Wedding Duress (Events By Design Cozy Mystery Series Book 2) by Ally Gray Page A

the job I did and thought I deserved a raise, it shouldn’t have anything to do with a personal relationship.”
    “I know. But I’m kind of hurt that you thought I wasn’t a big enough person to handle a relationship with you. And if you forgot, I don’t exactly run this company. That’s your job. I’d be just as happy if Aunt Abigail had left it to someone else. In fact, I have a brilliant idea…the company is yours! Now let’s go eat!”
    “You can’t just give me a multi-million dollar company, Nathan!” Stacy replied, exasperated at the fact that he failed to take anything seriously. Nathan just smiled and shook his head.
    “Of course I can. I don’t want it, and I have a job, thank you very much. So the company is yours!” Nathan sat back and crossed his arms triumphantly. “Therefore, I’ll pick you up at seven. Wear something sexy, maybe a backless number with a skirt that only comes to about… here.” He placed his hand on the top of his thigh and Stacy just rolled her eyes.
    “Six thirty, and you might want to swing me through a drive-thru since I have exactly thirty-one minutes for dinner tonight. I’m meeting the governor’s aide at seven to do a final run through and checklist, and then it’s off to Enri’s to see about a dress fitting.”
    “Oh, are you buying a dress? Any special occasion I need to know about, be invited to, or be ready to whisk you away from?” Nathan batted his eyelashes and gave Stacy his best hopeful look.
    “It’s not my dress, silly. It’s Diana Barber’s dress? Remember? That little shindig we’re throwing together for the heiress to the largest lumber fortune in the entire southeastern part of the country? It’s no big thing, just some paper plates, some barbecue, oh yeah, and two thousand guests. You might have heard about it. She’s only marrying the starting quarterback from one of the largest SEC schools, the guy who won the Heisman and got picked in the first round of the NFL draft.”
    The wedding Stacy was referring to had only been the talk of the South all year, and even if he didn’t want to admit it, Nathan knew as much about it as anyone else. The beauty queen and the football star, as the headlines and society pages kept calling them, were the reigning—but soon to be former, therefore allowing her to get married—Miss Georgia and the golden boy of NCAA sports, Ben Curry, the one whose shoulder on his throwing arm was already insured for millions of dollars. This was the event to attend, and invitations had finally been cut off before there was no venue big enough to hold them all.
    Between Diana’s two hundred sorority sisters—and her father’s important business contacts who couldn’t be snubbed at a time like this—and Ben’s equally impressive number of teammates from the last four years of college play, there hadn’t been room to even begin thinking about the family members. That was Stacy’s job. Somehow it had fallen to the event coordinator to find room for grandmothers at this event, given that all the other seats were occupied by linebackers and bankers.
    “Yeah, I might have heard something about a wedding or two,” Nathan said slyly. “I’ve got it. We’ll swing by the fitter and pick up the dress, then head over to The River Club for dinner. How about it?”
    “You seriously think we’re going to drive around town with a seventeen thousand dollar, one of a kind wedding dress in the backseat? Are you completely mad?”
    “What? We have insurance, don’t we?” he answered, but paled when he saw the look of rage that suddenly came over Stacy’s face. He sighed. “Fine. We’ll drop the dress off at First National Bank and tell them to lock it in the vault and keep it under armed guard for the duration, then we can go eat. Happy?”
    Stacy shook her head. This was the boss she’d given up the romance for? It’s like he didn’t even know what his own company did, and yet, she had to be the one to step in and