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1
CHASE
We really neededa lock on the office door.
If there was a lock on the office door, I wouldn’t need to use the large desk to barricade myself in. I was sweating with the effort—and I hadn’t brought a change of clothes. Rookie mistake.
I’d considered other options to seal myself inside but nothing was substantial enough, even sitting on the small tower of crates I pushed to one side wouldn’t have done it. It needed to be the desk. The desk that had to weigh close to a tonne. The desk that Mack and I had found on the sidewalk at four in the morning and dragged back to our, as yet, unfinished bar.
It was a regal desk, with dark timber and hidden compartments; a desk of queens and kings and other important people. It was immense and ridiculous and had no place in our office. And yet, after we managed to get it inside—through tenacity and Tetris-like maneuvering—I could almost hear it sigh with relief that it was home.
The door opened, not all the way because the desk limited its progress to a medium sized crack. Although if there was a lock this wouldn’t even be an issue. Mack poked his head around the partially opened door.
“There y—whoa—what’s happening in here?”
I straightened, huffing a little, and blew an errant strand of hair out of my face. “Nothing, nothing’s happening. Why do you ask?”
“Only because the desk isn’t usually on that angle, or obscuring the door quite as effectively,” he said with a chuckle.
“Oh that? It’s fine. I was just… testing something out.” Because of course I’d be doing that in the middle of wedding preparations. Totally normal.
“Uh-huh…” His eyes swept over me, seeing far more than I wanted them to. “You want to put it back where it was so I can open the door?”
“No.”
“No?”
“If the door can open then you can come in, and I can get out, and I’m quite happy here right at the moment, thank you very much.” And I would continue to be happy here until the night was over. What the hell had we been thinking, taking on a wedding? We weren’t geared for events. Until a couple of days ago we didn’t even have a functioning kitchen. We were a bar. A cool bar, if I did say so myself, but a bar nonetheless. Not a wedding venue. This whole thing was a mistake, I saw that now. So I was hiding.
Mack tried to wedge himself further through the crack in the door, he didn’t get far. “Is this about the plums?” he asked.
My stomach rolled. “I am going to strangle Nash with his own hair. How could he fail to mention that his sister—thebride—doesn’t like plums?”
“There are other cocktails.”
“That’s the best one,” I said, running my finger over a scratch on the desk.
“Better than the ginger fizz?”
“That one’s good, too. It’s very warming, good for this time of year...”
“A fact I can attest to after you made me drink three.” He shoved on the door. The desk moved a fraction and his shoulders entered the room. “So, this is just about the plums?”
“Yes.”
Another shove. “Chase.”
“No,” I admitted as I watched him push his way all the way in. I turned my back and perched on the edge of the desk. He dropped down beside me and bumped my shoulder with his.
“What’s up?”
I shook my head. “Maybe I’m just realizing that we might have bit off a little more than we can chew.”
“Ahh… and is this you, or is it Maureen?”
I huffed out a laugh. “So what if it is Maureen? She’s not always wrong.”
“Maureen is full of shit—always,” he said, voice gruff. Usually, I would agree with him. Maureen—the name he’d given to my negative inner voice—was often out of line. Today, though, today I was pretty sure she had a point.
