Charity Case - The Complete Series - Piper Rayne Page 0,198

order their food and by the end of lunch, all of our cheeks hurt from spending time with Lennon and Jasper Banks.

Later that night, we walk into Torrio’s. I told them I’d only stay for a little while but after getting the news that our venue for the gala has pulled out for some unknown reason, Hannah needs some company and a few Vespers under her belt.

“I have no idea what to do. It’s July. Invitations were being printed which means I have to get them reprinted, but I don’t even have an address. Girls, we need to brainstorm.”

After our nice lunch, the shit hit the fan for the rest of the afternoon.

“We’ll figure something out,” Victoria says.

“As if I need anything else bad tonight,” she says.

I look over my shoulder, finding the silver fox walking in with a cocky smirk on his lips.

“Ignore him.” Victoria squeezes Hannah’s forearm.

Hannah takes her drink to her mouth and silver fox takes a seat at a table behind us. Why does he enjoy torturing her?

She rolls her eyes. “I’m sure we’ll figure something out.” She fluffs it off.

“We’ll find a venue. Don’t worry.” I drink my water with lemon that I’m already growing tired of.

I see Roarke stand and I keep my eye on him as he heads to the bar, waiting patiently for a drink.

Victoria and Hannah start talking about the possibility of pushing back the gala date and having a winter gala instead. Sounds like Hannah’s warming to the idea. All the while, my eyes are on the silver fox and my gut churns when I know for certain he’s heading toward our table.

“Ms. Crowley, I couldn’t help but overhear that you’re in need of a venue.” He places his drink down and eyes the spot next to me.

I slide over in the booth closer to Victoria. Hannah narrows her eyes at me.

“Thank you,” he says in a deep voice.

“Sure,” I respond and again Hannah gives me a death look.

“I’m not interested.” She sips her drink.

“What if I can get you not only a venue, but the venue?”

We all wait for the rest of his offer because none of us were born yesterday.

“I’m sure your price is more than we can afford,” Hannah says with a saccharine smile.

Hannah is so impressive. So cool. So collected. But I think she may have found her match.

“Oh, Ms. Crowley, you have it all wrong. You know as well as I do that the art of negotiation is simple. I give you something you want, and you give me something I want in return.”

She twirls her glass around by the stem. “And what is it that you want, Mr. Baldwin?”

Victoria and I look to Roarke with intrigue.

“You.”

Can you imagine how Hannah reacted

to Roarke’s offer?

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Cockamamie Unicorn Ramblings

Let’s see, what can we tell you about Afternoon Delight…

We’ll start with Chelsea Walsh. Her character was supposed to be similar to Chelsea Handler’s character in This Means War when we introduced her in Break the Ice. Hence the reason for her name. In Breaking the Ice we wanted her to test Beckett and give him hell for sitting back and not acting on his feelings for Skylar for so long. The kind of character that knocks on the hero or heroine’s head saying wake up and see what you’re missing out on.

As things often do with us, things changed. We decided midway through that Chelsea would be one of our Divorcee Dating heroines (see Manic Monday). Which meant she had to have been married. So we threw in a quickie marriage in Break the Ice, wiped off our hands and said done. Or so we thought. At this point the hero was not going to be her ex-husband! Uh-oh!

Dean matured from a bad boy to having the stuffy exterior of tax attorney to being her ex-husband. Originally, at the end of Manic Monday, Victoria got a message from Chelsea saying that she’d messed up again by marrying her ex in Vegas a second time. They were going to be there for Skylar’s bachelorette and that would have been perfect because they could have met Lennon and Jasper at a blackjack table (perfect scenario if only it would have worked out). But there were timeline issues and we just couldn’t make it work in a way that allowed us to do what we wanted to with Hannah’s story in Happy Hour. Needless to say, Chelsea and Dean’s story changed—A LOT!

And for any readers wondering about Chelsea and Dean’s first