The Heiress Who Refused the Family Key novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Aisle

Cecelia walks down the aisle, reads the Nevada marriage record to 180 guests and plays Danielle's 'oops' call over the speakers, then returns her ring; at the door Danielle whispers that she should have taken the key.

The quartet began the processional at four o'clock, and I walked.

I had no father on my arm.

I had my bouquet in one hand and the folded certificate in the other.

One hundred and eighty people turned in their chairs to watch me come.

Preston waited at the end of the aisle in his grey morning suit, smiling at me as if nothing had ever gone wrong.

Danielle stood three steps behind him in lavender silk.

I had asked her to be a bridesmaid two years ago, when I still thought she was my friend.

She gave me a small, shy wave.

Hannah stood on the other side in her maid of honor dress, one hand in her clutch.

She nodded at me.

I stopped at the altar and handed my bouquet to her.

"You look beautiful," Preston whispered. "Thank you for coming. I know it's been a rough day."

"Is that what you call it?"

The officiant cleared his throat and opened his book.

"Dearly beloved, we are gathered here..."

"Excuse me," I said.

He looked up.

"Before we begin, I'd like to read something. It's short."

I unfolded the certificate and turned to face the room.

Preston's hand closed on my elbow.

"Cece. Not now."

I stepped out of his reach.

"This is a certified copy of a marriage record from Clark County, Nevada," I said, loud enough for the back row.

The quartet stopped playing.

"It names Preston James Gaines and Danielle Elaine Lorring."

Somebody in the third row said, "What?"

"They were married on Monday. Four days ago. In Las Vegas."

I held the paper up so the people at the front could see the seal.

Preston's mother stood halfway out of her seat.

"That is a private matter," she said. "Sit down, Cecelia."

"It stopped being private when it was hidden in my veil."

The room made a low, ugly sound, the sound of a hundred and eighty people turning to look at the same two people.

Danielle pressed both hands to her chest.

"It was a dare," she said, and her voice shook. "Oh my God, Cece, it was a stupid dare. We were drunk."

"Who dared who?" I asked.

She blinked.

"Preston dared me."

"Danielle did," Preston said, at exactly the same time. "It was her idea, Cece, I swear."

They stared at each other.

A man in the second row laughed, short and surprised, and then covered his mouth.

Preston's boss was sitting beside him.

I knew because I had seated him there myself.

"Cece, honey," Preston said, in the warm, reasonable voice he used on clients. "You're upset. Let's step outside and talk. This is a misunderstanding."

"I think they'd like to hear the rest of it," I said.

I looked at Hannah.

She had already plugged her phone into the band's sound system.

"Hit it," I said.

The speakers crackled.

"Cece! Oh my God, please don't kill me." That was Danielle, bright and breathless, filling the whole ballroom.

I watched her face go white.

"We were in Vegas after the client dinner. Everybody was drunk. Preston dared me to do one of those tacky chapel weddings. So I dared him back."

"And then?" said my voice.

"And then, oops."

Someone gasped.

"Relax. It's nothing, it's paperwork. We file in thirty days and it disappears. Preston is crazy about you, you know that."

Hannah stopped it there.

The silence in the ballroom was complete.

Preston's mother sat down very slowly.

Preston's boss stood up, buttoned his jacket, and looked at Preston without blinking.

"Gaines," he said. "My office. Monday."

"Sir, it's not what it sounds like."

"It sounds like you married someone four days before you married someone else."

I took off my ring.

It was a good ring.

He had chosen it himself and proposed with a hundred people watching, so that I couldn't say no.

I put it in the officiant's open book.

"Please see that he gets that back," I said. "I'm finished wearing it."

"Cece, please." Preston's smile had finally slipped. "You can't do this to me."

"I haven't done anything to you."

I handed him the certificate.

"I only read it."

I turned and walked back up the aisle.

Nobody said a word.

Halfway down, in the last row, a man got to his feet.

Rafe Dellinger was taller than anyone around him.

He wore a plain dark suit, and he had his hands in his pockets and his eyes on me, steady and unsurprised.

I had sent him an invitation out of politeness.

I never thought he'd come.

He didn't say anything either.

He just held the door open.

I had almost reached it when a hand caught my wrist.

Danielle had run the whole length of the aisle in her bare feet, her lavender skirt in her fist.

Her face was wet.

She leaned in until her mouth was at my ear.

"You should have taken the key, Cecelia," she whispered.

Then she let me go, and stepped back, and started to cry again for the room.

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