QB! Look what you made me do! novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Dress
In a wedding dress on the live-streamed Ironhorse gala stage, Sorcha delivers her scripted claim that the rugby captain left her at the altar; Cade hears her surname, says 'She's right,' and offers her a contract marriage in the car.
The ballroom doors opened, and eight hundred people turned to look at my wedding dress.
I had practiced the walk in a hallway for an hour.
Now my heels sank into the red carpet, and every step felt like falling.
A camera operator swung his lens toward me.
On the giant screen above the stage, a woman in ivory lace with a shaking bouquet filled the whole wall.
That was me.
My name is Sorcha Delaney, I'm twenty-seven, and I sell flowers for a living.
I had never stolen anything in my life.
That night I walked into the Chicago Ironhorse charity gala to ruin a man I had never met.
He stood at the podium holding a microphone.
Cade Ward, captain of the Ironhorse, six foot three, nose broken twice, a scar through his left eyebrow.
He had been thanking the sponsors.
He stopped in the middle of a word.
"Cade!" I said, loud enough to carry, just like the script said.
My voice cracked on his name, and that part wasn't acting.
"You promised to marry me today."
The room made a sound like air leaving a tire.
"I waited at the church for three hours in this dress."
"You never came."
A woman at the front table covered her mouth.
Somewhere behind me, a phone started recording, then ten more.
I kept walking, because stopping would have been worse.
Trent had told me where to look.
He was by the bar in a gray suit, my ex-fiance, thumb on his phone, filming me for his uncle.
That afternoon he had left me at the altar for real, in front of the pastor and an empty church.
It was all part of the plan.
The bride is dumped, the bride is humiliated, the bride turns up at the gala to make the rugby captain pay.
It was the cheapest way to get a stranger into the most guarded house in Lincoln Park.
I stopped at the foot of the stage.
Cade Ward looked down at me.
He didn't look angry or shocked.
He looked at my bouquet, at the cue card I'd taped inside it, and at my hands.
"What's your name?" he said into the microphone.
The whole room heard it.
I had a line for that too.
"Sorcha Delaney."
Something changed in his face.
It was small, a flicker, the look of a man who has heard a name he hasn't heard in a long time.
I didn't understand it then.
He put the microphone down and came down the three steps in one stride.
The sponsors at table one stood up.
The woman from the Harlan Foods table said, "Cade, don't."
He didn't even turn his head.
He took the bouquet out of my hands, tipped the card into his palm and read it without blinking.
Then he closed his fist around it.
"She's right," he said, to the room.
I felt my knees go.
"I promised her today, and I didn't show up."
"That's on me."
Eight hundred people gasped together.
Cameras flashed in a white wall.
He put a hand at the small of my back, warm through the lace, and steered me through the crowd.
"Smile," he said quietly.
"What are you doing?" I whispered.
"Walking you out."
"Keep your head up."
The sponsor's wife stared at us as we passed.
Trent's mouth had dropped open.
That was the first thing that night that felt like a win.
Cold air hit my shoulders when we reached the street.
A black car idled at the curb with the door already open.
Cade helped me in, then climbed in beside me and shut the door on the shouting.
The flashes thinned behind the tinted glass.
"Drive," he told the driver.
We pulled away.
I was shaking so hard the sequins on my skirt chattered.
"I can explain," I said.
"You can't," Cade said.
He opened his fist and smoothed the cue card on his knee.
My handwriting looked tiny and guilty.
"Somebody wrote you three lines and put you on a stage," he said.
"Somebody is going to be very pleased with how it went."
"I don't know what you mean."
"You don't have to."
He looked up, brown eyes steady, and I forgot how to breathe.
"Here's what's going to happen, Sorcha."
"The sponsor is going to call me tomorrow and say one more scandal ends the deal."
"So by Monday, the story has to change."
"The woman in the dress isn't a scandal."
"She's my wife."
My mouth opened.
Nothing came out.
"A contract," he said. "Twelve months. You get paid. I get a story that works."
"Why would you do that for a stranger who just tried to wreck you?"
Cade watched the city slide by on his side of the glass.
"Because I know the name Delaney," he said.
My phone buzzed in my lap.
A message from Trent lit up the screen.
"Well done. Uncle Thurston says you're in."
I turned the phone face down, too late.
Cade had already read it.
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