I Prepared for My Wedding, Only to Be Shut Out of My Own Bridal Suite novel · Chapter 7 of 24

Chapter 7: Room 612

"Not here," Cooper said, glancing at the security guard behind the front desk. "Can I drive you somewhere?"

"I have a box with a fern in it."

"The fern can come."

His car was a dark green pickup, not the sports car I'd have guessed.

There were rolled-up drawings on the passenger seat.

He moved them very carefully to the back before I sat down.

He didn't drive to the hotel.

He drove down to the waterfront, past the market, to a long brick building with arched windows and half its roof patched with blue tarp.

I knew it.

Every architect in Charleston knew it.

An 1890s cotton warehouse, three stories, empty since before I was born.

"I bought it in March," he said, and turned off the engine. "I want to make it a hotel. Ninety rooms. Keep the brick, keep the beams, keep the arches."

"It'll fall down if you look at it wrong."

"That's why I need someone who brought my ballroom back from the dead."

He reached into the glove box and took out a folded contract and a check.

"I was going to ask you after the honeymoon," he said. "I'm asking now. Forty thousand to start, as a retainer. The rest by phase."

I stared at the number on the check.

"I don't have a firm anymore, Cooper."

"You said you were opening a studio."

"I said that forty minutes ago."

"So you've had forty minutes to name it."

I looked at the brick.

At the arches, the busted windows, the long iron shutters rusted open.

"Stanhope Studio," I said.

He wrote it on the contract, in that slanted hand from the card on the cake.

Then he opened the envelope and shook a thumb drive into his palm.

← Chapter 6 · All chapters · Chapter 8 →

Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend