Fated to My Homeless Billionaire Alpha novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Party
Bryn finds Preston and Whitney in his old bedroom and ends the engagement in front of eighty guests, then proposes to a homeless man on a bench and he says yes.
I went upstairs at my own engagement party to find a missing earring.
Preston's parents had rented a tent on their lawn in Sewickley and filled it with eighty guests.
I had done every arrangement myself, three hundred white ranunculus, because Preston said florists should never buy flowers from someone else.
I was proud of them.
At ten o'clock I noticed my left earring was gone.
My grandmother had given me those earrings, so I slipped into the house to retrace my steps.
The back stairs led past Preston's childhood bedroom.
The door was open an inch.
I heard a laugh I had known since seventh grade.
"She's counting her flowers down there," Whitney said. "She won't miss us for ten minutes."
"Fifteen," Preston said.
I pushed the door open.
Preston was on his old twin bed with his shirt off and his belt on the floor.
Whitney sat on top of him in the champagne bridesmaid dress I had paid for.
My best friend looked at me over his shoulder and did not even climb off.
"Bryn," she said. "You're early."
I looked at the two of them for exactly as long as it took to see my left earring in her hand.
She had taken it off my dresser that afternoon and used it as an excuse to come find me.
Preston scrambled up and grabbed for his shirt.
"It's not what it looks like," he said.
"It's what it looks like," Whitney said, and laughed again.
I took the earring out of her fingers.
Then I walked downstairs and across the lawn and into the tent.
The band was playing a slow song.
I stepped onto the stage, took the microphone from the singer, and said, "Excuse me, everyone."
Eighty faces turned to me.
"I want to thank you for coming to my engagement party," I said.
"It's over, because the groom is upstairs with the maid of honor."
Nobody breathed.
Behind me the singer whispered, "Oh my God."
I walked to the long table where the punch bowl sat on a sea of white flowers.
I pulled the two-carat ring off my finger, held it over the bowl, and let it drop.
It sank through the pink punch with a small, clean plunk.
Preston's mother caught me at the tent flap before I got out.
She was a tall woman in pearls, and she took my arm so hard it hurt.
"Don't you dare make a scene," she hissed.
"I just did," I said.
She leaned in close enough for me to smell her perfume.
"Listen to me, you little shop girl," she said. "You are twenty-seven, you rent your own flat, and your mother is dead."
"No decent man will have you after tonight."
"Preston will forgive you if you go apologize right now."
I looked at her hand on my arm until she let go.
"I'd marry the first stranger on the street before I apologized to your son," I said.
I left my flowers, my coat and my car keys behind.
I took only my phone and ordered a car.
At midnight it dropped me on Penn Avenue, outside my own shop.
I couldn't make myself go inside to my flat.
The empty street felt better.
A cold wind pushed grit along the gutter, and I sat down hard on the bus bench outside the pharmacy.
I started to shake.
I didn't know how long I had been there when a voice beside me said, "You dropped something."
A man was sitting at the other end of the bench.
I had not noticed him.
He wore a ragged army coat, and his beard was long and dark.
He held out my earring.
It had fallen into my lap when I sat, and from my lap to the ground.
His hand was huge, and his fingers were warm when they touched my palm.
I looked up.
His eyes were grey, and for one second under the streetlight they flashed gold.
Something low in my stomach pulled tight.
I heard the old woman's voice in my head again.
No decent man will have you after tonight.
"Are you homeless?" I asked.
"For nineteen days," he said.
His voice was deep and a little rough.
"Do you have a name?"
"Mathias."
"Mathias," I said. "I'm Bryn. I've had the worst night of my life."
"I know," he said. "I heard you from the corner. You were crying out loud."
I laughed, and it came out wet.
I had never done a reckless thing in my life, and I was tired of being careful.
"Mathias," I said. "Marry me."
He went absolutely still.
The wind stopped moving the trash in the gutter.
Slowly he turned his whole body toward me.
I saw his nostrils flare.
"Say that again," he said.
"Marry me," I said. "Tonight."
For a long moment he only looked at me.
Then the gold came up in his eyes, and stayed.
"Yes," he said.
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