Heron's Landing. JoAnn Ross

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СКАЧАТЬ ankles, revealing a pair of purple Chucks as she ran across the parking lot toward Brianna. The other woman, who’d finished packing up the equipment, followed at a more sedate pace. “I was beginning to think we’d lost you to Sin City forever.”

      Kylee threw her arms around Brianna and gave her an even more enthusiastic hug than she’d shared with the bride and groom.

      “Wasn’t going to happen.”

      Before her sudden change in her career, Brianna’s destination track after Vegas had always been New York (her goal had been the Waldorf Astoria, currently under renovation), then London’s Claridge’s, before reaching her personal pinnacle: the Hôtel Plaza Athénée, which might not be Paris’s flashiest hotel, but to Brianna’s mind was the most luxurious, romantic and, with its glorious views of the Eiffel Tower, iconic.

       Bygones.

      “Do I dare hope you’ll be here for our wedding?” Kylee asked. “Believe it or not, Seth’s mother is going to be the officiant.”

      “Caroline Harper is a minister now?”

      “She was ordained online about a year ago. She doesn’t have an official church or anything, but has become very spiritual, in an earth mother New Agey way. More and more people have been turning to her for their weddings. And not just the retro hippy crowd, but remarrying widowers or divorcés, who want more celebration than signing papers at the courthouse, but also don’t want to lock themselves into any established religious belief system.”

      “Trust you to have a unique wedding.” Caroline Harper had always been a creative thinker and, like Brianna’s own mother, was actively involved in community service. Performing weddings sounded like just another step along her life’s path. She did wonder how Mr. Harper, who’d never seemed that conducive to change, had taken to his wife’s apparent midlife transformation. “Now I’m even more looking forward to being part of your special day.”

      “So you’re staying?”

      “How could I not?”

      “Oh, that’s so great!” She pumped the hand not still holding the camera into the air. “I didn’t want to dump any guilt on you, but I’ll admit to being disappointed when you said you had that big deal convention to deal with.”

      Magic Marketplace, the world’s largest fashion show, which attracted nearly a hundred thousand visitors, many of whom had booked Midas two years in advance, had been going to keep her in Las Vegas. Missing her BFF’s upcoming wedding had been on the top of Brianna’s list of life regrets. Now, thinking how events turned out, she should be grateful for Doctor Dick turning her life not upside down, but right side up.

      “My priorities were screwed up,” she admitted. Hyatt had denied her request for time off when she’d asked two months ago, but she’d also known that if she’d put her foot down and made certain her duties were well covered, he would have let her get away for at least the day of the wedding. But her damn pride, believing that only she could handle such a large event, had outranked what would be, so far, the most important day of her remaining best friend’s life. Which went right along with her recent thoughts about not having any true friends. Because, in order to have a friend, you had to be one. Something she’d failed at. Miserably.

      “Don’t even worry about it. I totally understood.” Kylee turned toward the woman who was, in appearance, her physical opposite. Where Kylee was tall, with wild masses of curly red hair that tumbled over her shoulders, her wife-to-be was petite with an asymmetrical black bob. “I’m sorry. I was so excited to see you, I got sidetracked. This is Mai, the grand love of my life. Mai, Brianna.”

      “I’ve heard a lot about you.” The other woman’s smile was warm. “Including that you’re what keeps Las Vegas’s most glamorous resort humming along.”

      “That’s a major exaggeration. But it doesn’t matter, because I no longer work there.”

      “No way!” Kylee’s green eyes widened. “We talked just last week and you didn’t give me so much as a hint you were changing jobs.”

      “It was sort of unexpected. And sudden.”

      “I guess so. So, what new gig did you jump up to this time? Social secretary at the White House?”

      “Ha. Far from it. I’m opening a B and B.”

      “In Las Vegas?” Mai asked. Her tone remained neutral, but a slight lift of her brow hinted at skepticism. Which wasn’t surprising since bed-and-breakfasts were rare in the city. Visitors tended to stay in the resort hotels, economy off-Strip motels or RV campgrounds as much as an hour outside the city. Although Airbnb had begun making inroads with budget travelers, hotels at Midas’s level, where size always mattered, weren’t the least bit concerned.

      “As it turns out, I’m going to be doing it here.” Brianna blew out a breath. This was the first time she’d said it out loud. And it sounded good. Good, but a little scary.

      “Really? Wow!” Kylee’s face lit up like a sudden sunbreak during a long winter of gray days. “And your timing’s perfect because Herons Landing is for sale.”

      “I saw it on the website the other night. Other than paint colors on the exterior, it looks in pretty good shape compared to the last time I was in town.”

      “That paint was the previous owner’s idea. While those painted ladies may fit into San Francisco’s street scene, the pink and purple look ridiculous with the wooded backdrop. And photographs can be deceiving,” Kylee said. “Especially in these days when everyone knows how to Photoshop. The sales photo exterior shots only look good because Seth spent the entire last year fixing up the outside. Then the couple who’d hired him broke up and the place went into foreclosure.”

      Which explained why the price had seemed lower than Brianna would’ve expected. The real estate ad hadn’t mentioned that little detail.

      “The inside is definitely a work in progress,” Kylee said.

      “Which is a polite way of saying wreck,” Mai murmured.

      “True. But so was our new place not that long ago,” Kylee reminded her. “Seth is a miracle worker. Even though his father is a bit of a challenge.”

      “He likes you,” Mai said.

      “That’s because the caterers always let me keep the leftover wedding desserts. Which I take right over to the job. The man’s got a serious sweet tooth,” she confided to Brianna. “In his case, my mom was right on the money about the way to a man’s heart being through his stomach. You can never go wrong with cookies. Or doughnuts. I’m not sure I could have convinced him to put coffering on the ceiling were it not for the fritters from Cops and Coffee.”

      Knowing how Ben Harper felt about her family, Brianna felt that even the entire contents of that towering glass case next to Cops and Coffee’s take-out counter wouldn’t be enough to win Seth’s father over. Not that she was going to allow any negative behavior to dissuade her from hiring Harper Construction to create her dream.

      “Anyway, Mai and I looked at Herons Landing while we were house hunting, but decided it was a lot more of a project than we wanted to deal with. And more rooms than we’d ever need. Even now that we’re planning a family.”

      “You СКАЧАТЬ