Once Upon a Bride: A Novella

by Jenny Holiday

Genres: Friendship; Women's Fiction; Contemporary Romance; Romantic Comedy; Workplace Romance

Synopsis

From the USA Today bestselling "master of witty banter" ( Entertainment Weekly) comes this steamy and entertaining story of unexpected romance between two people who seem to be exact opposites of each other. Jay Smith likes to be in control. His every choice, every move, is made with his carefully planned future in mind. Sure, some people think that's boring. But Jay knows who he is, and he makes no apologies for it. So when the lobby in his accounting firm needs a makeover, Jay takes charge—and quickly determines he needs a designer. What he does not need is a spirited woman who shakes up his very orderly life. Elise Maxwell needs this job. After cutting off her overbearing, old-money family, she’s determined to establish a successful design business—all on her own. Independent for the first time in her life, Elise isn’t looking for a boyfriend. Not even someone as irresistible and fun to tease as her straitlaced client Jay . . .

Release date: April 6, 2021

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing

Print pages: 160

Sample

Chapter 1

The guy did not look like his picture. That was the first thing Elise Maxwell noticed about Jay Smith when he emerged into the waiting area of Cohen & Smith Accounting, walked right over to her, and said, “Ms. Maxwell, I’ve been waiting for you,” in a way that suggested that he had, in fact, been waiting for her. Like, for her, specifically. She didn’t even know how he had recognized her. Yes, she probably looked like an interior designer—she tried hard to make sure her personal style reflected the good taste and eye for detail her profession demanded—but there was at least one other woman in the waiting area who could have fit the bill. Who could have been Elise Maxwell, aspiring interior designer.

Except she needed to quit it with the aspiring part. What was her best friend Gia always telling her? Just because you haven’t had any big, lucrative jobs yet doesn’t mean you’re “aspiring.”

Tell that to her bank account, but yes. Elise appreciated the sentiment. So Elise Maxwell, interior designer, stood and shook the hand Jay “I Don’t Look Like My Picture” Smith extended.

Elise had not seen a picture of Jay’s hand, but she had not imagined it being…like this. Big and warm and somehow striking the perfect sweet spot between firm and gentle with its grasp.

Most of the time when guys did not look like their pictures, it went in the opposite direction. Like when a guy’s Tinder profile showed him shirtless holding up a fish and you thought, Well, maybe I can excuse the stupid fish because look at those arms! And when we get married, I’ll appreciate all those fishing trips, because don’t smother me, dude. But then you met him in person, and it turned out that those arms were from six years and two gym memberships ago.

This was…not that. The photo of Jay Smith, partner at Cohen & Smith, that accompanied his bio on the firm’s website showed an accountant. It sort of went with his name: nondescript. In the portrait he wore a suit and glasses, and his hair was slicked back. And the picture was in black and white.

Jay Smith in the flesh, however, was not black and white. His hair was a deep rich brown, and instead of being neatly pasted back, it looked like he’d been raking his fingers through it all morning. His eyes, which were not obscured by glasses at the moment, were turquoise. Like, seriously, colored-contact levels of saturation. Elise had done an accent wall the other day that was pretty much that exact color.

“Bahaman Sea Blue,” she said before she could stop herself.

He flashed a smile that was equal parts amusement and bewilderment. Lines appeared around his eyes as he did so. She wondered how old he was. Older than she was, but she couldn’t tell by how much.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I just did a job that involved some paint the exact color of your eyes. Benjamin Moore Bahaman Sea Blue.”

Then, to try to save herself, to make it seem less weird that she’d just informed him of the color of his eyes in the Benjamin Moore palette, she pointed to the pale-pink button-down shirt he wore and said, “Millennial pink.”

He grinned, and those lines came back. What the hell was going on with those lines? She kind of wanted to…stroke them?

No stroking prospective clients, Elise.

But seriously, those eyes—the crazy color and the lines around them—made her realize how long it had been since she’d been on a date. Or…done other things. Between dealing with all the family drama, finding an apartment, and getting her business off the ground, she’d barely had time to sleep, much less engage in any extracurricular activities.

She hadn’t missed those activities—she’d thought. Or at least she hadn’t missed them until she was suddenly confronted with Jay Smith’s laugh lines.

“Millennial pink,” he repeated. “Is that a Benjamin Moore color, too?”

“No. Just a zeitgeisty thing. It’s a color millennials like.” Though he was rocking it super well, paired with a skinny black tie. “It’s very of the moment.”

“Well, I’m thirty-seven, so I guess I am a millennial.”

That confirmed her sense that he was older than she was. But only by seven years. Somehow he seemed older than he actually looked. He was commanding. In a good way.

Not that that mattered.

No stroking prospective clients, Elise.

He turned and gestured vaguely at the waiting area. “So this is the ‘before’ picture, I guess.”

Yes. The firm was hiring a designer to redo the lobby. It wouldn’t be the most exciting job, but having something like this on her résumé would be huge for her. Cohen & Smith wasn’t a major global player like Ernst & Young, but according to her research, the firm had a reasonably big reach in Toronto. If she did a good job, there might be referrals. And for someone with exactly $717 in the bank and a burning desire to not go crawling home to Daddy, referrals were precisely what was needed.

“What’s your diagnosis?” he asked, still looking around the space, which matched her impression of his corporate portrait: nondescript. Beige sofas, beige low-pile carpet, boring landscape paintings.

“Well, it could use a refresh.”

“I know it could use a refresh. That’s why I’m interviewing designers.”

Technically he was still smiling, but there was an edge to his tone that hadn’t been there before. In doing her research on the firm and its partners, she’d read a profile of Jay in Canadian Business. He reportedly had an IQ of 150 and was known for valuing honesty and transparency. For being hard but fair. For not suffering fools.

So she tried again with that in mind. “Your company’s slogan is interesting. Most accounting firms would say something vague and kind of interchangeable about service and integrity. Yours is ‘Toronto’s Accountants.’” He nodded, and she took it as permission to continue. “I read in an interview that you don’t have national or international ambitions for the company.”

“Right. When my partner and I started the firm, we made a distinct choice not to try to chase the Big Four, but we also aren’t a small mom-and-pop shop. Most of our clients are well-to-do individuals or medium-size businesses headquartered here. We thought it would be a sweet spot, and that turned out to be true.”

“And you do a lot of local charity work,” she said. “Your mission statement references the generation of wealth coming with an obligation to funnel some of that wealth back into the city.”

“Someone’s done her homework.” The respect in his tone thrilled her, probably disproportionately. The last thing she needed was to get herself into a position where she was seeking approval from a man. She’d done that with dear old Dad. Done it and was done with it. Elise and her $717 were on their own now. As scary as it was sometimes, she wouldn’t have it any other way. She wished she could have her independence and maintain a relationship with her parents, but that was a game she couldn’t win. Not unless she was content to contort herself into the mold her parents had cast for her the day she was born: old-money North Toronto socialite. Just like her mom. God forbid she should actually want a career of her own.

Anyway, the fact that Jay’s praise delighted her so much wasn’t about that. It was that she was getting somewhere with him. So she pressed on. “I have done my homework. And the results make me wonder why the physical space of your business looks like every other accounting firm in the world. Like every other dental office, even. Sitting out here, you could just as well be waiting to get your molars drilled in Yellowknife as get your taxes done in Toronto.” He winced at the dental office comparison, so she decided to wrap things up and deliver her prescription in a nutshell. “What I would do with this space is make it match your corporate values.”

He looked at her for a long time, his face impossible to read—those laugh lines had disappeared along with his smile. There was some of that edge again, in his demeanor this time rather than in his voice, but there just the same.

And stupidly compelling just the same.

Just when she was starting to sweat, to fear she’d gone too far on the whole honesty front, he grinned. “And I presume you have some ideas about how to do that?”

“Absolutely.”

  

Elise Maxwell looked exactly like her picture—namely, almost supernaturally pretty. Jay let his eyes roam as she settled into the guest chair at his desk and unzipped a leather portfolio. She had honey-blond hair, sparkling hazel eyes, and a heart-shaped mouth that almost looked like a cartoon. He might even call it millennial pink. He glanced at his shirt for comparative purposes. Nope, her lips were darker.

The picture on her website had been a full-body one of her dressed in a crazy floral-print minidress but with plain black tights and flat shoes. Today she wore a dark-green-and-black-striped tunic over skinny black pants and black patent-leather heels. Elise Maxwell managed to convey fun and creativity, but with just the right dose of reined-in professionalism.

So did her plans for his lobby, judging by the pile of sketches and images she was arranging on the desk between them. Not that that mattered, because he’d decided to hire her before he’d even seen them—right after her devastating little monologue about how the waiting area looked like a dental office. Still, he had to let her talk him through her vision. Hell, he wanted her to talk him through her vision. And here he’d thought he’d drawn the short straw when his partner, Kent, had stuck him with the job of overseeing the lobby redesign.

He ordered himself to pay attention to her work instead of to her. Ogle the designs, not the designer. Not that it mattered. She was too young for him.

“So one idea is t. . .