Chapter 6
ROXY
The pristine frosting on the lemon-poppy seed five-tier cake sliced apart under our joint grip on the silver knife.
An exuberant cheer went up from the tables as I fed Angel a bite of the sponge.
He returned the gesture for the multitude, leaning down to press a kiss onto my temple.
The flashbulbs and phones went off, capturing the moment.
His arm encircled my waist as the catering servers rolled up to portion out slices to our guests.
As we backed away from the massive, decadent dessert table, we got enveloped by the crowd.
With a sigh, I began accepting congratulations from our guests.
I cringed at most, but I almost lost my composure when Jude’s mum, Maggie, appeared in a stunning blue dress that matched her eyes.
We’d met at Jude and Sofia’s home a few months back and bonded over our shared love for art.
She was the sweetest woman, and I caught the gentle concern in her eyes as I folded into her arms.
‘Jude mentioned the real deal with Evangeline. Stay strong, honey, it shall be well,’ she whispered in my ear as I fought back tears.
She went on to hug Angel as Kian, her handsome silver fox husband, kissed my cheek and squeezed my arm.
Their support gave me the strength to wade on with more felicitations from random acquaintances of my parents.
Most of the men offered Angel tight, respectful nods.
The women, however, stared at us like hawks, their eyes calculating as they swarmed us, desperate to pry any nugget of truth from us.
‘Roxy, darling, you’re freakin’ radiant!’
Blonde, red-lipped, and tight from a recent Botox treatment, Trudy Neams was a high-society doyenne.
Her word held authority when confirming or denying Nashville’s glitterati scandals.
Her bosom strained the silk bodice of her flower-patterned dress as she leaned in close, purring with curiosity and thinly veiled scandal-lust.
‘We’re all dying to know, were you always the intended bride?’
‘Wouldn’t you like to know?’ I breathed, giving her a tight smile.
Trudy’s brow arched at my side step.
‘Well, it’s a surprise, if not a touch unconventional.’
Her gaze darted between us, but Angel glanced away with pursed lips, making it clear he’d no time for her bullshit.
Trudy plowed on, undaunted.
‘Where’s Evangeline? Rumor has it she had a sudden emergency.’
‘An emergency?’ a younger brunette whose name I couldn’t remember chimed in, her voice dripping with artificial sweetness. ‘Oh, not according to all the rumors. People are saying she left, and that you two -.’
Her voice dropped to a sotto whisper.
‘- Were secret lovers this entire time? The other sister who bagged the prince like a fairy tale?’
My throat locked up.
The scrutiny was overwhelming, and not knowing how to respond, I grew flustered.
Until Angel stepped in.
His gravitas had the women gasping as his hand encircled my waist.
‘This ain’t no fairy tale, it’s freakin’ real, ladies,’ he growled.
His hand slid from my hip up to the nape of my neck, his lean fingers tangling into my hair.
He pulled me up to him, and then he kissed me.
This was no gentle, polite, staged kiss for the cameras.
It was a possessive, breathtakingly intense claiming that sent a shockwave straight through me.
His flavor was intoxicating, like expensive whiskey and sensual promise; from the mastery of his full lips, firm and yet soft at the same time, to the solid mass of his ripped, muscled frame.
He pressed his hand to my back, pulling me even closer, and I went lightheaded at the proximity.
My hands flew to his broad shoulders to keep myself upright as my head spun.
For a fleeting, delusional second, it felt so real.
The women around us let out collective sighs of yearning, the thrill of the display silencing their interrogation.
Just as fast as he claimed me, Angel tore his mouth from mine and pulled away, his eyes unreadable.
‘Excuse us, ladies,’ he muttered, his grip tightening on my arm as he pushed a path through the dense crowd.
Angel kept his touch on my waist as he prowled away, heading back to the bridal table.
As he did, he dipped to growl into my ear.
‘Apologies, Rox but I had to put a stop to the speculation, per our agreement.’
Per our unfair contract terms with Reese. Damn.
I nodded, lips still swollen and throbbing from his mouth on them.
Reese’s public relations executive, Di Montcliffe, along with the wedding coordinator, a bird-like woman named Clara, sidled up and cut in our path.
‘We need to talk,’ Di insisted.
With faux smiles, they steered us into a quiet velvet-curtained alcove.
‘How’s everything going?’ Clara intoned with a Cheshire grin. ‘You two newlyweds are so gorgeous.’
‘Let’s be real, this charade is fucked. Cut to the chase.’
Angel’s deep, husky drawl, laced with fury, shut her up at once.
Clara blinked in shock at the vehemence in his tone.
‘Your flight to Italy departs in two hours,’ Di murmured, undaunted, her manicured nails tapping the screen. ‘Evangeline booked a luxury honeymoon villa on Capri, close to the Amalfi Coast. Reese expects arrival photos, plus vacation reels and shots as agreed with Evangeline.’
Angel crossed his massive arms over his chest and glared down at her.
‘Cancel it. All I want right now is to get home and disappear for a few weeks.’
‘Angel, I’m so sorry about all of this,’ I muttered, placing a hand on his forearm.
He shook it off with a quiet grunt.
‘Stop apologizing, Roxy. You’re not the one who’s fucked up my life.’
He turned back to the PR executive. ‘You got that? We’re canceling the freakin’ getaway.’
Di cleared her throat, tapping her digital screen with insistence.
‘You can’t, by agreeing to the wedding and deal with Mr Rosedale, you’ve consented to honeymoon.’
Di and Angel faced off for a beat until he cursed.
‘Hell. Go on then, hit us with what else we’ve signed our lives away for.’
‘The initial arrangement with Evangeline required regular social media updates. We need them to maintain consumer confidence before the Saudi prince signs the contract for the Rosedale deal.’
Angel grimaced.
‘The hell, why?’
Di simpered.
‘The Saudi Cup has a $20 million purse, and is the most lucrative event in horse racing. Reese’s thoroughbreds, after the sale, will be the main attraction, so any publicity generated will help gain more eyeballs to the event.
If Reese can raise the purchase price of the horses because of the infamy of your attachment to the brand, he will. ’
‘So luring everyday IG and TikTok doomscrollers to care about the Rosedale horse trade means more mullah for Reese?’ Angel growled, his expression one of thorough disgust.
‘Indeed. Evangeline was promoting the brand on social media and showing off the horses. In fact, that’s how the Saudis found Reese, through her socials,’ Di said with some pride.
‘I helped map out her social media publishing calendar and hit the right hashtags. Turns out cute racing colts are popular online. We even had the sexiest stallion groomer online visit the Rosedale ranch and -.’
‘I don’t give a flying fuck about any damn groomers,’ Angel ground out.
Di was unflappable.
‘However, you can see why Evangeline disappearing from the scene needs to be replaced in the public eye by a more compelling and believable story?’
Angel cursed, terrifying a passing waiter who almost dropped his tray of champagne flutes.
‘This is my life you’re clowning with; I don’t want to be part of this toxic circus.’
‘You’ve no choice,’ Di tittered
Angel whirled around to her and leaned in, his sinewed arms bulging.
The veins on his corded neck pulsed, his hair falling over his temple as his rage turned incandescent.
‘You want me to fuckin’ fake a romance on a beach while my heart has been ripped from my chest?’ he growled.
He was letting out more expletives than I’d ever heard from him, and I felt his pain, wincing at his every word.
‘If the press detects any fakery about this wedding, your father will lose his business, trust me. Reese is a man of his word,’ Di reminded him with a cold smile.
Angel half surged upright toward Di, and I stepped between them, resting both palms flat against his rippling torso.
‘Angel, look at me,’ I whispered, forcing him to meet my eyes. ‘Don’t give Reese any ammunition. Let’s play his game today so we can protect your family tomorrow.’
He let out a ragged breath, his shoulders dropping an inch.
Our gazes locked, and he pursed his lips, searching my soul till he sighed.
The man was at his limits, and I squeezed his arm to calm him, sighing in relief as he simmered down.
He glared past me at Di, then sat with a grimace in a nearby armchair, arms crossed, jaw gritted.
‘Fine, but I won’t take this lying down,’ he finally rasped.
‘The Rosedale jet is waiting at Nashville International Airport right now,’ Di added, unfazed. ‘You’ve three hours before take-off, so please hurry.’
Angel scoffed, then nailed the pair with his disdain.
‘We’re on it, now kindly leave us the fuck alone!’
The publicist and planner retreated without another word, hastening away from the incensed man.
I sank into a chair across from him and hunched forward, staring at my hands, playing with the ring on my finger, a pink diamond, in an oval cut.
My mother handed it to me before the ceremony; it was the same one Evangeline was meant to wear, yet now it was mine.
I sensed Angel’s icy gaze on me and glanced up as he started speaking.
‘We’ll play along for now, hear? We’ll be the most romantic honeymoon couple for the cameras. Then as soon as I find a way to rid of that your bastard of a father, we’ll dissolve this mess. Got it?’
My heart plunged as my hopes sank to rock bottom.
He wanted nothing to do with me.
‘Reese won’t let you walk away,’ I murmured, my throat tightening up.
‘I’ll find a way to beat him at his own game by then,’ Angel muttered, pushing back his chair. ‘I’m out; I need some air.’
He strode off without another word as I stared at his tall, muscled frame track away from me, despair eating at me.
In under three hours, we’d be trapped inside a pressurized metal cabin at over forty thousand feet.
Hurtling toward a forced honeymoon neither Angel nor I wanted, or planned for.
The sheer horror of our upcoming proximity hit me hard, leaving me breathless.
I was just a plain-faced artist who, for years, hid in the blinding shadow cast by my half-sister’s radiance.
Now, I was about to spend a holiday with her former fiancé, the man I loved in secret, unable to hide my adoration of him behind my art, work, or gallery walls.
Would my agonizing, long-buried crush on Angel emerge and embarrass me?
I’d have to be very careful around him.
I was certain Angel would never love me, but perhaps with time out of the spotlight, we’d get a chance to explore more than just an awkward in-law situation-ship.
Maybe, once we were alone together, he’d find it in him to see beyond my plainness to the heart of me.
I clung to the desperate hope that he’d go easy on me, praying he understood that I was just as much a victim in this circus as he was.
‘Roxy?’
I glanced up as my mother approached, still wearing her dark sunglasses despite the late hour.
In a peach Chanel suit, she resembled a magazine cover model, albeit a mature one, clutching a prosecco in one hand and her Bvlgari Women’s Serpenti Forever handbag in the other.
Her brother, my Uncle Ed, accompanied her.
Edmund Hughes was a lean-as-a-whip British aristocrat and a collector of rare butterflies.
The pair were tight, bound by a shared survival story that traced back to a crumbling estate in Yorkshire.
Elsa and Ed were scions of the House of Hughes, a minor but ancient branch of English nobility.
In the last hundred years, their family’s prestige dwindled to just a drafty manor house, a historic title and a series of scandals.
Their mother, my grandmother, Tabitha, endured a public divorce from her cheating husband in the late 1960s.
However, she refused to be suffocated by the rigid disdain of high society in London.
Packing up her two young children and what remained of her dignity, she emigrated to the United States to start fresh.
Elsa and Ed grew up in Nashville, navigating the contrast between America’s hustle culture and their polite, aristocratic roots.
Tabitha left them a tiny inheritance.
To augment his share, Edmund sold classic cars for a living.
He was tenacious and loyal to my mother and me, and loathed Reese and Evangeline with a vengeance.
Now, both she and he opened their arms, and I rushed into them.
‘I’m so sorry honey, Reese is being such a beast,’ Elsa murmured as she pushed a handkerchief into my hands.
I dabbed at my tears as Ed stroked my hair.
‘I’ve a bit of money, we can get lawyers to stop this pantomime,’ he offered with vehemence.
‘No,’ I countered in a panic, ‘Father threatened Angel’s band and family. I won’t risk Reese going to war because we’re all going to be victims and he’s going to win. He always does.’
Ed studied my face for a long time before nodding.
‘Fine, I’ll back off. However, that new husband of yours better give you the royal treatment. Angel is a good man, but his judgment on Evangeline never sat well with me. Sorry, Elsa, I know she’s your daughter, but -.’
My mother sniffed and waved her hand in agreement.
‘Reese never allowed me parent her. Or discipline her. He spoiled her rotten, and this hot mess is the result. As for Angel, I’ve always thought the best of him.’
My uncle wasn’t as convinced.
‘He seemed pissed at having to marry you, Roxy. If he does you wrong -.’
I took a breath and shook my head.
‘He won’t. He’s angry right now, but we have to let him cool off. OK?’
Ed pursed his lips and huffed.
‘Fine.’
I hugged them again, my heart wrenching.
‘Thanks, you two, for the support.’
I was sick with weariness and filled with a desperate craving to sit alone with my feelings for a while.
Elsa caught on to my mood and stroked my cheek.
‘We’ll give you some space, honey. Find us at the bar when you’re ready.’
I nodded in gratitude as they looped hands and took off.
I went back into the alcove and sank onto a velvet chair.
My dry, hot eyes were on the far-off merriment, more lonely in this moment meant to be the happiest of my life than any other before it.