—
HANNAH WAS PERFECT, AND he really hoped that she didn’t break up with him once the story dropped. He’d finally had enough to call one of his buddies from school who worked for the Washington Post.
From there, serendipity had taken the reins. Turned out, one of the reporters at the Post had already done some work on the story. But Jack had provided some missing pieces. Together, they had the whole picture, and Jack was going to have a byline in one of the country’s great papers.
His editor planned to run it in the morning. As soon as it ran, he could tell Irv that he was out of a how-to guy. And a crack political reporter. And to shove his “How to Lose a Girl” story where the sun didn’t shine.
He only hoped that the fallout wouldn’t interfere with Hannah getting the promotion she’d worked so hard for. As insurance, he was going to do everything he could tonight to remind her that this thing between them was real. In fact, he was going to prove to her that it was realer than it had been the first night in that stupid speakeasy.
Kissing the palm of her hand was cheesy, but that was the only way he could get his lips on her right now, and he would take it. “You look beautiful.”
She had her hair in some 1920s style with a silvery headband around her forehead that matched a dress that caressed her body like he would later that night. Once he’d told her the truth about why he’d been doing such stupid shit and promised that he’d never lie to her again.
“Thank you.” Then she blushed, and he knew that she didn’t need fancy words and charm from him. Just the truth. The fact that he hadn’t been giving her the truth made him more uncomfortable than her saying, “You look pretty, too.”
“Pretty?”
“Yeah, pretty.” He would have argued that he was handsome, but she led him over to one of the three bars that she’d had set up—he’d never seen them at any of the weddings he’d been to in the same room—and the spangles on the dress shifted and glinted in the light. He was so obsessed with the way her ass looked as it shifted under the sparkly shit on her dress that he lost the will to argue with her.
He couldn’t deny how impressed he was with Hannah’s work. Not that he hadn’t been impressed by her before, but her competence amazed him anew when he took in the whole room. She’d turned it into a cross between a sparkly fairyland and a gangster’s hangout spot, and it worked.
She handed him a drink and clinked her glass with his. Before taking a swig, he stopped.
“What are we drinking to?”
She paused for a moment, squinting her eyes and scrunching her nose in a way that was so cute he wanted to kiss the hell out of her right then. “To us?” he asked.
Shaking her head, which worried him, she said, “To the future.”
They clinked glasses and then drank, even though the toast made a knot form in his stomach. More than anything, he wanted them to have a future. But he couldn’t guarantee that she would want the same thing after tonight.
For a few moments, he let himself believe that this was the beginning of something new and different, something without lies. The real thing with her that he’d wanted even before they’d met. She smiled at him, and he felt full of her. Then he couldn’t help but kiss the corner of her painted-red mouth.
He was all set to properly kiss the hell out of her when her friend Sasha tapped her on the shoulder, with an apologetic look thrown his way.
“There’s a brewing emergency.”
Jack didn’t know why he had the sinking feeling that the backward glance Hannah threw over her shoulder would be the last time she looked at him like she liked seeing his face.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
MADISON CHAPIN AND HER fiancé had disappeared right before the senator wanted to give a toast. Never one to miss an opportunity to turn a social event into a campaign rally, he’d invited a bunch of press people.
“How are you holding up?” Hannah asked Sasha as they left the party to search the service hallways and storage rooms for the young lovers.
“I’m great.” Her best friend’s voice was brittle. “I’m just really glad you’re doing this with me, and not Giselle.”
“Why is Giselle even here?” Hannah had been frustrated when her nemesis had shown up along with Annalise and her husband. As though she’d expected Hannah to screw things up and wanted to be here to enjoy it. “Shouldn’t she be at home terrorizing her husband?”
Sasha opened a door in the hallway, finding the janitor’s closet empty. “Do you think they snuck up to their hotel room?”
“Eh. They don’t seem like the type of couple to do that.”
“Yeah, you’re right. I can’t even imagine them in the thrall of lust.” Sasha had to stop reading so many old-school romance novels. Trying to respect her love of historical romance, Hannah had tried to turn her on to Sarah MacLean and Joanna Shupe, but Sasha always went back to Kathleen Woodiwiss and Bertrice Small. Her purple prose reflected that. “You and Jack, on the other hand; seemed like he was about a minute from dragging you away to show you his throbbing member.”
“Ew.”
“Like I’m wrong?”
She was only sort of wrong.
“Just don’t say ‘throbbing member.’”
“If it’s not throbbing, you might want to have that checked out.”
“More like blue balls,” she muttered. As much as she appreciated sweet Sasha making sex jokes, Hannah was really starting to worry. The reason Annalise had been hesitant to put her in charge of a wedding was that she wasn’t a true believer in love. She’d worried that she didn’t have enough appreciation for romance to make someone’s wedding dreams come true. Sure, she’d always known how to sex up any event, but she hadn’t really been able to empathize with someone who had been planning her wedding since she was six. She simply hadn’t believed that she’d wanted that anymore.
But that wasn’t the case. Someone had chosen her, and Hannah had started allowing herself to have white-dress fantasies at that stupid bridal salon about her and Jack. Hell, she’d started believing it before the bridal salon. And everything had clicked into place with him in that tux. If Madison Chapin blew up her own engagement party, preventing Hannah’s promotion now that she truly knew how to bring the romance, she’d probably have to kill her.
The ping of metal hitting tile echoed through the hall, and Sasha and Hannah wordlessly followed the faint sound after exchanging a wide-eyed look in the dim light. Soon, the melodious ring of Madison’s Disney princess voice rang out.
“It’s over.”