My Sister Stole My Wedding, So I Took Her Husband's Company novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Winifred's Kitchen

Her grandmother picks her up outside the chapel, Preston offers four million for her shares, and Hazel reads the page that would hand him her votes.

Maxwell Brodie gave me a business card and kept walking toward the parking lot.

I stood on the chapel steps in my ruined dress with the card in one hand and my tote in the other.

Behind me the organ had stopped.

A green sedan at least twenty years old was parked at the curb with its engine running.

The passenger window slid down.

"Get in before they come out and take pictures," Winifred said.

My grandmother was seventy-nine, five foot two, and wearing a cardigan to a wedding.

I got in, and the dress filled the whole front seat.

"You weren't inside," I said.

"I don't sit through weddings I don't trust," she said. "Your mother wouldn't tell me where the groom's side was seated."

She pulled out of the lot with one hand on the wheel and looked me over.

"You went out a window," she said.

"How did you know?"

"You have a bed of mums on your hem."

I laughed, and it came out wrong, and then I was crying into my own hands.

Winifred drove for a whole mile and let me.

My phone rang on my knee.

It was Preston.

"Put it on speaker," Winifred said.

I pressed the button.

"Hazel," Preston said. His voice was low and warm, the one he used on investors. "I'm so sorry you saw that. I wanted to tell you myself."

"You looked right at me," I said.

"I know. That was a mistake. Listen, I want to make this clean for you."

"Make what clean?"

"I'm prepared to buy your thirty percent. Four million, today, before the honeymoon. After we're back you can come home to the office. Nobody has to lose anything."

"Home," I said.

"Brooke will be a wonderful sister-in-law to you. She's already said so."

I looked at the green dashboard clock.

"Did you know at 2:38 when you texted me?" I said.

"I knew all week."

He said it plainly, and that was the worst part.

Winifred took the phone out of my hand.

"Preston, this is Winifred Heathcote," she said.

"Mrs. Heathcote, I didn't realize you were..."

"You nodded at a minister while my granddaughter stood in a doorway in her dress. I was parked outside. I could have driven through the wall."

"Mrs. Heathcote, this is a family matter."

"Then you should have kept it in your family," she said, and ended the call.

She handed the phone back and didn't say another word until we pulled up at her house in Stamford.

It was a narrow white house with a porch swing and a flag she never took down.

Inside, she put the kettle on and pulled a pair of gray sweatpants and a Yankees shirt out of the dryer.

"Your grandfather's," she said. "They've been through worse."

I changed in the bathroom and left the dress in a heap in the tub.

When I came back, she had set two mugs on the table.

"Now tell me what he wants," she said. "A man doesn't ring up four million dollars on his wedding day for nothing."

I set my tote on the table and took out the folder.

I hadn't looked at the page past the title. I had only seen that it was for the board, and he had always sent me things for the board.

I read it now, all of it, in Winifred's kitchen light.

It was an irrevocable voting proxy. It handed every vote on my thirty percent to Preston Lyle, for as long as he wanted them, signed and effective the day I did.

There was a signature line, a witness line, and a date that said Monday.

"He wanted me to sign my vote over to him," I said.

"You'd have married him on Saturday and signed whatever he put in front of you on Monday?" Winifred said.

"Yes."

"And now?"

"Now he has the wrong sister," I said. "I'm not his wife, and I'm not signing anything."

My phone buzzed on the table.

A text from the lawyer, who had sent the folder.

Hazel, Preston asked me to remind you the consent is due Monday at 9 a.m. He says it's more urgent than ever.

I looked up at my grandmother.

"He still needs my signature," I said. "He's going to come and get it."

← Chapter 1 · All chapters · Chapter 3 →

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