Your Love Came Late, I Chose Another novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Same Cake

In the bridal suite Ronan repeats his offer and Noelle sets her terms, until Brandon's mother storms in and threatens her career.

Nobody in the garden breathed.

Ronan Ashe walked up the aisle.

He stopped in front of me and held out the peach.

"Last one at the stand this morning," he said. "I fought a man in a golf visor for it."

"Did you win?"

"He's still out there. Thinking about his choices."

Somebody in the third row snorted.

Bree grabbed my elbow from one side and Ronan's sleeve from the other.

"Bridal suite," she said. "Both of you. Now."

She marched us back down the aisle past a hundred and eighty open mouths.

She shut the door and leaned on it.

Then she pointed at Ronan.

"Who the hell are you?"

"The man from the peaches," I said.

"The peach guy? The one who said Brandon's ex was flying in?" Bree turned to me. "Noelle. He was right?"

"He was right."

"Holy shit."

Ronan set his phone on the vanity, next to my lipstick and my grandmother's hairpins.

He didn't sit. He didn't touch me.

He looked at me the way he'd looked at that last flat of peaches, like he'd already decided and was waiting for me to catch up.

"Same deal as last month," he said. "I marry you today. Same cake, same guests, same officiant."

"And then what?"

"Then you don't go home to a man who left you in a garden."

"I mean the rest of it."

"A year. Married on paper and under one roof. If you want out after that, we sign a quiet divorce. I don't take a dime of yours. You don't take a dime of mine."

"You don't have a dime," Bree said. "You own an inn."

"An inn is mostly dimes," he said. "Wet ones."

I laughed.

It came out wrong, half a sob, and I pressed my knuckles to my mouth.

Ronan's jaw moved.

He picked up a box of tissues from the vanity and held it out without a word.

I took one.

"Why?" I asked. "Really."

"Because Tara's plane landed at six-fifty this morning." He said her name flat, like a bill he'd already paid. "She did this to me two years ago. Eleven days before our wedding. By text."

"I know. You told me at the market."

"So I know how the afternoon goes from here." His gray eyes didn't leave mine. "Everybody's very kind. Nobody looks at you. You eat the cake alone for a week."

Bree said, very quietly, "Jesus."

"I'd rather they looked at you," Ronan said. "Walking down an aisle on your own two feet."

My throat closed.

I put the tissue down and folded my arms over the lace.

"I have terms."

"I figured."

"One. No pity. You don't look at me like I'm a kicked dog. Not today, not ever."

"I'm not looking at you like a dog."

"How are you looking at me?"

He thought about it.

"Like you're about to win an argument I started."

Bree made a small noise in her throat.

"Two," I said, louder. "Separate bedrooms."

"I've got twenty-two rooms. Pick one."

"Three. A year, like you said. Then we're done, no hard feelings, no money."

"Done," he said.

"And you can't be weird about Brandon."

"I'm never weird about anything."

"You brought a peach to a wedding."

"I brought a peach to my wedding," he said. "Big difference."

That stopped me.

My wedding.

His wedding.

Bree looked from him to me and back, her mascara already threatening.

"Okay, I'm just going to say it," she said. "He's hot, he's funny, and he showed up. That's three more things than the last guy."

"Bree."

"I'm the maid of honor. I'm allowed to have opinions."

I looked down at my hands.

My engagement ring was still on my finger, a modest solitaire Brandon had picked out in a hurry the week his mother said the 1910 ring was "for the wedding day."

The wedding day had come.

The 1910 ring hadn't.

I worked the solitaire off and set it on the vanity next to the peach.

It made a tiny click.

Ronan watched it and said nothing at all, which was the right thing to say.

"Yes," I said. "Okay. Yes."

His shoulders dropped.

"Okay," he said.

"Don't make it a whole thing."

"I'm not making it a thing."

"You're smiling."

"I'm adjusting my face," he said. "It's been a long morning."

Bree grabbed her phone and started typing furiously.

"Who are you texting?"

"The caterer. Nobody touches the cake topper." She looked up. "You baked seven layers of coconut cake at midnight last night. It's going to a man who shows up."

There was a pounding on the door.

Bree yelped and jumped off it.

The door swung in hard enough to bang the wall.

Brandon's mother stood there in her champagne silk and her pearls, her face pale under the makeup.

She looked at the solitaire on the vanity.

She looked at Ronan.

Then she looked at me, and her voice came out like broken glass.

"You'll wait for my son," she said. "Or you'll never work in this town again."

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