Page 23 of How to Ruin a Wedding

I frown at him. “I bet you get yourself into constant misunderstandings.”

His brows bunch together, pulling down a scar at the side of his right eyebrow. “What do you mean?”

I gesture to the napkin. “You’re very affectionate,” I point out, but affectionate doesn’t seem like the right word.Charming, maybe, but it doesn’t encompass what I mean to say, either. “I can tell you don’t mean to be, that you’re just doing things in the moment, but it only makes you more endearing. You probably think you pass as friendly, but other people might believe you’re looking for more than that.”

His gaze latches onto me. I can’t quite read the emotion in it. It’s a little darker than the easy warmth that seems to fill it most of the time. “I know exactly what I’m doing.”

I’m not entirely sure what he means by that, but for some reason, tiny circles of heat sear through my skin as he looks at me. I shift in my seat and take a fortifying sip of wine. “Anyway, what favor couldIpossibly do for you?”

“When you wrecked my friend’s wedding,” he begins casually, as if we’re talking about the weather, “I tried to find you but you left pretty soon after.”

I want to shrink inside myself for a moment, to become so small he forgets I ever walked into the restaurant, but his words don’t have any judgment in them. It’s enough to let me push aside the pulse of embarrassment vibrating under my skin and actually listen to his words.

“For a blissful moment,” I say, “I forgot I told you what I do.”

“Nothing wrong with trying to make a living.”

I hold up a hand. My pitch is a little too high not to hint at some mortification. “This is not tomakea living butfora living. It’s not my life’s goal or anything. I stumbled into it, and one day, I’ll stumble out of it.”

Hopefully.

“Right, because you want to buy Save a Paw.”

Whatdidn’tI tell him?

The bar is so low for men that Anders remembering this one detail sends a fluttering to the pit of my stomach. “Yeah, among other things.”

“I’d like to hire you.”

My hand stills on the glass pressed against my lips. Nothing about this conversation is going in any direction I predicted it to. “You’re engaged?” Being hung up on his first love marrying his best friend didn’t make it seem so.

“No, I’m not. It’d be for my sister’s wedding.”

My eyes widen. “Your sister?”

“You think less of me for it?”

“No.” I cross my arms against my chest. “It’s just, you didn’t seem the meddling type. You sat back and didn’t object to your first love and best friend getting married, but you’re inserting yourself into your sister’s relationship?”

He flinches, and guilt slices into me. I quickly add, “I’m sorry. That came out harsh. I’m just trying to better understand.” And, since the floor is open. “Did they set a new date? Your friend and ex?”

“It’s okay,” he says, sitting back, but there’s still a bit of tension in his shoulders. “They got married the next day. They’d reserved one of the halls for another night of celebration, so it didn’t stop them. Only made for some interesting speeches from the guests.”

Knowing I starred in those speeches isn’t too embarrassing. Aside from Anders, none of them know me, and it doesn’t seem like Anders told them anything. One day I’ll just be some deranged, faceless woman they tell stories about.

I down the final wineglass. “This is unexpected.”

The waitress comes over and drops our plates, pausing our conversation a moment before I ask her for another flight of wine, which earns me a chuckle from Anders.

“I’ll let you eat before I overwhelm you with information,” he says as I stare at the plate of burger and truffle fries.

“I can multitask.” I pop a salty fry in my mouth. “But before you waste your time—no offense, really—you should know that I am very expensive.”

He raises a brow. “And?”

I shuffle through the hazy and blacked-out files in my brain and pull out the folder of our first hour together when we participated in the officialGet to Know You Handbookof asking:What do you do? Where are you from? Do you have siblings? Do you think the moon landing was fake? Want to get so drunk we forget our names?“You’re a graphic designer, aren’t you? I’m sure you make a decent living, but my clientele is usually the annoyingly rich who couldn’t tell you the price of milk if you asked.”

He looks at the ceiling and chews on his bottom lip likeheis shuffling through our night’s files together. When he finds what he’s looking for, Anders brings his gaze back down and catches me staring at his bottom lip. “You need twenty thousand to buy your share of the shelter. I can pay you that.”