The Wedding Planner’s Guide to Stealing the Bride

Chapter 1

Kalpana Jayathilake sat on the London Underground, trying not to fidget with nerves. It was just a publishing dinner party, nothing to be scared of. Granted, it wasn’t the sort of event she’d normally be invited to – she was going because she was Marcus’s fiancée, and he was hot property right now.

Her knee started to jiggle. She tried to stop it, but once it got going it felt like it had a mind of its own.

The Tube carriage wasn’t too busy, so she tried to stretch her leg out, hoping the change in position would help.

As she moved, the carriage lurched, knocking over the tote bag on her lap.

The proof copy of her next book slid out and landed on the man sitting in the next seat.

He looked up from his phone, peered down and picked the paperback up.

‘I’m so sorry,’ Kalpana said. She stretched out her hand to retrieve it.

The man had turned the book over and was reading the back, a small furrow on his brow.

He looked up and met her eyes. ‘This book isn’t out yet.’

Of all the responses, she hadn’t been expecting that.

She looked at him properly for the first time.

The first thing she noticed was that he was wearing a powder-blue suit.

It shouldn’t have worked against his brown skin and black hair, but somehow it did.

Everything about him spoke of someone who cared about his appearance.

The stylish haircut, the artful shadow of a beard and, when he handed the book back to her, the neatly squared-off fingernails.

He tapped her name ‘Kalpana Jay’ on the cover, written in bright pink. ‘I’m jealous that you get to read it early.’

She stared at him. ‘You’ve heard of … her books?’

‘Oh yes,’ he said, eyes sparkling. ‘I’ve read nearly all of them. I’ve got that one on pre-order.’

As far as she knew, her readers were mostly women. She wrote uplifting romances, so that wasn’t a surprise. It was nice to meet a man who read romance. She eyed the colourful suit. That made sense now. She knew a lot of gay men who read romance novels.

For a second, she considered telling him that she was the writer, but the sheer embarrassment of it made her say, instead, ‘I don’t often meet men who read romance.’

He looked down, for a moment, his face dimmed. ‘My sister got me into them,’ he said. When he raised his eyes back to meet hers, the sadness was gone. ‘I read a fair bit of romance now. Almost as much as crime. How about you?’

‘I mostly read romance,’ she said. It was market research, so she could read without feeling guilty that she should be writing instead. ‘I used to read a lot of psych thrillers.’ She still read thrillers, usually if she was in the middle of a book and didn’t want to get her voice muddied.

‘A lot of romance writers also write crime,’ he said. He rattled off a list of names. She knew most of them personally, but didn’t say that. Instead, she chimed in with book titles that she loved. His face came alive with interest. This was someone who loved reading fiction as much as she did.

A few stops later, he said, ‘I have to get off now. It was really nice to meet you.’

‘You too.’ She meant it.

‘I’m very jealous you get to read a proof copy of Secrets in Dragonfly Common,’ he said as he stood up. The train stopped. He gave her a small wave and disappeared onto the platform.

Kalpana sat back and smiled. Talking to someone who had clearly read a lot of her books – and knew them well enough to talk about them – was always a wonderful thing.

It made it all worthwhile. She glanced at the Tube map above the opposite seat.

Two more stops until she got off and walked up to the hotel where she was meeting Marcus and his friends for pre-event drinks.

The nerves that had been kept at bay by her conversation with the man in blue came back in a rush.

A few minutes later, she walked into the bar at the hotel. Marcus had arranged to meet her there, so they could go on to the party together. It wasn’t hard to spot him, there was a small cluster of people around him, where he sat in one of the armchairs. She paused in the entrance to look at him.

Marcus Lloyd-Howell was, in every way, a golden boy.

He had golden-blond hair, blue eyes and a classically handsome face.

He was tall, well-spoken and rich. And, ever since his book of literary essays, Reflections, was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he’d been extremely in demand.

He had done so many TV, radio and podcast appearances that people were starting to recognise him in the street.

She’d met him first through his words. Like so many people, she had been stunned by his prose.

His first book, which, in her opinion, was even better than Reflections, had been so beautifully written that she’d had to pause to admire individual sentences.

She had read everything she could find about him and watched him on TV whenever he appeared.

In her mind, he’d taken the stature of a literary rock star.

So when he’d come over to talk to her, she had been so completely starstruck that she’d agreed to meet him for a drink before her brain could catch up and sabotage her.

To her great surprise, he’d stuck around – bought her flowers, taken her to restaurants she couldn’t afford, told her she was beautiful. He even admired her work. For the first time in her life, she felt special, precious. Kalpana wasn’t used to that kind of praise. It was like a drug.

She glanced down at her hand, where the diamond ring sparkled under the hotel’s lights. And now he was hers. Or she was his, which was the same thing, really.

He hadn’t clocked her yet, so she nipped to the bathroom to freshen up and touch up her lipstick.

She was pretty, she knew that. Her mother had given her great bone structure and a petite frame.

Her father had given her glossy hair and eyes that were lighter brown than was usual for Sri Lankans.

She fussed with her hair. It had been short for a while, but she was growing it out now, partly because Marcus said it suited her and loved playing with it.

Sometimes, she missed the convenience of having a messy bob.

She retied her chignon, touched up her lipstick and set off.

Marcus was surrounded by a small group of people who appeared to be hanging on every word he said. When she came near, he looked up and said, ‘There she is!’

He stood up and held out his hand to her.

‘This is my lovely fiancée, Kalpana.’ When she placed her hand in his, he drew her to his side and kissed her lightly.

A few people nodded. A seat was found for her and a glass of rosé procured.

At first it had been intimidating coming to literary events with Marcus, some of the people he hung out with were literary giants, but she was getting used to it.

Inevitably, a woman asked her, ‘What do you do?’

Kalpana smiled. Here we go.

‘I’m a novelist.’

‘You’re a writer too. The conversations between you two must be so fascinating. What do you write?’

‘Romance novels.’

She watched the light go out in the woman’s eyes. ‘Oh.’ There was a moment of awkward silence. Then, ‘Is that like Fifty Shades of Grey?’

Kalpana laughed. ‘No. Not like that. I wish I sold as well as that book did, though.’

The other woman seemed to be casting about for something to say. ‘I … Have you considered writing something a bit more … you know, meaningful?’

And there it was. Ugh. The snobbery. Before Kalpana could answer, Marcus leaned across and said, ‘Kalpana is terribly prolific. She writes something like two books a year. It’s incredible to witness.’

‘That’s not particularly fast,’ Kalpana said, gently.

In the circles she hung around in, quite a lot of people wrote two or three books a year – sometimes in two or three different genres under two or three different pen names.

There were half a dozen counterarguments she could make against this wrongheaded assumption that romance was somehow inferior to other genres too – but these people didn’t want to hear them.

They dismissed her as soon as they heard the ‘R’ word.

At least Marcus didn’t do that. This happened so often that she knew not to let it get to her.

She smiled and picked up her phone instead.

The worst thing about dating a Pulitzer Prize–nominated essayist was the literary groupies.

***

Sampath Dahanayeka was thinking about the woman on the train as he walked into the meeting room.

There was something familiar about her, but he couldn’t place where he’d seen her before.

He was normally good with remembering people.

Try as he might, he couldn’t remember anything about having met her, so he obviously hadn’t spoken to her before.

It was going to bother him all day until he worked out what it was about her that felt so familiar.

Grant, his boss at the wedding planning agency, was already there. Sampath slipped into a chair and pulled out his notebook, ready for when the meeting started. The others filed in, and Grant began running through the events that had closed in the last week.

Sampath had a wedding he was working on – a relatively small but fun affair where the couple had wanted a Back to the Future theme to the day.

He waited until the relevant section came up and delivered his report.

Hiring a DeLorean had been a bit of a sticking point, but he’d eventually found one that looked accurate to the car in the movie.

Grant made a note. ‘You’ve updated the database?’ All new suppliers had to be added to the database, so that if another wedding planner needed to hire something particular – like a DeLorean – they would know where to find it.

‘Already done,’ said Sampath.