Marry Me By Midnight

Chapter 1: The Best Man

“Ivy!” Her sister Sophie waved her over from across the private dining room, radiant in the way brides always were forty-eight hours out, equal parts joy and low-grade panic. “Come meet Marcus’s brother. He flew in this morning and he’s already terrified of you, I can tell.”

Michael’s brother. Ivy’s stomach dropped somewhere around her heels as she crossed the room, heels clicking against reclaimed hardwood, professional smile locking into place out of pure muscle memory. She’d built an entire career on staying composed in rooms full of chaos. She was not going to lose that now, in front of forty of her sister’s future in-laws, because of a man she’d told herself she would never see again.

He turned. Recognition hit his face half a second after it hit hers — she watched it land, watched the easy best-man charm flicker for just a moment before he caught it and smoothed it back into place, faster than she managed the same trick herself.

“Grant Ashford,” Sophie said, oblivious, looping her arm through Ivy’s. “My future brother-in-law, and apparently the best man, which means you two are going to be attached at the hip for the next week whether you like it or not. Grant, this is my sister Ivy — she’s planning the whole wedding, so basically your new boss.”

“We’ve actually met,” Grant said, and his voice was exactly as low and unhurried as Ivy remembered, which was deeply unfair of it to be. “Briefly. In passing.”

“Very briefly,” Ivy agreed, in a tone that dared him to say one more word about it.

“Small world,” Sophie said, already being pulled away by someone with an urgent question about the seating chart, leaving Ivy and Grant standing three feet apart in a room full of string lights and the smell of expensive wine, six months and a Vegas elevator between them and everything neither of them was saying.

“So,” Grant said, once Sophie was safely out of earshot. “Best man. Wedding planner. Small world doesn’t begin to cover it.”

“You could have led with your last name.” Ivy kept her voice pleasant, professional, the voice she used on difficult vendors and overbearing mothers-in-law. “That night. It would have saved us both a very awkward rehearsal dinner.”

“You could have asked.”

“I was a little distracted.”

Something flickered across his face — not quite a smile, but close, the ghost of the same reckless grin that had talked her into a second drink and then a very bad, very good decision. “As I recall, we agreed it wasn’t that kind of night. No names, no numbers, no strings.”

“That was the deal,” Ivy said. “I’m holding up my end.”

“Good. Because I’ve got a wedding to be the best man at, and you’ve apparently got it to plan, and I don’t think either of us wants Sophie finding out her maid of honor and best man already—” He stopped himself, glancing around, lowering his voice. “Already know each other. Under the circumstances.”

Maid of honor. Right. She was also that, on top of running the entire event professionally, which meant the next week was going to require a level of compartmentalization she genuinely wasn’t sure she possessed.

“We’ll be professional,” Ivy said, mostly to convince herself. “Polite. Distant. We’ll get through the toasts, the photos, the reception, and then you’ll fly back to wherever it is best men come from, and this will just be a very strange footnote.”

“Chicago,” Grant said. “I live in Chicago. And for what it’s worth, I’m good at professional and distant. I do it for a living.”

“What do you do?”

“Corporate risk consulting. Mostly I tell rich people why their bad ideas are bad ideas, and they mostly ignore me anyway.” He tilted his head, studying her in a way that made her very aware of how thin the fabric of her dress suddenly felt. “You?”

“Weddings. Mostly I tell brides their bad ideas are bad ideas, and they mostly ignore me anyway.”

That got an actual laugh out of him, low and surprised, like he hadn’t meant to give it to her. For one unguarded second, it was Vegas again — the bar, the easy back-and-forth, the sense that she’d stumbled into the one conversation in the room actually worth having.

Then Sophie’s voice cut across the noise, calling them both toward the head table for toasts, and Grant’s expression shuttered politely closed, best man again, nothing more.

“Professional,” he said quietly, offering his arm the way the seating chart required. “Distant.”

Ivy took it, feeling the warmth of him through his sleeve, and reminded herself, with considerably less conviction than she would have liked, that she was very good at keeping promises to herself.

She was going to need to be, for the next six days. Because the wedding wasn’t the only thing about this week that was going to demand a very careful plan — and she had a strong, sinking suspicion that Grant Ashford was about to become the one variable she hadn’t accounted for.