Jilted at the Altar, I Married His Billionaire Uncle novel · Chapter 1 of 32
Chapter 1: The Wrong Bride
At the altar Hayden swaps Reagan for her pregnant stepsister while three hundred guests laugh, so Reagan proposes to his uncle Anson in the back row; on the hotel steps Anson tells her Hayden signed every bad bolt order and picked their wedding day on purpose.
Hayden let go of my hands right when the officiant asked if he took me.
He stepped back off the little platform.
Three hundred guests leaned forward in their gold chairs.
"I can't," he said into the microphone clipped to his lapel. "Not to her."
He wasn't looking at me.
He was looking at the front row.
My stepsister stood up.
Kaylee was supposed to be in sage green like the other bridesmaids.
She'd taken off her wrap.
Underneath was a white satin dress, cut low, with a little bow at the waist.
She put a hand on her stomach and smiled at the room.
"Four months," Hayden said. "I wanted everyone to hear it from me."
My stepmother was smiling too.
She'd known.
My father half rose out of his seat, and she pulled him down by the sleeve.
I stood there in my mother's veil with my bouquet in both fists.
"Hayden," I said. "Not here."
"Where, then?" He laughed. "On a beam forty floors up? Reagan would rather marry a steel beam anyway. Everybody in this room knows it."
Somebody near the back snorted.
Then somebody else laughed.
Then it went through the whole ballroom.
Three hundred people, and most of them had eaten my father's ribs at my engagement party.
Kaylee walked up the two steps and took my place.
She didn't even have to move my flowers. I was still holding them.
"You can keep the dress," she whispered. "It never really fit you."
I looked down at my hands on the stems.
Ironworker hands. Short nails, a white scar across two knuckles, calluses I'd sanded for a week so the ring would look nice in photos.
On Thursday those hands had found three bolts on the thirty-first floor of Strahan Point that snapped at half torque.
I'd shown Hayden.
He'd kissed my forehead and said to leave it till after the honeymoon.
I hadn't left it.
On Friday I'd sent a report with photos straight to the owner's office.
I took off my veil.
I folded it once and handed it to the officiant, who held it.
Then I put the bouquet in Kaylee's arms.
"Congratulations," I said. "Don't let him near a wrench."
I walked back down the aisle alone.
Nobody laughed now. They were too busy filming.
I didn't stop at the doors.
I stopped at the last row.
He was sitting by himself on the end.
The chairs on both sides of him were empty, and so were the two in front.
Like whatever he had might be catching.
Anson Strahan. Hayden's uncle. The man who owned Strahan Point, and Strahan Tower before it, and half the skyline I'd bolted together since I was twenty.
The man everyone in Pittsburgh swore had pushed his first wife, Elise, off the top of his own building.
I'd met him exactly once, for barely a minute, on the deck at Strahan Point.
He'd asked my name and if I was the one who'd caught the loose shackle on 22.
I'd said yes.
He'd said good, and walked away.
Now he looked up at me from his chair.
Gray eyes. Dark suit. No tie.
He didn't look surprised. He was waiting to see what I'd do.
"Are you married, Mr. Strahan?" I said.
The whole room heard it.
"No," he said.
"Do you want to be?"
Hayden's voice came over the speakers. "Reagan, for God's sake. Sit down."
I didn't turn around.
"Marry me," I said to his uncle.
Somebody dropped a glass.
Hayden laughed into the microphone again, but it cracked in the middle. "You know what he did to the last one? He'll throw you off a roof."
Anson stood up.
He was taller than I'd thought, and he buttoned his jacket like he had all the time in the world.
He took my hand.
His palm was rough. Not like a man who sat in offices.
There were thick ridged scars across it, old ones, shiny in the chandelier light.
"Yes," he said.
Kaylee made a sound.
"Pennsylvania makes you wait three days for a license," Anson said, to me, like nobody else was in the room.
"Then I'll wait three days."
"Monday. Nine o'clock. City-County Building."
"I'll be there at eight-thirty."
The corner of his mouth moved.
He kept my hand and walked me out through three hundred people who didn't know where to look.
Behind us, my stepmother hissed, "Dermot, stop her."
My father said nothing at all.
Outside, the May air smelled like rain and bus exhaust.
I sat down on the hotel's stone steps in my wedding dress, because my knees had decided they were done.
Anson didn't sit.
He stood one step below me, so his eyes were level with mine.
"You're shaking," he said.
"It's a cold dress."
"It's seventy degrees."
"Then I'm shaking."
He took off his jacket and put it around my shoulders.
It was warm and smelled like cedar.
"Why did you say yes?" I said.
"Why did you ask?"
"Because you were the one person in that room he's scared of."
He nodded.
Then he reached into his pocket and unfolded a sheet of paper.
It was my report. My photos. My three broken bolts on a gray deck.
"I read this at six o'clock this morning," he said.
"Good. Then you'll stop the steel."
"I pulled every bolt order for that tower before I got dressed." He tapped the paper. "Every one of them is signed by my nephew."
I stared at him.
"He didn't pick today by accident, Reagan," Anson said. "He picked the one day you'd look crazy to everyone who reads this."
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