Bargaining with the Bride (Honeybrook Love, Inc. 1)

She rolled her eyes, "Right."

"That aside, we have a problem."

"We do?" She stepped from the bed, only half listening. But when she turned, her heart dropped into her stomach.

Garret was gone.

He was supposed to be here. Had agreed to take the day before the wedding off in order to help her with the rest of the plans.

All week, she'd been looking forward to today. Had hoped that they could spend all morning wrapped up in the blankets, not thinking about work or her family or anything. Just each other...

But she was getting ahead of herself. Maybe he was downstairs. Maybe—

"Rachael," Her mother's sharp tone cut into her thoughts.

"Huh?"

"What are we going to do about this?"

She searched for a way to pretend she'd been listening, but came up empty. "About what?" Even as she asked the question, she winced.

"Honestly, sometimes I don't know where you girls came from. About your dress. It's...a disaster. To put it lightly." She sniffed.

"Did something happen to it?" She gripped the phone a little harder. Partially from concern, and partially because she really should have known better than to think her mother would be harmless in her involvement with the dress.

"The lace—did you want it with so much lace? Is this how my money was spent?" She asked.

"What do you mean?"

"It looks like an enormous doily. Honestly, wouldn't a nice satin be more flattering? I think you ought to come down here and straighten them out."

She held her hand over the receiver, and then let out a long sigh. "It's supposed to look that way, mother. Thank you for your help, but I have to go."

She could sense her mother rearing up to argue, so she rushed to end the call.

After tossing her cell onto the bed behind her, she scurried downstairs, only to find Tesla napping lazily on the windowsill.

"Where's Garret?" she asked the dog, but he only looked at her with lazy eyes then turned his attention back to the front yard.

"Great,” she murmured, and then moved onto the front steps.

His car was gone.

Which, of course, meant he could only be in one place.

Even as she pulled into her normal parking space, she knew she had no reason to be at the office. Nobody was expecting her. Natalie had been handling everything as smoothly as ever. Hell, she couldn't even claim she'd forgotten something in her desk.

As far as the wedding details...she could make something up. A question about the cake or the flower arrangements or something. But what sort of fake bride consulted her fake groom about their fake wedding the day of the rehearsal dinner?

Still, that didn't stop her from wanting to see him and find out what he was up to. She could come up with something stupid along the way, surely. All that mattered was that she could see him. After she'd made her way up the elevator and through the lobby, she headed toward her office, partially from force of habit and partly because the place soothed her.

There, she'd have a little more time to come up with an excuse. There, she could—

She stepped through the threshold of her door and stopped short.

Her normally pristine desk had one red folder sitting atop it. Even from this distance, she could spy the big, black letters printed across the front

"Confidential."