Page 4 of Slapshot Bride

“Sprinted, actually.”

“And your family? No notice to them?”

She doesn’t answer right away. Her jaw works. The shaking in her hands has stopped, and she’s started picking at the beading on her bodice in small, methodical movements, like someone who needs to be doing something with her hands or she’ll come apart.

“They wouldn’t believe me,” Her voice drops an octave. “He’s the picture-perfect guy. The textbook definition of good guy.”

“And you’re telling me they’ll take his word over yours?” I find it difficult to believe, but I don’t say it.

She laughs. A dry sound, devoid of humor, unlike her usual bubbly one.

“You haven’t met Preston.”

“Preston?”

Even his name pisses me off, which is fucking ridiculous considering I didn’t know Riley half an hour ago.

“Preston Sinclair.” She says the name the way you’d say a medical diagnosis, flat and clinical. “You probably know him. Most people in this city do. He likes it that way. He’s…” she waves a hand, searching for the word, “connected. He knows everyone. He has lunch with everyone. He gets quoted in the LA Times about housing policy, and he sits on three boards, and he hosts a podcast nobody listens to, but everyone pretends they do. He’s very good at all of it.”

“Sounds charming.”

“Oh, he is. That’s the thing.” Her voice wobbles. I catch her dab at her eyes with the tulle of her skirt. “He’s so charming. Everyone says so. My mother says so. My friends say…” she stops. “My friends used to say so.”

“Used to?”

“I don’t really see them anymore.”

She says it like it’s a fact about the weather and not the saddest sentence I’ve heard in a long time.

Apparently, this asshole has managed to convince everyone around her that he’s the good guy while slowly cutting her off from the people who should’ve been there to protect her.

Something hot and ugly twists low in my gut.

I want to meet Preston.

No. Scratch that.

I want five minutes alone with Preston.

I tighten my grip on the steering wheel, forcing my hands to stay there because imagining what I’d do with them anywhere else isn’t helping.

Riley sniffs beside me, and when I glance over, there’s a smile on her face that doesn’t come close to reaching the faraway look in her eyes.

He did this to her.

And apparently the asshole cheated on her too.

Fuck, I hate cheaters.

I know what people say about me. That I’m a player. That I’ve probably slept with half of Los Angeles. Some of it’s deserved.

But I’ve never cheated on a woman I was with. Not once.

If I want someone else, I leave first. It’s not fucking complicated.

I look at Riley again, at the smile she’s still trying so hard to keep in place, and my hands tighten around the steering wheel.

Six years with this prick, and somehow he had her believing she was the problem.