The Paid Bridesmaid(13)

Krista nodded. “I have potentially good news on that front. The director, Hank? I think he might like me. He keeps making googly eyes at me. Like the ones you make at Camden.”

“I do not—” I cut myself off before I started protesting too much. “I have never made googly eyes at anyone in my entire life.”

“I know! That’s why it’s so exciting because now you are.”

“You shouldn’t be excited,” I said, setting down my planner. “You don’t have all the information.”

Her eyes lit up with interest as I started telling her the entire Camden saga, leaving out the parts where I’d been intrigued by him. After I’d given her most of the details, she laughed for longer than she should have and when she finally calmed down I asked, “What do you think I should do going forward? I’m planning on avoiding him completely. He’s already trying to uncover my background; we can’t let him find out about us.”

There were still tears of laughter in her eyes as she responded, “What should you do going forward? I think you should have a good time!”

“What?”

“Girl, if he wants to woo you, go get your luxury car!”

“Why would I get a luxury car?”

“Because he’s rich and the way to a woman’s heart is with a luxury car. At least that’s the way to my heart.” She went into my mini-fridge and grabbed herself a bottled water, twisting off the lid. “Usually you’re an undercover bridesmaid, but Camden thinks you’re undercover as a spy. That’s pretty fun.”

“Or not fun,” I retorted. This could be a huge issue if we didn’t come up with a way to handle him.

There was a loud crashing noise from next door. I raised both of my eyebrows at Krista and whispered, “That’s his room.”

She excitedly whispered back, “Do you think he has someone in there? Like of the female persuasion and they’re knocking over furniture?”

My heartbeat increased rapidly. “What? No!”

Why did that bother me so much?

“That would definitely solve your problem. If he was interested in someone else.”

But I didn’t want him to be interested in someone else.

What was wrong with me?

Krista tiptoed over to the wall and put her ear against it. “I can’t hear anything,” she reported. “Hand me one of those glasses.”

“This isn’t a cartoon. That doesn’t actually work.”

“Come on, we’re supposed to be spies, remember? Have some fun with me!”

One of the reasons my working and personal relationship with Krista had been so great was because of situations like this one—where I was caught up in my own inner drama and she was reminding me to have fun. Because our job was fun. Even when it was stressful, we still got to get our hair and makeup done and get free dresses and eat excellent food and dance the night away.

We could spy on a boy for a moment.

I tiptoed over and put my ear against the wall but couldn’t hear anything, either.

“We need to get going to the fitting,” I told her. “Down at Sadie’s villa.” The hotel had provided her with a private villa that sat right on the beach.

“Fine,” Krista said with an exaggerated sigh. “Let’s go.”

I checked to make sure I had both of my keycards on me as we left our room. Some small part of me hoped Camden would come out when he heard my door shut, but he didn’t.

And I was disappointed.

As we walked down the hallway Krista said, “Just tell him you’re not a spy.”

“I’m sure he’ll believe that. Because he seems like the trusting type.”

“I don’t know what else you can do. There’s no way he can find us online.”

That was true. Taimani made sure of it, and her ability to scrub our names was one of the reasons I’d hired her in the first place. She made certain that our real names were never connected with any pictures of us that were online. I had stopped using aliases because Taimani was just that good.

“Or,” Krista said, “you could just play along and flirt back.”

“I don’t think I want to do that.” Because so far my body couldn’t tell the difference between real and fake, so even if my brain knew it didn’t mean anything, I didn’t think I’d be able to convince my heart.

“It will be fine,” she told me. “Just grab that bull by the horns and see where things go. We’re in Hawaii. Let’s do our job, but let’s also keep having a good time.”

She pushed the button for the elevator and we waited in silence for it to arrive while I considered her advice.

Grabbing a bull by its horns wasn’t a great analogy because I wasn’t up for being gored if things went sideways.

And working at weddings had taught me that stuff always seemed to go sideways.





CHAPTER FIVE


Stefan quickly finished with the dresses for me, Krista, and Mary-Ellen. This was our first time meeting with him, but we’d already sent in our measurements. I hadn’t known what to expect when we arrived, but Sadie had selected some beautiful gray silk dresses that draped like they’d been made for us.

Which, I supposed, they had. It was just nice to get a dress that was so pretty. I actually could wear it again, unlike most bridesmaid dresses.