From This Day Forward (The Wedding Belles 0.5)(2)

Leah shook her head. “Only you could look so perfectly chill about the fact that you’ve been planning the president’s daughter’s wedding.”

“Former president.”

“Details, schmetails,” Leah said with a wave of her hand. It was true, the bride wouldn’t technically be the First Daughter on her wedding day, but President Preston had ended his second term just within the past year, so in the eyes of the press, Kylie Preston was still very much America’s sweetheart.

“What’s Kylie like, anyway?” Leah asked. “She always seems so sweet and shy on camera.”

“She’s sweet and shy in real life, too, although the shyness fades when she’s around Brent.”

Leah shook her head. “Wouldn’t you just figure that the president’s daughter and the son of the richest man in New York would become college sweethearts?”

An uncharacteristically dreamy look stole over Alexis’s eyes. “It works that way sometimes.”

Leah’s snort slipped out before she could help it. It wasn’t that she didn’t believe in true love. She totally did. One didn’t make it to age thirty-one as a wedding photographer without trusting that at least some of the couples would make it to happily ever after.

It was just that it never seemed to work that way for her. Despite the fact that Leah continued to put herself out there, trying every sort of wretched dating app on the planet and gamely agreeing to every blind date her friends could rummage up, she had yet to feel the thing. That elusive combination of wanting to see someone naked and wanting to wake up beside him the next morning. For Leah, it was usually one or the other—either she met exactly the type of guy she could laugh with and didn’t feel even a flash of attraction for, or there was a guy who completely revved her lady bits, but with whom she had nothing in common.

Except . . .

That wasn’t entirely true. The emotional and physical attraction had overlapped once. But the disastrous consequences of that short-lived fling had been painful enough that she was, well, skeptical.

“Do you have any plans for your unexpectedly free weekend?” Alexis asked as she perused the menu.

Leah’s eyes narrowed on her friend. Alexis Morgan might be the queen of poker face, but Leah had known Alexis for close to a decade now. She knew when she was being handled, and right now, Alexis was definitely working up to something.

Instead of answering the question, Leah took a sip of her mimosa and waited. When Alexis’s brown eyes flicked up to hers, Leah merely lifted her brows. Waited some more.

With a sigh, Alexis set the menu aside and folded both arms on the table, leaning toward Leah. “I need a favor.”

“Anything,” Leah said automatically, meaning it completely.

Her relationship with Alexis may have started as a business arrangement—they’d both arrived in the city ten years earlier with big plans of pursuing their dream careers. But somewhere along the way, Alexis and Leah had transitioned from sometimes business associates to friends. Alexis had been there for Leah when she’d needed her, and Leah fully intended to repay the favor any way she could.

“I need you to work the Preston wedding.”

Leah blinked. “The Preston wedding. As in, the wedding of the former First Daughter we were just talking about? The one this weekend?”

Alexis nodded.

Leah sat back, stunned. “Holy crap, Lex. That’s not really me doing you a favor, hon. More like the other way around. This would be the opportunity of a lifetime for me. For any photographer.”

“I know, but I still hate asking last minute like this. If it were up to me, I’d have recommended you from the very beginning, but Kylie’s college roommate and her husband are a two-person photographer team, and Kylie wanted to give the opportunity to her friend.”

“So what happened? They had a falling-out?”

Alexis shook her head. “They live in San Francisco and she’s a few months pregnant. There was some complication; she’s been put on bed rest. Nothing serious, just a precaution, but ergo . . . she’s certainly not going to be flying to New York anytime soon, and certainly can’t be photographing a wedding.”

“Ugh. That sucks,” Leah said sympathetically.

Alexis smiled. “This is why I knew you were right for the job. You get it. You get people.”

Leah rolled her eyes. “You hardly have to sweet talk me into taking a job that’s likely to be the highest-profile wedding of my career.”

Alexis glanced down at her Bloody Mary, stirring a pickled green bean. “Well there is one tiny thing I haven’t mentioned.”

“Bring it.”

Alexis looked up. “It’s a huge wedding. One photographer’s not going to cut it.”

Leah waved her hand. “Oh please. My ego’s not so big I can’t handle a little teamwork. Who else you bringing in?”

Alexis bit her lip, and Leah tensed at the rare unease she saw on her usually confident friend’s face.

Alexis leaned forward and touched her arm. “Leah, you have to know how impossible it is to book one good photographer on short notice in June, much less two, and I’m counting myself lucky because two of the best happened to be available, but . . .”

“But what?” Leah asked, her heart pounding faster as she somehow knew what her friend was trying to say. Knew whose name Alexis was terrified to say.