“To the newest Belle,” Alexis said, echoing Heather. “And to new beginnings.”
Brooke met her new boss’s gaze, wondering exactly how much Alexis Morgan knew about Brooke’s past. Wondered if the other woman knew how true her words were.
She hadn’t hid what happened from Alexis during their several phone interviews, she just . . . hadn’t volunteered it. Still, it was hardly a national secret. Alexis, and Heather, for that matter, could have found out every sordid detail with a quick visit to everyone’s BFF, Google.
Looking at Alexis’s face certainly didn’t tell her one way or the other whether her boss knew. The woman was like 007 with the unreadable.
“So, Brooke,” Heather said, reaching for yet another roll. “You’ve heard that we East Coasters are known to be a bit more blunt than you West Coasters, right?”
“You’re from Michigan,” Alexis told Heather. “That’s more Midwest than anything.”
“I became a New Yorker about five minutes after moving here,” Heather said. “We all do. Anyway, what I want to know is—and you can totally tell me to shut my trap, by the way—your, um, spicy past . . . are we talking about it, or not talking about it? I’m fine either way.”
“Heather!” For once Alexis’s voice was anything but calm, and Brooke sensed she’d like nothing more than to kick her assistant under the table.
“I’m sorry,” Heather said, going a little bit pale. “Was that rude? I just thought that if we’re going to be spending, like, every minute of every day together, we should know what’s off-limits and what’s fair game.”
“Yes, of course it was rude,” Alexis said.
Heather gave Brooke a contrite look. “I’m sorry. It’s just that it’s totally not a secret, and if I’m supposed to tiptoe, I have to know now, you know?”
“Good Lord,” Alexis murmured, taking a sip of her champagne. “Have you ever tiptoed?”
The women’s exchange gave Brooke a second to gather her thoughts—to recover from the shock of hearing it mentioned, only to realize that Heather was right.
They would be spending a hell of a lot of time together, and as far as Brooke was concerned, the only thing worse than talking about it was not talking about it.
And so, after taking a sip of champagne for courage, Brooke took a deep breath, folded her hands in her lap, leaned forward slightly, and told her new colleagues all about the guy she’d fallen in love with. The one she’d almost married.
Right up until the moment the FBI had arrested him.
At the altar.
Chapter Three
IT’S NOT AS THOUGH Brooke had meant to start dating a con man. She certainly didn’t intend to get engaged to one.
But that’s the thing about con men. The good ones were good at, well . . . the con.
And Clay Battaglia had been a good one. The best, actually, if you took the word of the FBI agent who’d debriefed Brooke and her family—while she was still in her wedding dress.
Turns out that while Brooke had been happily building her wedding-planning company, Clay had been quietly and competently getting away with every white-collar crime in the book. While she’d been planning their wedding, he’d apparently been knee-deep in yet another Ponzi scheme.
Brooke hadn’t even known what a Ponzi scheme was when the FBI had told her.
She did now.
Following Clay’s arrest, she spent weeks researching white-collar crime. Wanting to know what he’d been up to all those times he’d quietly kissed her forehead late at night and told her he needed to make some phone calls for “work.” Wanting to know what her life would have been like if the FBI hadn’t taken him down before they’d exchanged vows.
Still, while Brooke would be ever grateful that she’d learned the truth before she’d become Mrs. Clay Battaglia, she’d be lying if she didn’t admit that the timing of it had stung just a little bit.
If they’d only taken him down a day before. Heck, even an hour before.
But no.
Just moments after Brooke kissed her father’s cheek and prepared to marry the man she loved at the wedding she’d poured her heart into, the FBI stormed—yes, stormed—the church.
Clay was in handcuffs before she even registered what was happening.
Numbly she watched as he listened to his Miranda rights at the precise moment he should have been listening to the vows she’d spent months writing.
And as reality slowly sunk in, Brooke waited. Waited for him to look at her. To look at her and say that it was all a