24. Paige
PAIGE
The wedding dress feels too tight.
It’s gorgeous, of course. Sylvie has pulled off a miracle in only a week. She took a mostly completed wedding dress from the Milan atelier and had her team prioritize its finish.
The ivory silk has two thin straps over my shoulders and a draped cowl neck that hints at my cleavage before narrowing to my waist. It flows out from there in a soft, almost mermaid style finish.
It’s everything I’d ever want for a real wedding.
But this isn’t a real wedding. I married a man I hate in a courthouse, to save my company, and it was over in fifteen minutes. This is a public spectacle with a single purpose—to sell the illusion that we’re in love.
Maybe I’ll never get to experience this again.
It’s not like I’m good at relationships anyway, and lord knows how long Rafe and I will have to be married. I’m doing this for Mather & Wilde. For the employees who raised me, who feel like family. For my parents and my grandparents, who worked tirelessly to make the company a success.
Did you know he terrorized my sister? He asked. Family is everything.
It is, and my uncle doing something so idiotic and amoral proves just how far he’s devolved from the man I once knew. From my father’s brother who loved to have fun, who would chase me around the Mather & Wilde warehouse while I shrieked with laughter.
Family is everything. And I’ve lost all of mine.
“What do you think?” Sylvie is sitting on one of sofas. The villa’s living room has been transformed into an atelier for the day. Her dogs are lying near her feet.
“It’s so beautiful. I could never thank you enough.”
She reaches down to run a hand over the thin head of her greyhound. “Don’t thank me. My work will be photographed, yes? It’s a win-win.”
“Yes, I suppose that’s true,” I say. It’s rare that anyone says it out loud, but she’s been straight with me from the beginning.
“How did you like Colette? She was good, yes?”
I look in the mirror her team brought in. A seamstress is standing behind me, working on the tiny silk-clad buttons, and it’s hard to breathe. “Yes. Amazing.”
“She told me that you two were… interesting,” Sylvie says.
I look down at where the ivory hem kisses the ground.
I’ll have to pretend in front of dozens of guests in just a few days.
Guests I barely know. The guest list is a mile long and all are business connections.
I didn’t invite Amy or any of my old college friends.
How could I ask them to make the long and expensive trip for a fake wedding?
How could I sell a lie to them? The stakes are too high.
I need to get out of this dress so I can take a full breath again. My chest is tight, and I know this feeling. Not now, I think, but that’s never stopped it before.
“Interesting?” I ask.
“Yes,” Sylvie says. “She has complete client confidentiality, of course, but she said you two have such chemistry.”
I look around for the closest door. It opens up to the garden and the lake beyond.
I try to get off the small podium I’m on.
Someone is protesting. The seamstress? Sylvie?
I need to leave before she sees me break down and thinks I’m not brilliantly, incandescently happy. My breathing is audible now. Shit.
And the shoes. I need to get out of the heels—
“You’re not meant to be in here!” The voice is much closer. Sylvie’s, accented in French. “Seeing the dress is a bad sign. Shoo, Raphael. Shoo.”
He appears in front of me, eyes locked on mine. I’d be embarrassed if I could focus on anything but the rising tide of panic inside me. Damn it.
“She’s already my wife.” He looks at me for a few seconds before wrapping an arm around my waist. “I need to borrow her for a moment. I’ll bring her right back to you. I promise, Sylvie.”
He pulls me out of the room.
As soon as I’m walking, I feel better. It’s like movement helps with the undulating coil of emotions inside. I wish I could walk faster.
I wish I could run.
“Breathe,” he mutters.
I try to focus on that instead of the tightening in my chest. Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in. Breathe out. It’s hard with the tight dress and all those tiny buttons, one by one locking me into the performance I have to give.
He pulls me into the kitchen. It’s empty, and the doors are open to the kitchen garden outside. “Are you breathing?”
“I’m trying to.” I focus on the collar of his shirt. There’s a V there, where the top two buttons are undone, and a hint of dark chest hair. “This dress, it’s too tight. I can’t… I can’t…”
“Shit,” he mutters, and turns me around. My hands land on the cool marble of the kitchen counter, and I focus on breathing. That’s all I can do. “These are fucking tiny.”
I focus on the feeling of his cool fingers over my warm skin, and then one button comes free. Another joins it, and soon the vise around my ribs lessens.
“There. That’s better. Are you still breathing for me, Wilde? Don’t you dare stop.”
So bossy, I think, but I do what he says. It’s nearing its peak. I can feel it, the way it builds, and soon I’ll start crying. It always happens.
Another few buttons open up, and his fingers brush my low back. “There. Turn… there we go. Is that better?”
My back is against the cool kitchen counter. Something hot runs down my cheek, and his face swims in front of me.
I’m crying.
“Breathe, Wilde.” His voice is lower this time, deep and reassuring, and a thumb comes to smooth over my cheek. “I’m going to count, and we’ll breathe together. Okay?”
I struggle to do it, but he gives me another try, and then another, and I focus on the deepness of his voice. Sobs break through my breaths every now and then, and we have to start over.
He has a very nice voice.
His accent is American, courtesy of his mother, but there are rounder tints to some of his vowels, and then there are the word choices that hint at a life mostly led abroad. No one sounds quite like him.
I listen to him, and breathe, and cry. There’s no space for anything else. The panic is like a quick-flowing venom, and I know from experience that it’ll pass, even when it feels like it never will.
A door opens. Rafe turns his head and bites out something in Italian. But I keep my eyes locked on his neck. On his Adam’s apple, the top buttons of his collar, the hint of chest hair.
He always wears linen.
I like linen.
“Are you breathing for me?” His hand is tight on my waist, but it’s a good tightness, an anchoring touch.
Like a tree falling, I slowly end up with my forehead on his shoulder. And slowly, like the inevitability of the tides, my breathing comes easier. The roiling nausea gives way to a calm sea.
He strokes my hair, and the shoulder of his shirt quickly turns damp. From me. From my tears.
He’s holding me.
Rafe Montclair is holding me.
“Are you okay?” he asks, like it’s his job to take care of me when I fall apart. And just like that, a wave of shame rushes through me.
“Yes,” I whisper.
“Good.”
We’re in the kitchen, this old-school, homey room that I’ve yet to use properly. My back is to the counter and my hands are on him. Fisted in the fabric of his shirt.
Another tremble racks me.
I hate the aftershocks just as much as I love the blessed silence after an attack passes. When it feels like my body has just run a marathon of stress.
Rafe’s eyes search mine, dark eyebrows drawn low. Like he cares. I hate that he’s seen me like this.
“I got your shirt wet,” I murmur.
“I have more,” he says. “And you’ve already helped yourself to my closet.”
That makes my lips curve, just a tiny bit. “Yes. I have.”
“What was that?” he asks. It’s not a harsh question. It’s not an accusation. But it is demanding, and I close my eyes against his shoulder.
“Did Sylvie notice?” I ask instead.
“I don’t think so.”
My hands fall from his shirt and find the cool marble of the counter behind me instead. “I’m still in her dress. She’s going to be mad.”
“No, she won’t.” He takes a step back too, and the sudden closeness is gone just as quickly as it happened. Inches open up, reestablishing the moat that should always run between us.
“I should go back in there.”
“I’ll handle it. Take a few minutes.”
“I’m still wearing her dress.” I turn, but Rafe’s hand comes to find my wrist.
“Wilde,” he says. “Your face…”
Oh. Humiliation makes my cheeks burn. I’ve been crying. “I should probably wash up first.”
“It might be best,” he says. His jaw works. “Is it because of… the wedding?”
“No. I’m good, I promise. I’ll be fine up at the altar.”
He nods and hesitates another second. “Right. Tell me if you need anything, though, okay?”
“I will. Wouldn’t want to ruin our happy image.” I run a hand over my cheek. The only thing more humiliating than him seeing all of this would be him thinking I’m panicking because of him. “It’s not because of you, by the way.”
“Right,” he says, and nods once. “Of course not.”
“Good,” I say.
“Great.”
He’s back to the man I know. The man who rushed out of the massage room rather than touch me, the man who backed us into a corner, the man who made himself my last resort to save the company.
The man I can never afford to let down my guard around.
I step away from him, toward the hallway. “Tell her I’ll be back in a few minutes?”
“I will.” He shoves his hands into his pockets. “The buttons…?”
“I’ll ask her to help with them,” I say. My gaze drifts to the wet spot on his shoulder. “Thanks for, um… getting me out of there in time.”
His lip curves into that crooked smile again. “Is this the first and only time I’ll hear that from you?”
“Savor it,” I say. “And let’s never talk about this.”
“Never,” he agrees.