Total pages in book: 90
Estimated words: 87179 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 436(@200wpm)___ 349(@250wpm)___ 291(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 87179 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 436(@200wpm)___ 349(@250wpm)___ 291(@300wpm)
My staff leaves when I do. They are going out to dinner and then home to rest for a few hours, but they’ll be back around midnight to help me tear everything down so we have a clean slate for tomorrow morning.
I hurry through my shower and do my hair and makeup in record time before donning my red, off-the-shoulder dress, just in time for Chase to pick me up and bring me out for the party.
I have to admit, everything out here looks spectacular. We pulled off the faerie garden look, complete with twinkle lights and a waterfall in the far corner of the tent. Chase’s bar is in another corner, with my flowers draped across the front. Two bartenders bustle behind it, filling orders.
To my surprise, there’s a full stage set up on the opposite end of the tent, complete with instruments and microphones, and I’ll be interested to see what they use that for, given how many musicians are here tonight.
“Have I mentioned that you’re fucking gorgeous?” Chase whispers into my ear. We’re sitting across from his parents, who I really like. Joy, Chase’s mom, keeps grinning over at me. But it’s disconcerting to have her son whisper sweet nothings in my ear while she watches us dreamily.
“You have,” I murmur and take a sip of my wine. His jaw just about came unhinged when he saw me in my red dress.
“Summer,” Joy says from across the table, “I just have to say, these flowers are absolutely beautiful. You did a wonderful job.”
“Thank you. My team and I worked hard to make sure Erin got exactly what she had in mind.”
“I love it,” Joy continues and winks at me, then moves her gaze to Chase, and I can see the wheels spinning in her head. “Is this your first date with Summer, Chase?”
“No, ma’am,” Chase says with a shake of the head. “And it won’t be the last.”
“How nice,” she says, and if I’m not mistaken, her already wide smile grows. “How is your aunt Paula, Summer? She didn’t make it to our last book club meeting.”
“She’s great. I’m sorry she missed the meeting. She was probably helping me at the shop. She spends more time there in the summer, which I really appreciate.”
“Did I overhear that you’re the florist?”
I turn to the woman sitting next to me and nod, butterflies suddenly filling my stomach. Somehow, I was seated next to Sidney Sterling. The Sidney Sterling. My favorite country singer of all time. The woman whose every song I know by heart, and even got to go see in concert last summer in Seattle. I’ve been tongue-tied since she introduced herself to me and shook my hand.
A hand that I might never wash again.
“I am,” I reply with a nod.
“Wow, you do great work. This entire setup looks like it came out of a magazine.”
“Thanks. I didn’t do it alone. I have a talented staff.”
“She’s being modest,” Chase informs Sidney. “She’s fucking brilliant.”
Sidney grins and winks at me. “You have an admirer. And he’s a hot one.”
“Don’t make me kill Chase,” Sidney’s husband, Keaton, says from the other side of her. His voice is totally mellow, his face bland, but his eyes are sharp. “I like him.”
“No one’s hotter than you, babe,” Sidney replies with a laugh. “I’m so glad that Erin didn’t have us all sitting in bunches. You know, in family groups? I like meeting new people, and this ranch is absolutely to die for.”
“It was smart of her to have us mingle,” Joy agrees from across the table. “I suspect that some of us might have been a little…intimidated to approach some of you otherwise.”
“Don’t be,” Keaton insists. “We’re all just a bunch of normal people. Some of them are idiots.”
“Our families have that in common,” Chase says with a laugh, and the two men high-five over the table.
“I heard that,” Brady calls out from the next table over. “I know you’re not calling me an idiot.”
“Or me,” a man I recognize as Vaughn freaking Barrymore, the hottest actor of our generation, says with a laugh.
“I am talking about him,” Keaton says with a whisper. “He married my sister, so I can give him a hard time.”
Before we can continue the conversation, there’s a commotion on the stage, and we all quiet down, turning to see what’s happening.
“That’s our cue,” Sidney mutters to her husband, who reaches out and rubs her cheek with the back of his finger.
“Hello,” Meg, Erin’s mom, says into the microphone with a little smile. “First of all, be kind, okay? I don’t sing in public much anymore these days. Is anyone going to come up here with me, or what?”
To my shock, I watch as Leo motherfucking Nash stands at a table across the room, and with a cocky grin on his crazy handsome face, he struts up to meet her. Other members of the family join them, including Sidney and Keaton.