One Night With The Wrong Brother novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Toast
At her engagement party Lawrence announces her pregnancy to two hundred guests, names the suite she told no one about, and Lana leaves him in public; outside, his brother says Lawrence told him she asked for the dark.
Lawrence told two hundred people I was pregnant before I had told him.
He did it from the little stage on the roof of the Ashcroft Grand, one hand around his champagne and the other around my waist.
"To Lana," he said, "who has just made me the happiest man in New York. We're having a baby."
The roof went up.
His mother pressed both hands to her pearls. Women I had met twice squealed and reached for me.
Meghan stood near the front, holding her phone up to film, her smile wobbling.
Meghan was the only person alive who knew.
I had told her two weeks ago at my kitchen table, crying into a dish towel, and I had made her swear.
She saw me looking and found something very interesting on her screen.
Here is what nobody on that roof knew.
Lawrence and I had never slept together.
In a year of dating he had never once stayed the night.
He kissed my forehead, said he wanted to wait for the wedding, and was gone by ten.
Eight weeks ago I had slept with someone else, in a dark hotel suite, thinking he was Lawrence.
I had been trying ever since to find a way to say it.
Constance Ashcroft took the microphone and raised her glass.
"To the next Ashcroft," she said, and two hundred glasses went up with hers.
Lawrence squeezed my waist. "Come on," he murmured, still smiling at the crowd. "Let's get some air."
The stairwell door closed behind us and the noise dropped away.
I yanked my arm out of his hand.
"You told your mother. You told everyone. Lawrence, who told you?"
"Meghan did." He said it gently. "Don't be angry with her. She was worried about you."
"Then you know it isn't yours."
"I can count, Lana." He tucked a curl behind my ear, the way he did when he wanted me calm. "I'm not angry. I'm not even surprised. You've been so tired and strange for weeks."
I stared at him.
I had expected shouting.
I had practiced answers to shouting for two weeks.
"Whatever happened that night," Lawrence said, "this baby is mine. It carries my name, my mother's house and my protection. Nobody on that roof will ever hear a different word from me."
"I haven't decided what I'm doing."
"You don't have to decide anything. You were in 5204 until dawn. You've had a hard time. Let me look after you now."
My whole body went cold.
"I never told you the room number," I said.
"Sweetheart, it's my hotel." He laughed softly. "The night manager reports to me. Did you really think I wouldn't hear?"
It was a perfectly good answer.
It was warm and reasonable, and he delivered it with his hand already on the door, ready to lead me back to my own party.
I thought about the forehead kisses.
I thought about ten o'clock every night for a year.
I thought about a man who had known everything about the worst night of my life and had spent eight weeks letting me hide it from him.
He had not asked who.
He had not asked how.
He had only asked me to smile.
So I stepped out.
I walked back onto the roof ahead of him, and the guests turned toward me with their glasses up and their faces open.
Lawrence's champagne was still on the stage ledge where he had left it.
I pulled his grandmother's ring off my finger and dropped it in.
It sank to the bottom with a small clink.
"I'm not marrying you," I said.
Nobody breathed.
Lawrence came up behind me and laid his hand on my back, and his voice was warm enough for everyone to hear. "She's overwhelmed, everyone. Please, enjoy the night."
I didn't wait for what came next.
I walked through the gap the crowd made for me, past the bar, toward the service elevator.
Halfway there I saw him.
He stood alone at the back, beside the service door, in a black suit with no glass in his hand.
Mitchell Ashcroft.
Lawrence's older brother, the one the family never mentioned, the one I had woken up beside eight weeks ago and hit across the face.
He looked as if someone had knocked the floor out from under him.
He was looking at my stomach.
I hit the elevator button four times.
I rode down fifty-two floors in silence and crossed the lobby with my heels in my hand.
The doorman had just pushed open the glass door to the street when a hand caught the edge of it above my head.
"Lana."
The voice was low and rough, and I knew it, because I had spent one whole night hearing it in the dark.
I turned around.
Mitchell's chest was rising and falling.
"Lawrence told me you knew it was me," he said. "He told me you asked for the dark."
Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend