Free Any Man Of Mine by Rachel Gibson

some of my vendors and see what kind of deals they can give you. In this economy, they are a lot more open to giving price breaks. And I’ll contact the local Society for Creative Anachronism and see what they can do, too. I think we can come up with something fabulous and still stay within your budget. I’m looking forward to helping you with this wedding. It’s going to be fun.” At least it wasn’t a pink princess theme, which was Autumn’s least favorite. “Have you picked out a dress,” she asked Carmen, and by the time the bride and groom left her office, they’d signed a contract, put down a deposit, and were upbeat and optimistic about their June wedding.
    Autumn tossed her pen and pressed the heels of her palms against her brows. She wasn’t going to get rich planning weddings with budgets of twenty grand. Every little bit helped, and she was grateful for each job. But the commission off Carmen and Jerry’s wedding would barely pay the lease on her office for two months, which was why a lot of planners worked out of their homes, but not Autumn. She’d always believed that the image of success attracted success. Her office wasn’t anything big and splashy, just a seven-hundred-square-foot space she rented in a strip mall not far from her house; but it did give her the appearance of professionalism that a planner just couldn’t get from meeting clients in her home.
    Autumn depended on the big events and big weddings, like the Savages’, to survive the leaner times and keep her business going. To put food on the table and pay the utilities. Although she hated to admit it, the money she got each month from Sam went above and beyond helping to pay her personal bills. She and Conner lived modestly, and she’d like to be able to say she didn’t use any of the child-support money Sam provided. She’d like to throw it all back in his face, but she wasn’t a martyr, and raising a child was expensive. She’d like to say she was socking the money away for Conner’s education, but Sam had that covered, too.
    The amount Sam paid for one child was ridiculously high, but she was the only one who seemed to think so. Neither her lawyer nor Sam’s or even Sam himself seemed to think he should pay less. Which, she supposed, showed how much money the man made a year. She didn’t need half that much, and she’d put a lot of it aside so that when it had come time to buy a house, she’d paid cash. The house was thirty-five years old, but it was her and Conner’s, and they’d never be homeless. Never have to move around to avoid landlords and eviction notices like when she’d been growing up. Never moving from town to town, one step ahead of the repo man.
    If Autumn did have a weakness, it was traveling. Every year, she took Conner on an awesome vacation. Usually in January because Januaries were notoriously slow months in the planning business. But with Conner in school now, they would have to take minivacations and wait until spring break to head off to St. Barts or Atlantis.
    “Hey, Autumn.” Shiloh, Autumn’s twenty-five-year-old assistant stuck her dark head into the office. “I talked to Tasty Cakes, and they’ll do the cake for the Kramer anniversary for a thousand if we use them for the Peterson birthday party.”
    “Fabulous.” The Kramer’s fiftieth wedding anniversary was planned for the second week in November and included three hundred family members and a five-tier wedding cake. “We can use the savings on better wine.” She flipped her wrist over and looked at her watch. Seven thirty. Free weekend nights were rare. “Don’t you have a date or something?”
    Shiloh raised one dark brow over her brown eyes. “Don’t you?”
    Autumn laughed. “Yeah right. I have a five-year-old.”
    Shiloh rested a shoulder against the doorframe. “Not tonight you don’t.”
    True, Conner was at the hockey game watching his dad skate around and punch people in the head. Sam had actually come through