The Billionaire Bride He Took for Granted novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Groom Who Didn't Come
At the altar, Simone hears her groom laugh on speakerphone about a prank video, ends the wedding in front of her guests and tells the man offering to cut him off: not tonight, next Saturday.
The quartet played the processional a second time before I let myself believe Trenton wasn't coming.
One hundred and eighty guests sat turned toward the ballroom doors.
Nan was in the front row with her cane across her knees.
She was not looking at the doors.
She was looking at me.
I stood under the arch of white roses and called him.
He picked up on the sixth ring.
There was music behind him and the clink of glasses.
"Corrie, hey," Trenton said, pleased to hear my voice. "I was just about to call you."
"Where are you? Everyone is here."
"Right, so, I'm not coming today."
I put him on speaker so I could hold my bouquet with both hands.
The officiant's microphone was clipped to the lectern a foot from my wrist.
The whole room heard him.
"Krista's numbers have been down for a month," Trenton said. "Runaway-groom videos are blowing up right now."
"She needed something big, and I owed her."
Krista's laugh came through the phone before he finished.
"Corrie! Don't be mad. It's a bit. You're going to be famous."
In the third row, a woman put her hand over her mouth.
"I'll make it up to you," Trenton said, soft and reasonable. "We'll do the real one next Saturday."
"You can pick everything. I'll even let you pick the song."
My free hand had gone flat against my stomach.
I had taken the test on Wednesday.
I was going to tell him at the reception, on the dance floor, before the cake.
"Okay," I said.
"That's my girl." He sounded relieved. "See? She's fine, Pipe."
Before I could hang up, a man on his end laughed.
"Pay up, man. She's not crying."
"She's standing at the altar with her mouth shut," someone else said. "I had her screaming by now."
"Wait until Saturday," Krista said. "Double or nothing. I know exactly how it goes."
"I'm in," Trenton said, and he was smiling.
I could hear it.
I ended the call.
Nobody in the ballroom spoke.
The roses smelled too sweet, and my hands would not stop shaking.
Eight years.
Every time I brought up marriage, the answer had Krista's name in it.
Her breakup, her bad year, her channel, her apartment.
She needed him, and he liked being needed.
I had planned this wedding alone.
I picked the flowers, the band, the cake and the dress.
Two days ago I paid the last balance on this ballroom from my own account.
Trenton never asked how I could afford it.
He just said he knew I would handle it.
So I picked up the microphone.
"Hi, everyone," I said, and my voice came out steady. "Thank you for coming."
"Trenton won't be here today, and there won't be a ceremony."
Somebody near the back gasped.
"The dinner is paid for, so please eat it. The bar is open, and so is the dessert table."
In the front row, Nan lifted her cane and tapped it once on the floor.
"Well," she said to the room. "Somebody tell the kitchen to start."
A few people laughed.
The laughing broke the silence.
Chairs scraped and phones came up.
Several were pointed directly at me before I turned around.
I stepped down from the platform in my wedding dress.
A man was already walking up the center aisle against the tide of people.
He was tall, in a charcoal suit, with grey just starting at his temples.
He had stood by the doors the whole time, his phone held loosely at his side.
Miles Corbett had managed Nan's accounts for as long as I could remember.
Trenton thought of him as the family accountant and had never learned his name properly.
"Ms. Marchbanks," Miles said.
He was the only one who ever called me that.
"Miles."
He stopped close enough that nobody else could hear him over the noise.
"Sallis Capital's credit line comes up for renewal at midnight," he said. "Say the word, and it doesn't renew."
"I can have the paperwork ready before the cake is cut."
I looked down the aisle at the empty place where Trenton should have been.
I thought about his voice saying, That's my girl.
"Not tonight," I said.
Miles waited.
"He booked another Saturday," I said. "He wants me in a dress again, in front of the cameras, waiting."
"You don't have to go."
"I know."
I had never felt so calm in my life.
"I'm going anyway," I said. "Next Saturday. Let him think I'm the same woman who said okay."
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