When I Flash Married a Billionaire novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Slideshow

Briony walks into her own wedding hall on the arm of a stranger, plays her fiance's affair video on the slideshow screen for both families, and walks out; on the steps her managing partner whispers that her husband owns her company.

The doors of the Lakeshore Pavilion opened at two o'clock exactly, and a hundred and eighty people stood up for me.

The string quartet started Pachelbel and then lost their nerve.

I wasn't alone, and they could see it.

My husband of five hours walked beside me in a gray suit that was tight across the shoulders.

My hand was tucked in his elbow.

Dexter stood at the altar in his navy tuxedo, and his smile died halfway across his face.

Ottilie stood beside the empty bride's spot in her pink maid-of-honor dress.

"Who is that?" someone whispered behind me.

"Is that the groom's brother?"

"That is not the groom's brother," said my father, out loud, from the front row.

I kept walking.

At the altar steps I stopped, and Ewan stopped with me.

Dexter's mother sat in the first row in a lilac hat the size of a tray.

"Briony," Dexter said, in the low careful voice he used on clients. "What is this? What are you doing?"

"Getting married," I said.

I held up my left hand, and the steel ring slid down my thumb.

"I'm sorry I'm late. I was getting married at the county probate court at eight fifty-two."

Somebody gasped, a short high noise from the third row.

"To him," I said, and nodded at Ewan.

Ewan said nothing.

He stood there, perfectly calm.

"You're joking," Dexter said.

"Check the date on the certificate if you want."

"You've lost your mind."

"I have a different idea about that," I said.

I turned to the sound table at the back of the room.

Jorie stood at the laptop, tall and furious in a blazer over her paint-spattered overalls.

She had built the engagement slideshow herself, and she was about to replace it.

I lifted my chin once.

She hit the key.

The giant screen above the altar, where our smiling faces had been drifting by to soft piano, went black.

Then it lit up with a hotel door open one inch.

The sound came through twelve speakers at once.

A game show laughed.

Ottilie's giggle came in, high and bright, and I heard a woman in the fourth row say her name.

"She'll walk down the aisle in her dead mother's veil," Ottilie said on the screen, forty feet wide, "and I'll have had you first."

The room made a sound I'd never heard before.

"Tomorrow I marry her portfolio, babe," said Dexter's voice, enormous.

On the screen his tie was on the floor.

"That gull-wing roof gets me a partnership by spring. You get me for the weekends."

"Turn it off," Dexter said.

Nobody moved.

"Daddy's going to love this," said Ottilie, from the walls and the ceiling.

Her father was sitting twelve feet away.

He was my father, too, and he had gone the color of paper.

"Turn it OFF," Dexter shouted, and he jumped down the steps.

He didn't go for the laptop, or for the table.

He came for my phone, in my hand, and for me.

His face had gone red and ugly, a boy who has been caught.

Then a broad gray shoulder came between us.

Ewan didn't hit him.

He put one flat hand on Dexter's chest, and Dexter stopped.

"No," Ewan said.

He didn't raise his voice.

Dexter's mouth opened and shut.

The forty-second video ended and the screen went to a blue field.

Into the silence came the sound of my father's chair scraping.

He crossed the aisle and slapped me.

It was an open hand, hard, and my ear rang for a second afterward.

"You humiliate your own sister in front of all these people," he said. "For what?"

I looked at him, and the room went very still.

Ewan's hand left Dexter's chest.

"Don't," I said to Ewan quietly, before he could do anything.

"This one's mine."

I put my palm to my cheek, and I looked at my father until he looked away.

"Ask your other daughter about the lipstick," I said, loud enough for the back rows."

Behind him, Ottilie had her pink hands over her mouth.

Dexter's mother was already crying, and it was not for me.

"The bar is open," I said to the room. "The cake is real. I paid for it."

I took Ewan's arm and walked back down the aisle.

Nobody stopped us.

The cold hit me on the steps, and so did the shaking, which I'd been saving up.

My knees went.

Ewan's hand was at my elbow before I knew I'd stumbled.

"I've got you," he said.

"I know," I said. "That's the problem."

Footsteps ran up behind us, quick and light.

It was the managing partner of Lakeline Design Group, sixty-one years old, in a gray suit.

I had worked for him for four years, and I'd put him on the guest list because he liked cake.

He was looking at my husband as if he'd found a snake in a sugar bowl.

"Briony," he whispered. "Don't say anything yet. Do you know who that is?"

"His name is Ewan," I said. "He runs Sutherland Group. He's my husband."

He swallowed.

"He's the owner of Cuyahoga Lake Holdings," he said.

I stared at him.

"He bought Lakeline in August," he whispered. "He's our owner, Briony. He owns your desk."

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