Drive your mother insane by trying to do everything yourself. Victoria made a good living as a wedding planner, but she'd been told by many a mother of the bride that she was worth ten times her hefty fee, thanks to her ability to keep their precious darlings from turning into bridezillas.
Tori sent her charges off to speak with Pastor Jim--who had performed many a ceremony for her and knew his way around a bride and groom--and focused on the next item on the to-do list: Locate missing best man.
She strode to the rear of the church, flicking through screens on her tablet to bring up the files her business partner had left her on the Houghton-Gaines wedding. This happy event was supposed to be Sidney's headache, but her partner had gone on a reality dating show last year, fallen hard for the host, and had recently begun filming a spin-off show with him creating dream weddings for deserving couples.
Which was incredible exposure for their business, but meant Sidney was virtually unreachable on filming days and left Victoria holding the bag for this wedding that had to be cursed.
Bridesmaids with allergies sneezing into their bouquets, a mother of the groom who insisted last minute that they had to have a separate four-tier wedding cake for gluten-free guests, and now a missing best man.
Tori had dosed the bridesmaids with antihistamines and cajoled the baker into making the second smallest tier of the original cake with almond flour. Now all she had to do was find the best man and pray nothing else went wrong.
Luckily, Sidney was as organized as she was. The best man's contact information and itinerary were all stored under a tab marked Taylor.
The itinerary file opened.
Victoria's heart stuttered.
She'd assumed Taylor was his first name. She'd never heard him referred to as anything else, but the name written large across the top of the itinerary and sending shockwaves through her perfectly ordered world was Nicholas. Nicholas Taylor.
It couldn't be her Nick.
It was a common name. There had to be hundreds of Nicholas Taylors in Manhattan. And probably dozens of those were California transplants.
There was no reason to suspect Nicholas Taylor, absentee best man, was the same Nick Taylor she'd loved with every atom of her teenage heart for three years of high school before college on different coasts had pulled them apart. The same Nick Taylor she'd reconnected with for an all-too-brief summer fling in the weeks after graduating from USC. The same Nick Taylor who had vanished back to the East Coast for law school and stopped responding to her calls and emails. Who had left her to fend for herself as she tried to figure out what the hell a twenty-two-year-old with a bachelor's degree in English and a mountain of student loans was supposed to do about the little blue line on the pregnancy test.
No. It couldn't be him. There were at least five million Nick Taylors in the world. This was a different one. It had to be.
Forcing herself to remain calm and poised, Tori pulled up the airline's flight status app--only to find the best man's flight had landed right on schedule three hours ago. Eden was a good hour north of LAX, but even in the most brutal traffic, he should have arrived by now.
Pastor Jim had things under control at the altar, so Victoria slipped out of the cavernous sanctuary and into the narrow entry hall to call the other Nick Taylor's cell.
It went straight to voicemail. Her blood chilled.
She shouldn't have recognized his voice. It had been eleven years since she'd heard it. She shouldn't have any memory of the sound, but her heart recognized it, even if her brain denied the possibility.
The tone was a shade deeper, somber, and businesslike as he went through the standard voicemail instructions. She was so shaken by hearing his voice, she heard the beep to leave her message before she knew it. She jerked the phone away from her ear and stabbed at her screen to end the call, heart racing.
Crap.
She was a professional. She had a reason to call him. And she was thirty-three freaking years old. She should be able to be mature about this.
But as the exterior door to the church flew open so hard it banged against the opposite wall and a man in a dark suit rushed inside, all thoughts of maturity vanished.
She was fifteen again, clapping eyes on Nick Taylor for the first time. Colors were brighter, emotions sharper. Everything was more intense when Nick was in the room. It had always been that way, the very air around him electrified by his presence.
The tangible force of his personality hadn't diminished in the past decade. If anything, it had intensified. But it was darker now, carrying a new hardness.
Was he happy?
And where had that thought come from? Why should she care if the man who had abandoned her was happy? She'd written him out of the story of her life. This was a blip. A momentary speed bump. By Monday he'd be in Manhattan, and she'd go back to forgetting him.
Nick rapidly scanned the entry and froze when his gaze landed on her. His jaw dropped, a crack appearing in his fierce focus. Those unforgettable amber eyes widened with shock.
Her daughter's eyes.
"Victoria?"
She could do this. "Hey, Nick. You're late."