Page 7 of Love and Loathing

The room was darkly lit by chandeliers overhead, and it took a second for her eyes to adjust. She could tell the room was huge and peaceful compared to the chaos in the foyer and the greenhouse. She took a deep breath to ease her nerves. This wedding was so much bigger than she’d imagined, so much bigger than she could’ve hoped to imagine.

She lifted her handheld camera and turned it on. As soon as the room came into view, she hit record, and the very next moment, a silhouette moved into frame. Her camera immediately started to adjust until the image was clear.

“What are you doing?”

Jessie stared at the face on her camera. A man with a tensed, pulsing, chiseled jaw and dark brown brows furrowing over steel-blue eyes glared at her through the monitor. Her breath hitched. He advanced toward her until he filled the space on her screen and made her step back in retreat. She yanked her eyes off her camera, pulling the small device to her chest as she glanced up.

The man now stood directly in front of her and pointed at her camera. “Are you kidding me?” he asked. “A wedding is not an appropriate place for this.”

She glanced around, now that the room was clear, at the large venue with a couple dozen table-sized bouquets, overhead sparkling lights, white candles of multiple shapes and sizes on tables covered in the finest China she’d ever seen, and a dance floor made of cut white marble. It was stunning, a wedding priced well over two hundred grand, or so she’d been told.

A lock of her dark, ash-brown hair fell out of her carefully coiffed chignon as she faced him again. “Filming?” she squeaked, and she sort of hated herself for it, but she was taken off guard, and this guy was freakishly good-looking.

He placed his hands on his hips and looked down as though he were exasperated.

“I’m sorry,” she started, “I don’t know what you’re—”

“You should be sorry,” he said.

She blinked. What was going on here?

“Okay, fine,” he said. “What do we have to do to get this over with? Want a selfie with me? A hug? A kiss?”

“Excuse me?” Her irritation rose like the tide. Just who on God’s green earth did this guy think he was? “I don’t even—”

“Who are you with?” he asked.

She frowned. “I don’t think—”

“Let me guess, the groom?” He played with one of his silver cuff links.

She nodded, for some reason. Technically, she was with the groom. She’d been hired by his father, Phillip Hayes Senior.

“No one on Hannah’s side of the family would dare show up in a sundress for her wedding.”

Her jaw dropped. This was her best dress! Well, technically it was Caroline’s dress. Jessie had been dying to wear it for months. It was a light blue, tied at the waist, and flowed lightly around her knees, plus it was a good color for her.

“Let’s get this over with,” he practically growled in a deep timbre. He stepped next to her and flung a large, muscular arm around her shoulder.

She shrugged it off and stepped into a table, making the glasses of iced water that’d been laid out with the white and silver china slosh over the sides. She eyed the spills nervously, hoping it’d dry before the wedding party made its way in for dinner, then turned her glare on the stranger. “Just who do you think you are?” she demanded.

He furrowed his brow.

“You don’t just walk up to a woman all grouchy, yell at her, insult her clothes, and offer to kiss her—” No matter how gorgeous you were. It just wasn’t done in polite society! “No, I don’t want a selfie, I don’t want a hug, and I don’t want a kiss!”

He held up a hand, and his blue gaze, which she now realized matched her dress, narrowed in on her in a way that sent tingles up her spine. “Now, wait a minute. You were filming me. At my friend’s wedding, no less.”

“Of course I was, it’s my—”

He cut her off … again. Did his ego know no bounds? “Just take your picture and get out of here. I don’t want to see you again.”

She sucked in a gasp. He’d just dismissed her, the cretin! He’d approached her! “Oh, you want to get it over with,” she seethed. “Fine. How’s this?” She grabbed a glass of water off the table and chucked it in his face. “How’s that, you creepy … weirdo?” Okay, not one of her best insults, but she was flustered.

He yelped as the water hit him. An ice cube or two slipped past his collar of his suit coat, and he frantically tugged at his button-down shirt.

She only had a moment to enjoy the look of utter shock on his face before she turned and fled as cool water dripped over his sharp features and as he yanked his shirt up, exposing rock-hard abs to dislodge the ice. If this was what every high-society wedding was going to be like, she’d never do one again!

Chapter 4

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