He Left Our Wedding for a Sprained Ankle, So I Married My Ex-Boss novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Two Hundred Guests

Miriam zips Gillian into her dress and says good. Sylvia threatens her. Vaughn sets his rule: real or nothing. Dillon's car skids onto the lawn.

Vaughn looked at the arch, then at my dusty sneakers, then at me.

"You're not dressed," he said.

"I was waiting for a groom."

"Go and dress. The judge and I will wait."

The judge nodded at me over his glasses and sat down in the front row.

"One thing first," Vaughn said. He kept his voice low. "I told you on the phone. This is a marriage, not a stunt."

"I heard you."

"The ceremony is today. The license we sign at the clerk's window on Monday, because the county doesn't care who I am. After the vows, you can walk away on Tuesday if you want. I won't stop you."

"I won't."

"Then say it properly."

"I'm marrying you, Vaughn. For real."

He held my eyes a moment longer.

"Go," he said.

I went up the stairs two at a time.

My mother was already standing in the bridal suite with her purse on her arm and a steel thermos of tea in her hand.

Miriam Ashworth had been a school secretary for thirty-one years. She could read a lie off a child before the child opened his mouth.

"The planner called me," she said. "She was crying. What happened?"

I told her.

All of it. The phone call, the ankle, the hundredth time, Vaughn.

She set the thermos on the dresser.

"Good," she said.

"Mom."

"Good. I've watched that boy run for six months. I kept my mouth shut because you love him." She unzipped the garment bag. "Do you love the man downstairs?"

"I don't know yet."

"Does he show up?"

"He drove here in twenty minutes with a judge."

"Then turn around and let me button you."

She did the long row of buttons down my back in silence.

When she reached the top, she turned me by the shoulders and looked at me in the mirror.

"You look like yourself," she said. "Which is more than he's let you be all year."

I almost cried.

I did not. I had a hair appointment in fifteen minutes with a stylist who thought the wedding was off.

By one o'clock the first guests were at the ballroom doors.

The planner had told every usher the same sentence. The groom has changed.

I heard it travel through the room in whispers.

Two hundred people in good suits and pastel dresses stood in clusters between the white roses, looking at the head table.

The new name card sat in the center in black ink.

Vaughn Stroud.

Dillon's cousins at table four had their phones out already.

One of them was filming.

I walked down the side aisle in my dress to find my seat in the bridal alcove, and a hand closed on my elbow.

Sylvia Lowry.

Dillon's mother stood in her navy suit and pearls, her silver hair pinned exactly as it had been in the engagement photos.

She had come early to inspect the roses.

"What is this?" she said. Her voice stayed polite. It always did.

"Hello, Sylvia."

"Someone has told me my son's name has been taken off a table."

"Your son left this building at ten this morning to carry Chloe's ankle to the hospital."

"Chloe is fragile."

"I'm a person too."

"You will not humiliate my son in front of his family," she said, very quietly. "That boy has carried more than you will ever know."

I had no idea what she meant.

I added it to the list of things nobody in that family explained.

"Then he should have carried it here," I said.

Her fingers tightened on my arm.

"Take that name down, Gillian, and put the ceremony back on its schedule, and I will forget this morning. Dillon will be home in an hour. I'll see to it."

"He'll be home in an hour," I said. "To a wedding. Please take a seat, Sylvia. You're in the second row."

She let go.

She did not move.

She looked past me, at the front doors, and her mouth went thin.

Vaughn had walked back in, carrying a single white rose from the arch, and stopped at my side.

"Mrs. Lowry," he said.

"Mr. Stroud." She had known him by reputation for years. Everyone in the city had. "This is absurd."

"I'd call it overdue."

He held the rose out to me.

I took it.

The photographer called for pre-ceremony shots.

The quartet started the processional, five minutes early because the planner panicked.

The guests turned in their seats.

I took a breath.

Then I heard it from the lobby.

A car engine, too loud, and tires tearing across the manicured front lawn.

A car door slammed.

The cousin at table four looked up from his phone with his mouth open.

"Dillon," he said. "He just watched the video."

And Dillon Lowry came through the ballroom doors with Chloe Danvers hanging off his arm.

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