The Wrong Billionaire, page 3
“You’ve seen him?”
“Briefly. And I don’t want to sabotage what I have with Hunter by making him choose between me and his friend.”
“You’re determined to marry him, then?”
“Hunter?” Of course, Hunter. “Yes.” She lifted her chin, trying to sound confident when she was still a scattered mess. “If he’ll have me.”
“Do you love him?”
“Not yet.” She bit her lip. “Do you think that’s bad?”
Micah snorted. “Romantic love is a pretty bow people put on things like desire for sex and fear of death. This kind of caring is what matters.” He pointed between them and tucked his chin to send her a look of exasperated affection. “I will always look out for your best interests. I want you to be comfortable and content. I believe this marriage—not Hunter, per se, but the marriage he’s proposing—will meet your needs. I’m glad you’re going into it with a practical mindset rather than telling me you can’t live without him. In that respect, it’s good that you’re not in love with him.”
“Thanks, I guess,” she said dryly.
“His poor taste in friends concerns me, though. I’ll keep a close eye on Sylvain. If he steps one millimeter out of line...” He left the threat hanging.
* * *
In the end, she told Hunter a pale version of the truth.
“I met Remy years ago at a nightclub. It was one dance so I’m not surprised he didn’t recognize me. He and Micah aren’t on the friendliest of terms, though. I didn’t want to make anything of it, especially at your party.”
“I appreciate that,” Hunter said solemnly. “I’ve had enough scenes in my life.”
He seemed to let it go, but a few days later, Hunter said, “I spoke with Remy. He said his beef with Micah is firmly in the past. He doesn’t want to revisit it, which is why he acted as though he didn’t know you. He offered to drop out of the wedding if there’s a conflict.”
“Don’t be silly. It’s your wedding, too! You should have the best man you want.” What was wrong with her? She didn’t want to see Remy again. Did she?
If that was her motive, she was disappointed. He only appeared once before the wedding, at the engagement party.
Eden thought she had adequately braced herself to see him again, but the second he came into the room—before she even saw him with her eyes—a tingling sensation prickled across her skin.
She looked up and he was looking right at her.
The ground fell away. She was both soaring and plummeting, hot and cold, happy and aching with loss.
Once again, he was devilishly handsome and painfully indifferent. Once again, he made his excuses as he arrived.
“I’m flying to Martinique tonight, but I wanted to extend my well-wishes.” He didn’t kiss her cheek the way everyone else had, only shook her hand very briefly.
She closed her fist around the sensation to keep it lingering on her palm.
“We should honeymoon in Martinique,” Hunter said, glancing at her.
Did Remy flinch? “Rainy season starts in June.”
“Right. Forgot about that. Niagara Falls, then, since we’ll be in the neighborhood.” Hunter winked. It was a joke. Micah had already offered his island villa in Greece. “We’re marrying at Niagara-on-the-Lake,” Hunter explained to Remy.
“Oh?” Remy’s tone was impossible to decipher, but it was weighted with...something. Remy held Hunter’s gaze and Remy’s eyes narrowed with—Eden couldn’t tell what that was. Significance. A question?
Hunter’s face went oddly blank. Something in the exchange made the back of Eden’s neck prickle, but Hunter glanced at her.
“It was Eden’s decision.” Hunter was inviting her to fill in the blanks.
“Oh. Um, my aunt has a vineyard there.” Eden’s voice was thin and unsteady. Hopefully, the men attributed it to bridal nerves. “Weddings are her specialty.” And it was the Bellamy family brand that they support Canadian merchants whenever possible.
“Do you have a lot of family attending?” Remy’s hammered-gold irises flashed a spark into her eyes that left them stinging. A hot sensation filled her chest and swam up to her throat, suffocating her words.
“Most of my relations live in the Greater Toronto Area. My brother bases himself in Berlin these days.” She fought to steady her tone. “He’ll step in as father of the bride.”
She waited, ears straining for Remy’s reaction.
The silence went on a beat too long.
Hunter must have misread the thinness in her tone. His warm hand squeezed her shoulder. “I’m still kicking myself that I didn’t call you right after Vienna suggested setting us up. Maybe I could have met him. Oscar Bellamy sounds like he was a good man.”
It was her cue to say her father would have liked him, but she could only manage a weak smile. Her father never would have asked her to marry to save the company. He had fallen for her mother the minute he met her and waited as long as he had to.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” Remy said distantly. His gaze flicked to Hunter’s hand on her shoulder, then slipped past her. His cheek ticked. “I should say hello to Vienna.”
Vienna is married, Eden wanted to scream for no particular reason at all.
“I’m arranging my own bachelor party. My PA is,” Hunter said, correcting himself with a wry cant of his head. “Golf in the Okanagan. I’ll have her send you the dates.”
“Wouldn’t miss it,” Remy said with a tight smile. One final, flashing glance landed on her before he nodded and walked away.
Her brother had already said he wouldn’t be back until the wedding, but Eden could have wept at the strain that continued to hold her taut. This felt like a twisted game of chicken, where Remy was calling her bluff, waiting to see if she would go through with marrying Hunter while she waited to see if he would interfere and disrupt it.
As the weeks toward the wedding counted down, she began to believe that Remy would let the wedding happen. She needed this marriage so she ought to have been relieved. She only grew more anxious.
When Remy missed the wedding rehearsal at the vineyard, the night before the wedding, she asked Hunter with as much levity as she could muster, “Are you sure the rings will arrive on time?”
“I have them. Remy texted. He’s running late, but he’s on the road. He’ll arrive tonight. Everything will go smoothly tomorrow. I promise.”
She smiled as if she believed him, but a jagged lump sat in her chest.
The lump stayed there, behind her breastbone, right up until the wedding planner said, “Ready?”
CHAPTER THREE
Present day
“EDEN—” VIENNA CAME into the suite behind her.
Eden whirled on her. “Is it true?”
Her voice reverberated through the speakers outside.
Quinn, ever the protective friend and efficient maid of honor, made a cutting gesture across her own throat. She unclipped the microphone the wedding planner had attached to Eden’s neckline and turned it off, setting it amid the clutter that had collected on the bar.
“I don’t know.” Vienna’s expression was a study in apology and distress. “I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if our stepmother staged this. She’s that spiteful.”
As Eden’s heart took a swoop between anguish and hope, she looked to Quinn. Quinn was as supportive as ever, but even though her expression brimmed with empathy, she shook her head, indicating this development was a death knell as far as she was concerned.
Micah finished shuffling the bridesmaids off the terrace and through the suite, instructing the teenager to deliver the flower girl to her parents before he closed the doors.
He folded his arms and cocked one dark eyebrow in a silent “I can still help you.”
Any second, Lucille would burst in to keep Eden from agreeing to exactly that. If she had allowed Eden to accept Micah’s help in the first place, she wouldn’t be in this situation!
I need this marriage. It was the mantra Eden had used to muffle all the misgivings she’d had from the time Hunter had proposed to this morning, when she’d struggled to keep her breakfast down.
Why? Evil stepmother notwithstanding, Hunter was perfect. He was even-tempered and smart, wealthy and good-looking. He understood she had responsibilities and aspirations and was ready to support her in achieving them without trying to tell her how to do it. He wanted a family.
She clenched her eyes over a hot sting.
Judging by five seconds ago, he had a family. A baby he had abandoned, if the accusations by the baby’s grandfather were to be believed.
The young mother had said something about not telling him. Hunter wasn’t one to wear his emotions on his sleeve, but his astonishment had been apparent, as had the fact he recognized the woman.
Has he been having an affair all this time? Am I still that blind and stupid?
Eden started to rub her eye before she remembered the makeup that had taken an hour for a professional artist to apply.
Was this even happening? Or was she in one of those too-real dreams brought on by anticipation of a big day? No matter where she was traveling, she always had a missed-my-flight nightmare right before her alarm went off. Maybe that’s all this was.
She pinched her arm with her manicured nails, trying to awaken. Trying to convince herself she was sleeping late because she had tossed and turned past midnight, consumed with thoughts of him.
Curse Remy Sylvain! He hadn’t been surprised by any of this. As she’d stood out there, aghast at the scene unfolding below her, the groom’s best man had only lifted an inscrutable look to her.
“Let me help you out of this,” Quinn said gently as she brushed aside the train on the layers of satin and tulle skirts that Eden wore.
Eden stiffened. “I can’t change until I know whether it’s true.”
“You still want to marry him?” Micah’s voice thundered with astonishment. “Let me help you.”
“No.” Eden thrust out her palm in a halt against the suggestion. “If you want to argue about that, go do it with Mama. In fact, go head her off. I don’t want her in here.” Was she blaming Lucille for this fiasco? Perhaps a little. She would also start to cry if her mother came in and wrapped her arms around her. She would ruin makeup, dress and day all in one go. “Tell everyone to stay calm. This is just a delay.” Please, God.
Micah’s eyebrows went up. He was not used to being ordered around, but Eden would play the bridezilla card as long as she could cling to it.
I need this marriage.
As the door closed behind him, Eden looked to Vienna. “Has he been seeing her all this time?”
Vienna’s head went back with indignation on her brother’s behalf.
“If he has, it’s news to me. When? He was wrapped up in the court case, then you two started dating...” Vienna’s defensiveness trailed off as she squinted into the middle distance. “He was here with Remy last summer, though, for a weekend of golf. That was before I introduced you two. Maybe he met her then?”
To Eden’s eternal damnation, the lurch in her stomach had nothing to do with her groom picking up women on a bro weekend. It twisted and shrank because Remy probably had as well.
Why? She was nearly twenty-five, but she was more obsessed with that vexing man than a preteen with a celebrity crush.
“The baby looked pretty young,” Vienna said hesitantly. “Maybe six or eight weeks?”
“That math checks out,” Quinn said with a pained nod, equally reluctant to crush Eden’s hopes and dreams.
“I’ll find out what I can. You can’t stand here wondering.” Vienna slipped away.
“And then there were two,” Quinn murmured as she brought across one of the mimosas that had been delivered a few hours ago. “I’m sorry this is happening, Eden. Really sorry. But you wouldn’t marry him if he has a baby with someone else, would you?”
“Maybe?” Eden sipped. The tepid liquid dripped like battery acid down the back of her throat. “Not if he’s been with her all this time, but he looked pretty shocked. If it was just a—a fling and he only found out today...” She could hear herself reaching for justifications that would allow her to forgive him.
I need this marriage.
“It’s not the way I planned to start our family, but we both want one.” Her voice was strained by the growing tightness in her throat.
Had they wanted a family with each other, though? It struck her that Hunter had been as content as she was to put off sex, despite the ten months that had passed while they dated and became engaged. They had shared a few long kisses, which had been pleasant enough. Not earth-shattering, but warm enough she had thought sleeping with him wouldn’t be a chore.
She hadn’t really wanted to sleep with him, though. Not the way she really wanted—
“That’s bargaining,” Quinn noted quietly.
“Pardon?”
“The stages of grief aren’t just for grief. A stalled car can trigger them and you’re going through them now. You don’t want to believe the baby is his because that means the wedding has to be called off. That’s disbelief and denial. Now you’re trying to tell yourself there’s a way to make his baby fit into your life so the marriage can go ahead. It can’t, Eden. I’m sorry, but it can’t.”
Eden clenched her eyes shut against her friend’s kind but firm truth-telling.
“It’s not like he’s had a baby all along and you knew what you were getting,” Quinn continued, saying what Eden knew, but didn’t really want to hear. “The conditions have changed. At the very least, you need time to revisit the terms of your marriage before you go ahead with it. This wedding can’t happen today.”
“I don’t have time,” Eden cried.
“I know,” Quinn noted with a frustrating level of patience and understanding.
“You have never supported this marriage,” she accused Quinn, hearing herself resorting to anger, but Quinn didn’t take it personally and maintained her calm tone.
“I don’t support marriage as a concept. It’s not personal to you and Hunter. I want you to have what you want, Eden—I do. But this isn’t it. Not anymore.”
“I need this marriage,” Eden sobbed and swirled away in a rustle of tulle. The first few times she had picked up all these skirts, it had been like gathering clouds and dreams. Now they felt like heavy armloads of soiled laundry.
“Would your mother support you going to these lengths?” Quinn prodded gently. “Now? After this?”
“Go ask her!” Eden waved her hand in vexation. “I think there’s more to her stubbornness than pride, but the fact she won’t talk about Micah’s father tells me more than if she did.”
“What do you mean?” Quinn frowned.
“I’ve always suspected...” Eden hesitated to voice her ugly suspicion, hating to think of it. “I think Micah’s father was abusive, but I can’t ask her that. I can’t ask Micah.”
Quinn recoiled slightly and hugged herself, mouth somber and gaze dropping to the floor. “No,” she replied. “I can see why you don’t want to push her to speak about that.”
Maybe her reasoning was more emotionally driven than logical, but Eden was grateful Quinn understood and supported her refusal to press her mother to talk of something so potentially painful.
There was a knock on the door that turned both of their heads.
“Eden, it’s me,” Hunter said.
Quinn’s cheeks went hollow. She moved to let him in, stepping out to give them privacy.
“It’s bad luck to see the bride before the wedding,” Eden said, hearing the hysteria creeping into her tone. It was moving like poison through her arteries and nerve branches and lung tissue because one look at his grim expression and she knew. She knew it was true. She knew she wasn’t getting married today.
In reaction, promises and assurances and angry retaliations burbled out of her. Very little of what she said was the result of having a spurned heart. She was humiliated, yes, but the acrid taste in her mouth was failure. She was not going to save her father’s company today.
The iconic chain that her great-grandfather had started as a mail-order catalog of bulbs and seeds, the one that supplied middle-class families across the country with their home-and-garden needs, would gasp its last breath on her watch.
That was more shame than she was prepared to accept.
Hunter didn’t stand there and let her berate him. He cut into her litany with a firm “I’m sorry,” and walked out.
Quinn came back in as Eden was still swaying in shock, too devastated to even cry.
“Let me help you—” Quinn began.
“Go tell Micah to send everyone home. Or—They should eat the food, right?” She was now in the stage of trying to keep everything normal despite the fact a nuclear-size catastrophe had landed in her lap. “They’ve come all this way.”
“I’m sure the wedding planner has dealt with things like this before,” Quinn said soothingly. “I’ll have an announcement made, then I’ll come back to help you change.”
Eden nodded and knocked back the last of her mimosa, brain firing with fight-or-flight chemicals. Mostly flight. She hated herself so much in this moment, she wanted to crawl out of her own skin. There was no way she could face all those guests, who would cast pitying looks at her.
She set down the champagne glass and reached for another, but noticed the fob on the bar with its I-heart-PEI key chain.
She didn’t overthink it. Her purse was right there, her phone on the charger beside it. She scrambled everything into her bag and opened the door to the hall.
“Eden,” her mother called. Lucille was coming into the suite from the terrace.
Eden ignored her and rushed out, sweeping down the inside stairs.
The voices in the breakfast room silenced as she appeared, but she didn’t so much as glance to see who was gathered there. She shot out the main doors to the path lined with tall hedges that led to the guesthouse parking lot.
