I Prepared for My Wedding, Only to Be Shut Out of My Own Bridal Suite novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Dunbar Events

Claire reads the transfer aloud, Beverly slaps her in front of the guests, and after cake in bathrobes Kelsey's edited video makes Claire the villain.

I lifted the microphone and read it out loud.

"Transfer completed, six twelve this morning. Eighty-four thousand dollars. To Dunbar Events."

Nobody in the ballroom moved.

"That was our wedding account," I said. "The caterer, the band, the flowers. The final payments just bounced."

The bandleader at the side of the stage slowly lowered his saxophone.

Kelsey lifted her face off Beverly's shoulder.

"That's my company," she said in a small voice. "That was for the planning."

"Your fee was six thousand dollars," I said. "I signed the contract. I have it in my email."

Mason found his voice.

"It's a deposit, Claire. For the honeymoon stuff. Kelsey was handling it. You'd know that if you ever let anybody help you."

"At six in the morning."

"She's an early riser."

"She was in my bed at six in the morning."

Somebody at the back actually laughed.

It wasn't a kind laugh, and it wasn't at me.

Mason's ears went red.

Beverly let go of Kelsey and walked up the white runner toward me.

Her heels didn't make a sound on the carpet.

She stopped close enough that I could smell her perfume, something with gardenia in it.

"You greedy little thing," she said, quiet, but the microphone was in my hand and it caught every word. "Standing at an altar counting money. I told him what you were."

"It was my money, Beverly. Most of it."

"Nothing you have is yours. You live in a house my son pays for."

"My father paid for it. He's dead. The insurance was the down payment."

She slapped me.

It was a hard, flat sound, and the speakers made it bigger.

My head turned with it.

The pearls slipped in my fist, and I held on.

My mother said, "Don't you touch her," in a voice I hadn't heard since I was twelve.

Before Beverly could lift her hand again, somebody was standing between us.

Cooper Harrington.

He didn't touch her.

He was just there, big, in his charcoal suit, his back to me.

"Mrs. Ridgeway," he said. "Not in my ballroom."

"This is a private family matter."

"It's a hundred and eighty people. And it's my floor you're standing on."

He nodded to two men in dark jackets by the doors.

They didn't come in. They only stood up straighter.

That was enough.

Beverly looked at him for a long second, then turned to the room and smiled.

"I'm so sorry, everyone. My son has had a terrible shock. The bar is open, please enjoy it."

The bar had just bounced.

Nobody pointed that out.

She walked out with Kelsey under one arm.

Mason followed them.

At the doors he turned back and pointed at me.

"You'll be back tonight," he said. "You've got nowhere else to sleep."

Then he was gone.

Cooper turned around.

He looked at the side of my face and something in his jaw went tight.

"I've got a room on the eighth floor," he said. "For you and your mother. As long as you want it."

"I can't pay for it. Apparently."

"I didn't ask you to."

The eighth-floor room had a view of the harbor and a bathtub the size of a canoe.

My mother hung my wedding dress in the closet, still zipped in its bag.

She closed the closet door very gently.

I took a shower with my hair still pinned.

When I came out there were two hotel bathrobes on the bed.

And there was a knock.

A room service waiter wheeled in a cart.

On it was my wedding cake.

All four tiers, white buttercream, sugar roses down one side.

Nobody had cut it.

There was a card in Cooper's slanted handwriting.

"The bakery's invoice is settled. It seemed like a waste. C.H."

My mother and I looked at the cake.

Then she handed me a fork and took one for herself.

We sat on the bed in our robes and ate the top tier straight off the board.

It was lemon with raspberry.

I'd picked it after tasting nine cakes, and Mason hadn't come to any of the tastings.

"Honestly," my mother said with her mouth full, "I always hated his mother's laugh. She sounds like a car that won't start."

I laughed so hard I choked on a sugar rose.

Then I was crying.

Then both at once, with frosting on my chin.

My mother held my head against her shoulder and kept eating cake over the top of it.

At eleven my phone started buzzing and didn't stop.

My cousin. My bridesmaids. A girl I hadn't talked to since high school.

"Have you seen this??"

"Claire call me."

"Is this real??"

They'd all sent me the same link.

It was Kelsey's page.

A short video, filmed in the ballroom on somebody's phone.

It started on me yanking my hands out of Mason's.

It cut to Beverly, stunned, one hand pressed to her chest.

Then a close-up photo of Kelsey's neck, with two red marks above the collarbone.

The caption said, "She attacked me while I slept, and then she hit his mother. I only wanted to help them have a beautiful day."

It had three hundred thousand views.

Every time I refreshed, it had more.

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