Page 31 of Meant to be Mine

DREW

“It looks good,” Kensey said. “You’ve done that loop four times. The bar is still in the same place it was the last time you looked.”

“I want to make sure it looks good,” I said.

“It does. Why don’t we have a little drink to settle your nerves?”

She was right, of course. She put her hand on my forearm. “It looks incredible,” she said. “You know I wouldn’t bullshit you.”

“We did this.”

She shook her head once. “You did this. I made a spreadsheet and helped pick the crab cakes. This is yours.”

I looked around the room. Yeah, okay. Maybe I did do this.

“Go enjoy yourself,” I told her. “You don’t have to work tonight. You’re a guest.”

“I can do both,” she said with a small smile and disappeared toward the patio.

I watched her go and decided to send Annika the biggest fruit basket ever. That dress was fucking amazing. Gone was the lanky girl from school. She was all woman. I had no business looking at her the way I was. She was my friend.

The room was buzzing with the servers making their rounds. People sipped champagne or ordered drinks from the open bar. And the bar was doing serious business.

The crostini were going fast, which I’d predicted. I made a mental note to tell Kensey she’d been right about ordering extra. The food was a hit. I spotted Kensey a few times. I wasn’t the only man in the room that had noticed her. She was hard to ignore. It pissed me off in a way. I was jealous of people looking at my friend.

I worked the room. Shook hands. Thanked people for coming. Talked to a few of the buyers who’d flown in from New York and Chicago. Two editors from fashion publications that Cleo’s team had invited. A woman who ran a boutique in San Francisco and wanted to expand the relationship. I said all the right things. I schmoozed.

About thirty minutes in, the DJ turned the music down a touch. Not all the way, just enough to signal something was happening. A spotlight hit the entrance.

The room shifted. Heads turned. Just like we planned.

They came in together, which was the only way they ever did anything. My cousins were used to making an entrance. It was one of the things they were famous for. They showed up to events dressed to kill.

Adrian Blackwell walked in first, which made sense because he was the oldest and basically the boss. He ran Blackwell Couture as the CEO. He didn’t get ruffled. He was the guy that kept shit running after his father died. The whole family had been worried about him with how hard he was working. But then he met his wife, Elizabeth.

She was beside him, her hand in the crook of his arm. She was sharp and kind at the same time. I knew enough of their story to know it hadn’t been simple. Adrian had a talent for making things complicated when they didn’t need to be and Elizabeth apparently had the patience of a saint and the backbone of a prizefighter. The combination had worked out.

Behind them came Sebastian. He was the creative force in the New York operation, the one who could put together a promo campaign or a fashion shoot. The Blackwell Summer events had been his idea to promote the store. As a former model himself, he knew how to show off the clothes and all the things that made Blackwell a trendsetter. He’d taken a bit of a step back from being the face of the company after meeting his wife, Bernadette.

She was on his arm, laughing at something. She was normally the uptight one compared to Sebastian’s wild side. For them, opposites had definitely attracted. It had apparently been a revelation for everyone involved, including him. Their story was one of those ones that sounded unlikely, but when you watched them in a room together, you knew. You saw it.

Briggs came next with Mandy beside him. Mandy was Cleo’s best friend and one of the people most responsible for the Blackwell Wedding line. She, Cleo, and Callum had built the wedding company together.

Briggs was the quietest of the New York cousins, but his looming physical presence did most of the speaking for him. He was the legal mind, protecting the family business from any and all legal threats. So it was a shock when the straightlaced Briggs got hammered in Vegas and married Mandy. Somehow, they had made it work and she had softened some of his harder edges.

And then came Dash, who was always last and always made it look intentional. He was the youngest of the four New York Blackwells and the most likely to be somewhere he wasn’t supposed to be. The wild child. His wife, Krista, was beside him. She was an absolute badass, looking like she could kick my ass and everyone else at the party.

All eight of them stood in the entrance for a moment. Of course, they were all dressed in couture, and of course, they looked like walking billboards.

I waited until they had made enough of an entrance before I approached.

“Drew.” Adrian shook my hand, patting my upper arm. “This is excellent. Seriously.”

“Thank you for coming,” I said. “Everyone gets excited when you all show up.”

“We weren’t missing this.” Adrian stepped back and looked around the room. I watched him do the assessment. “You’ve got the right crowd.”

I nodded. “We’ll see how the models land.”