Married In A Heartbeat novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Aisle
She hears her fiance and her family plan to take her mother's house, walks into the ballroom in her wedding dress, and asks a stranger to marry her today. He says yes.
I was zipped into my wedding dress when I heard my own name through the bathroom door.
"Leanne signs it over after the vows," Darla said. "She'll be too happy to read anything."
I stood very still with my veil in one hand.
The bridal suite had two rooms, and I was alone in the back one.
My phone sat on the vanity, recording the vows I had been practicing in the mirror.
I never turned it off.
"The house is hers the second she says I do," Colt said. "Ellen's will says so. I read it twice."
"Then we have her sign at the reception," Darla said. "Put the pen in her hand while the band plays."
"Trista needs a nursery by Christmas," Colt said.
I stopped breathing.
Trista was my stepsister, and she was twenty-five, and I had picked out her bridesmaid dress myself.
"Ten weeks," Darla said. "The doctor says it's a healthy one."
Colt laughed low.
"And Roy?" he said.
"Colt's father tears up your gambling markers, Roy," Darla said. "You sign nothing. You just stay quiet."
My father cleared his throat.
"She's my daughter," he said.
"She's a girl who bakes cakes," Darla said. "Don't be useless today."
Nobody said no.
I waited for my father to say no.
He said, "Fine."
I looked at the house keys on a ribbon around my wrist, the ones I had planned to give Colt after the wedding.
My mother's kitchen was behind that key.
She had died when I was seventeen, and I had learned to frost a cake at her counter.
I took the keys off my wrist and put them in my glove.
Then I picked up my phone, and I walked out of the back room.
The three of them turned around.
Colt had his tie half knotted.
His face did the thing it always did, the small smile that made me feel chosen.
"Babe," he said. "You look insane. Is it time?"
"It's time," I said.
I walked past Darla, past my father, past Colt's hand on my arm.
I went down the hall and opened the double doors myself.
The ballroom was full, and one hundred and forty faces turned.
The string quartet stopped in the middle of a bar.
Colt came after me, whispering my name, fast, the smile gone stiff.
I walked down the aisle in my mother's veil, and I took the microphone from its stand at the front.
"Hi," I said. "I'm sorry to do this to your Saturday."
The feedback squealed once and died.
"I just heard my fiance, my stepmother and my father plan to take my mother's house the minute I married him."
A woman near the front covered her mouth.
"Colt has been sleeping with my stepsister," I said. "She's ten weeks pregnant, and she's sitting in the third row in the pink dress."
Trista's face went white under her blowout.
Every head turned to look at her, and she did not say a word.
Colt got to me then and tried to take the microphone.
"Leanne, stop it, you're upset," he said.
"Don't touch me," I said, and I stepped back.
He laughed, the wrong way, loud enough for the back rows.
"You're making a scene," he said. "Who's going to marry you now? Look at yourself."
It was a good question.
I looked out over the room for an answer.
At the back, by the side door, a man in a gray canvas work jacket stood on a stepladder.
He had a flashlight in one hand and his other palm flat against a brown stain on the ceiling.
He was not looking at the ceiling anymore.
He was looking at me.
He was tall and broad, with dark curls and a scar through his left eyebrow, and he did not look away.
I had never seen him in my life.
I said into the microphone, "Sir. On the ladder."
His eyebrows went up.
"Are you married?"
Somebody laughed, nervously, and stopped.
"No," he said. His voice carried without trying. "I'm not."
"Do you have somewhere to be today?"
He looked at the ceiling, and then at me.
"Not anymore," he said.
"The marriage bureau is open until midnight," I said. "It's twenty minutes from here. I'm asking you to marry me, today."
The quartet cellist put down her bow.
Colt said, "You are out of your mind."
I did not look at Colt.
The man on the ladder climbed down one rung at a time.
He wiped his hand on his jeans, and he walked up the aisle with the flashlight still in his fist.
He stopped in front of me, a full head taller.
Up close his eyes were dark brown and perfectly steady.
"I don't know your name," I said quietly, off the microphone.
"Tobin," he said.
"Leanne."
"Leanne," he said, like he was trying it. "You mean it?"
"I mean every word."
He held out his hand, the one with the dust still on it.
"Yes," he said. "Where's your car?"
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