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But Amanda’s head had already begun to twist, her thoughts contorting. Slowly, she backed into the wall behind her and dropped her head against it. She was no longer completely focused on what people said in front of her, nor their opinions. She was now back in the nightmare of January 2021, when she’d learned she wasn’t worthy of love.
“Did you look back in the suite where you were getting ready?” Susan demanded of Noah, speaking to him like she was in the courtroom.
“Of course. But that’s where I was when we first lost him!”
Susan’s hand was in a fist. “Charlotte? Where’s Charlotte?” She scanned the foyer, then ducked into the adjacent hallway to find the wedding planner, Susan’s cousin, who wore a headset and smiled happily. “Charlotte, we have a situation. We can’t find the groom.”
Charlotte’s smile fell off her face. “I’m on it,” she said, disappearing through the double-wide doors and out across the green.
Audrey spoke to Amanda, trying to console her, but Amanda only got bits and pieces of it. She’d heardSam wouldn’t do this to you,andhe loves you, but what Audrey didn’t understand was that, once upon a time, Amanda never would have imagined Chris would have done that, either.
“Maybe it was all a game to him,” Amanda said very quietly. “Maybe he wanted to make me fall in love with him, just to do this to me again?”
“No!” Audrey protested. “He’s got to be around here somewhere.”
But that moment, Charlotte burst back into the foyer with more news. “Have you seen Kelli?”
Their cousin, Kelli Montgomery, was the hotel manager of the Aquinnah Cliffside Overlook Hotel. Two summers ago, she’d been instrumental in its purchase by a man named Xander Van Tress, and together, they’d built it back to its former glory and beyond. They’d also fallen in love along the way.
“She said she was going to be here,” Susan muttered. “She wouldn’t miss Amanda’s wedding.”
“There’s been a lot of chaos at the hotel today,” Noah mentioned, his eyes flashing. “She probably had to take care of something.”
“That’s no reason to miss a family wedding,” Susan said.
A moment later, Sam’s younger brother, Xavier , appeared in the foyer, similarly panicked. “Have you seen Sam?”
Amanda crumpled into herself against the wall, rolling in and out of fits of panic. As everyone before her spoke all over one another, spitting questions and offering solutions to find her groom, Amanda began to face her fate: Sam had probably left her at the altar. And she was going to have to start a brand-new life all over again.
ChapterTwo
One Week Earlier
Kelli awoke at sunrise. It was Saturday, opening day of the Aquinnah Cliffside Overlook Hotel, the first day of the rest of her life, and she couldn’t waste any time. Leaving the handsome Xander Van Tress in bed, his muscular arm wrapped tenderly around the glowing sheets, she tip-toed to the bathroom to shower and do her makeup and hair. As she slid into a two-piece suit and adjusted the jacket over her shoulders, she knowingly eyed herself in the mirror and said, “Come on, Kelli Montgomery. You’ve been preparing for this for nearly two years. You can do this.” Still, Kelli felt jittery with doubt.
Downstairs, Xander was up, brewing a pot of coffee and scraping peanut butter over a slice of toast he said she was legally required to eat. He kissed her dutifully on the cheek, careful not to mess up her lipstick, then whispered, “But we’ll do plenty of kissing when we get home tonight.”
Kelli’s cheeks were warm. “You’re still coming up today, aren’t you?”
“Of course! I’ll be there by eight,” Xander affirmed.
“And you have the list of to-dos I gave you?”
“I put the list in my phone so I wouldn’t lose track of it,” Xander told her.
As Kelli sipped her coffee, a text buzzed through on her phone. It was from Susan Sheridan, her cousin, whom Kelli both loved and felt equally annoyed at.
SUSAN: Good luck today with the opening!
SUSAN: I’m so relieved you managed to open in time for Amanda’s wedding next week.
SUSAN: That was touch and go!
Kelli grimaced and decided to text Susan back later. As the construction and design crew had restructured the old Aquinnah Cliffside Overlook Hotel for the past two years, Kelli’s brain had been twisted with worries that had only doubled in size when Susan had set the date for her daughter’s wedding to June 10. Last autumn, Kelli had been sure the redesign would be finished by then. But as time had gone on, it had become increasingly clear just how complicated a redesign of this nature was— and they’d just-barely managed to open one week before Amanda’s wedding.
“Was that Susan?” Xander could read Kelli like a book.
“She’s a nervous wreck. I get that.” Kelli tried to laugh it off. “But I have two hundred guests staying at my new luxury hotel tonight, and I have to somehow throw them a party, keep them safe, and ensure they write amazing Google reviews, all for the future of my employment. I can’t think about Susan’s anxiety right now!”
