by Kate Benitez
On top of that, every other bridal salon in Boston and the greater Boston area seemed to feel the same way—Anneliese was officially a bridal pariah. In saving one girl’s love life, it appeared she’d doomed her own career in the love industry and for the first time since Anneliese Nottingham had turned eighteen, she was out of a job and shit out of luck.
Chapter 2
Leo MacKenzie’s lucky streak had ended. His personal assistant was getting married and this one had only lasted a grand total of six months. Six months of decent work until the girl had found the man of her dreams and decided that the working world was simply not for her.
She was just one in a long line of temps, fanatics, and armchair detectives who had jockeyed for the prestigious position of Secretary at the L.M. Agency. The agency had an utterly boring and nondescript name, which was one of the reasons why Leo had such trouble finding good help. In actuality, the L.M. Agency was a one-man private detective agency catering to a high-end clientele and this made finding a good personal assistant all the more difficult.
The person he was looking to fill the position had to be a talented personal assistant, a good judge of character, discreet, and professional. Whenever he advertised for a “Private Eye” position, Leo found that over ninety percent of his applicants were either fans of mystery novels or downright desperate. The other ten percent were people who’d figured out that Leo MacKenzie was that Leo MacKenzie—the one with the massive bank account and connections in all the right places.
But Leo was more than happy to leave his wealthy family connections in the past. He’d built his business based on his natural talent for detail and his training as Special Ops in the Marines. Leo had seen and done it all, and he’d generated a solid reputation for solving everything from white-collar crime to a fair number of cheating spouses. Now he was beginning to get some of his parents’ set sneaking in, cloaked in dark colors and large sunglasses. Currently, he was sitting across from the latest in disguise—Mrs. Tate.
Decked out in the requisite high-end sunglasses, four-inch heels, and a dark navy suit, Mrs. Tate obviously thought she was flying under the radar. It just showed Leo how far out of touch the woman was. Jeans and boots would have been a better disguise at 4 pm on a side street in Beacon Hill.
“There must be something you can do. I’m sure your parents would appreciate your doing me a favor.” The woman removed her sunglasses and tried a smile that didn’t quite reach those icy blue eyes.
Leo sat up straighter in his chair and checked the small leather notepad he kept the details of his meetings in. The story Mrs. Tate was telling him was all over the place and its bones vaguely resembled the story the newspapers and tabloids had been rehashing since the spring. Mrs. Tate’s daughter, Jennifer, was to marry a Senate hopeful, Robert Blackstone, and after a conversation at a dress shop, Jennifer had called off the wedding.
The press had such a field day at the time and Leo had always wondered if the shop girl had left Boston—or even the country—to escape the media spotlight. She’d ended up the scapegoat for the entire affair. Now, in Leo’s office, Mrs. Tate wasn’t blaming the girl anymore—she simply thought that she might be part of a bigger picture. It was Robert she was after now, and she thought he’d used her family in other ways and wanted Leo to get to the bottom of it. Apparently, there’d been a boost in his campaign funds that was difficult to account for and, for some reason, Mrs. Tate believed he’d stolen something from the Tate family.
There was just one problem.
“What exactly are you saying Mr. Blackstone has stolen from you?” Leo asked calmly, resting his elbows on his grandfather’s old writing desk and setting his chin on his fists.
Mrs. Tate cleared her throat and, for the first time during the meeting, looked somewhere between embarrassed and unsure. Leo waited patiently as her eyes glanced around the sunlit room noting, he was sure, the eclectic mix of precious antiques and Ikea.
“Well, I…” Mrs. Tate twirled the large diamond engagement ring on her finger once, then twice. It must be her tell, Leo noted. People gave far too much away with needless movements.
Those icy eyes focused on Leo again. “Well, I’m not sure, actually. That’s what I want to hire you for.”
And there it was. “So I’m not here to reunite Jennifer with her beloved?”
“Ex-fiancé. And no, I would be hiring you to figure out how Robert Blackstone used our family. I’m convinced he was in this for more than the political connections.”
Leo sat back and considered her allegation. From what he remembered, there were mixed reviews on whether Blackstone had tried to woo Jennifer back or if he was trying to ruin her and her family’s reputation. However, Leo hadn’t paid as much attention to the scandal as he had the Red Sox this spring.
“Alright, Mrs. Tate. I understand your concerns, but I’m not ready to take your case on officially at the moment.” Leo watched as the woman’s mouth opened in indignation. His head already hurt just thinking about working with her for the long haul. Leo didn’t have the inclination or the fortitude today to deal with Mrs. Tate. Not without a secretary to lighten his load and soften the blow. “Let me do a little more research and get back to you. Let’s say in three days’ time?”
Mrs. Tate’s mouth shut, and she nodded stiffly.
She stood and extended her hand toward him then Mrs. Tate left Leo with one final veiled threat. “Thank you for your consideration, Mr. MacKenzie. I’m sure we can come to a mutually beneficial agreement—no one would need to know your family’s entire history now, would they?”
The woman’s cold smile finally matched those hard eyes perfectly. Leo felt his stomach drop. He may have cut all the ties with his family, but he wasn’t going to be their downfall either. He watched Mrs. Tate leave, her heels clicking on the old hardwood of the brownstone in a decisive manner. Leo knew the woman had won with that last threat. Even more than she was ashamed to go to the proper authorities with her conspiracy theory, Leo felt the need to protect his family secrets.
Picking up the pocket-sized notebook, Leo tied it shut with surprising grace for a man with such large hands and shifted it into the back pocket of his dark jeans—Leo knew where he had to go. He checked the time and realized the saving grace of the day would be that he could be as drunk as he wished in about an hour, and he had just the man in mind to do it with.
*****
The Bar was crowded for a Tuesday night. It was one of those annoyingly hip places that seemed to change its decor at the drop of a hat. Currently serving craft drinks that changed on a weekly basis and finger food that wouldn’t satisfy a goldfish, Leo liked the place because no one he worked with or tailed seemed to have ever used it. Plus, it was a five-minute walk from his brownstone. Case in point, at five-thirty the bar was packed with a mix of suits escaping the business district for the posh Beacon Hill area, as well as a fair amount of graduate students trying to avoid the undergraduate population that seemed to permeate the academic city.
Leo looked beyond the suits and plaid shirts and spotted the only Globe employee present in the expensive, modern space. The tall man was tucked into a two bar stool nook toward the back of the raw light bulb-lit room. Passing by a woman in a dress only considered professional by an extra inch of fabric, Leo earmarked her as a potential conquest for later in the evening. For now, Leo focused on the man with the graphic t-shirt and scruffy beard.
“I got you a beer. Thank God they serve Sam Adams in every bar in the city, or I’d have killed you for asking me to meet you at this place again. Can’t they at least serve nachos?”
Leo took a long swig of the pony-necked beer, also thankful that it seemed to be a law to serve Boston’s finest in every drinking establishment he visited.
“Gulliver, you need to expand your palate,” Leo said, taking a seat on the wooden stool—a gloriously familiar object in a sea of hipsters.
Gulliver thrust one large finger at a menu description. “No one needs to taste ‘ca
mpfire’ in their gin and tonic. No one.”
Leo laughed. Gulliver actually blended in just fine with the hipster part of the crowd. His smooth dark skin was covered by one of those careless five o’clock shadows that movie stars seemed to wear with ease. The fashionable hairstyle was paired with skinny jeans tucked into worn motorcycle boots, and a retro t-shirt that was most likely from the Woodstock era. The problem with Gulliver as a hipster was, he’d actually cultivated a collection of music memorabilia and owned a well-used Harley motorcycle. No one would ever guess he was one of the Boston Globe’s most up-and-coming journalists when he looked more like a poor grad student.
Gulliver took another swig of his beer and played with his own leather-bound journal. “So what is it you need?”
“Why do you think I need something?” Leo asked, breaking eye contact with the hottie in the entirely unprofessional dress. At least, Leo considered it unprofessional now that he could see how much cleavage was visible in the low neckline after she’d removed her scarf.
Gulliver took in the sight of the woman and gave an appreciative nod before answering, “If you just wanted to drink and shoot the shit, we’d be at a dive five streets over. Not at a place considered chic by Page Six.” Gulliver nodded to the sexy business lady. “Pretty sights notwithstanding.”
Leo set down his beer and nodded, focusing on the task at hand. “What can you tell me about the Tate - Blackstone wedding?”
“You mean the Wedding,” Gulliver said, using air quotes. “The Wedding that didn’t happen?”
Leo took another drink, feeling like a gossip queen, “Yeah, that wedding.”
“What, did you live under a rock for the last few months? Even I researched a piece about that catastrophe.”
Now Leo was interested. Gulliver was one of those reporters with morals—the kind that only wrote good journalism about serious subjects. Up until now, Leo had assumed the entire wedding affair was meant for tabloid pages only.
“Of course, I know the bare bones of the situation, a wedding between two prominent families called off because of the advice of a shop girl.”
Gulliver gave Leo a tired stare. “Shop girl? What are you? Seventy?”
Leo shrugged. “I’m sophisticated. I don’t use air quotes.” Leo cut his eyes to his friend to see if that blow had landed before he continued, “But if you were interested, there must be more to it than that. I don’t see you researching tawdry affairs or cases of he said, she said.”
“No, I leave that shit to you,” Gulliver responded with a wink and a smile, to which Leo flipped him the bird. Touché.
“No, actually a lot of the fallout didn’t quite match up. Jennifer’s story never wavered—she didn’t want to be a politician’s wife. But Robert’s story swung all over the map and the ‘shop girl’…” He paused, again with the air quotes. Either the blow hadn’t landed, or Gulliver was rubbing Leo’s face in it. Air quotes were such an annoying habit, Leo thought.
Gulliver continued, “Well, the girl remained a bit of a mystery as well. She was a fairly renowned secretary, slash personal assistant in the bridal industry here in greater Boston. Apparently efficient, a model employee, and considered by all but her last employer—lucky. That final job did manage to put a fair dent in the urban legend that was Anneliese Nottingham.”
“Why did you drop the story then—you said you just researched it? Did someone else take it over?” Leo set down his drink and leaned his tall form closer into the bar to hear Gulliver better.
Gulliver shrugged and took a final swig of his beer, shaking the bottle to verify it was empty. Leo rolled his eyes and hailed the bartender for another.
“Thanks,” Gulliver said before continuing, “no, I couldn’t get Anneliese to go on record. Alone, that wouldn’t have been a huge issue. Enough of her old employers were ready and willing to testify to both her work ethic and luck for their business. But Robert’s stories were damn near impossible to trace. It was frustrating to sift through what was gossip, what was real, and what was just a story concocted by his campaign manager. I made the decision that the story wasn’t worth the effort. Tabloids had ruined the soup, anyway. It happens,” Gulliver finished, accepting his fresh beer.
Well, Gulliver had at least confirmed the Robert Blackstone angle that Mrs. Tate had alluded to. Mrs. Tate had claimed that he was all over the map—shifting stories and shifting blame. With all of his PR and political connections, it wouldn’t be difficult to create a smokescreen from the scandal. The shop girl, however, she sounded more and more like a wild card.
Leo picked up his own fresh drink. “So why is the shop girl so lucky?”
Gulliver rolled his eyes. “I told you, old man, shop girl has a name. It’s Anneliese. I believe her name was in a headline more than once.”
Leo shrugged. “Fine. The shop girl, Anneliese. Can you explain the luck?”
Gulliver set down his drink and flipped open his notepad, a sleek black moleskin with lined pages. Leo himself had always been a fan of the unlined. “The stories were all over the place. One of her first employers was one of those bridal shops that sell sample dresses for cheap. Brides can’t order them or anything—they just buy these designer dresses off the rack for vast discounts.”
Leo nodded and Gulliver continued, “Anyway, they get the dresses from high-end bridal salons after they’re done with them. A month into Anneliese’s hiring, some big store in New York—Kleinfeld’s—shipped the mother-lode of stock to them. Apparently this was a coup the likes of which the bridal world had never seen.”
Again Leo nodded, but he had to admit he didn’t quite see what was the big deal about that. Gulliver noted Leo wasn’t impressed and moved on, “Other times she was credited with having a spree of would-be brides who walked out purchasing multiple dresses—only those Anneliese had spoken to.”
Leo furrowed his brows. “So she’s a good salesperson?”
Gulliver shook his head. “No, remember she’s the secretary. She doesn’t get any credit for a sale—there’s no motivation. And the employer said that Anneliese claimed never to have mentioned or pushed purchasing multiple dresses.”
Leo shook his head from side to side. “Ok, so she’s good for revenue?”
“Yup,” Gulliver agreed, “good for clientele, too. Each and every store claimed that after they hired Anneliese, not only did their revenue go up but so did the level of their clientele. Even her last job at that Linen and Lace place said that getting to dress the bride for The Wedding of the year had been a first for them. Apparently, the girl was just plain old lucky.”
Both Gulliver and Leo took sips of their beers. “So where is she working now?” Leo wondered.
“Nowhere.”
“I’m sorry. Is that the name of some new modern bridal shop? Like the way this place is called The Bar?” Leo gestured to the increasing crowd of people and used the moment to make come-fuck-me-eyes at a beautiful brunette down the bar.
“No. She’s literally not working anywhere. Blackballed from the bridal community after almost taking down the biggest bridal shop in Boston and actually killing The Wedding of the season. People Magazine was going to make it their cover story for Pete’s sake. I feel for the girl.” Gulliver began to scan the crowd as well, and Leo saw his eyes land on a pretty dark-haired girl near the booths. Time was of the essence.
“Could you get me her phone number?” Leo asked.
Gulliver’s dark eyes betrayed him by sweeping to the bottom of the page on his notebook. He slowly shut the thing and looked up at Leo. “Listen, I don’t know why you need to know all this, but she’s a nice girl. She gave Jennifer Tate solid advice and a shoulder to cry on. Because of that she may never get a job in this town again—or in bridal anywhere. Don’t poke at her.”
Leo shook his head, his mind racing around the twisted story, the beautiful woman at the bar, a lucky secretary... Finally, he centered on one thought—crystallizing the multitude of questions swarming and calming his brain.
> “No, I’m not going to poke her. I want to offer her a job.”
Gulliver’s mouth dropped open just as sexy dress approached Leo. “Leave the number or I’ll pocket your moleskin. I know the number is in there.”
Gulliver looked pissed at Leo for a long moment, watching as the woman started to drape herself on the former Marine. Leo watched out of the corner of his eye as Gulliver noted the hot brunette as well and sighed. Gulliver wrote a number on a cocktail napkin, and Leo slowly pocketed it and smiled. There was nothing better than killing two birds with one stone.
Chapter 3
After three months of unemployment, Anneliese had one final indulgence left she couldn’t deny herself. Ben and Jerry’s—the only men in the universe who seemed to know exactly what women wanted. She wasn’t counting the myriad of sexy hunks who turned into the perfect man by the end of a two-hour Hallmark Channel movie—she preferred the physical tub of goodness in her hands to a cleverly marketed storyline—though she couldn’t stop watching those movies either.
Utterly engrossed in watching an Alaskan logger fall for a hotel magnate’s daughter, Anneliese almost missed the ping from her phone, signaling an email. She kept her eyes on the screen while she fished around under a soft knit throw for her phone. The lovebirds were about to kiss. She shifted her eyes to the clock and realized, with just fifteen minutes left of the movie, this was going to be the big moment.
Watching true love enacted on the TV, Anneliese sighed at the thought that the love industry had left her high and dry. There was no way the email could be coming from a bridal boutique, or even a wedding planner—she’d been rejected from every one she’d applied to. It hurt just a little more that even the startups who would have killed for her expertise just a few short months ago, wouldn’t touch her with a ten-foot pole now.