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LAUREL SOMMERS STEPPED back froh the puddle at the edge of the kerb, splashing icy water over her feet, and decided this was all her father’s fault, really
Well, the fact that she was stuck in London, waiting in the freezing cold for a car to take her back to where she should be—Morwen Hall, the gothic stately home turned five-star hotel in the countryside an hour and a half’s drive out of the city—was clearly Melissa’s fault But if their father hadn’t wanted to have his cake and eat it for their entire childhoods then her half-sister probably wouldn’t hate her enough to make her life this miserable
Sighing, Laurel clasped the bag holding the last- favours that Melissa had insisted she collect that afternoon closer to her body as a stream of cars continued to rush past It was three days after Christht in that strange sense of anticipation that filled the space between December the twenty-fifth and New Year’s Eve—full of possibilities for the year ahead and the lives that ht be lived in it
Any other year Laurel would be as caught up in that sense of opportunity as anyone She usually used these last few days of the year to reflect on the year just gone and plan her year ahead Plan how to be better, to achieve h
Just last year she’d plotted out her schedule for starting her own business organising weddings She’d been a wedding planner at a popular company for five years, and had felt with quiet optio it alone—especially since she’d been expecting to be organising her oedding, and Benjamin had always said he liked a woman with ambition
So she’d planned, she’d organised, and she’d done it—she had the business cards to prove it Laurel’s Weddings was up and running And, even if she wasn’t planning her oedding, she did have her first celebrity client on the bookswhich hy this year that optimism would have to wait until January the first
All she had to do waswithout anything going terribly wrong and she would be golden Melissa was big news in Hollywood right now—presumably because she was a lot nicer to directors than she was to wedding planners—and her wedding was being covered in one of those glossy azines Laurel only ever had time to read at the hairdresser’s If this ell her business would boo to earn enough to pay back the small business loan she’d only just qualified for
She ht not be a Hollywood star like Melissa, but once her business went global no one would be able to say she wasn’t good enough
But of course thatto Melissa’s every whim—even when that whim meant a last-minute trip back to the capital to replace the favours they’d spent teeks deciding on because they were ‘an embarrassment’ all of a sudden
And, asabout it, a peaceful wedding also ain Which was just the cherry on top of the icing on top of the wedding cake—wasn’t it?
Another car—big and black and shiny—slowed as it reached the kerb beside her Lauren felt hope rising She’d asked the last of the cars ferrying wedding guests fro into the city and pick her up on its way to Morwen Hall, rather than going around the M25 It would er journey, but she was sort of hoping he wouldn’t notice Orcompany for it
Since the last guest was the groom Riley’s brother—Dan Black, her soon to be half-brother-in-law, or so—she really hoped he didn’t object It would be nice at least to start out on good ter fa but Her anise Melissa’s wedding Or, as she called her, ‘That illegitihter of your father’s mistress’
Unsurprisingly, her uest list
Dan Black wasn’t a high-maintenance Hollywood star, at least—as far as Laurel could tell In fact Melissa hadn’t told her anything about him at all Probably because if he couldn’t further her career then Melissa wasn’t interested All Laurel had to go on was the brief couple of lines Melissa and Riley had scribbled next to every nauest list, so Laurel would understand why they were important and why they’d been invited, and the address she had sent the invitation to
Black Ops Stunts Even the follow-up e the journey and his accommodation had been answered by the minimum possible number of words and no extraneous detail