An Inconvenient Plan (Happy Endings Book Club, Book 10) Read online

  He went inside and slipped behind the bar. It didn’t take long before her friends let him know they were mad at him, even his own sister.

  And he still had Hailey’s shoebox of money.

  He refused to comment on the situation no matter how much her friends harassed him. One thing was clear—he’d been right to resist temptation. The two of them together were a disaster; even when he tried to make up with her they fought. And there were way too many people—family and friends—ready to butt in on their weird contentious relationship.

  He’d let her cool off and they’d put this entire thing behind them. Hopefully soon. Otherwise, Hailey as part of his family would haunt him forever.

  Chapter Two

  Six weeks later…

  Josh had looked death in the eye more than once as a paratrooper, but nothing had prepared him for this—Hailey, a blubbering mess in his office. Her long strawberry blond hair hung in her face, matching her blotchy skin.

  It was like her fighting spirit just broke. And in its place were tears and snot. Damn, she was an ugly crier. He’d had to hide her back here in his office at Garner’s before she ruined their parents’ engagement party.

  He offered her a box of tissues. She grabbed one, blew, and then sobbed some more, the crumpled tissues piling up in her lap.

  This was not the Hailey he knew. He wasn’t even sure why she was crying. He only knew he was the straw that broke the beauty queen’s back. He’d been working behind the bar and she’d been about to have a drink when he’d informed her, “I’m best man, so I’ll be your wedding escort again.” (She was maid of honor for their parents’ wedding.)

  She’d looked at him for one horrified moment and burst into tears.

  He’d never seen her cry before. She was usually so put together, more prone to anger than a breakdown. His sympathy pain was so great he almost wanted to cry along with her, but he couldn’t. He’d been dry-eyed since he was eight years old and his mom had walked out the door never to return. In some ways he’d grown up that day. As the oldest with his identical twin, Jake, he took care of his younger siblings. Still did. And now that Hailey would soon be his “little sister,” it was his responsibility to take care of her too.

  Hailey shook a crumpled tissue in the air. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I can’t stop crying. What’s wrong with me?”

  Damned if he knew, and he knew better than to hazard a guess in her fragile state. He looked into her red swollen pale blue eyes, at a complete loss as to how to comfort her.

  She sniffled and more tears leaked out along with sad little sobs. Like a kitten who’d been abandoned in the rain, all scrappy heartbreak.

  His shoulders tensed, creeping up toward his ears as if that would block out the sound.

  “I don’t want anyone to see my eyes like this,” she whispered. The engagement party was still going strong, all of their friends and family having a great time without them. Probably wondering what was taking them so long back here too.

  She blew her nose again. “I should go back to the party.”

  They’d gone this round already. Hailey: I should go back to the party. Him: Let’s go. Hailey: But how can I? My mom will think I’m not happy for her, but I am! Sob!

  Before she could get going again, he said, “How about we take a walk? The cold air will help clear your head. Maybe we could stop and get your money from my place.” He really would like to get that off his hands and know that he’d righted the wrong between them.

  The crying abruptly stopped. His shoulders eased away from his ears as the fire returned to her eyes.

  “Are you nuts?” she exclaimed.

  He completely relaxed. Fighting with her was so much better than feeling helpless watching her fall apart. “Must be.”

  She huffed, all indignant. “Damn right you are. You think I want a repeat of what happened last time?”

  He bit back a smile. Not because what had happened last time was so great, but because she was back in fighting form.

  She jabbed a finger at him. “Don’t you smirk at me, you scoundrel!”

  A-a-a-and she was back.

  ~ ~ ~

  Hailey held the cold compresses made from folded paper towels to her eyes. “Thank you.”

  “No problem.”

  Josh was being so nice to her, bringing her cold compresses and hiding her embarrassing tears in the privacy of his office, but she couldn’t even work up a smile. Normally she could always work up a smile. Her pageant training had taught her that. Something in her broke today. Her mom had found her forever love, all of her friends had found their forever loves, while she, a diehard romantic—a fucking wedding planner for God’s sake!—had shit.

  Okay, so maybe she’d been too busy creating a strong foundation for her wedding planning business to make any real effort to find a relationship, but she had made some effort. She’d been taking notes for years on what made relationships work, through intensive study of her friends, her clients, and romantic movies and books. And she’d ended a friends-with-benefits arrangement and let everyone know she was open to a relationship. What had it gotten her? Zilch.

  So humiliating. She loved love, she’d even added the moniker “Love Junkie” to her business card so clients would know just how much she supported them in the ultimate expression of their love, their wedding. Now she couldn’t even muster the effort to check her online dating profile. It was like her whole identity had broken. No, it had died. All this time she’d thought she was a Love Junkie when she was really a Love Loser. She couldn’t see a way forward. All she saw was a lifetime of bearing witness to other people’s happy endings. And she was the leader of the Happy Endings Book Club too, a romance book club she’d started as a singles book club. Now she was the only single woman left. Ugh. The painful irony. She should’ve been the first to find her happy-ever-after.

  Her eyes welled again, and she took the cold compresses off to help them dry.

  Josh stared at her from across the desk. Her nemesis and soon-to-be “brother.” Barf. He’d deeply hurt her feelings on the night that went horribly wrong. In the six weeks since that night, she’d figured out a perfectly reasonable explanation as to why it went wrong. She’d guzzled down a cran-vodka that was mostly vodka on an empty stomach at ladies’ night right before she went to Josh’s apartment. Normally she only sipped at wine. Naturally, the alcohol had made her horny—hello, six-month dry spell—and Josh’s apartment had been way too hot, like a hundred degrees in there, giving her the strong urge to feel cool air on her skin. On top of that, in her woozy state, she’d mistaken the tension she felt with Josh as sexual when it was just the usual irritation. Horny plus hot and irritated equaled a wardrobe malfunction. Embarrassing, yes, but perfectly understandable. It could’ve happened to anyone in similar circumstances. If Josh brought it up again, she’d explain it in exactly that way. Wardrobe malfunction brought on by too much vodka summed it up nicely. Except—

  That was a lie.

  Despite their twisted history of one-upmanship, despite all their fighting, she and Josh were cut from the same cloth. They both loved a challenge, they both felt passionately about their chosen professions (he’d been saving for years for his dream bar), and they were both steady and strong. That stability was something she’d worked hard to achieve as an adult after her unstable childhood. So there she was back on that fateful night, sitting at the bar with her friends, reeling from the news that her mom and Josh’s dad, Joe, were moving in together after only five weeks of dating. Worlds colliding! Her hard-won stability tipped to the anxiety of her childhood with her flaky mom about to ruin everything. Hailey was sure her mom would ditch Joe, and then the Campbell family would turn on Hailey by association for hurting their dad. Mad Campbell was her best friend, she was close with many of the Campbell brothers, and Joe had always treated her like part of the family. Poor Joe had already had a wife who ditched him and his six kids. Her mom would just reopen that wound and leave everyone furious. />
  And then there was Josh behind the bar, being his laid-back rock-steady self. In that emotionally charged moment, she’d realized Josh was exactly the kind of man she needed in her life. In fact, he might be the only one who truly understood her (since they were similar in the ways that counted), the only one who could give her comfort just by being his strong stable self. For so long she’d had all these pent-up feelings where Josh was concerned. He excited her, aggravated her, entertained her, and, okay, she could admit he turned her on with his sexy confidence that told her she’d be in good hands.

  Despite everything, she’d trusted that he’d catch her when she fell into his arms.

  Only she’d fallen face-first into utter humiliation. He wasn’t even tempted. She was standing there exposed (literally), and he’d turned her down flat.

  She’d scrambled to put some distance between them in any way she could. Drawbridge up, battle lines firmly back in place. A drunken wardrobe malfunction was the only way to save face.

  “Come on, Hailey, let’s get some fresh air. We’ll get your money—”

  “No.” She tried to add a good glare, but her eyes were too swollen to pull it off. At least he’d called her by her real name instead of princess. Probably because he felt sorry for her. She was an ugly crier and rarely gave in to tears, preferring anger, which was motivating, or sheer grit to get through. The last time she’d cried was when she’d ended her friends-with-benefits relationship. The time before that? Way back when she was a kid and found herself homeless for the second time because her single mom didn’t pay the rent. The first time she’d been too shocked to cry. Just another example of her mom’s flakiness. She’d regularly skipped out on work and gotten fired, which was why they couldn’t make rent and ended up homeless twice. Add to that the fact that her mom fell in and out of love easily and no relationship had ever worked out, and it was easy to see why Hailey craved a stable foundation. No one and nothing had ever stuck for her. Even now she kept waiting for her life to fall apart.

  “Let’s go, princess.”

  Back to that, are we? “Listen, you cad, I am never, ever stepping foot in your place again.” And he knew very well why.

  His lips twitched. “Never ever?”

  She seethed. He never stopped giving her a hard time. Like she had no feelings at all, like she was his personal entertainment system or something. Poke her here, see the reaction; poke her there, watch her go nuts. If she wasn’t such a mess right now, she’d march right out of his office.

  Josh leaned forward. “Can you keep a secret?”

  She eyed him suspiciously. There were always layers to what he said, subtle innuendoes and digs just waiting to come out. On the other hand, Josh had never shared anything remotely private with her, and she was intrigued. No. He was just trying to reel her in and then whammo! Some twisted joke at her expense. She refused to take the bait.

  She crossed her arms, feigning indifference.

  His voice dropped to a nearly inaudible whisper that had her leaning in.

  “What?” Dammit! He’d reeled her in again!

  He didn’t smirk like she thought he would. Instead he raised his voice a little. “That shoebox of cash has been nothing but trouble. Not just between us. Clarissa and I had a huge fight over it.”

  Clarissa was his ex-girlfriend, a beautiful bohemian yoga instructor who always seemed to be underfoot. She’d run into the woman absolutely everywhere for a while there. It was hard not to take it personally that Josh happened to get a serious girlfriend just as Hailey announced to the world that she was newly single and open to a relationship. Kind of like he was thumbing his nose at her: I have what you want and you have nothing. Not that she’d wanted to be in a relationship with Josh at the time. Back then she’d been sure they’d kill each other. She hadn’t seen past the sparring like she did now to the kind of man he was at a deep level. She almost wished she didn’t know the real deal with Josh because here he was helping her through a personal crisis in his irritating but strongly supportive way, and she had to fight to keep her walls up for her own self-preservation. She needed to move on with her life. She couldn’t keep letting herself get sucked in by Josh. He’d given her a clear message—not interested.

  Josh didn’t elaborate further over his and Clarissa’s fight, just sat there like there was nothing more that needed to be said. She needed details!

  She clamped her mouth shut for a good ten seconds before blurting, “Why did you fight over the money?”

  Josh shrugged his big muscular shoulders. He was extremely fit like he’d stuck to his soldier-training regimen, an attractive trait both for the hard work it took and the results, which she’d admit to him only with a knife to the throat. “She found the money and thought I was into strip joints or something crazy like that. I told her the truth. It was yours and I planned to give it back one day.”

  “You did?” She couldn’t hide her surprise. Until very recently, she’d thought he’d lord it over her forever. The truth was he’d earned that money fair and square as her paid escort to the many weddings she planned. She couldn’t very well show up alone to weddings when she was supposed to be a Love Junkie. Back when they’d made that arrangement, she’d been a little desperate. The guys her age at the time, early twenties, kept flaking on her or showing up really late to the weddings. Josh lived and worked in town and had been very dependable and punctual. It was a business arrangement—she got a wedding escort; he got money toward his dream bar. But after their falling-out, he forfeited all rights to that money. She’d demanded it back. He’d taunted her for years that she’d have to go to his place to get it in a tone that screamed sexual innuendo. Hmm, in hindsight, her naked offering wasn’t so out there. He’d been hinting at exactly that if she ever had the nerve to show up at his place. Clearly he’d been messing with her because he didn’t even touch her once she was there. The cad.

  Josh gave her a look she couldn’t interpret, and she was usually excellent at reading people. It was somewhere between you’re an idiot and offended.

  “Yes, I planned on giving the money back,” he said in an aggrieved tone like she was supposed to know better. It was both you’re an idiot and I’m offended. She was good at reading people after all. “I never should’ve taken it in the first place. You needed it to build a stable foundation for your business. Peace of mind, security, and all that.”

  She sucked in air. She’d been right about him. He truly understood the value of a stable foundation and understood what it meant to her as well.

  Josh went on. “After our fight, she was done with me. She even got a new job and moved to a different town.” What an extreme reaction. Hailey would never pick up and move over a man.

  Well, that explained why she’d stopped running into Clarissa all over town. They broke up over her money? How strange. And delightful. Damn, Josh had turned her into a terribly petty person. Only he brought out this side of her.

  She tried to hide the secret enjoyment from her voice. “That was rash of her. She sounds like an idiot.”

  Josh regarded her seriously. “She made me a better man.”

  She tensed, irritated with Clarissa all over again with her laid-back, mellow, la-di-da attitude. Nothing would ever get done in the world with that kind of attitude. “I can’t believe you broke up over a shoebox.” So stupid. What a stupid couple.

  “She said I was hanging onto you.”

  She shot straight up in her seat. “What? That’s ridiculous. We were fighting like cats and dogs at the time.” Was it true? Had Josh had feelings for her back then? What happened? Had their fighting gotten so out of hand that they’d squashed any chance they’d had to connect?

  He inclined his head. He’d shaved today for the special occasion, his square jaw pronounced. His dark brown hair was rumpled like always, but he wasn’t wearing his usual flannel shirt over a T-shirt, faded jeans, and sneakers. He wore a light blue dress shirt, unbuttoned at the collar and rolled up at the sleeves, revealing c
orded muscular forearms. Dark blue dress pants with a brown leather belt and dark brown leather shoes too. Dressy but still true to his casual self. She tore her gaze away and stared at his desk. He cleaned up nice.

  “I told her that,” Josh said. “How could I be hanging onto you when we have no history?”

  Her head jerked up. “Well, we have gone on some wedding dates.”

  “Escort service. You paid me. Exhibit A, the shoebox of cash.”

  “And we did have one boring dinner at that fancy restaurant in the city.” Not like he’d asked her out. She was supposed to be having a business dinner with his identical twin, Jake, and Josh had pulled a switcheroo to teach her a lesson. Jerk. She still couldn’t figure out what lesson she was supposed to have learned.

  “Boring!” he barked. “I thought you lived for that stuff. Limo, posh restaurant, drooling over Jake’s yacht.”

  “You were a boring braggart. And the portions at that restaurant—”

  “Were too small.”

  “Yes.” She quieted for a moment, remembering the event two and a half years ago. She and Josh had a long strange history. “And I didn’t appreciate that you tricked me with that twin switcheroo to teach me a lesson. All I learned was not to trust you.”

  He blew out a breath. “It was stupid, I guess. Sorry.”

  “You don’t sound very sorry.”

  He groaned long and loud like an obnoxious beast.

  She huffed daintily. “Obviously we have a history. We’ve been fighting for years. Still do.”

  One corner of his mouth curled up in a classic Josh smirk. “More like razzing each other.”

  She pursed her lips. “I got very worked up.”

  “Bah. I told you before I was just playing with you.”

  She sincerely doubted that. There had definitely been some heated words between them in the past. “I took up yoga because of you…briefly.” That was before Clarissa the yoga nut breezed into town. Not that Hailey would’ve spent the money on classes. She’d watched some YouTube videos. Everything she earned was either saved or funneled back into her business. Her goal was always a stable foundation.