Southern Bombshell (North Carolina Highlands 5)

Their intensity—it peels back my skin, and for a second, I’m swimming in the terrible shame that haunted me day and night for months after I ghosted her. She hadn’t deserved that. But she definitely deserved better than me.

She looks good. Her blond hair’s gotten longer, and she wears it parted down the middle in long, loose waves that fall past her shoulders. She’s dressed to the nines as always: a silk blouse tucked into a vibrantly patterned skirt, her waist cinched by a Gucci belt.

We look at each other for a beat too long. Milly blinks, and the emotion in her eyes dissipates, replaced by determination. She’s too smart—too ambitious—to let me fuck up her chance to crush this job.

“Nate.” She extends her hand. “It’s nice to see you again.”

I take it, mentally unplugging the source of the electricity that darts up my arm. “Hey.”

“Small world that y’all’s families go way back.” Chris shakes his head. “There’s some pretty neat history up here.”

Milly gives him a tight smile. “‘Neat’ is a nice way of putting it. I’m not sure our families deserve that much credit.”

“Definitely not,” I say.

“Best wishes to you and Reese on your engagement.” She drops my hand and steps back, folding her arms over her chest. “How exciting.”

The scent of that perfume fills my head with thoughts. Memories.

Good ones.

“No ‘congratulations’?” I blurt, feeling a little too warm inside my blazer and jacket.

“That’s not the proper thing to say to engaged couples, actually,” Milly replies. “Congratulations is what you say when you’ve accomplished something. Like a writer typing ‘the end’ on a book or an Olympic swimmer winning a race or a medal. It’s what you say at the end of something. But marriage is a beginning. So I’d like to think we’re blessing it with wishes for good things yet to come.”

Reese shakes her head, eyes wide. “You’re good.”

“I am.” Milly’s smile touches her eyes, and there’s a lurch inside my chest. She gestures to a table in the center of the studio, where a Black woman in a long dress and heels waits with a notebook tucked under her arm. “This is my assistant, Thea. She’s my right-hand woman and a master of all the tiny details that really make a wedding sing. You’ll see her cc’d on all our emails.”

“Hey, y’all,” Thea says, smiling warmly.

We introduce ourselves. I notice Thea’s handshake is firm—confident—just like Milly’s.

“I also have a couple of interns cycling through at any given time,” Milly continues, “so if you see additional names pop up on our correspondence, that’s why.”

“Interns?” I arch a brow.

Milly nods. “I thought about what I wish I’d had back in college. I loved design and was interested in event planning, but I didn’t know where to start. I needed a mentor. A safe place to explore what jazzed me and what didn’t. So I reached out to App State up in Boone and asked them if they’d be interested in setting up an intern program at the resort. Students get real-world experience, plus a decent paycheck.”

Of course Milly is doing good work and doing good too.

She’s also doing well for herself, as evidenced by the assistant, the interns, and the snazzy office.

See? She’s better off without you.

I made the right call.

Why, then, am I still drowning in this sense of shame? I give my collar a tug.

“I started as an intern and never left,” Thea says with a laugh.

Milly gestures to the massive zinc-topped table, fashionably weathered, that dominates the room. “Shall we get started?”

“I’d love to,” Reese says, rubbing her hands together.

I notice a silver bar tray set up in the center of the table. Crystal coupes, Ketel One, a milk glass bowl of perfectly ripe citrus fruit. A fifth of whiskey that isn’t mine.

Not gonna lie. It hurts a little to see Whistle Pig on Milly’s table. I’m sure she didn’t mean it as an insult. Feels like one, though.

Maybe because I deserve it.

Grateful for the distraction, I help Reese out of her coat and pull out a chair for her, carefully tucking it under the table when she sits. I don’t miss the way Milly’s eyes flick to my hands on the back of Reese’s chair. I ignore the pulse of awareness that rips through me at her attention and shoulder out of my own coat, unbuttoning my blazer before I sit down beside Reese. Chris sits on our side of the table, while Milly and Thea take their seats across from us.

“That’s a fancy getup you got there, Nate,” Milly says, eyes glued to the papers she flips through. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you . . . quite so dressed up.”

Reese puts a hand on my thigh. “As the master distiller at the world’s best whiskey distillery, he needed a wardrobe overhaul. Don’t get me wrong, Nate, you look hot as hell in your T-shirt and jeans. But this”—she nods at my custom blazer and button-up, the cuff monogrammed with my initials—“is hot too.”