Page 2 of A Prince of Smoke and Mirrors (Billionaire Sanctuary: The Heir #1)

the most important day

LEXI BYRNE

My wedding day was the worst day of my life.

And it was my own damned fault.

Looking back, someone should’ve stepped in and said, “Lexi, look around you. Take a deep breath and just think. Something isn’t right.”

I would have done the tough love for any friend of mine.

The bride’s room in the chapel on the grounds of the Monaco Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas was stocked with dark furniture, ebony-stained from decades of brides’ sweaty palms rubbing the wood.

The last fumes of the final cigarettes long-ago brides had smoked as single ladies occasionally slipped from the stained upholstery into the air, a faint staleness that caught my attention even though five years separated me from the last time my lips had wrapped around a cigarette and sucked thick, calming smoke into my mouth and body.

The chair’s skinny dowels were knobby against the row of tiny buttons running down my spine, and I sat carefully so as not to crumple my bouffant white dress.

The cell phone’s glass screen chilled my cheek, probably smearing my first professional make-up job. “Hi, Mom?”

“Oh, Lexi! I was hoping to find a minute to call you,” my mother said, her voice hoarse.

Mom had her hands full with my young half-brothers. “Yeah. It’s okay. Is Rogan doing okay?”

“Oh, yes. He’s so much better,” my mom said, her voice brightening. “The doctor said the antibiotic worked, and he’ll be discharged this afternoon. I’m just glad he didn’t need a tonsillectomy.”

“Oh, me, too. Is he getting all the ice cream he can eat?”

“Ice pops. They don’t do ice cream with tonsillitis anymore, just in case you need surgery. Just ice pops.”

“Bummer for him. Is Gerry there with you?”

“Yes, he’s right here.” Her voice warmed. “He hasn’t left Rogan’s bedside except to pick up Jake from kindergarten. Do you want to talk to him?”

A tiny spark of jealousy sizzled in my heart, but its red glow faded into fatigue. “No, I don’t need to talk to him, but that’s great, Mom. I’m glad he’s there for you.”

“Gerry has been great, a real help.”

Her insinuation that I had not been proper help while her son was in the hospital back in Nebraska wafted through her voice.

Heaviness settled in my chest. “Yeah, I’m sorry I haven’t been there more this week.”

“That’s all right, Alexandra. I hope your day is going better than mine!”

Ugh, I hated my full name. It sounded like a stripper.

The white satin and petticoats in my puff of a skirt rustled against my ankles. “I’ve been pretty busy. The wedding is today.”

“Oh, is it Tuesday already?”

“Yeah, it’s Tuesday.”

“Well, happy wedding day to you! All the best.”

Everything inside me leadened, pulling my shoulders down and the white lace tight across my back. “Thanks, Mom.”

“I mean, finally. Jimmy made you wait long enough. Six years is a long time to date someone.”

Oh, this old argument again. “We all agreed that he needed to finish college first, and this way, I could save up for a nice wedding for us.”

“Yes, but making you wait so long while he went off to college out of state?—”

The fatigue camping out in my chest twisted.

My mom had a lot of opinions about wedding propriety for someone who’d never even married my dad and then married some other guy to have her real family.

“It wasn’t cheap, you know. Jimmy wanted a destination wedding.

The honeymoon suite for two weeks cost a lot of money.

It took me years to save enough for it all. ”

“Yes, yes. I’m sure it was expensive for you?—”

The bridal room’s door flipped open.

Five giggling women wearing matching silky peach dresses, Jimmy’s sisters and cousins, burst through the doorway.

Lydia hollered, “We brought you a shot! Come on, Lexi! Let’s get you married!”

They were my future.

Steadfast traditions and fun-loving natures knit the expansive Johnson family together. They played sports and board games together on weekends. During the week, everyone worked together at Johnson Construction LLC, where I was the HR Admin.

As soon as I’d started seriously dating Jimmy Johnson six years ago, when he was seventeen and I was two years younger, they’d absorbed me right into their family with a giant sucking sound.

They’d given me a structure I’d never had and a full-time job with benefits right out of high school for almost as much money as I could’ve made somewhere else.

I joined their church and was baptized with a full-immersion soak in heavily chlorinated water while his family clapped, and I ate the lukewarm church potluck supper afterward with my bleached hair wet-clinging to my scalp.

But I belonged.

Jimmy loved me, and I loved him with all my soul, my puppy love turned to forever-love with an innocence that had never known heartbreak because he was my only boyfriend, ever.

And so, the pulling threads in my chest evaporated as Jimmy’s family swarmed me.

“Mom! I’ve got to go!” I yelled at the phone, dodging as Maisie tried to pluck it out of my hand. “Great talking to you, but I’m getting married!”

Their shrill cheers filled the room as my phone was replaced with a plastic shot glass sloshing with amber liquid. I peeled the cellophane film off the top, tossed the liquor down my throat, and sputtered around the burn. I was not a whiskey girl, but I was willing to learn for the Johnson family.

“Come on!” Nellie yelled. “Jimmy is waiting, and then you’ll be official! Once you’re legal, you’ll never get rid of us!”

They tugged me out of the dressing room and out of the back of the chapel, and we strolled through the tiny tropical garden the casino had planted around the chapel, white lily-like flowers blooming in the early desert summer heat and attracting flies, even a small waterfall cascading over a cement wall molded to look like volcanic rocks that filled the air around it with chlorinated humidity.

Between Jimmy’s sisters and cousins, who were my best friends, and his mom, who’d taught me to cook and calmed me down from my wild high-school theater-kid days, I was counting on never being rid of them.

Signing that little piece of paper would mean Jimmy and I would be together as husband and wife and I would be a part of their family.

This day should have been the most important day of my life, the day when I would finally, finally belong somewhere, legally, forever.

Yeah, I never even saw it coming.