To Have and to Hold (The Wedding Belles #1)(48)

Brooke’s head was spinning. “Okay, but—”

“May I speak out of turn?” Alexis said.

Brooke bit back a smile. “Do you even know how?”

Alexis merely looked at her, waiting for a response.

“Sure,” Brooke said, oddly eager to see what might come out of her boss’s mouth when the woman didn’t have her shields up.

“I think people make too big a deal about sex,” Alexis said.

Not what Brooke had been expecting.

“It’s just . . .” Alexis waved her hand impatiently. “I know what the magazines and romance novels tell us. That sex has to complicate everything, but that’s a myth. It only has to complicate things if you let it.”

“And you don’t . . . let it?” Brooke asked, trying to follow along.

There was a brief flash of something across Alexis’s face—something Brooke might have called vulnerability if she didn’t know the other woman better.

“Not anymore,” Alexis said. “And if you’re sitting there thinking that it’s weird to be talking about sex with your boss, well . . . that’s exactly what I’m talking about. Sex shouldn’t be taboo.”

Brooke reached for a Hershey’s Kiss. And then another. Hell, she needed a whole bag for this conversation. And a vodka.

“I’ll apologize for overstepping,” Alexis said as she calmly stood. “Consider it food for thought.”

“Wait, that’s it?” Brooke asked, aghast. “I’m not . . . I’m not entirely sure what you’re trying to tell me.”

Alexis smiled. A real one, that reached her eyes. “Yes you do.”

Brooke hesitated. “Are you telling me to sleep with Seth Tyler?”

Alexis shook her head. “I am not. I’m telling you to sleep with who you want to sleep with.”

“Even if it’s a client?”

“Admittedly, not my first choice, but then it’s not my choice, is it? And you’ve read the Belles creed. It doesn’t matter who’s paying the bill because the real client is . . .?”

“The bride,” Brooke finished. It was no less than she’d been telling herself and Seth for days.

“All I’m saying is that it doesn’t have to get complicated,” Alexis said. “I’ve always managed to keep sex and the rest of my life separate, and I find I rather like it that way. In fact, sometimes—how did you put it?—crossing that line can actually ease the tension. Not add to it.”

Brooke stuffed another candy in her mouth. “Respectfully, I can’t believe we’re having this conversation.”

Alexis shrugged. “Respectfully . . . think about it.”





Chapter Eighteen





SETH KNEW THAT PEOPLE thought living in a hotel was lonely, but the truth was, it usually wasn’t.

He liked the location. He liked the room service. Liked coming home to a freshly made bed and clean sink and never having to change a lightbulb.

But on Thursday evening as he wheeled his overnight bag into his set of suites after a long-ass, delayed flight back from Hong Kong, neck cramped, eyes gritty, and body tired down to his very bones, Seth paused in the foyer and looked at his home differently.

And for the first time in as long as he could remember, he wished for . . . something. Someone.

A dog. Even a godforsaken cat.

Or, maybe, a sassy-mouthed blond wedding planner.

He pushed this last thought aside as he dropped his keys on the console and flicked on the lights. Seth hadn’t heard from Brooke since last Friday when she’d rejected his kiss. While he couldn’t quite say he was over the sting of her rejection, at least he hadn’t done damage to her working relationship with his sister. A couple of casual questions to Maya had reassured him that Brooke was still very much the wedding planner.

The whole thing was just as well, he thought as he entered the small but modern kitchen and opened the fridge door. Getting involved with any woman wasn’t on the agenda right now. Not when every last drop of his energy went toward being a CEO worthy of filling his father’s shoes.

But if he were to get involved with a woman, it sure as hell shouldn’t be with one to whom he’d be writing a fat paycheck in a few months.

And unfortunately for Seth, he was increasingly worried that he would be writing a check. So far he’d turned up no tangible dirt on Neil, and his sister had given no indication that she regretted accepting the man’s proposal.

There was, of course, still the chance that Brooke might turn something up during the course of wedding planning, but it had been a long shot that she’d sabotage her own paycheck in the first place. Now that he’d gone and made a move on her, he wasn’t exactly betting the ranch that she was going to join his anti–Maya and Neil wedding campaign.

Which left him with the private investigator that Seth hadn’t quite worked up the courage to call back.

Seth closed the refrigerator door upon realizing that it was mostly empty. Fine. He wasn’t hungry so much as restless.

And not restless so much as horny.

“Shit,” he muttered, bracing his hands on the granite counter, and debated a cold shower. But he’d been trying that for days, and so far it had been completely ineffective at banishing images of Brooke from his mind.