Page 4

Eden

M y wedding day arrives after a night of little sleep and a morning of barely eaten breakfast.

It’s normal to be so excited before your wedding you can’t sleep or eat, everyone assures me.

And I am so excited. After the pain of my divorce, it’s lovely to know that by the end of today, officially and for the rest of my life, I won’t be alone again.

For a girl who’s been left as often as I have, that’s huge.

The space where I’m getting married is actually an enormous converted barn, and the hayloft has been split into a groom’s room and a bride’s room. The brightly lit, mostly white bride’s room has skylights and big windows that look out onto the gorgeous Hott property—a former ranch.

The decor is ranch chic—wooden beams, a sliding barn door at the entry, cowboy hats and ropes hanging on the walls, leather touches and accents of cow-print upholstery. One wall is a continuous dressing table with mirrors.

My gown hangs from a beautiful carved-wood stand. It’s a shimmering white mermaid dress with elaborate beading that I love as much today as I did when I first laid eyes on it.

“You ready to put it on?” Mari asks, following my gaze. She’s not only my friend and maid of honor but also one of Hanna’s many sisters-in-law.

I nod, feeling an unexpected sense of awe. The hairdresser and the makeup artist just left. The photographer has already snapped a thousand photos of me. It’s go time.

Mari helps me into the dress. It has to slip on over my feet; I step into it carefully, and she shimmies it up around my body.

“Oh my God, Eden, you look amazing!” she cries.

She stands back, arranging the train of the dress for me as the photographer’s flash goes wild.

“He’s going to swallow his tongue when he sees you!” Mari tells me.

On the other side of that wall, Paul’s getting dressed, too—just without as many mirrors. He and I spent the night separately, by agreement, so I can do a big reveal this morning.

He’s been remote these last couple weeks—busy and distracted—but I’ve chalked it up to how awful his work has been. I wish we were going on our honeymoon right away, but maybe it’s better that it’s a couple months out because by then he’ll be less stressed.

There’s a knock at the door. “Do you think that’s him?” I gasp.

Mari opens it a crack and peeks out. “It’s Satan,” she says over her shoulder.

She was furious when she heard that Rhys was going to be my wedding planner, even for only a couple of weeks.

She and Hanna had words over it, Mari going so far as to say that Hanna was damn lucky I hadn’t bailed out to Hanna’s number one competitor, Five Rivers Weddings, but afterward even Mari said there wasn’t any other way.

The real mind fuck, she’d said when she finally delivered that verdict, is that out of all the small towns in America, you and Paul decided to set up shop in your nemesis’s hometown. From there, the rest feels almost fated. In a bad way.

Rhys has barely been in evidence this morning, which is fine with me.

I know he’s been around, making sure the day runs smoothly, and to his credit, it seems like he’s doing a great job.

I haven’t heard a peep from anyone about problems, and everything has flowed like expensive wine at a high-end steakhouse.

“I need to talk to Eden,” Rhys’s deep voice comes from behind the door. “Alone.”

“Come on, Rhys, don’t be a dick,” Mari says. “It’s her wedding day.”

“Now,” he says sharply.

Mari gives me a WTF face and mouths, You okay with that?

I nod, but she doesn’t open the door any wider. She’s still watching my face, and I can’t read her expression.

Rhys’s voice comes again. “Mari, I need you to do something for Eden. ASAP.”

“What’s going on?” she asks, shooting me another look. Now she looks nervous, which makes my lungs shrink. For some reason, I remember the last wedding meeting, when Paul arrived in a tizzy.

Why? Why had he been so flustered?

Why hadn’t I wondered before now?

Instead of answering, Rhys says, “Arthur Weggers is sitting in the back row on the bride’s side, wearing a ruffled shirt and a royal-blue suit jacket. Sit down next to him and distract him with your sparkling conversation. I don’t care what you talk to him about. Anything.”

“What the hell?” Mari asks.

There’s a moment of silence, then: “Hanna will come find you and Arthur, and when she does, she’ll explain.”

Mari and I exchange glances.

“You sure you’re okay alone?” she asks.

I nod.

She gives me one more look—almost pleading—but steps out the door, followed by the photographer, as Rhys steps in.

He closes the door behind himself and leans back against it, as if shutting out evil spirits. “I need to tell you something, and you need to be?—”

He stops, his eyes finally settling on me. Taking me in, from my upswept hair to the dusky makeup and berry lips to my bare shoulders and exposed curves, down the flare of the dress over my hips. Back to my eyes, his a hundred times more intense now.

I’ve been looking forward for days to the look on Paul’s face when he sees me for the first time in this dress, but I know in my heart and several other more-honest body parts that however Paul looks, it won’t be this gratifying.

It won’t make my heart stutter and my core clench and my whole body flush.

It won’t make it impossible for me to look away from the eyes on me, devouring me, taking in every detail and reflecting it back to me.

All those times Rhys’s gaze flicked past me like I was beneath contempt, and now he swallows hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing almost painfully, and I feel a surge of absolute triumph.

Then he looks away, and the moment is over. In fact, I’m pretty sure it never happened.

“—sitting down,” he finishes.

He pulls a cow-print upholstered chair out and arranges it behind me, and I sink into it as instructed.

But he doesn’t have to tell me what he’s going to say. I’ve already connected the dots. Paul’s disheveled state at our meeting, his failure to bring the marriage license that day.

Did he ever pick it up?

I think I know the answer.

It feels like someone has punched me in the stomach but also like a hot flush of the deepest shame. Somewhere in my body, I already know that I will never be able to face the people waiting out there in the audience again.

“Paul isn’t going to marry me,” I say. Not a question.

Rhys nods, not looking at me. Looking at some point off in the distance. It’s cold, his not looking, and I want the earlier moment back, before I got gut-punched, when Rhys’s gaze told me that no matter what anyone else could do or say, I was perfect.

Except I’d imagined that, and the truth is that I’m not perfect.

I’m jilted .

Oh, God, I’m jilted .

“He left a note,” Rhys says, “for his brother to give to you.”

“So why didn’t Charlie bring me the note?”

“Because he never showed up this morning. He’s a coward. Like his asswipe of a brother.”

His voice is low and dark and hard, his jaw tight. If I didn’t know better, I’d think he was angry on my behalf.

“But you’re not.”

Rhys laughs—a short, dark, unhappy laugh. “No,” he says. “I’m not.” And he hands me the envelope he’s been clutching behind his back.