Southern Bombshell (North Carolina Highlands 5)

I wouldn’t say creating ever came easily. But it didn’t always feel like such a chore. Something to get through so I could move on to other things. More pressing things like errands, interviewing interns, accounting.

Running a hand through my hair, I try to talk myself off the ledge. Maybe this is just growing pains working themselves out. Even though I don’t have to take on as many weddings each year thanks to the enormous budgets I’m presented with for those weddings, my workload has increased exponentially. The pressure to knock it out of the park every damn time is real.

Still, a voice inside me says something else is going on here. Nothing feels romantic the way it used to. I wish I could hit pause on my life sometimes. Will I ever get to the end of my to-do list and get the break I desperately need? I feel like I could spend all day, every day doing and still not clear the list. It sucks the romance out of everything.

I drop my pen and push back from the table with a mumbled, “Fuck.” My stomach goes tight. I’m starting to panic.

I get to my feet. Okay. Dancing helped get the wheels turning. No one else is in the office today—not yet.

Screw it, I’ll dance. I’m that desperate.

I grab my AirPods from my bag and put on a Pop Rising playlist. An Ed Sheeran song comes on.

Perfect.

Glancing over my shoulder at the door to double-check no one’s around, I raise my arms and swing my hips. I feel like a lunatic. When did it come to this?

But I force myself to keep going. It gets easier, thanks in large part to the catchy beat of “Shivers.” I turn up the volume. Putting my hands on my knees, I shake my ass, then move my feet.

Go figure, I can kinda, sorta do the foxtrot to this song. I let my legs do their thing, part twerk, part ballroom dance, and close my eyes.

I hoped the first thing I’d see in the darkness was a wedding idea.

Instead, I see Nate. The calm in his eyes and the steadiness of his touch as he pulled me into his arms. My body ignites at the memory of his scent and his smile. Somewhere in the back of my mind, it registers that I’m smiling too, as a delicious, heated heaviness gathers low in my core. The way he’d looked after I’d spun underneath his arm—

Biting my lip, I pretend he’s standing in front of me as I turn again, this time really moving my hips. His gaze is downright murderous now. There’s a clench in my chest that tells me I need to stop. This is another woman’s man I’m fantasizing about. If I had a guy like Nate, it’d kill me to know someone else thought about him this way.

It goes without saying I have absolutely no plans to act on said fantasies. But still, the fact that I allow them to exist—to blossom—is wrong.

So I open my eyes and I keep dancing, training my gaze on the design spread on the table. Justin Bieber is on now, and I don’t hate it. During a concert of his I went to, Bieber was suspended in a big glass box (yes, really) above the audience.

What if we incorporated more glass into the design scheme? Rather than doing low floral arrangements on the tables, we could do hurricanes and glass candlesticks of varying heights. Oh! And the place cards—I always try to do something creative with them instead of just putting them on the tables. We could do a gigantic lucite pegboard and hang place cards from it. Maybe use tiny baby’s breath boutonnieres as pegs for each one—

I nearly have a heart attack when someone taps me on my shoulder. Whipping around, I see my brother Rhett standing there laughing at me.

The bastard has the balls to laugh.

I’d tell him to go fuck himself if I wasn’t mid-twerk. Instead, I leap to my feet and pluck the AirPods out of my ears. I forgot his team has a bye this week, so he came home from Vegas with Amelia and his son to visit the Farm.

“Rhett, what the hell! You scared the shit out of me.”

“You’re scaring the shit out of me. I know I’ve got Halloween on the brain, but for a second there, I thought you were possessed by the ghost of Meghan Thee Stallion.”

I bring my brows together. “Meghan’s alive, moron.”

“She wouldn’t be if she saw you dancing.” He peers at me. “Everything . . . okay?”

“Fine,” I snap. “Now get out of here. I’m working.”

Rhett tilts his head. “Are you?”

“As a matter of fact, I am. I was, um . . . dancing—being on my feet—helps me think.”

“Riiiiight.” He says it the way Dr. Evil would, with a healthy dose of skepticism.