Chapter Two
With autopilot fully engaged, Jules remained upright and on her feet. It was her only task as Abigail bulldozed into the staging tent at the end of the aisle. Behind their entourage, the murmurs and whispers turned into a full-fledged buzz before the white canvas flaps closed.
Jules wasn’t heartbroken, yet she felt so profoundly betrayed. Little shards of jagged disappointment tumbled and turned with every hurried step, ripping apart the security blanket that her marriage to Mason had promised. What would her stalker say now?
Abigail didn’t slow down as their gaggle flew through the oversize staging tent.
“Where’s Sloane?” Jules stumbled, only to be yanked up by the veil bundled into Yasmin’s arms like a newborn baby.
A newborn baby. Mason was going to be a dad.
Olivia would be the mom. Somewhere in Las Vegas, gamblers were betting on whether the baby would be a boy or a girl.
She’d seen the odds on when she and Mason might have a child.
The answer was never. Children had been thoroughly discussed during contract negotiations.
She didn’t want any. He had shared the sentiment. At least not with her.
Did everyone know?
Did anyone know?
The groomsmen did. Absolutely. Had her bridesmaids had any idea Olivia was pregnant?
That Olivia and Mason were together? If they had, it would all come out in the news.
Jules imagined Sloane interviewing each bridesmaid in a CIA black site.
By the end of the night, they’d know who’d known what, even if Sloane wouldn’t really resort to spy interrogation techniques. At least, probably not.
Spycraft or not, Sloane would finagle a plan to save Jules from the ridicule that would roast her alive as the ugly truth swept through gossip bloggers like a flood breaking through a dam in a desert.
Jules searched for Sloane. “Do you see her?”
“She’ll find us.” Abigail ordered the herd of bridesmaids to stay close.
Abigail still had Sloane’s phone, but Sloane had likely confiscated one of her assistants’ devices, blocking and forwarding phone numbers like a gunslinger in the Wild, Wild West.
Her security team materialized from the shadows. Her eyes locked with Rhys Callaghan.
She didn’t let herself wonder, not even for a second, what it would have felt like to ask him instead.
He’d been by her side for years. She distrusted him, and she needed him.
They were a contradiction in everything, yet the sight of him somehow promised all today would be okay.
Sloane Ellis might be a ruthless media mastermind.
But Rhys, with his rigid rules and whatever-it-takes-to-get-the-job-done attitude, kept the insanity at bay, and she bet he didn’t do so-so sex and knock up bridesmaids.
The man lived for his job and nothing else. Then again, she’d never met a person who worked in her world who detested Hollywood the way he did.
“I got her.” Rhys took over the charge, relegating Abigail to Jules’s side.
The security team swept them through the hotel lobby like that time someone had yelled, “Gun!” at a red-carpet event.
Rhys and his colleague Wes Wilder forged the path into the hotel, flanked by the pack of bridesmaids.
Aaliyah and Tabitha stayed close to her side.
Yasmin carried the heavy train of the dress.
Behind them trailed two additional bodyguards acting as the caboose of their frenzied escape train.
Their gaggle piled into an elevator like subway commuters during rush hour. No elbow room. No one making eye contact. Not a shared moment of humanity between a single person as they all struggled to figure out what had just happened.
Not to mention Jules and her trusty band of bridesmaids wore shoes that were designed for runways and photoshoots, not sprinting from the altar. They were catching their breath while nursing fresh blisters.
The elevator doors pinged open, and off they went again, Rhys, bodyguard to the rich and famous, leading the charge, and before she could catch her breath, they swarmed into the bridal suite, which was strewn with clothes and makeup and leftover champagne glasses.
Jules launched her shoes across the suite.
The heels bounced off the delicate white floral wallpaper with thuds as the sweet feeling of relief rolled over her bare feet.
Ditching those shoes was as close as she’d get to an orgasm any time soon.
That was a pretty terrible realization on your wedding day.
Yasmin unceremoniously unpinned the veil, snagging a few blonde hairs still attached to Jules’s head. “Sorry. Sorry.”
Jules waved the apology away. Her scalp had survived far worse from well-meaning hair stylists. The iron grip of the wedding dress was about to kill her. Jules twisted and reached for the back but couldn’t find the hidden zipper. “Unzip me?”
The dress had to go. If there hadn’t been a blood oath involved, she’d cut the thing from her torso. Anything to take a deep-enough breath and reactivate her brain. Because the neuro connections and synapses had failed to figure out what to do or say or feel.
She was numb. Unmarried and utterly numb.
Did her stalker know what had happened yet? He had likely known about Mason and Olivia before Jules. She didn’t know what to do with that—probably because she still couldn’t take a deep breath. “A little help, please?” She eyed Rhys. “Do you have a knife?”
“No weapons needed.” Yasmin untied the corset ribbon and yanked the zipper down.
Relief rolled through Jules again. A groaning, moaning whimper of pleasure slipped past her lips as the dress piled onto the carpet, circling her in a mountain of silk and tulle. She could breathe again.
Her eyes opened to Rhys, former FBI turned bodyguard.
Oh, the things he’d seen over the years.
Everyone moved around them, but he was like a stone.
Nothing bothered him. Nothing caught his attention.
Nothing, not even a half-dressed, moaning woman, distracted his focus.
Not for the first time, she thought he could be cast as a hunky leading man.
She might have made the suggestion except he had made it clear that Hollywood disgusted him.
That was fine. He was likely a better protector than an actor.
Casting Rhys in a movie wasn’t where her head should be.
Aaliyah slipped the hotel robe onto Jules’s shoulders and clipped her thoughts on costarring with Rhys.
Abigail picked up the hotel phone on the credenza and kicked off her shoes. Her toes wriggled like Jules’s had. “Room service.”
“I’m not hungry,” Jules said.
“Do you have ice cream? Good. Chocolate and vanilla bean. That too. Every topping. What else comes with the sundaes? Great idea. Yup. Those too. Do you have toffee chips? Perfect. That’ll work.
We’ll pay whatever it takes for someone to literally run it up here.
” She winked at Jules as though everything would be fine so long as they binged on enough calories.
“Yes. Literally sprint. Send the fastest person you’ve got. ”
“Doing okay, honey?” Aaliyah asked.
Jules should be far more upset than she was.
Tabitha snorted. “Of course she’s not okay.”
Tabitha didn’t know how to be kind, and if she weren’t family—a fact she tossed around to anyone who would listen—then Jules would have disentangled herself from her cousin years ago.
They weren’t even real cousins. Second cousins by marriage and divorce and some other complicated familial connections that her mother accepted as gospel and Tabitha never let her ignore.
Jules ignored her now. “Are there any water bottles left in the mini fridge?”
“I drank the last one before we went downstairs,” Tabitha said.
Of course she had. Jules searched for something to drink and caught Abigail’s irritation with Tabitha growing. “No problem. It’s fine.”
Abigail glared. “I’ll call room service back and ask.”
“They’re probably already sprinting up here. Don’t worry about it.” There was enough going on that the Lowry sisters didn’t need to volley drama back and forth with Tabitha.
Rhys snagged a champagne flute from the wet bar, semiwashed it in the sink, and refilled it with tap water.
Tabitha wrinkled her nose as he offered it to Jules. “That’s gross.”
“Get over yourself, Tabby,” Abigail muttered.
Jules drained the champagne flute in three gulps then dropped like a rock onto the couch. “Thanks.”
“Want another?” he asked.
She shook her head. The adrenaline rush of running from the altar was wearing off. “Anyone heard from Sloane?”
No one had.
All eyes followed her around the room like she might snap. “Did anyone know Mason knocked up Olivia?”
Genuine disbelief radiated from Yasmin, Aaliyah, and Abigail.
Tabitha, too, if Jules were being honest, though her cousin wore a smirk.
The four-man security detail held no expression.
She didn’t know why she’d expected a flicker of anger from Rhys.
He never reacted. Never. He was more machine than man.
His brain cataloged information like data points siphoned through a computer processor.
Her parents thought he was charming and had heavily influenced his decision to leave the FBI and work as her bodyguard whenever their family asked. Big asks, considering he lived on the opposite side of the continent. But he was loyal to the Lowry family via Titan Group, where he and Wes worked.
Before she’d asked the room about Olivia and Mason, had Rhys even known why they had sprinted from the wedding like they were running from the bulls in Pamplona?
Sloane’s phone lit up with an incoming call. Abigail answered, walking to the far side of the spacious hotel room. Was that Mason trying to explain? Or trying to grovel? Or maybe it was Sloane, ready to enact whatever plan she’d concocted.
Abigail ended the call and grimaced as she forced her shoes on again. “Mom and Dad are in their hotel room, but Mom wants to see you.”