Butterface

She had no more than opened her mouth, though, when the door between the front room and the foyer opened up, revealing her not-exactly-invited house guest in all of his tight-fitting-jeans glory.

“I don’t mean to interrupt,” said the man who’d just opened up the door to her at-home office without knocking. “But it sounds like you might be having a little trouble.” This part came through while he was looking right at Gina before he looked over at the couple. “Maybe I can help.”

Donna’s shoulders sagged with relief. Scott seemed to grow an inch or two from not being the only one with a Y chromosome in the room. As for her? It took just about everything Gina had not to let her Sicilian out. What in the hell did he think he was doing, walking in on a client meeting like this? It was beyond very not okay.

“Ford, can I have a word with you out in the hall?” she asked, digging her nails into the palm of her hand to help keep her voice steady.

“Before you do,” Donna said, batting her eyelashes at Ford, despite the fact the man who’d put a gigantic ring on it was sitting right next to her. “Can I ask you one question?”

Ford’s gaze ping-ponged between Donna and Scott and then he slid on his uber-neutral cop face. To anyone not paying attention, he would have looked completely together and in control. However, from her spot by the window, Gina got a good look at him in profile, and there was no missing that as he held his hands behind his back in an at-attention stance, he was tapping out a fast beat on his thumb. That little tell of nervousness shouldn’t have cooled her annoyance at his butt-in-ski ways, but who was she kidding? The fact that he rushed in—requested or not—to try to help was kind of endearing.

Donna held up the envelopes. “Which color makes you think of eternal bliss?”

Ford blinked. He blinked again. His finger tapping on his thumb went into overdrive. Gina wasn’t rooting for him, not after he’d barged in on her business, but she had to admit if only to herself that she was pulling for him. He could do this. He could make the whole thing right with one word. Pink or yellow, it didn’t matter.

He cleared his throat.

Gina held her breath.

The thumb symphony stopped, and he said, “They’re both really nice.”

Donna’s hopeful expression crumbled back into indecisiveness. Gina, however, wasn’t confused at all. She was going to have to be one more in a long line of Lucas who found out how they looked in an orange jumpsuit.

“Can I speak to you out in the hallway now?” she asked, but the timbre of her voice perfectly detailed that this was not a request.

She didn’t wait for an answer, just shot a quick smile in her clients’ general direction and strode out into the hallway. She waited by the door until Ford walked through, but as soon as he did, she closed it behind him and got within whispering distance but stayed out of touching distance because, even as annoyed as she was, the urge to do that was just under the surface.

“What in the hell do you think you’re doing?” she asked.

One eyebrow went up in the universal sign of male superiority. “Helping?”

“Is that what you call it?” Her entire body felt hot and tight at the same time. “Funny, I’d call it interfering with my business and making my job even harder.”

Ford snorted, a dismissive sound that told her exactly what he thought of her business. “Come on, I’ve been listening to her waffle for half an hour. I figured she just needed a push.”

Of course he did. Wedding planning was just simple women’s work, after all. Not something that needed experience and education.

“And you came by this idea from your vast experience as a wedding planner?”

Something in her voice must have alerted him to the very vital mistake he’d made. “No, but—”

“Oh,” she interrupted. “It was from your degree in hospitality and unpaid internships with some of the most demanding wedding planners in Harbor City?”

Seriously, those days had been fourteen-hour hells of grunt work and abuse.

“No, but—”

She verbally plowed forward, shoving his mealy explanation to the curb. “The only other thing I can think of is that because you have a dick you think that means you know all the answers to anything, whether you have experience in that area or have been working with a set of clients for months and know how to slowly maneuver them one way or another because if you don’t do it a certain way, they get stuck in a loop of indecision?”