For Better or Worse

by Lauren Layne

  A few days ago, the offer might have been somewhat tempting, but as of yesterday morning, Alexis was officially a New York resident.

  Well, sort of. Did subletting count? She’d signed a three-month sublease on a two-bedroom place in Harlem with a sweet, if slightly ditzy, roommate named Mary.

  It wasn’t quite where she wanted to be, but it beat the cheap hotels she’d been staying at before now, at least budget-wise. Enough so that she was fully intending to eat something with protein in it tonight.

  She flipped open the menu and winced as she saw the price of a cheeseburger. Or not.

  Even hole-in-the-wall pubs were pricey in Manhattan. Alexis thought she’d been prepared, but she was running through her allotted spending money a hell of a lot faster than she’d expected. Especially considering she hadn’t made any traction on a potential investor in her business idea: an elite, full-service wedding-planning agency.

  Alexis glanced at the bartender, hoping she wasn’t too late to cancel her wine order, but the bored-looking redhead had already poured her wine and was heading her way.

  At least the glass was filled to the brim. Alexis must have looked like she’d needed it. Still, she’d have to offset the wine price with the cheapest food item. Again. Just a few months ago, she wouldn’t have thought it possible to be sick of French fries, but she’d passed that point about a week ago.

  “You know what you want to eat, or need a few?” the bartender asked.

  “Still deciding.”

  “No prob.” Her attention was on her phone. “Just holler when you’re ready.”

  The bartender wandered away, still typing on her phone, and Alexis opened up her laptop and pulled out the ever-present file folder where she kept a printed copy of the most recent proposal.

  Generally speaking, the electronic version of her business plan was more practical, but you never knew when someone who mattered was going to ask you for more information, and she wanted to be ready.

  Alexis was always ready.

  Her stomach rumbled in hunger, and hard as she tried to ignore it, it wasn’t the first time a tiny part of her wished that she’d taken her father up on his offer of a loan. Then her company would be a reality instead of a dream, and maybe she’d be able to eat something other than cereal and ramen.

  But though she had a reasonably good relationship with her sometimes-cold father, his stipulations had just been too much.

  For starters, the loan came with a location requirement. Stay in Boston.

  That wasn’t the dream. New York was the dream.

  The other stipulation had been even harder to swallow.

  You could hire your sister, you know . . .

  Yeah, no.

  She didn’t want to hire her sister. She loved Roxanne, but her sister wasn’t the type of person she was looking to bring on to help get this business off the ground. Alexis needed someone with drive and business acumen. Roxie, while smart and savvy, was easily bored when it came to her career choices. Alexis needed someone who’d be in it for the long haul.

  Plus, there was the bigger elephant in the room—it was just too damn hard to be around her sister right now.

  The wound would heal, eventually. Alexis knew that. It was just a little too fresh, and Boston was just a little too painful.

  She took a sip of wine as she opened her spreadsheet. The potential investor she’d spoken with today had been polite and shown token interest but was concerned with her growth model, specifically with the size of her team.

  It was a valid point—a tiny number of employees would mean they could only support so much business. Still, Alexis was hesitant to change it. What the company would lack in scalability, it would make up for with consistency. Perfection every time, even if there were fewer times.

  She left the column as is. Alexis knew it was unrealistic to think she wouldn’t have to make some compromises, but she kept holding out hope that someone would get it. That someone would hear her, see what she was trying to do, and understand.

  “Hello.”

  The sexy British accented startled Alexis out of her thoughts, and she glanced up, both alarmed and intrigued to find that the face that awaited her was every bit as appealing as the voice.

  The man was about her age—early, maybe ­midtwenties—and ridiculously cute. His hair was dark and maybe just a touch too long, as though he intended to get a haircut but kept forgetting. The eyes were brown and friendly, accented by trendy black-framed glasses.

  The chunky cable-knit sweater with elbow patches—for real—bordered on dorky, but then, Alexis had always had a soft spot for dorky. He had a bit of the Clark Kent thing going on, which had always been far more her type than the overrated Superman.

  “Hi,” she replied quickly, realizing that she’d been staring.

  His smile grew wider as he extended a hand. “Logan Harris.”

  Darn. Even the name was good.

  “Alexis,” she said.

  “Does that come with a last name?” he teased, lowering himself to the vacant barstool beside her.

  “Not to strange men,” she retorted.

  “I could buy you a drink. Get rid of the ‘strange’ part.”

  Alexis’s smile slipped as she remembered that romance, even flirting, wasn’t part of her plan. She’d learned the hard way that she could have one or the other—her own business or a boyfriend—not both. And even if she wanted the latter, the latter didn’t want her back.

  “No thanks; I’m fine,” she said, letting the slightest amount of chill enter her voice. The ice-princess treatment, Roxanne called it.

  Logan shrugged, undeterred. “All right then. May I borrow your menu?”

  She nodded, and he picked it up, perusing it for several moments and paying her no attention.

  It was both a relief and also a bit of an insult, if she was being entirely honest, to be given up on so easily.

  Alexis tried to turn her attention back to her laptop but watched out of the corner of her eye as he finally shut the menu and waited patiently to catch the bartender’s eye.

  “Hi there,” he said, when the bartender ambled back over. “I’d like a Stella, and maybe a bite to eat?”

  Alexis didn’t miss the once-over that the bartender gave Logan before the curvy redhead leaned over the bar, displaying perky boobs as she clicked her pen and pulled a notepad out of her back pocket.

  “Shoot,” the bartender said flirtatiously, looking a good deal friendlier than she had when she’d spoken to Alexis.

  Not that Alexis blamed her. A cute Brit could do that to a girl.

  “All right then,” Logan said. “I’d like the burger, medium, with Swiss. Fish and chips, extra tartar, and . . . how’s your chicken club?”

  The bartender blinked. “It’s good. But you want all that?”

  “I do. Thank you.”

  “Suit yourself,” she said, scribbling Logan’s order on the pad.

  “Hungry?” Alexis couldn’t resist asking after the bartender moved away.

  Logan gave a sheepish smile. “I’m a recovering student. I sometimes get so wrapped up in my day that I forget to eat.”

  “A recovering student. What does that mean?”

  He turned slightly toward her. “Someone’s showing plenty of interest in a strange man.”

  She bit her lip. “I’m sorry if I was rude before. I’m just not really in the market for . . . you know.”

  He gave her an easy smile. “Everyone’s in the market for a friend, Alexis.”

  She opened her mouth and then shut it as she realized he was right. She could use a friend. She’d spent her entire life in Boston and knew almost nobody in New York. This guy seemed nice and nonthreatening enough—what would be the harm in a little conversation over dinner? It had been too long since she’d had somebody to share a meal with.
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  Logan seemed to know the moment she capitulated, because he turned more fully toward her. “A recovering student, Alexis, is a recent graduate. One who hasn’t quite absorbed that there will be no more finals, no more requisite all-nighters, and no more dorm sex.”

  Alexis laughed. “Undergrad, then?”

  He gave her a wry look. “How young do I look, darling? MBA from Columbia. Just finished up end of last year.”

  She felt a little stab of relief that he wasn’t twenty-two.

  He leaned toward her slightly. “Twenty-five next month, just in case you were wondering. As a friend.”

  She tried to hide her smile and failed. “Columbia, huh? You’re a long way from home.”

  “Noticed that, did ya?” He winked. “I came out here for undergrad, also Columbia. Always figured I’d go back to London and maybe someday I will, but . . .” He shrugged. “Seems I have stuff to do here first.”

  “Such as?” She took a sip of her wine, dismayed to see that it was half-empty.

  “Well, this will probably shock you, given my vast amount of brawn, but I’m an accountant. Or at least I will be, once I get my business up and running.”

  Alexis was impressed. “Your own business?”

  Most twentysomethings, even those with an entrepreneurial bent, opted to get a few years of work for someone else under their belts before branching out on their own.

  He nodded. “I’m working out of my flat for now, but I’m hoping to lease some office space soon, get some legitimacy. If nothing else to get my father off my back.”

  “He’s not a fan of your plan?” Alexis asked.

  Logan’s shoulder lifted, and for the first time he seemed a little sad. “Both parents have had it in their head that I’d come home. Run the family business in London.”

  “Which is . . . ?”

  He spun his beer glass idly. “Financial consulting firm. My father’s the CEO, Mum’s the COO.”

  “Wow, that’s . . .”

  “Scary?” Logan supplied.

  “I was going to say impressive. That they work ­together—without killing each other, I mean.”

  “They’re in love. It’s atrocious,” he said with a wink. “What about your folks?”

  Alexis laughed. “Not in love. They divorced when I was in high school. Dad’s remarried and happy now, I think. Mom not so much.”

  “And you?” he said. “Are you happy, Alexis?”

  She pursed her lips, surprised and yet not entirely unsettled by the personal question. “It’s been a while since anyone asked me that. Since I even thought about it, really.”

  “Think it out. I’ll wait,” he said with a wink.

  She didn’t have to think that long. “I’m almost happy.”

  “You sound quite confident on that.”

  She shrugged. “Let’s just say that I need a few things to fall into place in my professional life, but once that happens . . . yeah, I’ll be happy.”

  She’d make sure of it.

  “You’re starting your own business.”

  Her head whipped around. “How’d you know that?”

  Logan reached over and tapped her laptop. “I can spot an Excel spreadsheet from a mile away.”

  “Is that why you came over here?”

  “No, darling. That would be your smile.”

  “I don’t remember smiling.”

  He burst out laughing. “You’re unusual. I like that. And you did smile. At the bartender, when you ordered your wine.”

  “You were watching me,” Alexis said, eyebrows lifting. “Rather creepy for a friend.”

  Instead of acknowledging her comment, he nodded his chin at her laptop. “What are you working on, if you don’t mind my asking? Dare I hold out hope you’re also an ­accountant and we can have darling, glasses-wearing babies together?”

  “My eyesight is twenty-twenty,” she retorted.

  “So that’s a maybe, then?”

  Alexis couldn’t help the laugh, a full laugh, the first in a long time, and his eyes crinkled a little at the corners as he watched her. “Tell me about you, Alexis, my new best friend.”

  Damn, he was charming.

  “Well,” she said slowly. “I’m not an accountant—sorry to break your number-crunching heart. But I, too, am a ‘recovering student.’ ”

  “Do tell.”

  “I finished up my master’s program at Boston College end of last year. Marketing and business administration.”

  “Boston,” he said, the word sounding ridiculously appealing in his clipped accent. “And what brings you to New York?”

  Alexis waved a hand over her laptop and the folder holding her business proposal. “This.”

  “And this would be . . . ?”

  She shoved the folder his way and took another sip of her wine—a big one.

  He pulled it toward him, opened it, and began to read.

  Having the entire thing memorized, Alexis couldn’t help but “read” along with him inside her own head.

  The Wedding Belles is a boutique wedding-planning company committed to providing carefully curated weddings for the discerning bride . . . The Wedding Belles ensures the perfect combination of classic elegance and innovative modernity, promising a wedding that’s both timeless and contemporary . . .

  Logan turned the page, and Alexis expected him to lose interest once he was past the marketing fluff, but to her surprise, he read every last page, analyzed every last chart she’d painstakingly created.

  His food arrived and Logan gestured with one finger for another round of drinks, before absently pulling a fry off one of the plates and shoving the plate in her direction.

  She bit her lip. She couldn’t. She shouldn’t.

  But the smell of the chicken club, with melted cheese and ripe avocado between buttery, toasty bread, was too much to resist. She picked up a knife and cut off a quarter of the sandwich.

  “Oh my God,” she whispered around the first heavenly bite.

  Out of the corner of her eye she thought she saw him smile, but he never looked up from her proposal, careful to wipe his fingers between fries and turning her pages.

  Finally, he’d read the entire thing, and Alexis was mortified to realize she’d eaten half his chicken sandwich, a quarter of the burger, a good two-thirds of the fish, and more than a few fries.

  Logan didn’t seem to mind as he picked up the remaining half of his chicken sandwich and took a thoughtful bite.

  He chewed slowly, methodically. Took a sip of beer. Then turned toward her once more. “Where are you with this?”

  “How do you mean?”

  “You need funding, yes?”

  She nodded, reaching for the second glass of wine the bartender had brought along with Logan’s beer. She couldn’t afford it, but . . . what the hell?

  “Yes. I’m envisioning a three-story, multiuse brownstone that could serve as both office space for the team, reception, as well as my living quarters. It’ll be more money up front, but I’ve done the math, and it makes more financial sense in the long run when you factor in the cost of moving, inflation, lease renewal.”

  “You want to start it off right,” he said. “From the very beginning.”

  She nodded, grateful that someone finally understood. “I know conventional wisdom suggests that I should start it out of my home and sort of build up, but the entire brand of the Belles is elite. The clients I want aren’t the ones who will meet in the living room of my Harlem apartment.”

  “Any nibbles?”

  She lifted a shoulder and pulled another fry off the plate, long past the point of playing coy about being desperately hungry. “I’ve had a few meetings. Nobody’s laughed me out of the conference room yet—just a lot of noncommittal ‘We’ll be in touch.’ ”

  He nodded. “Y
ou have a location in mind.”

  She smiled, loving that it wasn’t a question so much as a statement. As though he knew the way her mind worked, putting the cart before the horse and touring Manhattan real estate when she couldn’t even afford a second glass of eight-dollar wine.

  “Aha,” he said, with an answering smile.

  “Okay, fine,” she said. “It’s on Seventy-Third between Broadway and West End, and it’s just . . . perfect.”

  “Upper West Side,” he said in surprise.

  “Yes. It feels right for the Belles. Classic but up-and-coming, upscale but not stuffy, expensive but not too expensive . . .”

  “You really have thought it all out.” Logan was studying her.

  “Since I was, like, twelve,” she admitted.

  “Never wavered?”

  Alexis shook her head. “Nope. The vision became more precise over time, not less.”

  He turned away, watching his beer glass as he spun it idly on the bar top. “I had a great aunt. Margaret. Great old lady, great sense of humor. She passed away a few months back.”

  “Oh,” Alexis said, a little confused by the change of subject but sympathetic all the same. She touched his arm consolingly. “I’m sorry.”

  “Thank you,” he said. “Although she was ninety-two and passed in her sleep. Definitely the way to go, don’t you think?”

  “Can’t say I’ve put too much thought into dying. Quite the opposite, actually.”

  “Yes, I can see that about you, Alexis,” he said thoughtfully.

  She liked the way he said her name, embracing all the syllables. Uh-lex-iss.

  “Aunt Margaret left me some money. Quite a lot of it, actually,” Logan said, still not looking at her.

  “Um, congratulations?”

  Logan’s shoulders didn’t move, but he turned his head, resting his chin on his shoulder as he pinned her with an intense gaze. “I’d like to make you an offer, Alexis Morgan.”

  She stilled. “What kind of offer?”

  He used his elbow to indicate her proposal. “I’d like to fund the Wedding Belles.”

  Her breath caught in her throat. “Why would you do that?”

  Instead of answering, he turned to face her more fully, and all traces of the casual postgrad vanished, and she realized she was seeing the accountant version of Logan ­Harris—the shrewd businessman.