Page 5 of Accidental Groom

“You realize this sounds like you’re trying to pull the plug on the deal, right?” Dad adds, stepping a little too close to Harry for comfort, forcing him to step back.

“I’m not, Ralph.”

“Then we don’t delay,” Dad says. “A delay looks embarrassing to the press. She’s getting married today, no questions about it.”

I swallow uncomfortably, my palms growing damp again. “Dad?—”

“You want her to marry aghost?” Sarah balks, standing up from her seat. It’s the first real sentence I’ve heard from her all morning.

Dad ignores her, his attention focused wholly on Harry. “If you’d just kept a closer leash on your son?—”

“I didn’t come here to be insulted,” Harry interrupts, his jaw flexing in agitation I’ve rarely seen displayed so evidently on him. “I don’t have anything else to offer you.”

“We built this alliance together,” Dad says, jabbing a finger into Harry’s chest. “Your son and my daughter. Our businesses. If you still want it, thenyoustep up.”

Silence descends for all of two seconds, the dead quiet of the room ringing in my ears like a gunshot.

My heart skips a beat.

My breath dies in my lungs.

I force myself to stand. “What?”

“You’re single,” Dad continues, staring directly up at Harry. “You care about both of our families’ reputations, correct? Am Iwrong?”

Harry blinks, slow and long, like maybe he didn’t hear him correctly.

Dad just doubles down. “You marry her.”

Mom freezes with her phone halfway to her ear, the tinny voice of our family’s attorney barely audible through the little speaker.

Sarah makes a noise that sounds like she’s choking.

Dad stares at Harry with his jaw jutting out, goading a response.

And I feel like the floor is disappearing out from under me again.

“I’m—” Harry starts, swallowing as he takes a step back. “I’mmarried, Ralph?—”

“Don’t give me that,” Dad snaps. “Geraldine’s been gone twelve years, Harry.Twelve. Don’t stand there pretending like you’ve never once considered remarrying.”

Harry’s face doesn’t change. But something sharp flickers across it, so quick I almost miss it. “That was a low fucking shot,” he says quietly.

“And this is a high-stakes deal,” Dad counters. “You think you’ll come out fine if this falls through?Maybeyou will. But I won’t. My company won’t. My family won’t. This deal anchors everything, Harry, you know that. So if you want to keep the alliance from going up in flames and want to keep somesemblance of good graces in the public’s eye, then you’ll marry my daughter. Here. Today.”

I feel like I’m floating somewhere above my body, looking down at all of this in horror. The dress, the boning, the sweat collecting on the back of my neck — it all disappears under the weight of Dad’s words.

“No,” I say, but it’s too quiet, barely loud enough to be heard. I try again. “No.”

Dad turns. The look he gives me is hard enough to strike a match of fear inside me. “You agreed to marry into this family,” he says. “You agreed to all of this. If you’re too spoiled to handle a single change, I’ll give them Sarah instead.”

Sarah makes a sound like a wounded animal. “Dad.”

“You’d seriously put her through this?” I rasp, blinking, the rage slowly starting to catch up to the shock. When I speak again, the words are stronger, angrier,scared. I’ve shielded Sarah for almost all of my thirty years, and he knows exactly how far I would go to do so. “She wants nothing to do with this deal. She didn’t ask for this. You can’t just?—”

“The contract allows for a substitution,” he says, his jaw steeling again. “From both sides, might I add. She’s not married, and that’s all that matters.”

“You wouldn’t,” I whisper.