Chapter 6

The meeting with Colin went off without a hitch, and for a good ten days or so, Samantha and Drake had done nothing except plan for their wedding. Sam wasn’t in nearly as much of a hurry to make decisions about things as Drake, but that was obviously because she thought the wedding was still weeks away.

Drake, on the other hand, knew that the wedding was right around the corner, and he couldn’t stop worrying about every little detail. One night, he stayed up all night long looking up different kinds of white flowers and which ones would be best for their wedding. Sam had only decided on white flowers and hadn’t decided on the type, so Drake and Colin had to make the decision themselves.

Colin had turned out to be everything that Scarlett had indicated he would be. He was on time, courteous, and knew what he was doing. Drake knew that he would do the best he possibly could, given the existing circumstances. The problem was, Drake needed to constantly provide more information and make so many choices that he had started to second guess everything that came out of his mouth.

He even started to second guess the idea of actually having the wedding as a surprise. Drake knew that Sam was confident she wanted to get married and knew that she was alright with doing it quickly, but he wasn’t sure she was going to be alright with not having a say in all the details of the wedding.

Samantha liked to be in charge, and Drake knew it. Even though she had been his assistant for many years, she still was in charge of almost every aspect of Drake’s work schedule. Any time he would add an event or forget to tell her about something, he could tell that it really bothered Sam.

So how was she going to handle Drake planning their entire wedding without her? He didn’t know, he could only hope that she appreciated all the work that had gone into it and loved him enough to still walk down the aisle with him.

Drake’s phone started to ring, and he fumbled with getting it out of his pocket while he was in his office. He didn’t want Sam to hear him talking on the phone and making arrangements but couldn’t risk missing calls, so he had his ringer turned on for the last few days.

“Are we invited?” Drake heard a chipper female voice ask.

“Who are we?” Drake teased, although he knew that it was Emily on the phone.

“It’s Emily and Allison.”

“Oh, no, you’re not invited, but Allison is,” Drake said as he tried to hold back a laugh.

The phone went silent, and Drake instantly felt bad. He was just joking with Emily; of course, she and Allison could come to the wedding. Drake was also inviting all the other women, although he only expected Scarlett and Lauren to agree to come.

“I’m kidding, Emily. Of course you can come.”

“Oh, Jesus, stop scaring me like that,” Emily said. “I’m really excited for you guys; I know Allison is too. We are so excited to come to your engagement party.”

Suddenly Drake realized that he was talking about the wedding, and Emily was talking about coming to an engagement party. He had almost said something about the wedding and ruined the whole surprise. It would have been horrible if after getting worried someone else would spill the beans; Drake ended up doing it himself.

“Okay, I’ve got to run. I’ll see you at the party this weekend,” Drake said as he got off the phone.

Drake was thrown off by his near slip and had to regroup his thoughts. But he still had so much planning to finish off. The biggest issue was still the dress. Scarlett was being hush-hush about the whole thing, and it was making Drake really nervous. He just wanted to know that the dress had been purchased and needed to know how they would be sure it fit Samantha. He needed to talk to Scarlett.

“How’s the dress hunt?” Drake said to Scarlett as soon as she answered her phone.

“It’s going fine; don’t worry about it,” Scarlett said.

She sounded carefree and unworried, and Drake couldn’t stand it at all. He had to know the details or he was going to go mad with worry. Samantha had to have the perfect dress; Drake wasn’t going to settle for anything else than perfection for her.

“You need to tell me more; I’m going mad worrying about this.”

“Okay, well you know all those dresses that Sam gives to Allison’s pageant charity?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I had Allison bring me a couple of them, and I gave them to the tailor who is working on Sam’s dress. She was able to get all of her exact measurements, so we shouldn’t have to worry about the fit of the dress at all.”

Drake breathed a sigh of relief that at least the dress was going to fit. But he still didn’t know if Samantha was going to like the style of the dress at all. But there wasn’t really a good way of ensuring she was going to like the dress style without actually showing her the dress.

“That’s fantastic,” Drake said. “But what about the design of the dress. What are you doing for that? Is it going to be an A-line? Sam doesn’t like those kinds of dresses.”

Scarlett started to laugh into the phone as Drake talked about the cut of dress that he didn’t want Sam to have. It wasn’t every day that you got to talk to a man about wedding dresses, and he seemed to know what he was talking about. Whether Drake actually understood what he was talking about or not, Scarlett was impressed by his dedication and understanding of how important Sam’s dress would be to her.

“I’ve tried to convince her to go try on dresses, but she’s not interested. We did spend an afternoon looking through a designer dress magazine, and I made note of the ones she liked and contacted the designers. There were only three who had a sample dress in Sam’s size, so I just chose one of those.”

Drake breathed another sigh of relief. Scarlett’s plan sounded better than any he could have thought up. He would be forever grateful to Scarlett for all the efforts she had put in to make the wedding perfect.

“Okay, thank you so much. I know you’re busy. I’ll talk to you later,” Drake said.

Drake and Scarlett had been talking almost every day over the last week as they made wedding plans. Drake didn’t want to keep Scarlett on the phone for too long because he knew how busy she was, but he did feel much better after getting some answers to the questions he had about Sam’s dress.

Drake couldn’t concentrate on work at all as he flipped through the list on his phone. He was pretty impressed with himself and all that had been accomplished over the last few days. Drake wasn’t a party planner, but he certainly could appreciate everything that went into that job.

There was one item on his list that Drake hadn’t even started yet, and he didn’t know what to do about it. The food at the party was one of the biggest details, yet he had agonized over what to have catered for so long that now he only had a few days. It was unlikely he would find a decent company to cater the wedding and even less likely that he would find the staff needed to serve everyone. Drake had to think outside of the box, but the problem was he couldn’t stop thinking about how he might ruin everything with his decision.

Ruining the wedding seemed to be a common theme in Drake’s thoughts over the previous days, and he just couldn’t get the idea out of his head. He thought about Samantha getting angry with him, her parents, his parents, the guests and even the pastor he hired to perform the wedding. No one was off-limits in Drake’s imagination, and he just knew someone was going to be upset at the wedding.

Then it came to Drake; he had a great idea for the wedding food and knew just how to make it extra special for Sam. A few years before, they had a young woman working in reception who left LeBlanc Enterprises to go to culinary school. Sam and she had been great friends, and Drake hoped that he would be able to reach her in time to plan for the wedding.

Rebecca Martinez was the woman’s name, but Drake didn’t have any of her contact information. The one person who did have the contact information was Sam, but Drake certainly couldn’t go and ask her for the woman’s phone number. He would have to figure out another way of getting the number, and quickly.

He dialed Colin to enlist him for a little help with securing Rebecca for the event.

“Colin, I know a young caterer that I would like to invite to cater the wedding, but Sam is the only one who has her contact information. Do you think you could talk to her and get the necessary info so we could use this woman?”

“Sure, what is her name?”

“Rebecca Martinez, but I don’t have her phone number. That’s what you’ll need to get from Sam.”

“You know, I’m going to charge you triple just for all the trouble you’re giving me,” Colin said lightheartedly, but Drake thought he was probably serious.

“You do what you have to do; I’ll pay you whatever you want if this wedding goes off without a hitch.”

Colin whistled loudly as he contemplated how much he could charge Drake and have Drake still pay it. What Colin didn’t know was that Drake would have paid almost anything to ensure his woman was happy.

“I’ll get in contact with Rebecca and convince her to cater the event,” Colin said optimistically.

“Thank you, Colin. I really appreciate you.”

“I know, I know; I keep hearing that. But show me the money,” he joked again.

Drake had started to like Colin, and even enjoyed his sense of humor. It wasn’t every day that Drake made friends with a porn star, and Colin was actually a really nice guy who knew a lot about event planning. Scarlett had been right about Colin, and Drake appreciated that very much. He hadn’t had the foggiest idea about who he would have hired.

“I’ll talk to you tomorrow Colin,” Drake said.

“Yes, yes, we can talk tomorrow. Only a couple more days until the big day. I can’t wait to see Sam’s surprised face.”

Drake was eager to see Sam’s face when she realized what was going on as well. He wasn’t sure she was going to be happy about it all but knew she would be gracious, no matter what happened.

But Drake knew he would feel so much better once everything was over and the event had gone off without a hitch. Only a couple more days, and it would all be over, good or bad; it would be over.

Samantha had been talking a lot about their wedding and the engagement party. Drake knew she was excited to get married, and he kept that thought in his mind whenever he felt self-doubt about the planning of the event. Samantha loved him, and he loved her. That was all that truly mattered, and Drake knew it; so would Sam.

His gut kept telling him that their day was going to go off without a hitch, and by the beginning of the next week, Drake would be married. He couldn’t imagine what his life was going to be like as a married man, but he also couldn’t wait to call Sam his wife.