I Married a Stranger to Ruin My Groom novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Twenty Minutes Before
Tilda catches Cory and Mallory on the wedding livestream, walks out in her gown, and meets the stranger who needs a wife by midnight. Cory is his cousin.
Twenty minutes before my wedding, I heard my stepsister moaning my fiancé's name through the dressing room door.
That morning she had set up the livestream camera for me herself.
"Take your time, Til," she'd said, tapping the tripod. "Your mom gets to see everything. I'll keep him out of your hair."
My mother was in Room 412 of the hospital with a failing heart, and the camera was the only way she could watch me get married.
Cory had carried the tablet up to her room himself at dawn, and he had texted me a photo of her propped on three pillows, waving.
"Eat something," his message said. "I'll be the nervous one at the end of the aisle."
I opened the door.
My stepsister sat on the vanity where my veil should have been, her red bridesmaid dress shoved up around her waist.
My fiancé, who had texted me that morning, stood close between her knees with his hands in her hair.
In six years he had never held me like that.
The little red light on the tripod blinked at all three of us.
"Tilda." He jumped back and straightened his tie. "It's not what it looks like."
"Say it again," I said. "Slowly. The camera is still on."
Mallory Fenn slid off the vanity and smoothed her dress.
"Don't be dramatic, Til," she said. "You were never going to keep him."
Under the floor, four hundred phones began buzzing at once.
"The ballroom screen," I said.
Cory's face went grey. "What about it?"
"The livestream is for my mother. It has been on that screen since noon."
He didn't look at me when I caught him. He looked at me when four hundred people did.
I walked out.
I went down the grand staircase in twelve pounds of ivory silk.
I passed the string quartet, who had stopped mid-song, and the wedding planner, who held my bouquet at arm's length.
I passed my stepfather, Russell, who looked at his daughter's smeared lipstick and then at me.
"Tilda," he said, "don't make a scene."
I stepped onto the little stage where I was supposed to say my vows and took the microphone.
"Thank you all for coming," I said. "The dinner is paid for, so please stay and eat it."
Somebody laughed, and somebody started to cry.
"The gifts will go back to whoever gave them. The honeymoon is paid in full and can't be refunded, so Cory and Mallory can use it. They've clearly rehearsed."
A man near the front clapped once.
Then the room went silent, and I heard myself breathing.
I had eleven thousand dollars of credit card debt.
I had a mother in a hospital bed, a valve surgery the insurer had refused, and a dress my mother had sold her wedding ring to buy.
I had no groom, and no plan, and nowhere to go.
I put the microphone down.
I couldn't face the lobby, so I took the service corridor behind the kitchen.
A man stood by the freight elevator with his phone in one hand.
He wore a grey suit with no tie, and a thick leather folder was tucked under his arm.
On his phone was the livestream, still running.
"That," he said, "is the first wedding I have ever enjoyed."
"Glad I could entertain you."
"I'm not laughing." He turned the phone toward me.
Mallory was on his screen, smoothing her red dress in the dressing room where I had just left her.
"That's Mallory Fenn," he said. "She is my fiancée. We were meant to marry in three weeks."
The floor seemed to tilt.
For two years Mallory had kept a boyfriend secret.
"Til, you wouldn't believe me," she'd said. "He's out of your league."
I looked at him properly. The watch. The suit. The hotel manager had gone stiff when he walked past.
"Harvey Lorne," he said, and checked the time. His jaw tightened. "My grandfather's lawyer phoned an hour ago. Mallory told me I had three weeks. I have until midnight."
"Lorne Freight," I said. "The trucks on the interstate."
"My grandfather's company, yes."
"Until midnight for what?"
"To be married. If I'm not, my grandfather's company goes to the next name in his will."
He patted the folder under his arm.
"I haven't read it. I've read the one line about midnight, and that is all I've needed."
"Who's next in the will?"
Harvey looked at me for a long moment.
"Cory Fosdick," he said. "My cousin."
I had been engaged to Cory for six years.
He told me his cousin was a ghost who lived overseas and never came home.
I had never seen a photograph.
"Your mother is Maureen Fenn, in Room 412," he said. "Mallory mentions her bills when she wants sympathy."
He didn't smile.
"Marry me tonight. I will pay for your mother's surgery, and Cory loses what he came here to take."
The surgeon needed eighty-six thousand dollars before Friday.
Upstairs, Cory and Mallory were deciding what to say about me.
So I said yes.
I held out my hand.
"Tilda Callanan," I said. "Where is the courthouse?"
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