Teddi stood slowly, head down, her focus seemingly on the puddle of coffee and pieces of mug scattered across her hardwood floor. “I’m fine. I’m sorry. Clumsy. I’ll just…” She pointed over her shoulder, blinked several times, never meeting Leah’s eyes, then turned on her heel. “Preston, set up the next appointment, would you?” In the next three seconds, she had disappeared into the back.
A full five seconds of silence passed before Kelly and Leah exchanged looks. “Um, is she okay?” Leah asked Preston, whose head was turned toward Teddi’s exit.
“Uh, yeah. I’m sure she’s fine.” He turned back around. Uncomfortable. It was the only way to describe him. “Let’s get your next appointment on the schedule.”
Ten minutes later, Leah and Kelly stood at Kelly’s car, almost mirroring the first time they left Hopeless Romantic. It had been a beautifully crisp fall day, but now the crisp had kicked up and the beautiful had pulled back. Leah put her hands in the pockets of her long coat.
“That was so weird,” Kelly said, pulling open her car door and slipping inside.
“Right?” Such a strange reaction to a broken mug. Leah looked back at the storefront. “Do you think she cut herself?”
“Or she’s allergic to divorce attorneys.” Kelly chuckled and started the car. As if sensing Leah’s confusion, Kelly said, “That’s when she dropped the mug. When you said you were a divorce attorney.” With a snorted laugh, she asked, “You didn’t handle her divorce or something, did you?”
Leah blinked at her.
Kelly’s smile faltered, no longer lighthearted. “You didn’t, did you?”
“I…” Leah wrinkled her nose and shrugged. “Is she divorced? I mean, I guess it’s not out of the realm of possibility.”
“Oh, great.” Kelly let her forehead fall against the steering wheel, then immediately lifted it up again. “Well, we’ve paid a deposit and she’s the best in the business, so let’s hope, if you did, we can all just remain professional.”
“Yeah. Okay.”
“She got me, Leah.” Pleading her case. Thrilled and happy. Excited anticipation. Leah loved seeing these things on her sister’s face, hearing them in her voice. “She got everything I mentioned. I felt so comfortable with her.”
“I know.”
“I don’t want to unhire her. She’s exactly what I want.”
“Then we won’t.” Leah swallowed the twinge she felt at that last line. “We’ll work it out. Don’t worry.” Words she’d said to Kelly their entire lives, and she’d always made it so, no matter how much of a pretzel she’d had to twist herself into. She always worked it out. For Kelly.
Kelly held her gaze for a beat. “Okay. I love you.”
“Love you, too.” Leah slammed Kelly’s door and watched her pull away. One last glance at Hopeless Romantic. No Teddi standing in the window. “Well, that’s a damn shame,” she muttered, waiting an extra moment or two, just in case. Then she turned away and headed toward her car.
She had information to find.
Chapter Four
“So, I had to do some searching, but I finally found her.” Leah sighed, stabbed a hunk of salmon with her fork. “Theodora Baker. I represented her ex, Julia Bingham, in their divorce.”
“And who got the better settlement?” JoJo Gonzales asked, then took a sip of her iced tea. Her almost-black hair was in a French twist, and she wore her navy blue suit with what she called her power-red silk blouse underneath, as she’d had court that morning.
Leah cocked her head and arched an eyebrow. “Seriously?”
“I can’t believe you actually asked her that,” Tilly said, feigning insult. Her short white-blond hair was a little spiky on top but tamer than it often was, and she tucked a bit over an ear.
Nearly twenty years. Was that right? Leah did the math in her head. Holy shit, it is. She’d known Tilly and JoJo since they’d been thrown together in a suite in law school. They’d been lucky enough to hit it off—not all their classmates had—and they’d been a trio of besties ever since. They called each other almost daily and made an honest effort to have lunch, dinner, drinks, or all three at least once a week. It didn’t always happen, but they tried.
Back to the subject at hand, Leah said, “It wasn’t a difficult case, really. Together for eleven years, married for almost seven. My client kept the household running financially while her wife got her business up and running. Once it became a success, my client quit her job to study…ceramics and pottery, I think it was? Met someone, fell in love, asked for a divorce. They fought over the property division—Teddi said she’d been paying all the bills for years and it wasn’t fair.”
“But it was,” JoJo surmised.
“I mean, yeah. But”—she grimaced, stabbed some more salmon—“I did some research, and Teddi had to close up two of her three locations so she could cover the settlement.”
“Ugh, that sucks.” JoJo shook her head.
“Nature of the beast,” was Tilly’s comment. Emotion had no place in law. That’s what she always said. “Who’d she have?”
“Dennison.”
Tandem groans came from both friends.
“No wonder,” Tilly scoffed. Tilly hated Tim Dennison, thought he was a hack who took shortcuts so he could make the most money for the least amount of work. She wasn’t wrong. “Guys like him are the reason there are lawyer jokes.”
“I hate the idea of Teddi being repped by that dick.” Leah shook her head, her appetite dwindling a bit.
“So much for feeling it, huh?” Tilly asked, making air quotes.
“Wait. Feeling what?” JoJo looked from one to the other. “Am I out of the loop? Again?”
“You are,” Tilly said. “Loopless, as usual.”
JoJo snorted. “Listen, loops are hard. Talk to me when you guys have two kids, a mother-in-law moving in, and a husband who has no idea how the dishwasher or the washer and dryer work. Now, fill me in.”
“It seems that not only is this Ms. Baker the only wedding planner in the world for Kelly, but she had some serious chemistry going on with our friend Leah here.”
JoJo’s big brown eyes got even bigger as she did an exaggerated turn of her head toward Leah. “Oh, really?” She drew out the last word comically.
“Well, it’s all shot to hell now, so it doesn’t matter.” Leah tried not to sound as disappointed as she felt. Potential. That’s what she’d allowed herself to feel around Teddi. Possibility. Hadn’t lasted long.
“Yeah, her dropping her coffee on the floor when she heard you were a divorce attorney is a pretty big clue.” Tilly wiped her mouth with her napkin, then gestured to the waiter across the room that they were ready for their check. “Do you think she’d been trying to place you?”
“Maybe my name. We never met in person. Everything was handled outside of court.”
“Fucking Dennison,” Tilly muttered.
“What did you do last night when you figured it out?” JoJo, too, finished her lunch and tucked her napkin alongside her plate.
“I watched Notting Hill.” Leah shrugged like that made perfect sense. Which it did, to her.
“I’m standing here in front of this boy—”
Tilly didn’t get any further before Leah cut her off with an upheld hand. “No. Absolutely not. You do not get to butcher one of my favorite films by getting the lines wrong. Just stop.”
JoJo tsked, shaking her head in dismay. “Oh, Matilda. You’ll never learn.”
“Ms. Joellen Gonzales, would you care to correct Ms. Scarsdale?”
“I would love nothing more, Ms. Scott.” JoJo made a show of turning to face Tilly and cleared her throat. Hand pressed to her heart in a display of the utmost sincerity, she recited, complete with the proper pleading emotion, the actual line from the movie perfectly, even adding in the correct pauses and inflection.
“Bravo,” Leah said, clapping.
“Thank you.” JoJo took a bow from her seat. “Thank you very much.”
“Only one
of the best romantic lines of all time, Tilly,” Leah said.
“Agreed.” JoJo nodded.
“Ugh. Sap. That’s all it is.” JoJo and Leah gasped in unison, and Tilly laughed and shook her head. “You two. It’s a good thing I love you both.”
“It is,” Leah said while JoJo nodded.
It was an age-old disagreement the three of them had, and at this point in their friendship, they used it for laughs. Tilly was a horror movie fan. JoJo liked a wide variety of movies. And Leah watched every romance she could get her hands on—she had, ever since she was old enough to know what a romance was. Her library was extensive and included a few classics, several from when she was a kid, and many current films. At first Tilly had made fun of her and JoJo had piled on, but after their friendship deepened they began to understand what those movies were to Leah. When they’d finally begun to understand that, despite having a front row seat to the bitter divorce of her parents, despite her career choice, Leah actually believed in happily ever after, craved her very own with everything in her heart, they eased up on her.
The waiter dropped off the check, which Tilly scooped up almost before Leah’d even registered its arrival. “My turn this week.”
“So what are you going to do?” JoJo asked, her gaze on Leah. “About Kelly?”
Leah shrugged. “She wants Teddi as her wedding planner. She did her due diligence. She met with three others. She says Teddi gets her.”
“Are you worried it’ll be awkward?” JoJo clenched her teeth, made a face.
“All I can do is hope we can maintain a professionalism for Kelly’s sake. You know?”
“Leah did her job. It wasn’t personal.” Tilly. Matter-of-fact.
All Leah could do was nod. Tilly was right. She’d done her job and she’d done it well. But she was pretty sure Teddi Baker didn’t look at it that way.
* * *
While June was still the most popular month for weddings, September and October had moved up the ranks. Hopeless Romantic was busy, something Teddi never took for granted. Any time she felt like complaining that the schedule was too hectic, she made herself remember how hard she’d worked to come back from the verge of bankruptcy, thanks to Julia and her lawyer, Leah Scott.
She’d gone through her filing cabinet the previous night, looked up her divorce papers, found Leah’s name on them, confirming what she already knew in her heart. Her intention had been to give herself the evening to be angry. Leah Scott was the one who’d gotten Julia such a ridiculous settlement. Leah Scott was the reason Teddi had had no choice but to close not one but two of her three locations in order to pay Julia what she wanted—what she deserved, if you read the documents. Teddi was bitter. Absolutely, she was. Who wouldn’t be in her situation? So she’d gone home right after her meeting with the Scott sisters, Oxy-cleaned the hell out of the coffee stain in her favorite dress—another thing she’d likely lose, thanks to Leah Scott—and stomped around her house in the foulest of moods.
Yeah, still pissed. That was her first thought when she opened her eyes the next morning, so she’d allowed herself another day to just be mad. Preston had watched her stomp around the shop, speak rather curtly to her vendors, rip open her mail with more force than necessary. Smartly, he’d given her a wide berth, and when she’d come in the day after that, she was back to her old self again. A week had gone by. Two weeks. Teddi felt better, felt like her old self, finally.
Until today.
Because today, she would be seeing the Scotts again.
Really hoping any history you may have with my sister won’t affect our working relationship, Kelly Scott had texted her the day after they’d met last time. I feel like you understand exactly what I want for my wedding, so I hope we can continue to work together.
“I was kind of hoping she’d bow out,” Teddi had admitted to Harlow on the phone that night. “Like, she’d feel awkward and decide maybe it was better to find another wedding planner.”
“Except you can’t be turning away clients,” had been Harlow’s very accurate response.
“Exactly.”
“Can I say something you’re not going to like?”
“It’s adorable that you pretend I have a choice.”
“Funny. I just want to make sure that you know, if you need to blame somebody, blame Julia, not Leah Scott. She was just doing her job. It wasn’t personal.”
“I know,” Teddi said. And she did. She understood that. She also understood that it had been very personal for her.
And so, here she stood, behind the counter in her shop, piles of emails to return and calls to make, just minutes away from another meeting with the Scott sisters.
“You okay?” Preston asked as he made himself a cup of coffee from the Keurig.
Teddi saw the slight concern in his eyes. “Sure. Why?”
“Because you’ve been staring out the front window for about…” He checked the gold watch on his wrist. “Seventeen minutes now.”
Forced smile. Straightened posture. Teddi tipped her head from one side to the other, feeling the satisfying pop in her vertebrae. “I’m good.”
“Nervous?”
“A little, I guess. Which I hate.”
Preston crossed to the counter with the coffee and surprised her by sliding it across to her. It was in one of the to-go cups they kept a supply of. She grinned at him. “No spilling or dropping, okay?”
“What about throwing?”
“No throwing.”
Teddi sighed dramatically. “Fine. Fun killer.”
“It’s really okay. All right? It’s business. Income. Pretend they have dollar signs tattooed all over them.”
That brought a tiny bubble of a chuckle up from her lungs. “I’ll do that.” It had been a short and sweet pep talk, but it helped and she was grateful.
Through the shop’s window, she saw Kelly Scott slam her car door and hurry across the street toward the door. Maybe it would just be her today, no Leah. One could hope, right?
“Here we go,” Preston said, then took up residence behind the counter to take care of email and answer the phone while Teddi was busy.
The door swung open, letting in the chilly fall breeze that seemed to be the new regular thing lately. Kelly bustled in, smiling and cheerful, as she’d been both times Teddi had met with her, and Teddi really looked at her for the first time, noticed she was a shorter, slightly plumper, less sleek version of her big sister. While her hair was a touch lighter blond than Leah’s and her eyes were more hazel than Leah’s arresting green ones, their bone structure was similar—high cheekbones, rounded jawline—and you could tell they were siblings. Today, she wore comfy-looking jeans, a light blue sweater, and white Chucks. A picture of her sitting cross-legged on the floor reading to small children needed no conjuring. It just was.
“Kelly. Hi. How were the kids today?” Teddi greeted her client with a smile and an outstretched hand.
“A little wild,” Kelly said with a half grin. “Halloween is close and the excitement levels are off the charts.”
“I bet.” Teddi put away anything that wasn’t work-related. In a box. Marked it not important right now. Put it up on a high shelf in her brain. It was time for business. “Is Leah coming?” Oops. Okay, so that slipped out.
“Supposedly.” Kelly said it with the smile and acceptance of a person used to the tardiness. She took off her jacket and draped it over the back of a chair, then sat.
How did they plan weddings before the internet? Teddi asked herself that question almost daily. Even when she’d first started out nearly ten years ago, she’d had so much at her fingertips. Finding colors, choices, designs was super simple and there were too many, really. Luckily, most women planning a wedding—or who even hoped to eventually get married—tended to have a Pinterest board where they pinned anything and everything that sparked some kind of interest. Wedding gowns, bridesmaids dresses, tablescapes, venues, color schemes…it was all there for the scrolling. Part of Teddi’s research on a cl
ient was to check out her Pinterest board. Incredible how much you could learn about someone just from scrolling through the things she liked.
“Okay,” she said to Kelly as they settled in. Teddi slid her chair around so she sat next to Kelly rather than across from her. Touching the screen on her tablet, she said, “Let’s take a look at your Pinterest board.”
They’d been at it for about twenty minutes, scrolling, brainstorming, Teddi getting to know Kelly a bit better, when the door swung open.
“I know, I know,” Leah said. Her heels clicked on the floor and she crossed to the table and the empty chair on the other side of Kelly. She seemed breathless. A little frazzled. “I’m late. Not news. I’m sorry.” Annoyed with herself, definitely, Teddi could see that. Leah opened her trench, slipped it off her arms to reveal a smart black pantsuit with a silver silk shell underneath the jacket. Her blond hair was pulled partially back, the rest hanging down in gentle waves that cascaded over her shoulders. She took a seat, glanced up at Teddi for a split second, then quickly back down.
She’s as nervous as I am.
She could be wrong, but it seemed pretty clear that Leah had also figured out their connection and was a bit uncomfortable. Well, good. She should be. Vowing to make as little eye contact as possible—because Teddi was twelve, apparently—she instead watched Leah’s hands as she pointed to different things on the tablet Kelly held. How had she not noticed what beautiful hands Leah had? Small. Fine-boned. Her nails were manicured, the polish white—the latest trend, and it looked unexpectedly sophisticated on her. Oh my God, stop it! This is the woman who helped take two-thirds of your business!
“What are your thoughts on that?”
Teddi blinked, looked up at Kelly, who’d asked the question. “I’m sorry?”
Kelly pointed at the screen. “I really love these chairs.”
Focus, Teddi. A clear of her throat. A moment to return to business mode. “Well, they’re nice chairs. They also cost more to rent. We haven’t gone over your budget yet, but you’ll need to decide what’s important to you. What’s worth spending extra on, and what’s not. Where are you okay laying out a little more, and where does it make sense to cut some corners?”
Hopeless Romantic Page 4