Page 6 of Bound To Be Mine

“I’ll get my laptop,” I said. “I want to make sure all our bases are covered.”

While my best friend and her brother argued about who snatched the gouda, I opened my laptop and pulled up the file. I was used to their bickering. The three of us had been working together for the last couple of years and if they weren’t bickering, I would be seriously concerned.

Cleo and I had met in design school, and although I didn’t know shit about designing fashion, I could put together a color palette like I was born to do it. And if you asked my mother, that’s what she’d tell you, word for word. Born to do it.

As a little girl, I’d loved playing Barbies, and every single play session ended in a wedding to Ken in his black and purple suit, and Barbie in her tulle ballgown and veil. I’d drawn floral arches on paper, cut them out, and taped them to my bedroom wall for Ken and Barbie to say their vows in front of. I’d curated a ceremony full of A-list guests, consisting of, but not limited to, my collection of Beanie Babies, Bratz dolls, and other Barbies. By the time I was ten I’d planned and executed at least four hundred successful pretty-in-plastic weddings.

Born to do it.

Now, as a twenty-five-year-old wedding planner in Los Angeles, the stakes were significantly higher. But the flower arches were much, much better. And my ambitions? Well, they were higher than a frat boy on a Friday night.

I was going places. We were going places. Me, Cleo, and Callum. I functioned as a great resource, sending my clients to them for their dress designs, and they hooked me up with their rich and powerful connections who were in need of someone like me.

We just had to get through this one hurdle in New York.

“Stop spiraling,” Cleo said, without looking up from the notebook in her lap.

“I’m not spiraling.”

“You’re freaking out. Don’t freak out. My cousin is a serious man, but he’s not as bad as people think.”

I frowned. “Great, now I am freaking out. I didn’t think he was bad at all. I had zero thoughts about his personality. And now that’s all I’m going to be thinking about.”

Cleo smiled, her green eyes lighting up with laughter. “He can be intimidating.”

“I’m intimidating,” Callum said as he used a straw to drink his sparkling water.

Cleo and I stared blankly at him. She popped a piece of cheese in her mouth.

He looked back and forth between us. “What? You’ve never seen me in a boardroom.”

Cleo ignored him. “We’re going to walk in there, give our pitch, and Adrian is going to love everything so much and totally trust us. All we’re going to have to do is sign the papers. Then I’m taking us all to dinner somewhere with a very long wine list.”

“Adrian isn’t going to be there,” Callum said. “Remember? His wife just had the baby.”

“Right. So one of the brothers is filling in.” She grimaced but quickly smoothed out the cracks in her expression and shook her head, her black hair shimmering in the sunlight pouring through the window at her back. “Doesn’t matter. The deal is done. We’re just making it official. This is going to work. Our cousins didn’t get rich by passing on good deals, and this is an amazing deal. Our wedding line is huge on the west coast. We are a one-stop shop for all wedding needs. That’s what people want. We can eliminate the need for twenty vendors. We’re streamlining the whole process.”

I nodded. She was right. The deal was essentially done. The language she just used was exactly what we had pitched. It worked. I knew it worked because we’d been using the model over the last year. We just needed a little capital to expand on what we had. Blackwell Couture was the perfect partner.

The flight was over before I knew it, and a car picked us up. It dropped us near the Blackwell Couture offices. The noise of the city surrounded us. Horns blared and the smell of meat cooking drifted down the street from a food truck at the corner. Cleo and I sniffed at the air like stray dogs while Callum checked the time on his watch.

He nodded at a high-rise office tower up ahead. “Let’s go. We can worry about food later.”

When we stepped into the lobby of the office tower, the sounds of the city snuffed out, and in its place was calm serenity. A water-feature wall gargled like a stream, classical music played on speakers I couldn’t see, and a friendly woman at a front desk instructed us to the elevator that would lead to the appropriate Blackwell offices.

Cleo was already on the move. I followed behind, my sensible heels clacking against the floor. I had freshened up before we landed, determined to look like a woman ready to close a million-dollar deal. Did I feel the part? No. But the Armani pantsuit fit well, the heels sounded bad ass, and my perfume hid the scent of my anxious sweating from the flight.

We were shown to a conference room with a view of the city that made me stop walking for a moment. I’d been to New York plenty of times for work, but I’d never stood in a room quite this high up and watched it all happen beneath me. A sea of concrete and glass spanned out to the horizon, where gray skies met gray ocean.

“Mandy,” Callum said pleasantly.

“Coming.” I pulled myself away from the window and took a seat at the long conference table, which was already set with water and coffee and a spread of pastries. Each dish had a cute little place card in front of it to announce what it was.

Cleo poured herself a coffee. Callum reviewed something on his phone. I straightened my blazer again. The dusty pink silk blouse I wore under it was sleeveless, which meant the jacket stayed on. I wasn’t about to be flashing skin in a very important meeting. I opened one of the bottles of water and drank. The last thing I needed was coffee.

The door opened and a man walked through with a head of dark hair and a cocky grin. I knew who he was before he even tipped his head in my direction. I’d never seen one of the New York Blackwell brothers in person, but I’d seen my fair share of them in online articles or on socials, and I could confirm that I’d never seen a single picture that did Dash Blackwell justice. He walked over to Callum, who got to his feet, and the two of them clasped hands and pulled each other in for a one-shoulder bump.

Then Dash turned and grinned at his other cousin. “You look good, Cleopatra.”