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“With full authority, I now pronounce you Mr. and Mrs. Orion Sterling,” the officiant said as we turned to face the crowd.
Everybody stood, cheering and smiling and…happy.
Orion hooked his fingers through mine so we could take our first steps back down the aisle.
As newlyweds.
There was truly no turning back now.
THIRTEEN
NALANI
“I knew your grandmother;did you know that already?” Calliope Sterling asked me, after flagging me down to insist I come sit next to her.
Our — also untraditional — wedding reception was in full swing—food everywhere, wine flowing, and there were no signs of cutting a cake or tossing a bouquet.
I actually… kinda loved it.
No awkward speeches or dances, none of that, just congratulations and a fancy party.
I’d taken Shiloh up on the suggestion for a reception outfit, choosing a beautiful white silk jumpsuit that my friends had oohed and aahed over. I felt great in it now, able to move and dance and apparently… really meet the family.
Morgan was keeping a wide berth from him, but Ares, the middle brother, was nowhere near the stuffy bastard I’d expected from her description. Of course, her opinion was formed from heartbreak and assumptions that may not be fair to hold against a man decades later.
But still.
She was the homey, and he was the brother in law I’d gotten as a package deal in an offer I’d only grudgingly taken. Finding solidarity with her and being a little cold to him—not enough to be rude, but enough to know I was onto him—was easy.
Titan, on the other hand… that was the wild child.
I could see why Alexis was friends with him. It was hard not to be when his energy and charm were so infectious. He was dancing, drinking, talking to everybody who’d listen, including a full fifteen minutes spent talking about dough technology with my Aunt Lucy.
Both men struck me as wholly different from the Sterling brother my unlucky spin had landed on.
Jessica Givens, head of marketing, made a whole point of coming to offer her congratulations; much less erratically than she’d been last night. She was distinctly more put together—and covered up—and while her compliments still felt like sitting on fake leather a little too long, I gave her the courtesy of being polite.
Breana Sterling, though.
Well.
That onewas…
Shit.
I wasn’t even sure what to say.
I’d heard her name and assumed family, for obvious reasons. But her interactions with the men—anyman—around her were just a little… unnerving. It was especially evident in the way she spoke to the brothers—way too close, hands in the wrong place, lingering a bit too long.
Even when she introduced herself to me, she hadn’t told me her relation to them, just that she and Orion had a “special bond” she expected me not to get in the way of.
Which… I didn’t give a fuck about this man kicking it with his weird second cousin or whoever the hell she was.
A fact I communicated, confused, to a wide-eyed Shiloh who explained to me that Breana was, in fact, not blood related to this family at all.
She was Caspian Sterling’s widow.
Some might say… Orion’sstepmother.
