Page 14 of The Heartbreaker Next Door

Her lips pressed together, and it was the first time I seemed to rattle her. “Because I miss it. Because I’m good at it. Because Maverick is old enough for pre-K and I don’t want to rot in a cubicle while life is passing me by.”

I watched her the whole time she spoke. She met my gaze head-on, no theatrics, no self-deprecating jokes. Just the facts.

I shifted to the numbers. “The budgets you submitted for the sample events were… ambitious.”

She shrugged. “I know what things cost. I’m not going to lowball you to get the job and then tell you it can’t be done for the money I quoted.”

“Most people would.”

“I’m not most people.”

I stared at her, waiting for her to fill the silence with nervous chatter. She just waited, perfectly still. So different than the night before. It unnerved me. I moved on.

“In your events strategy, you said you wanted to ‘broaden the ranch’s brand beyond destination weddings.’ What does that mean?”

She smiled and, for a moment, all the energy in the room condensed into that one expression. It was like the sun breaking through my soul’s cloudiest day. It warmed me from the inside out. My entire world narrowed, and my chest tightened with an unfamiliar emotion.

“It means this place is a gold mine, but only if you stop thinking of it as a wedding factory. There’s demand for retreats, family getaways, seasonal experiences, ‘immersive rural luxury,’ if you want a buzzword. You’ve got the infrastructure, you just need the right programming.”

I pretended to jot down a note while I processed the phrase ‘wedding factory,’ which, honestly, was what my mother called our event barn behind closed doors.

I forced my voice into a monotone. “That’s a very…expansive vision for a temporary position.”

Her smile widened. “Temporary is a state of mind.”

I tried to find the flaw in her logic, but all I could see were the places where her resume dovetailed perfectly with our needs. “What would you do first if you got the job?”

“Rebrand the event spaces.” She didn’t even need to think about it. “Your website is three years out of date, your digital presence is mostly wedding-centric, and your packages don’t reflect the actual amenities or the new cabins. I’d create new visual assets, update the social, and bring in a content photographer for a day or two to make it all pop. Then I’d hit your vendor contacts and cross-promote with local businesses—get your off-season bookings up with themed weekends and family packages.”

She paused, as if daring me to argue.

“You make it sound simple,” I countered.

Her eyes flashed at the challenge. “It’s not simple, but it’s not brain surgery. It’s storytelling, vision, and logistics, and I excel at all three.”

I hesitated. There was something relentless about her, but also something honest. It made me want to ask more questions, just to see where her answers would lead.

I checked my list and saw a question I was very invested in. “With your skills, you could work anywhere, why do you want to work for us?”

She didn’t give the fake answers. I admire your family, I love your mission, I want to help the community. Instead, she said, “Before applying, I did my due diligence to make sure this was an environment I would thrive in and could bring something to the table. You have a luxury ranch, a vineyard, a spa, and enough picturesque scenery to make a Hallmark producer hyperventilate. I can think of a dozen ways to sell that which aren’t weddings or corporate events.” A grin tilted on her perfect, full lips. “And the commute wouldn’t suck.”

The corners of my mouth twitched at her mention of living next door, but I held my composure. I tapped my pen on the table, then started in on the scenario exercises. “A drunk groom-to-be decides, forty-eight hours before the wedding, that he wants a full-scale fireworks show. The county requires at least five business days’ notice for permits and fire marshal approval. The client threatens to cancel unless you deliver. What do you do?”

Her response was immediate, no thinking, no hesitation. “Honestly, if I have a relationship with the groom’s family, or whoever he was closest to, I’d call them to explain the situation and see if he could be talked out of it. If that fails, I find a way to get a permit expedited—call in a favor, sweet-talk the clerk, whatever it takes. If that fails, I rent a confetti cannon and sell him on how much fun it is to cover his guests and new in-laws in glitter. If that failed, I would look into the logistics of a laser show. The point isn’t to say yes or no, it’s to manage expectations while keeping the client happy and the ranch safe.”

I presented a second scenario, one God himself would have difficulty handling. “Saturday. Two hundred guests. Outdoor wedding. Ceremony starts at five. At three-thirty, a thunderstorm rolls in. The bride refuses to move the ceremony indoors because she’s dreamed of getting married beneath the cottonwoods since she was twelve. The groom’s mother is threatening to leave because her ex-husband brought his twenty-five-year-old girlfriend. The florist is stuck forty miles away with a flat tire. One of the groomsmen has already gotten into the whiskey, and somebody’s kid just released the bride’s doves two hours early.”

Her expression doesn’t change.

“You have ninety minutes. What do you do?”

She asked a follow-up. “Do I have staff?”

“You have me.” The second I said the words, I realized how they sounded and feared it was a Freudian slip.

Her eyes narrowed slightly, and she teased, “That feels less like help and more like an additional complication.”

One corner of my mouth twitched. I liked that she was giving me a little shit.