Page 4 of Marrying the Silver Fox

“No, you don’t,” he replies, voice steady. “You have no idea what I’ll lose if I go out there and don’t get married.”

“You make it sound like you don’t even care that it’s her,” I retort sharply, my voice taking on a little more edge than I intend it to. “I mean, seriously. Aren’t you guys in love? You proposed to her, didn’t you?”

He glances away from me, and I can tell I’ve hit a nerve. He might not want to admit it, but this shit makes a mockery of what the institution of marriage is supposed to be, at least to so many of these old-fashioned types.

“Look, unless I put on the damn dress and meet you at the altar, I don’t think this wedding is going to happen,” I tell him bluntly. “You understand me?”

And then his gaze turns back to me. My stomach tightens as I realize that I might have just skirted a little too close to an answer to his problem.

“Then put it on.”

My jaw drops, and I laugh before I can stop myself. Because he has to be joking. Right? There’s no way he can actually mean that. We barely know each other—I think this is the longest conversation we’ve had since we met.

But his gaze doesn’t move from mine, and the words feel more like a challenge than anything else as I stand before him, waiting for him to admit that it’s the craziest idea he’s ever had.

“I’m not going to marry you,” I protest. “I—you must be crazy. I’m not⁠—”

“You’re the wedding planner,” he tells me calmly, his voice taking on an almost eerie tone, as if he has already made his mind up about this. “So, make this wedding work.”

“I can’t, I told you, she’s gone⁠—”

“Listen to me,” he tells me, eyes narrowing. “Half the people out there, they don’t know her, and even if they did, they wouldn’t recognize her at a glance. They just want to see some girl in a pretty white dress come down the aisle and marry me today. And if that doesn’t happen, my reputation is going to take a serious hit. But—” He leans in. “So is yours.”

A cold shiver runs down my spine. I know, on some level, he’s right. If this wedding fails, in front of all of these people, there are those who are going to look at me as the reason why. Even though there’s clearly so much more going on here than I could have predicted—even if I’m certain that I couldn’t have seen something like this coming, and that I am not the reason this girl has decided to bail on the wedding at the last moment.

Hell, if this is the man she was meant to marry, I can’t say I blame her. He sounds crazy. Scary. Terrifying, even. And I don’t know that I have any choice but to go along with what he’s insisting on.

“You don’t know anything about me,” I warn him. “I’m not—I’m not the marrying type, I⁠—”

“A wedding planner who’s not the marrying type?” He lets out a bark of laughter, though it has no real mirth to it, before he continues. “Listen to me, I don’t care what kind of person you see yourself as. I care about putting a ring on someone’s fucking finger today. So, you better find a way to make that happen. Or I’m going to ruin your business just like you’re about to ruin mine if you fail me on this.”

My chest clenches, and I struggle to heave a full breath as I attempt to make sense of it. This doesn’t feel real. Doesn’t feel right. Like all of this must be happening to someone else.

My mind races as I search for a way out of it. I could try and ask one of the bridal party if they would be willing to step in, but if I remember correctly, all of them are engaged or married themselves.

Maybe I could just start going through the guests, see if any of them want to marry him? But then, that would expose the mess that I’ve made of this already, and I can’t let that happen. In a business like this, reputation is everything, and I know this will damage it beyond the point that I can string everything together again.

I squeeze my eyes shut. I don’t see any other way out of this. If he really goes after my business, then I’m done for. A guy with his kind of power could ruin me for good. If I let this all fall to pieces around me, then I’m as good as finished in this world.

I can feel Nikolai’s eyes on me as he waits for me to respond, and I know I have no other choice, as much as I wish it could be different, as much as I long for something, anything else.

“I’ll do it,” I whisper. “I—there’s a dress in her room, a backup in case something happened to the one she was supposed to be wearing. I think I can get into it. And I can tell the officiant to change the names. I⁠—”

“I don’t care how you pull it off,” he tells me sharply. “Just make it happen. Okay?”

I nod, feeling the ground crumble out from under my feet. This is not how I expected this wedding day to go. I was meant to plan this wedding, not be the one taking this man as my husband.

But if this is what it takes to protect my business, then so be it.

I know this is insane, but I can figure out how I’m going to handle it later. Right now, all I care about is keeping the business I have poured my entire adult life into from vanishing down the drain in front of me.

No matter what it takes to make that happen.

3

NIKOLAI

Music drifts around me, sunlight filtering in through the large windows that line the hall. The place is packed with people in their very best outfits, the band plucking out a tasteful string arrangement of some love song I’ve never heard before in my life. At a glance, it looks perfect—but all I can think about, as I stand there waiting for her to arrive, is how fucking angry I am.