The Jilted Bride

Chapter 1

Chapter One

Ican’t breathe.

I plop my flouncy, satin-clad butt down on a stone bench behind the hotel, picking up my phone and dialing my best friend Julia.

I know part of it’s the wedding dress. The corset is so tight my ribs feel like they’re touching.

The other part is people. So. Many. People.

From where I’m sitting, I can see a man in a gardening outfit on his knees in the distance, kneeling beside a lush rose bush, tending to it with the kind of care a mother shows a newborn baby.

What a dream it would be to have a job like that. No people. Just roses and the sweet sun in my hair.

Breathe.

“Come on,” I say to the phone.

“Hello?” Julia’s voice is crackly when she answers a moment later.

Relief floods me. “Hey!” I stand up, pacing the garden. I desperately want to chew my nails. “Hey, so I, like, can’t breathe. That’s normal, right?”

Pause. “Maggie?” Julia asks. “Are you there? Sorry, the line’s terrible. I’m on the ferry. Are you okay? I’m sorry I couldn’t get there sooner; my boss was being such a jerk again.”

I sigh. “I’m here.”

Julia’s an event planner who currently works herself to the bone for very little thanks. Her dream is to open her own business, but she’s always too busy to even think about it. She had to beg and steal the day off for my wedding and still wasn’t able to take the full day.

Still, just hearing her voice makes it a little easier to breathe. So does the scent of the garden I’ve wandered into. I inhale deeply, my nostrils filling with the sweet scent of spring roses.

“You know what?” I say, feeling calm again. “I’m fine. I just…I put on the dress early, just so this would feel real, you know?”

“Mags! The wedding’s not for another three hours. Where’s Jeff?”

“In his room. Getting ready, probably.” Knowing Jeff, he’s probably reciting his vows in the mirror.

I’m surprised I can’t hear his voice from here, honestly.

Unlike me, Jeff loves huge crowds. Feels at home in them.

Julia does, too, which is why I knew Jeff and I would work so well. Julia and I are like yin and yang.

Jeff and I are too. Kind of. Things have been feeling a little stilted lately, but that’s just because our lives are changing so much. Plus, wedding planning is exhausting.

“Okay,” Julia says. “That’s good.” There’s a slight stiffness to her voice.

Julia was lukewarm about Jeff when we first started dating.

But when I told her we were serious, she got in line.

I’m tempted to ask her what it was about him that gave her pause now, but it doesn’t matter. We’re about to be married.

We chat about details for the day, and by the time she says she has to go, I feel so much better. It’s always like this when speaking to the few people in my inner circle. If it were up to me, the wedding would be me, my fiancé, Julia, and Mom. Dad, if he were alive, of course.

At least I got the wedding by the sea—we’re on a little island off the coast of Redbeard Cove, BC, which is on a strip of coast only accessible by ferry. The only thing on this island is the hotel. Jeff says the place makes him feel trapped, but when we toured it, it felt like home to me.

“Okay, listen,” Julia says. “I’m going to be there as soon as I—” She cuts out. Then she comes back. “…all you have to say is I do. And smell the roses.”

I laugh. Roses. It’s kismet, because I’m standing in the most beautiful garden I’ve ever seen. “Thanks, Jules. See you soon.”

Everything’s going to be fine. I end the call.

I wasn’t being euphemistic. The place is incredible. Roses in every size and shade imaginable burst forth in every direction. So what if I have to deal with three hundred people—most of them Jeff’s friends and colleagues?

The man in the gardening suit—is that what it’s called? A gardening onesie, maybe?—pulls a rose down and brushes his thumb over the petals with a tenderness that makes me smile.

I smell one of the roses next to me, and my smile grows wider. I should call Jeff to see when the makeup and hair people are getting here. His hairstylist is the one doing my hair. Once I’m fully ready, I’ll feel amazing. I just know it.

When I pull out my phone, I pause for a moment and study my wallpaper. Jeff has his arm wrapped around me. I’m smiling, but I can see the panic in my eyes now—a shadow in my smile. There were so many people there that day too.

I give my cheek a light slap.

I’m fine. I just need to talk to Jeff. When I get back to the bench and stick my phone back in my purse, my fingers brush against a velvet box.

It’s my grandmother’s antique ring, which I’m going to hand to the parents of the ring bearer when they arrive.

It feels good holding this ring. I feel connected to my dad again—it was his mom’s ring.

Jeff doesn’t pick up. He’s probably got his phone on silent already—he remembers to do stuff like that.

Unlike me, who blasted “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy” in a staff meeting last week when I forgot to turn my phone down.

I couldn’t find it for a full minute. Mortifying.

“I was only trying to get in the wedding mood!” I’d exclaimed, cheeks flaming.

It doesn’t help that I’m an elementary school librarian.

Still gripping the ring in my hand, I go back inside, heading for the reception desk. I’ll use their landline to call Jeff’s room directly.

Except I’m halfway down the hallway when the ring slips from my hand. Because of course it does. It clinks on the floor.

Then starts rolling away from me.

“Crap!”

I chase after it, but it’s going fast. I race toward where it curves…and rolls directly under a closed door.

I could laugh. I do laugh, lightly. It’s fine. It’s just a broom closet.

I reach for the handle but pause when I hear a giggle.

I imagined that, right?

Except then a male voice comes through. A familiar male voice.

“You’re so hot, baby.”

My stomach drops.

I know that voice. I was just looking for that voice. Only the man I know with that voice doesn’t say things like that.

“That’s right. Just like that.”

The colors in the hallway seem to fade, everything around me going blurry.

Another giggle.

Open the door, Maggie.

My hand goes to the handle. The metal’s cool under my palm.

The door is locked.

“Mmm. So hot.” The male voice once more.

I back up, my heart racing. I need to get into that room. I need to confirm that I’m wrong. But there’s no one in the hallway. The reception desk is a million miles away, around a corner.

I head back to the door to the back garden. I walk briskly through those sweet-smelling roses to where that man is now bent over beside the bush, clippers in hand. Even from the back, I can see he’s big, his broad shoulders filling out his dark blue coveralls.

“Excuse me,” I say. “Do you have keys to any of the doors inside?”

He must have headphones in. I gently tap him on the shoulder, my panic increasing.

The man abruptly stands up, looking startled. He towers over me. He’s younger than I expected, but that’s all I see. My vision’s blurry. “You’re so hot, baby” echoes in my ears.

“I need to get into the broom closet,” I say. “I lost something…under the door.”

A moment later, the man is inserting a key into the lock. He didn’t ask any questions. He must have seen the urgency on my face.

Then the door is open. And there’s Jeff, his hands up the dress of the woman who’s supposed to be doing my hair in an hour. Clara, Jeff’s hairstylist, who told me just last week in the salon as we mocked up hairstyles that she knew Jeff and I were going to have the most beautiful babies.

Clara screams. My fiancé swears.

“Maggie! Shit, oh shit.” Jeff disentangles himself from Clara’s dress, yanking down the hem. They were full-on fucking.

So much for that low libido he’s been struggling with.

I open and close my mouth like a fish. But I don’t have any words. None except “Nice dress.”

Nice dress?

It is a nice dress. And I’m an idiot. A fool.

I turn on my heel and run.

My fiancé’s voice calls after me. “Don’t tell anyone, Maggie. Please! You know I’ll be ruined!”

He will be ruined if this gets out. I cling to that little bit of power I have as I pump my legs, my whole world crumbling.

Because my fiancé’s family is rich and powerful, his father a developer with ties to the community.

But not nearly as many as Jeff, the local pastor.