. She wasn't going to do that until she figured things out, since bride #3, April Hunsaker, was definitely going to fire her.
April was her last chance. If April fired her, Piper's career would be over.
Everything she'd worked for…destroyed.
Which meant she had to figure out how to regain April's trust tonight.
As in, within the next few hours.
Tomorrow, it would be too late.
Game over.
Piper had twelve hours left to fix the unfixable. Hence the need for a miracle.
She'd find a way, but right now, she had no idea what that path was. She was worried that there wasn't an out, and that scared her more than she wanted to admit.
"Wedding planner?" Declan looked amused. "That job title brings fear into every man's heart."
"What? Why? I make dreams come true. And very well, I might add." Well, except for the string of bad luck over the last ten months…beginning with her own. But that wasn't bad luck so much as a nightmare of her own creating. Either way, same result, though.
"The bride's dreams, maybe, but that poor groom?" Declan chuckled. "Now he's got two women to complicate his life. All he wants is to get married, and now he has to deal with things like tablecloths, seating charts, and table centerpieces."
Piper rolled her eyes. "That's so unromantic! Just wait until you fall in love. You'll realize that your greatest joy is seeing your bride's face light up as her dream day comes to life."
His amusement faded, and his jaw got hard. "No chance. No wedding in my future."
It was her turn to be curious. His reaction had been intense and unyielding, far beyond a typical marriage-averse manly-man reaction. "Really? Why not?"
Something flashed across Declan's face, an emotion so raw and ragged that she sucked in her breath. "Because it's not." He turned away, picked up his construction assault weapon, and slammed it into the wall of her shower again.
Piper didn't move for a moment, stunned by the expression she'd seen on his face. Declan was always so reserved, so controlled, so grumpy, but that had been pure, raw emotion raking across his face for that brief second.
Declan had secrets, she realized. Secrets that would probably rip him to shreds if he let them out.
Wow. Just…wow. She'd had no idea that her reserved, solitary landlord was a boiling cauldron of secrets.
He looked over his shoulder at her. "You're down to fifty-eight minutes."
"Right. I'm going." She grabbed the rest of her toiletries and bolted.
Declan had just gone from annoyingly attractive on a physical level to maddeningly intriguing on a human level.
Which didn't fit into her life.
At all.
Piper was standing on the ruins of a promise she'd made to her mother before she'd passed away. If she failed to fix things in the next twelve hours, the dream she and her mom had created together would be shattered.
She needed miracles right now, not mistakes.
And Declan would be a mistake.
A huge, irrecoverable mistake.
Which meant she was keeping her distance from him.
