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

Rachael continued the struggle with her wedding dress while Natalie watched from a nearby lounger, apparently nonplussed.

"Why do they make these things impossible to put on except by the team of skilled professionals?" She huffed the itchy veil out of her face, when scrunched the tulle at her waist in frustration.

"Practice makes perfect," Natalie shrugged, then got up and headed toward her. Rather than helping with the dress, though, she stepped past her, toward the champagne and poured a fresh class.

"Come here and calm down. Have a drink. The show doesn't start for a while yet. It's too soon to be getting into that thing."

Rachael sighed, then stepped from the dress, still determined not to look into the mirror. After an hour of make up and two hours of hair, both of which were deemed less than acceptable by her mother, she didn't think she could hold herself together if she had to stare at herself for another moment longer.

That and…something else.

Something else she wasn't ready to face just yet.

She took the outstretched glass from her friend and sipped, then plopped onto the leather sofa in the corner of the dressing room.

Natalie was wrong, of course. There was no time for any of this. If the wedding planner had anything to say about, it, she would have been in that frilly contraption hours ago. The photographer was already here. Guests were starting to arrive.

And she...

"Have you ever been consumed with a feeling of impending doom?" Rachael spied her friend over the rim of her flute, and Natalie tilted her head to the side, letting her wave of brown hair cascade over her lavender dress.

"How do you mean? Like, wondering if I'm pregnant?" She raised her eyebrows accusingly.

"No, no. I just mean...have you ever felt like you were going to make a big mistake and you couldn't do anything to stop it? Like you'd gotten yourself in over your head?"

Natalie sat back, watching her glass has she swirled the amber liquid inside. "Well, I did when I agreed to something with a boyfriend. I won’t list the specifics. Other than that." Her lips tilted to the side and for the first time in her nonchalant friend's life, Rachael thought she spied a hint of sadness in her features.

"Then there was my second marriage." Natalie added.

When she sipped her champagne and didn't bother continuing, Rachael prompted her, "What, like, the way it ended?"

"No, the way it started." Natalie laughed. "I was getting into my giant wedding dress, and I remember staring at myself in the big old mirror at my mom's house thinking, 'what am I doing? Is this the most enormous mistake of my life?'"

Natalie shrugged. "Of course, I thought that was just normal cold feet kind of thing. You know, I felt that way before husband number one, too. But with husband number two...it was sharper. Keener, you know?"

The pit in Rachael's stomach dropped another ten notches.

"Yeah," she said.

"Of course, you do have the benefit of this being, you know, completely fake."

Rachael let out a laugh she very much did not feel. "Yeah, you're right. That's a pretty big bonus all right."

"What's the matter? Second thoughts about letting Lance go? Is all of this about him?"

"Definitely not.” She shook her head, letting her perfectly arranged ringlets fly in every direction. "Just work stuff."

"Work stuff? Girl, let that place go for now. After all, how often does a girl get fake married? That's two, three times in a lifetime. Four if you're lucky." Natalie clinked their glasses together, and then took a long pull on hers.

"And it terms of fake grooms, you've got the pick of the litter. Bright, handsome...a little strange."

Rachael laughed despite herself. "Yeah, what woman doesn't dream of marrying her boss in exchange for having him use her like a science experiment? I'm shocked that Barbie hasn't come out yet. She'd come with little test tubes and a veil."

"Don't be stupid. I see the way the two of you are together. This is way past any of that."

"Maybe," Rachael sat her barely-drunk champagne on the little oak table beside her. "Now come on, help me get this thing on. We're running late."

Natalie sat her empty glass beside Rachael's and followed her to the mound of white lace on the floor.