Forbidden Game: Seducing the Bride at the Altar novel · Chapter 2 of 32

Chapter 2: Shrimp and Grits

Jasper carries her out of the chapel to his salvage yard, laughs at her story until she comes out of the creek with a tail, then watches Corbett tell the news she's had a breakdown and must be committed.

Corbett's hand was still on my arm when the chapel doors slammed shut behind the last pew.

Four men in gray suits stood in front of them with their hands folded.

Corbett's security.

"Nobody leaves," Corbett said to the room, smiling again. "My fiancée isn't well. Let's all give her a minute."

Three hundred people sat back down.

Jasper looked at the doors, then at the little side door behind the organ.

"Can you run in that?" he asked.

I looked down at eleven yards of lace.

"No."

"Okay."

He bent, put a shoulder into my stomach and lifted me off the floor.

The chapel gasped.

Then the side door banged open and we were out in the wind off the harbor.

"Put me down!"

"In a minute."

He ran across the Battery lawn with me over his shoulder and my veil streaming behind us.

Jasper's truck was a rusted white pickup parked on the grass with two wheels on a flower bed.

He threw the door open and set me on the seat, gown and all.

The train didn't fit.

He stuffed it in after me with both arms.

Then he drove.

He didn't say a word over the bridge.

I held my bare right hand in my left.

It stayed dry.

Shem Creek smelled like diesel, pluff mud and frying fish.

Loring Salvage was at the end of a shell road.

A tin shed. A crane with rust running down it.

A flat gray barge, and a houseboat painted the color of an old mint.

A three-legged yellow dog came bounding out of the shed and stopped dead at the sight of me.

Then he barked at my veil.

"Biscuit," Jasper said. "She's company."

A short, wide woman in overalls stepped out of the yard office.

She had a wooden spoon in one hand and an unlit cigarette in the other.

She looked at me. She looked at the gown.

She looked at Jasper.

"Lord have mercy upon us," she said. "What did you do?"

"I got married."

"You did not."

"Sort of."

"Get her inside before the whole creek sees. Jesus wept."

That was Ida Loring.

Her kitchen was the back half of the yard office, with a stove older than me and a table covered in charts and newspapers.

She cleared a corner and put a bowl in front of me.

Shrimp and grits, with bacon and too much butter.

I hadn't eaten in a day and a half.

I ate the whole bowl and then most of Jasper's.

"Somebody starved this child," Ida said.

"He put me on a diet for the dress," I said.

Ida looked at Jasper over her reading glasses.

"That boy has been a sin since he was born."

Jasper leaned in the doorway with his arms crossed and his tie pulled loose.

"Okay," he said. "Tell me about the foam."

So I told him.

The storm off Morris Island five years ago.

His brother in the water with his eyes open and no breath.

My sister rising out of the dark.

My pearl for Corbett's life, and legs to walk after him.

The vow, the betrayal, the moonset.

When I finished, Jasper laughed.

"A mermaid," he said.

"Sea folk. Mermaid is your word."

"Sure."

Ida didn't laugh.

She was looking at my fingers.

"Jasper," she said.

"Ida, come on. She's had a terrible day. Corbett does that to people."

I stood up.

I walked out of the kitchen, across the yard, down the dock, and straight off the end of it into Shem Creek.

The water was warm and salt and brown.

It closed over my head and I breathed it in.

My legs went first.

The gown floated off me in a cloud of lace.

I kicked once and was at the far bank.

I kicked again and was back.

When I came up at the end of the dock, Jasper was on his knees on the boards.

Ida had her spoon over her heart.

I rested my arms on the dock and flicked my tail up behind me so it caught the low sun.

Blue and silver, as long as a man.

Jasper looked at it for a long time.

"Okay," he said finally. His voice was rough. "Okay."

"Still funny?"

"No."

He held his hand out.

I took it, and he pulled me up onto the dock, and my tail slid back into two pale legs on the wet boards.

He shrugged out of his suit jacket and held it out without looking.

"Here."

I put it on. It came to my knees.

Ida had a quilt off the porch rail and wrapped me in that too.

"Psalm one hundred and four," she said, a little faint. "There go the ships, and there is that leviathan. I always took that for a whale."

"Ida."

"I'm just saying, the Lord keeps surprises."

Back in the kitchen she turned on the little television over the stove.

Corbett was on the six o'clock news.

He stood on the chapel steps in his white suit, with his hand on his heart and the black pearl shining.

"My bride has suffered a breakdown," he told the cameras. "She's been under a doctor's care. Today she was taken from the chapel by a man with a history of violence and grudges against my family."

The picture cut to Jasper carrying me out over his shoulder.

"I love her," Corbett said. "That's why I've filed this afternoon to have her committed for her own safety."

← 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